I guess I have this naive idea that on Less Wrong we can have friendly, thoughtful discussions of politics without getting divided in to tribes. Does this seem like an ideal worth aiming for?
You’re arguing for the world where everyone is made docile with the “connotations of trust, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tender-mindedness”.
You misread me, or I miscommunicated, or something :) Let me clarify: I have no proposals regarding trust, compliance, modesty, or tender-mindedness. And I didn’t mean to communicate any such proposals. When I said I was “leaning towards [docility] being a good thing”, I said that mainly because I perceived the word “docility” to have altruistic connotations.
I think we can both agree that enhanced psychopaths seem like a bad thing, right? So then the question is whether it makes sense to take measures to prevent people from engineering their babies to be enhanced psychopaths. I’m currently leaning towards no, in part through objections you’ve raised and in part through my guess that few people would deliberately choose to have an antisocial baby.
I think maybe our discussion hit a snag at some point because you incorrectly diagnosed me as someone who had values significantly different than yours. At this point you (probably rationally) decided to take an antagonistic pose in order to try to speak out against those values of mine that you disagreed with, and it became harder for us to toss ideas around, stay curious, and share evidence about things. (These are all things you do in a collaborative discussion with someone who shares your values, but are arguably counterproductive for achieving one’s goals in a discussion with someone who doesn’t share your values.) Hopefully the last paragraph clarified things some.
In any case: I’m a consequentialist utilitarian, so I care about everyone’s preferences when designing my utopias, which includes yours. I don’t think I’m your enemy. When it comes to government regulation, I’m a pragmatist: I’m in favor of whatever seems likely to work. And yes, failures of previous regulations contribute to that estimate.
Let me clarify: I have no proposals regarding trust, compliance, modesty, or tender-mindedness. … When I said I was “leaning towards [docility] being a good thing”, I said that mainly because I perceived the word “docility” to have altruistic connotations.
But altruism was in his list along with trust, compliance, etc. So I don’t think you actually answered his objections.
If I tell you I don’t want to eat foods made using vomit, excrement, or bile, and you tell me “well, the food doesn’t contain any vomit or bile”, that’s not really very comforting.
I guess I have this naive idea that on Less Wrong we can have friendly, thoughtful discussions of politics without getting divided in to tribes. Does this seem like an ideal worth aiming for?
This discussion was reasonably friendly by internet standards. No one called anyone a troll, accused him of lying, or decided to discuss his sexual peculiarities :-) No one got doxed or swatted :-D
I also don’t see much of a division into tribes. Two individuals can perfectly well have a political disagreement without serving merely as representatives of warring tribes. I, for one, don’t believe I am representing any tribe or any political consensus here, it’s just my own beliefs and viewpoints.
I have no proposals regarding trust, compliance, modesty, or tender-mindedness.
But you would prefer the population to move (or be moved) in that general direction? You said, and I quote:
Also, you haven’t explained why a “docile” citizenry is a bad thing. Personally, I’m leaning towards it being a good thing, especially if enforced universally.
and later you explained what did you mean by “docile”. Did you change your mind?
you incorrectly diagnosed me as someone who had values significantly different than yours.
This discussion was reasonably friendly by internet standards. No one called anyone a troll, accused him of lying, or decided to discuss his sexual peculiarities :-) No one got doxed or swatted :-D
Yes :) We’re not doing that badly.
and later you explained what did you mean by “docile”. Did you change your mind?
Did you see the clarifying edit in this comment? After thinking a little harder, I realized that the only reason docile people seemed good is because the term suggested altruism to me.
I’m hoping that “more babies should be born altruists” is something almost everyone can agree on. It seems like a proposal even a sociopath could get behind: more suckers to take advantage of :P (Note that it’s possible to be a disagreeable/heretical/cynical altruist; in fact, I know a couple.)
Brainstorming reasons why people wouldn’t like living in a world with lots of young altruists:
The young altruists will badger older folks to change their behavior, e.g. switch to a vegan diet, embrace the cause du jour, or just imply that they’re bad people since they don’t devote lots of time and resources to altruism related stuff (or act morally superior).
