For some reason “correcting” people’s reasoning was important enough in the ancestral environment to be special-cased in motivation hardware.
It feels instinctual to you and many others alive today including myself, but I’m not sure that’s evidence enough that it was common in the ancestral environment. Isn’t “people are not supposed to disagree with each other on factual matters because anything worth knowing is common knowledge in the ancestral environment” also an ev-pysch proposition?
It feels instinctual to you and many others alive today including myself, but I’m not sure that’s evidence enough that it was common in the ancestral environment.
Do you mean that it could just be a learned thing from today’s culture? Or that it is a side-effect of some other adaptation?
Isn’t “people are not supposed to disagree with each other on factual matters because anything worth knowing is common knowledge in the ancestral environment” also an ev-pysch proposition?
Yes I suppose it is. Is this a proposed source of the frustration-with-unorthodoxy instinct?
Whatever the cause is, “What matters is that this urge seems to be hardware, and it probably has nothing to do with actual truth or your strategic concerns.”
I’m thinking it would best be described as “cultural”. Some level of taboo against correcting others unless you’re in a socially-approved position to do so (teacher, elder, etc.) is, to my understanding, fairly common among humans, even if it’s weaker in our society and time. I brought up the common knowledge thing just because it seems to contradict the idea that a strong urge to correct others could have been particularly adaptive.
I brought up the common knowledge thing just because it seems to contradict the idea that a strong urge to correct others could have been particularly adaptive.
Not all beliefs would be direct common knowledge.
People still had gods and group identities and fashions to disagree about.
On the other hand, I actually can’t see any quick reason it would be adaptive either.
It feels instinctual to you and many others alive today including myself, but I’m not sure that’s evidence enough that it was common in the ancestral environment. Isn’t “people are not supposed to disagree with each other on factual matters because anything worth knowing is common knowledge in the ancestral environment” also an ev-pysch proposition?
Do you mean that it could just be a learned thing from today’s culture? Or that it is a side-effect of some other adaptation?
Yes I suppose it is. Is this a proposed source of the frustration-with-unorthodoxy instinct?
Whatever the cause is, “What matters is that this urge seems to be hardware, and it probably has nothing to do with actual truth or your strategic concerns.”
I’m thinking it would best be described as “cultural”. Some level of taboo against correcting others unless you’re in a socially-approved position to do so (teacher, elder, etc.) is, to my understanding, fairly common among humans, even if it’s weaker in our society and time. I brought up the common knowledge thing just because it seems to contradict the idea that a strong urge to correct others could have been particularly adaptive.
I think it’s a selection effect on the kind of people who wind up on LW.
Not all beliefs would be direct common knowledge.
People still had gods and group identities and fashions to disagree about.
On the other hand, I actually can’t see any quick reason it would be adaptive either.