The connection between “doing good” and “making a sacrifice” is so strong that people need to be reminded that “win/win” is also a thing. The bad guys typically do whatever is best for them, which often involves hurting others (because some resources are limited). The good guys exercise restraint.
This is complicated because there is also the issue of short-term and long-term thinking. Sometimes the bad guys do things that benefit them in short term, but contribute to their fall in long term; while the good guys increase their long-term gains by strategically giving up on some short-term temptations. But it is a just-world fallacy to assume that things always end up this way. Sometimes the badguys murder millions, and then they live happily to old age. Sometimes the good guys get punished and laughed at, and then they die in despair.
How could “good” even have evolved, given that “sacrifice” seems by definition incompatible with “maximizing fitness”?
being good to your relatives promotes your genes.
reciprocal goodness can be an advantage to both players.
doing good—precisely because it is a sacrifice—can become a signal of abundance, which makes other humans want to be my allies or mates.
people reward good and punish evil in others, because it is in their selfish interest to live among good people.
The problems caused by the evolutionary origin of goodness are also well-known: people are more likely to be good towards their neighbors who can reciprocate or towards potential sexual partners, and they are more likely to do good when they have an audience who approves of it… and less likely to do good to low-status people who can’t reciprocate, or when their activities are anonymous. (Steals money from pension funds, polutes the environment, then donates millions to a prestigious university.)
I assume that most people are “instinctively good”, that is that they kinda want to be good, but they simply follow their instincts, and don’t reflect much on them (other than rationalizing that following their instinct was good, or at least a necessary evil). Their behavior can be changed by things that affect their instincts—the archetypal example is the belief in an omniscient judging God, i.e. a powerful audience who sees all behavior, and rewards/punishes according to social norms (so now the only problem is how to make those social norms actually good). I am afraid that this ship has sailed, and that we do not really have a good replacement—any non-omniscient judge can be deceived, and any reward mechanism will be Goodharted. Another problem is that by trying to make society more tolerant and more governed by law, we also take away people’s ability to punish evil… as long as the evil takes care to only do evil acts that are technically legal, or when there is not enough legal evidence of wrongdoing.
Assuming we have a group of saints (who have the same values, and who trust each other to be saints), I am not even sure what would be the best strategy for them. Probably to cooperate with each other a lot, because there is no risk of being stabbed in the back. Try to find other saints, test them, and then admit them to the group. Notice good acts among non-saints and reward them somehow—maybe in form of lottery, when most good acts only get a “thank you”, but one in a million gets a million-dollar reward. (People overestimate their chances in lottery. This would lead them to overestimate how likely a good act is to be rewarded, which would make them do more good.) The obvious problem with rewarding good acts is that it rewards visibility; perhaps there should be a special rewards for good acts that were unlikely to get noticed. The good acts should get a social reward, i.e. telling other people about the good act and how someone was impressed.
(The sad thing is that given that we live in a clickbait society, it would not take much time until someone would publish an article about how X-ist the saints are, because the proportion of Y’s they rewarded for good deeds is not the same as the proportion of Y’s in the society. Also, this specific person rewarded for this specific good deed also happens to hold some problematic opinions, does this mean that the saints secretly support the opinion, too?)
I sometimes like to imagine a soft version of karma, like if people would be free to associate with people who are like them, then the good people would associate with other good people, the bad people would associate with other bad people, and then the bad people would suffer (because surrounded by bad people), and the good people would live nice lives (because surrounded by good people). The problem with this vision is that people are not so free to choose their neighbors (coordination is hard, moving is expensive), and also that the good people who suck at judging other people’s goodness would suffer. Not sure what is the right approach here, other than perhaps we should become a bit more judgmental, because it seems the pendulum has swung too much in the direction that you are not even allowed to criticize [an obviously horrible thing] out of concern that some culture might routinely [do the horrible thing], which would get you called out as intolerant, which is a sin much worse than [doing the horrible thing]. I’d like people to get some self-respect and say “hey, these are my values, if you disagree, fuck off”. But this of course assumes that the people who disagree actually have a place to go. Another problem is that you cannot build an archipelago, if the land is scarce, and your solution to conflicts is to walk away.
(Also, a fraction of people are literally psychopaths, so even if we devised a set of nudges to make most people behave good, it would not apply to everyone. To make someone behave good out of mere rational self-interest, they would have to believe that almost all evil deeds get detected and punished, which is very difficult to achieve.)