The older non-altruists would like to make friends with other non-altruists. Although there are lots of non-altruists who are their age to make friends with, maybe they would like to make friends with young people for some reason. Maybe to broaden their horizons, or maybe they’ve accumulated grudges against most non-altruists their age by this point, or some other reason.
It turns out to be impossible to genetically enhance altruism on its own without enhancing all the other facets of agreeableness along with it, which cause their own set of problems.
These seem like reasons to think that the socially ideal center of the altruism distribution should trend a bit more towards selfishness than it would otherwise.
Do any of these apply to you? Can you think of others?
I’m hoping that “more babies should be born altruists” is something almost everyone can agree on.
Sorry, nope :-/
Do either of these apply to you?
Don’t think so. I don’t foresee any difficulties in sitting in my wheelchair, shaking my cane and yelling “You kids get off my lawn!” :-D And I rather doubt the conversion to altruism is going to be that total that I won’t be able to find anyone to be friends with.
But yes, I suspect that a world full of altruists is going to have a few unpleasant failure modes.
First, what are we talking about? The opposite of “altruistic” is “selfish”—so we are talking about people who don’t care much about their personal satisfaction, success, or well-being, but care greatly about the well-being of some greater community. There are other words usually applied to such people. If we approve of them and their values (and, by implication, goals) we call them “idealists”. If we disapprove of them, we call them “fanatics”.
Early communists, for example, were altruists—they were building a paradise for all workers everywhere. That didn’t stop them from committing a variety of atrocities and swiftly evolving into the most murderous regimes in human history.
The problem, basically, is that if you think that the needs and wants of an individual are insignificant in the face of the good that can accrue to the larger community, you are very willing to sacrifice individuals for that greater good. That is a well-trod path and we know where it leads.
If we approve of them and their values (and, by implication, goals) we call them “idealists”. If we disapprove of them, we call them “fanatics”.
Sure… and if they operate using reason and evidence, we call them “scientists”, “economists”, etc. (Making the world better is an implicit value premise in lots of academic work, e.g. there’s lots of Alzheimer’s research being done because an aging population is going to mean lots of Alzheimer’s patients. Most economists write papers on how to facilitate economic growth, not economic crashes. Etc.) I agree that releasing a bunch of average intelligence, average reflectiveness altruists on the world is not necessarily a good idea and I didn’t propose it.
The problem, basically, is that if you think that the needs and wants of an individual are insignificant in the face of the good that can accrue to the larger community, you are very willing to sacrifice individuals for that greater good.
I mean, the Allied soldiers that died during WWII were sacrificed for the greater good in a certain sense, right? I feel like the real problem here might be deeper, e.g. willingness of the population to accept any proposal that authorities say is for the greater good (not necessarily quite the same thing as altruism… see below).
I think there are a bunch of related but orthogonal concepts that it’s important to separate:
Individualism vs collectivism (as a sociological phenomenon, e.g. “America’s culture is highly individualistic”). Maybe the only genetic tinkering that’s possible would also increase collectivism and cause problems.
Looking good vs being good. Maybe due to the conditions human altruism evolved in (altruistic punishment etc.), altruists tend to be more interested in seeming good (e.g. obsess about not saying anything offensive) than being good (e.g. figure out who’s most in need and help that person without telling anyone). It could be that you are sour on altruism because you associate it with people who try to look good (self-proclaimed altruists), which isn’t necessarily the same group as people who actually are altruists (anything from secretly volunteering at an animal shelter to a Fed chairman who thinks carefully, is good at their job, and helps more poor people than 100 Mother Teresas). Again, in principle it seems like these axes are orthogonal but maybe in practice they’re genetically related.
Utilitarianism vs deontology (do you flip the lever in the trolley problem). EY wrote a sequence about how these are a useful safeguard on utilitarianism. I specified that my utopia would have people who were highly reflective, so they should understand this suggestion and either follow it or improve on it.
