Well, I certainly agree that the controversial topics you list have the property you describe—that is, no popular position on them is unflawed.
I don’t believe this significantly explains the low light:heat ratio of discussions about those topics, though. There are lots of topics where no popular position on them is unflawed that nevertheless get discussed without the level of emotional investment we see when gender relations or tribal affiliations (or, to a lesser extent, morality) get involved.
That said, it’s not especially mysterious that gender relations and tribal affiliations reliably elicit more emotional involvement than, say, decision theory.
There are lots of topics where no popular position on them is unflawed that nevertheless get discussed without the level of emotional investment we see when gender relations or tribal affiliations (or, to a lesser extent, morality) get involved.
The problem is that the positions on this topic (not just the popular ones, but all the conceivable non-transhumanist ones) are not just “unflawed”, they’re pretty damn horrible, absolutely speaking.
Consider everyone (who’s smart enough for it and cares to) unabashedly using “PUA”-style psychological manipulation (not the self-improvement bits there, what they call “inner game” and what’s found in all other self-help manuals, but specifically “outer game”, internalizing the “marketplace” logic and applying it to their love life) versus things staying as they are, with the sexual status race accelerating and getting more crazy. Clearly, both situations are not just “flawed” but fucking horrible, full of suffering and adversity and shit. That’s very easy to imagine, and that’s where the tension comes from.
(BTW, privately I’m so disgusted at those “seduction” tricks that it took some willpower not to heap abuse at such practices throughout this comment. Don’t talk to me about it.)
To make sure I understand… do you predict that for any question, if a group of people G has a set of possible answers A, and G is attempting to come to consensus on one of those answers, G’s ability to cooperate in that effort will anticorrelate (p > .95) with how unpleasant G’s expected results of implementing any of A are?
That would surprise me, if so, but it wouldn’t vastly shock me. Call it ~.6 confidence that the above is false.
I’m ~.7 confident that G’s ability to cooperate in that effort would anticorrelate more strongly with the standard deviation within G of pre-existing individual identifications with political or social entities associated with a particular member of A.
It’s partly so in my opinion. I expect a modest effect like that for most issues, but in a much more dramatic fashion on the most painful problems, where our instincts are highly involved and can easily tell us that all the answers are going to hurt—like sex.
Why else ’d you think that most of European classical tragic/dramatic literature touches on intimate dissatisfaction/suffering, and irrational behavior in regards to it?
Because intimate relations are really important to us, so we tell lots of stories about it. It’s also why so many popular stories are about couples getting together and living happily ever after.
Well, I certainly agree that the controversial topics you list have the property you describe—that is, no popular position on them is unflawed.
I don’t believe this significantly explains the low light:heat ratio of discussions about those topics, though. There are lots of topics where no popular position on them is unflawed that nevertheless get discussed without the level of emotional investment we see when gender relations or tribal affiliations (or, to a lesser extent, morality) get involved.
That said, it’s not especially mysterious that gender relations and tribal affiliations reliably elicit more emotional involvement than, say, decision theory.
The problem is that the positions on this topic (not just the popular ones, but all the conceivable non-transhumanist ones) are not just “unflawed”, they’re pretty damn horrible, absolutely speaking.
Consider everyone (who’s smart enough for it and cares to) unabashedly using “PUA”-style psychological manipulation (not the self-improvement bits there, what they call “inner game” and what’s found in all other self-help manuals, but specifically “outer game”, internalizing the “marketplace” logic and applying it to their love life) versus things staying as they are, with the sexual status race accelerating and getting more crazy. Clearly, both situations are not just “flawed” but fucking horrible, full of suffering and adversity and shit. That’s very easy to imagine, and that’s where the tension comes from.
(BTW, privately I’m so disgusted at those “seduction” tricks that it took some willpower not to heap abuse at such practices throughout this comment. Don’t talk to me about it.)
To make sure I understand… do you predict that for any question, if a group of people G has a set of possible answers A, and G is attempting to come to consensus on one of those answers, G’s ability to cooperate in that effort will anticorrelate (p > .95) with how unpleasant G’s expected results of implementing any of A are?
That would surprise me, if so, but it wouldn’t vastly shock me. Call it ~.6 confidence that the above is false.
I’m ~.7 confident that G’s ability to cooperate in that effort would anticorrelate more strongly with the standard deviation within G of pre-existing individual identifications with political or social entities associated with a particular member of A.
It’s partly so in my opinion. I expect a modest effect like that for most issues, but in a much more dramatic fashion on the most painful problems, where our instincts are highly involved and can easily tell us that all the answers are going to hurt—like sex.
Why else ’d you think that most of European classical tragic/dramatic literature touches on intimate dissatisfaction/suffering, and irrational behavior in regards to it?
Because intimate relations are really important to us, so we tell lots of stories about it.
It’s also why so many popular stories are about couples getting together and living happily ever after.