The connection between “doing good” and “making a sacrifice” is so strong that people need to be reminded that “win/win” is also a thing. The bad guys typically do whatever is best for them, which often involves hurting others (because some resources are limited). The good guys exercise restraint.
This is complicated because there is also the issue of short-term and long-term thinking. Sometimes the bad guys do things that benefit them in short term, but contribute to their fall in long term; while the good guys increase their long-term gains by strategically giving up on some short-term temptations. But it is a just-world fallacy to assume that things always end up this way. Sometimes the bad guys murder millions, and then they live happily to old age. Sometimes the good guys get punished and laughed at, and then they die in despair.
How could “good” even have evolved, given that “sacrifice” seems by definition incompatible with “maximizing fitness”?
being good to your relatives promotes your genes.
reciprocal goodness can be an advantage to both players.
doing good—precisely because it is a sacrifice—can become a signal of abundance, which makes other humans want to be my allies or mates.
people reward good and punish evil in others, because it is in their selfish interest to live among good people.
The problems caused by the evolutionary origin of goodness are also well-known: people are more likely to be good towards their neighbors who can reciprocate or towards potential sexual partners, and they are more likely to do good when they have an audience who approves of it… and less likely to do good to low-status people who can’t reciprocate, or when their activities are anonymous. (Steals money from pension funds, polutes the environment, then donates millions to a prestigious university.)
I assume that most people are “instinctively good”, that is that they kinda want to be good, but they simply follow their instincts, and don’t reflect much on them (other than rationalizing that following their instinct was good, or at least a necessary evil). Their behavior can be changed by things that affect their instincts—the archetypal example is the belief in an omniscient judging God, i.e. a powerful audience who sees all behavior, and rewards/punishes according to social norms (so now the only problem is how to make those social norms actually good). I am afraid that this ship has sailed, and that we do not really have a good replacement—any non-omniscient judge can be deceived, and any reward mechanism will be Goodharted. Another problem is that by trying to make society more tolerant and more governed by law, we also take away people’s ability to punish evil… as long as the evil takes care to only do evil acts that are technically legal, or when there is not enough legal evidence of wrongdoing.
Assuming we have a group of saints (who have the same values, and who trust each other to be saints), I am not even sure what would be the best strategy for them. Probably to cooperate with each other a lot, because there is no risk of being stabbed in the back. Try to find other saints, test them, and then admit them to the group. Notice good acts among non-saints and reward them somehow—maybe in form of lottery, when most good acts only get a “thank you”, but one in a million gets a million-dollar reward. (People overestimate their chances in lottery. This would lead them to overestimate how likely a good act is to be rewarded, which would make them do more good.) The obvious problem with rewarding good acts is that it rewards visibility; perhaps there should be a special rewards for good acts that were unlikely to get noticed. The good acts should get a social reward, i.e. telling other people about the good act and how someone was impressed.
(The sad thing is that given that we live in a clickbait society, it would not take much time until someone would publish an article about how X-ist the saints are, because the proportion of Y’s they rewarded for good deeds is not the same as the proportion of Y’s in the society. Also, this specific person rewarded for this specific good deed also happens to hold some problematic opinions, does this mean that the saints secretly support the opinion, too?)
I sometimes like to imagine a soft version of karma, like if people would be free to associate with people who are like them, then the good people would associate with other good people, the bad people would associate with other bad people, and then the bad people would suffer (because surrounded by bad people), and the good people would live nice lives (because surrounded by good people). The problem with this vision is that people are not so free to choose their neighbors (coordination is hard, moving is expensive), and also that the good people who suck at judging other people’s goodness would suffer. Not sure what is the right approach here, other than perhaps we should become a bit more judgmental, because it seems the pendulum has swung too much in the direction that you are not even allowed to criticize [an obviously horrible thing] out of concern that some culture might routinely [do the horrible thing], which would get you called out as intolerant, which is a sin much worse than [doing the horrible thing]. I’d like people to get some self-respect and say “hey, these are my values, if you disagree, fuck off”. But this of course assumes that the people who disagree actually have a place to go. Another problem is that you cannot build an archipelago, if the land is scarce, and your solution to conflicts is to walk away.
(Also, a fraction of people are literally psychopaths, so even if we devised a set of nudges to make most people behave good, it would not apply to everyone. To make someone behave good out of mere rational self-interest, they would have to believe that almost all evil deeds get detected and punished, which is very difficult to achieve.)