Whatever dimension this quiz measures. Orthogonal in theory, maybe related in practice.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing—sometimes people are just wrong about things. Even non-communists thought communist economies would outdo capitalist ones. I think in a certain sense the failure of communism says more about the fact that society design is a hard problem than the dangers of altruism. Probably a good consideration against tinkering with society in general, which includes genetic engineering. However, it sounds like we both agree that genetic engineering is going to happen, and the default seems bad. I think the fundamental consideration here is how much to favor the status quo vs some new unproven but promising idea. Again, seems theoretically orthogonal to altruism but might be related in practice.
Gullibility. I’d expect that agreeable people are more gullible. Orthogonal in theory, maybe related in practice.
And finally, altruism vs selfishness (insofar as one is a utilitarian, what’s the balance of your own personal utility vs that of others). I don’t think making people more altruistic along this axis is problematic ceteris paribus (as long as you don’t get in to pathological self-sacrifice territory), but maybe I’m wrong.
This is a useful list of failure modes to watch for when modifying genes that seem to increase altruism but might change other stuff, so thanks. Perhaps it’d be wise to prioritize reflectiveness over altruism. (Need for cognition might be the construct we want. Feel free to shoot holes in that proposal if you want to continue talking :P)
I agree that releasing a bunch of average intelligence, average reflectiveness altruists on the world is not necessarily a good idea
I am relieved :-P
And yes, I think the subthread has drifted sufficiently far so I’ll bow out and leave you to figure out by yourself the orthogonality of being altruistic and being gullible :-)
I guess I have this naive idea that on Less Wrong we can have friendly, thoughtful discussions of politics without getting divided in to tribes. Does this seem like an ideal worth aiming for?
It would, if it didn’t keep getting disproven.
That said, designer babies aren’t an issue that I would have thought to be more politically sensitive than average as transhumanist topics go—it’s a touchy subject in the mainstream, but not in a Blue/Green way, more in a “prone to generalization from fictional evidence” way. Learn something new every day, I guess.
It brings up memories of other movements, backed by influential scientists, that gained widespread political appeal. Specifically, eugenics. Long before the term was associated with the Nazis, there were sincere eugenics movements in the United States that sought to improve the gene pool. There were laws on the books that provided for forced sterilization of the “unfit”. It just so happened that the victims of these policies were poor and/or minorities.
Since then, there’s always been a segment of the mainstream predisposed to distrust any talk of “improving” the population through scientific means. Any discussion of that topic will thus raise the Blue/Green specter.
As I mentioned in the reply to parent, I don’t see tribal warfare here. We are not two faceless champions of the enemy tribes duking it out, we are just two individuals who disagree. Not every political disagreement must represent tribal affiliation.
And “designer babies” is not a particularly politically sensitive topic. However control of how babies get designed, especially through laws and regulations, certainly is.
Not fictional evidence, real world evidence of how powerful groups have sought to control, marginalize, destroy the agency of, and even eliminate marginal groups all across history including recent history.
I guess I have this naive idea that on Less Wrong we can have friendly, thoughtful discussions of politics without getting divided in to tribes. Does this seem like an ideal worth aiming for?
You misread me, or I miscommunicated, or something :) Let me clarify: I have no proposals regarding trust, compliance, modesty, or tender-mindedness. And I didn’t mean to communicate any such proposals. When I said I was “leaning towards [docility] being a good thing”, I said that mainly because I perceived the word “docility” to have altruistic connotations.
I think we can both agree that enhanced psychopaths seem like a bad thing, right? So then the question is whether it makes sense to take measures to prevent people from engineering their babies to be enhanced psychopaths. I’m currently leaning towards no, in part through objections you’ve raised and in part through my guess that few people would deliberately choose to have an antisocial baby.
I think maybe our discussion hit a snag at some point because you incorrectly diagnosed me as someone who had values significantly different than yours. At this point you (probably rationally) decided to take an antagonistic pose in order to try to speak out against those values of mine that you disagreed with, and it became harder for us to toss ideas around, stay curious, and share evidence about things. (These are all things you do in a collaborative discussion with someone who shares your values, but are arguably counterproductive for achieving one’s goals in a discussion with someone who doesn’t share your values.) Hopefully the last paragraph clarified things some.
