Luke, I just want to make sure we’re keeping distinct things distinct. Here are three things to keep distinct:
The immediate situation in which we find ourselves
Our character, by which I mean that distinctive aspect of us which persists over a significant length of time (this may include skills)
Our immediate behavior
The Milgram torture experiment(s) showed that our immediate behavior is greatly influenced by our immediate situation. It did not show, going by what I have read of it, that our character is shaped by our immediate situation. I’m not saying it isn’t! I’m sure that a long succession of immediate situations will, over time, shape our character. All I’m saying is that the Milgram experiment, from what I’ve read of it, was not about that.
Similarly, the fundamental attribution error, as I understand it, is to blame immediate behavior on character on occasions when in truth the immediate situation has a greater influence on our immediate behavior. So this, too, is not about the role of our immediate situation in shaping our character.
The question of whether and how much our immediate situation—a succession of immediate situations—shapes our character over time in a lasting way is the question of the effect of environment on character.
You discuss people who you call “really trained rationalists”. That very fact—that they are “really trained”, and they are “a level or two above me” paints a picture of a lasting change on a person’s character brought about by training. You say furthermore that “all these people have spent time living with at least two other rationalists for many months—most of them, for longer than that,” which reinforces a picture of a long-lasting change in character brought about by immersion in an environment over an extended period of time.
I don’t think separating character from situation is useful; rather than say “they are a giving person” and using the situation to explain an overly generous or stingy action, I try to think “they are the kind of person who is generous in this situation and stingy in this situation”—and I’ve noticed improvements in my ability to predict coworkers behaviours since I made that change.
The other thing to remember is that, a la no perfect philosophy student of emptiness, there is no character outside of situation: you can’t examine a person’s character sans situational modifiers. You can describe people as having this or that character trait, but only insofar as it applies to situations.
Shokwave’s read on this is my take away from experiments like Milgram’s: the situational context is not truly separable from character. Zimbardo’s book The Lucifer Effect really drove this point home to me. He argued strongly against the idea that the abuses at Abu Ghriab were the result of “bad apples” (i.e. result of people with poor character), but that the situation itself led to the abuses, and further (and more controversially), the situation itself was created in order to bring about those behaviors. I don’t mean to say that there is necessarily only one behavioral outcome for a given situation, only that the situation weighs very heavily on the outcome, to the point where finding an unchangeable “character” across situations doesn’t seem feasible.
Luke, I just want to make sure we’re keeping distinct things distinct. Here are three things to keep distinct:
The immediate situation in which we find ourselves
Our character, by which I mean that distinctive aspect of us which persists over a significant length of time (this may include skills)
Our immediate behavior
The Milgram torture experiment(s) showed that our immediate behavior is greatly influenced by our immediate situation. It did not show, going by what I have read of it, that our character is shaped by our immediate situation. I’m not saying it isn’t! I’m sure that a long succession of immediate situations will, over time, shape our character. All I’m saying is that the Milgram experiment, from what I’ve read of it, was not about that.
Similarly, the fundamental attribution error, as I understand it, is to blame immediate behavior on character on occasions when in truth the immediate situation has a greater influence on our immediate behavior. So this, too, is not about the role of our immediate situation in shaping our character.
The question of whether and how much our immediate situation—a succession of immediate situations—shapes our character over time in a lasting way is the question of the effect of environment on character.
You discuss people who you call “really trained rationalists”. That very fact—that they are “really trained”, and they are “a level or two above me” paints a picture of a lasting change on a person’s character brought about by training. You say furthermore that “all these people have spent time living with at least two other rationalists for many months—most of them, for longer than that,” which reinforces a picture of a long-lasting change in character brought about by immersion in an environment over an extended period of time.
I don’t think separating character from situation is useful; rather than say “they are a giving person” and using the situation to explain an overly generous or stingy action, I try to think “they are the kind of person who is generous in this situation and stingy in this situation”—and I’ve noticed improvements in my ability to predict coworkers behaviours since I made that change.
The other thing to remember is that, a la no perfect philosophy student of emptiness, there is no character outside of situation: you can’t examine a person’s character sans situational modifiers. You can describe people as having this or that character trait, but only insofar as it applies to situations.
Shokwave’s read on this is my take away from experiments like Milgram’s: the situational context is not truly separable from character. Zimbardo’s book The Lucifer Effect really drove this point home to me. He argued strongly against the idea that the abuses at Abu Ghriab were the result of “bad apples” (i.e. result of people with poor character), but that the situation itself led to the abuses, and further (and more controversially), the situation itself was created in order to bring about those behaviors. I don’t mean to say that there is necessarily only one behavioral outcome for a given situation, only that the situation weighs very heavily on the outcome, to the point where finding an unchangeable “character” across situations doesn’t seem feasible.