I suppose the question is, to what extent can ideas be separated from social dynamics, such as status and legitimacy, and therefore not carry with them the risk of causing anger and fear.
Well ideas can certainly create positive as well as negative responses. For example, more accurate understanding and the communication of practically useful approaches are often intrinsically enjoyable. As is the communication of experience that might help determine the correct course of action or help avoid problems (i.e. personal stories, news). Provided these don’t threaten our status and legitimacy rules they remain positive and rewarding. They can also serve to validate our choices and serve to bolster our self esteem, or even to reduce the importance of those who threaten our values (satire). These can be viewed as improving our feelings that we have status (value) and legitimacy (goodness), i.e. the opposite of the fear causing uses I mentioned above.
However, ideas can also influence these factors more indirectly. For example, in the entertainment industry the term ‘social currency’ is sometimes used. This is used to describe the value that people place on communicating ideas as a means for establishing relationships (mutually nurturing through making each other feel good) and raising status (being relatively more important because you convey the pleasure of entertainment). A process mirrored here through the karma points. As such it can carry fears associated with threatening those in an alpha position or a conflict in the rules that underlie the status, for example as expressed in the phrase “you’re just saying that to be popular”.
Academics and other creative roles have the added pressure that the continuous generation of ideas is the basis for their livelihood. This is likely to lead to ideas being a major factor in their self esteem, adding an extra intensity to the fears and pleasures associated with having them (perhaps explaining why Bertrand Russell said the quote in the first place).
More significantly, formal ideas, such as proofs can be extremely threatening because they introduce a method of influence that conflicts with many existing status hierarchies. It breaks many people’s sense of legitimacy, to say that anyone can make a formal statement for any reason and yet still determine other people’s actions, or even more significantly, that an opinion of a person can be considered to have no value if a formal statement demonstrates that it is false. Taken to extreme, it could lead to a position where a person had no influence (and thus no status) because they were incapable of ever making a statement that was not proved false.
I would suggest it is more common to view the legitimacy of statements as deriving from status (which is why we tend to value quotes the way we do). And also to have status determined by tradition, which in some community’s leads almost all novelty to be treated as illegitimate. Thus reducing conversation to small talk or the repetition of traditional sayings (anything else would be ‘weird’). The power of scientific method (and this site) is in creating a set of traditions that enable novelty to be introduced in a legitimate way, so that these two positions are less likely to conflict (although I suspect they do so quite frequently).
I am in the unfortunate position of enjoying conversations about status and legitimacy, which are almost always fraught with the risks of taboo violation. Not to mention the fact that thinking about status and legitimacy tends to make your values different from those around you, making interactions a lot like walking on thin ice (exhilarating and terrifying) : ).
I’m glad you like it : )
I suppose the question is, to what extent can ideas be separated from social dynamics, such as status and legitimacy, and therefore not carry with them the risk of causing anger and fear.
Well ideas can certainly create positive as well as negative responses. For example, more accurate understanding and the communication of practically useful approaches are often intrinsically enjoyable. As is the communication of experience that might help determine the correct course of action or help avoid problems (i.e. personal stories, news). Provided these don’t threaten our status and legitimacy rules they remain positive and rewarding. They can also serve to validate our choices and serve to bolster our self esteem, or even to reduce the importance of those who threaten our values (satire). These can be viewed as improving our feelings that we have status (value) and legitimacy (goodness), i.e. the opposite of the fear causing uses I mentioned above.
However, ideas can also influence these factors more indirectly. For example, in the entertainment industry the term ‘social currency’ is sometimes used. This is used to describe the value that people place on communicating ideas as a means for establishing relationships (mutually nurturing through making each other feel good) and raising status (being relatively more important because you convey the pleasure of entertainment). A process mirrored here through the karma points. As such it can carry fears associated with threatening those in an alpha position or a conflict in the rules that underlie the status, for example as expressed in the phrase “you’re just saying that to be popular”.
Academics and other creative roles have the added pressure that the continuous generation of ideas is the basis for their livelihood. This is likely to lead to ideas being a major factor in their self esteem, adding an extra intensity to the fears and pleasures associated with having them (perhaps explaining why Bertrand Russell said the quote in the first place).
More significantly, formal ideas, such as proofs can be extremely threatening because they introduce a method of influence that conflicts with many existing status hierarchies. It breaks many people’s sense of legitimacy, to say that anyone can make a formal statement for any reason and yet still determine other people’s actions, or even more significantly, that an opinion of a person can be considered to have no value if a formal statement demonstrates that it is false. Taken to extreme, it could lead to a position where a person had no influence (and thus no status) because they were incapable of ever making a statement that was not proved false. I would suggest it is more common to view the legitimacy of statements as deriving from status (which is why we tend to value quotes the way we do). And also to have status determined by tradition, which in some community’s leads almost all novelty to be treated as illegitimate. Thus reducing conversation to small talk or the repetition of traditional sayings (anything else would be ‘weird’). The power of scientific method (and this site) is in creating a set of traditions that enable novelty to be introduced in a legitimate way, so that these two positions are less likely to conflict (although I suspect they do so quite frequently).
I am in the unfortunate position of enjoying conversations about status and legitimacy, which are almost always fraught with the risks of taboo violation. Not to mention the fact that thinking about status and legitimacy tends to make your values different from those around you, making interactions a lot like walking on thin ice (exhilarating and terrifying) : ).