In any case: I’m a consequentialist utilitarian, so I care about everyone’s preferences when designing my utopias, which includes yours. I don’t think I’m your enemy. When it comes to government regulation, I’m a pragmatist: I’m in favor of whatever seems likely to work. And yes, failures of previous regulations contribute to that estimate.
But altruism was in his list along with trust, compliance, etc. So I don’t think you actually answered his objections.
If I tell you I don’t want to eat foods made using vomit, excrement, or bile, and you tell me “well, the food doesn’t contain any vomit or bile”, that’s not really very comforting.
This discussion was reasonably friendly by internet standards. No one called anyone a troll, accused him of lying, or decided to discuss his sexual peculiarities :-) No one got doxed or swatted :-D
I also don’t see much of a division into tribes. Two individuals can perfectly well have a political disagreement without serving merely as representatives of warring tribes. I, for one, don’t believe I am representing any tribe or any political consensus here, it’s just my own beliefs and viewpoints.
But you would prefer the population to move (or be moved) in that general direction? You said, and I quote:
and later you explained what did you mean by “docile”. Did you change your mind?
Why do you believe the diagnosis was incorrect?
Yes :) We’re not doing that badly.
Did you see the clarifying edit in this comment? After thinking a little harder, I realized that the only reason docile people seemed good is because the term suggested altruism to me.
I’m hoping that “more babies should be born altruists” is something almost everyone can agree on. It seems like a proposal even a sociopath could get behind: more suckers to take advantage of :P (Note that it’s possible to be a disagreeable/heretical/cynical altruist; in fact, I know a couple.)
Brainstorming reasons why people wouldn’t like living in a world with lots of young altruists:
The young altruists will badger older folks to change their behavior, e.g. switch to a vegan diet, embrace the cause du jour, or just imply that they’re bad people since they don’t devote lots of time and resources to altruism related stuff (or act morally superior).
The older non-altruists would like to make friends with other non-altruists. Although there are lots of non-altruists who are their age to make friends with, maybe they would like to make friends with young people for some reason. Maybe to broaden their horizons, or maybe they’ve accumulated grudges against most non-altruists their age by this point, or some other reason.
It turns out to be impossible to genetically enhance altruism on its own without enhancing all the other facets of agreeableness along with it, which cause their own set of problems.
These seem like reasons to think that the socially ideal center of the altruism distribution should trend a bit more towards selfishness than it would otherwise.
Do any of these apply to you? Can you think of others?
Sorry, nope :-/
Don’t think so. I don’t foresee any difficulties in sitting in my wheelchair, shaking my cane and yelling “You kids get off my lawn!” :-D And I rather doubt the conversion to altruism is going to be that total that I won’t be able to find anyone to be friends with.
But yes, I suspect that a world full of altruists is going to have a few unpleasant failure modes.
First, what are we talking about? The opposite of “altruistic” is “selfish”—so we are talking about people who don’t care much about their personal satisfaction, success, or well-being, but care greatly about the well-being of some greater community. There are other words usually applied to such people. If we approve of them and their values (and, by implication, goals) we call them “idealists”. If we disapprove of them, we call them “fanatics”.
Early communists, for example, were altruists—they were building a paradise for all workers everywhere. That didn’t stop them from committing a variety of atrocities and swiftly evolving into the most murderous regimes in human history.
The problem, basically, is that if you think that the needs and wants of an individual are insignificant in the face of the good that can accrue to the larger community, you are very willing to sacrifice individuals for that greater good. That is a well-trod path and we know where it leads.
Do you think the effective altruist movement is likely to run in to the same failure modes that the communist movement ran in to?
If it gets sufficient amount of power (which I don’t anticipate happening) then yes.
Sure… and if they operate using reason and evidence, we call them “scientists”, “economists”, etc. (Making the world better is an implicit value premise in lots of academic work, e.g. there’s lots of Alzheimer’s research being done because an aging population is going to mean lots of Alzheimer’s patients. Most economists write papers on how to facilitate economic growth, not economic crashes. Etc.) I agree that releasing a bunch of average intelligence, average reflectiveness altruists on the world is not necessarily a good idea and I didn’t propose it.
I mean, the Allied soldiers that died during WWII were sacrificed for the greater good in a certain sense, right? I feel like the real problem here might be deeper, e.g. willingness of the population to accept any proposal that authorities say is for the greater good (not necessarily quite the same thing as altruism… see below).
I think there are a bunch of related but orthogonal concepts that it’s important to separate:
Individualism vs collectivism (as a sociological phenomenon, e.g. “America’s culture is highly individualistic”). Maybe the only genetic tinkering that’s possible would also increase collectivism and cause problems.
Looking good vs being good. Maybe due to the conditions human altruism evolved in (altruistic punishment etc.), altruists tend to be more interested in seeming good (e.g. obsess about not saying anything offensive) than being good (e.g. figure out who’s most in need and help that person without telling anyone). It could be that you are sour on altruism because you associate it with people who try to look good (self-proclaimed altruists), which isn’t necessarily the same group as people who actually are altruists (anything from secretly volunteering at an animal shelter to a Fed chairman who thinks carefully, is good at their job, and helps more poor people than 100 Mother Teresas). Again, in principle it seems like these axes are orthogonal but maybe in practice they’re genetically related.
Utilitarianism vs deontology (do you flip the lever in the trolley problem). EY wrote a sequence about how these are a useful safeguard on utilitarianism. I specified that my utopia would have people who were highly reflective, so they should understand this suggestion and either follow it or improve on it.
Whatever dimension this quiz measures. Orthogonal in theory, maybe related in practice.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing—sometimes people are just wrong about things. Even non-communists thought communist economies would outdo capitalist ones. I think in a certain sense the failure of communism says more about the fact that society design is a hard problem than the dangers of altruism. Probably a good consideration against tinkering with society in general, which includes genetic engineering. However, it sounds like we both agree that genetic engineering is going to happen, and the default seems bad. I think the fundamental consideration here is how much to favor the status quo vs some new unproven but promising idea. Again, seems theoretically orthogonal to altruism but might be related in practice.
Gullibility. I’d expect that agreeable people are more gullible. Orthogonal in theory, maybe related in practice.
And finally, altruism vs selfishness (insofar as one is a utilitarian, what’s the balance of your own personal utility vs that of others). I don’t think making people more altruistic along this axis is problematic ceteris paribus (as long as you don’t get in to pathological self-sacrifice territory), but maybe I’m wrong.
This is a useful list of failure modes to watch for when modifying genes that seem to increase altruism but might change other stuff, so thanks. Perhaps it’d be wise to prioritize reflectiveness over altruism. (Need for cognition might be the construct we want. Feel free to shoot holes in that proposal if you want to continue talking :P)
I am relieved :-P
And yes, I think the subthread has drifted sufficiently far so I’ll bow out and leave you to figure out by yourself the orthogonality of being altruistic and being gullible :-)
It would, if it didn’t keep getting disproven.
That said, designer babies aren’t an issue that I would have thought to be more politically sensitive than average as transhumanist topics go—it’s a touchy subject in the mainstream, but not in a Blue/Green way, more in a “prone to generalization from fictional evidence” way. Learn something new every day, I guess.
It brings up memories of other movements, backed by influential scientists, that gained widespread political appeal. Specifically, eugenics. Long before the term was associated with the Nazis, there were sincere eugenics movements in the United States that sought to improve the gene pool. There were laws on the books that provided for forced sterilization of the “unfit”. It just so happened that the victims of these policies were poor and/or minorities.
Since then, there’s always been a segment of the mainstream predisposed to distrust any talk of “improving” the population through scientific means. Any discussion of that topic will thus raise the Blue/Green specter.
As I mentioned in the reply to parent, I don’t see tribal warfare here. We are not two faceless champions of the enemy tribes duking it out, we are just two individuals who disagree. Not every political disagreement must represent tribal affiliation.
Tribal warfare looks like this.
And “designer babies” is not a particularly politically sensitive topic. However control of how babies get designed, especially through laws and regulations, certainly is.
Not fictional evidence, real world evidence of how powerful groups have sought to control, marginalize, destroy the agency of, and even eliminate marginal groups all across history including recent history.
So, in other words, it is a Blue/Green issue. Well, I’ve been wrong before.