The post seems to be talking about these topics solely from the perspective of the relation between the individual and the community they belong to (“You are a member of some community”, emphasis added). But, in my opinion, one of the most important manifestations of guilt (and shame, etc) to analyze, if we aim to understand these emotions more deeply, is when the individual feels guilty for violating a norm inside a community they are no longer a part of. This comes about because the vast majority of people have a tendency to internalize the norms and lessons they are taught and to try to uphold them regardless of the external incentives they face from the group.
As Eliezer once wrote, when you punish a child for stealing cookies, the child learns not to be caught stealing, but usually and to some extent, they also learn not to steal, as an end goal/principle independent of whether they get caught.
When applied to object-level behavior like stealing cookies, this kind of norm internalization is ethically neutral. But when applied to protocols and coordination mechanisms, this becomes part of how shame-based coordination infiltrates and subverts communities doing something more interesting—people who recognize and try to leave bad communities end up recreating those same dysfunctional behaviors in the better communities they seek out.
In my reply to CstineSublime on pecking orders I explored how this works through specific social mechanisms like using self-deprecation to derail accountability.
The post seems to be talking about these topics solely from the perspective of the relation between the individual and the community they belong to (“You are a member of some community”, emphasis added). But, in my opinion, one of the most important manifestations of guilt (and shame, etc) to analyze, if we aim to understand these emotions more deeply, is when the individual feels guilty for violating a norm inside a community they are no longer a part of. This comes about because the vast majority of people have a tendency to internalize the norms and lessons they are taught and to try to uphold them regardless of the external incentives they face from the group.
As Eliezer once wrote, when you punish a child for stealing cookies, the child learns not to be caught stealing, but usually and to some extent, they also learn not to steal, as an end goal/principle independent of whether they get caught.
I agree.
When applied to object-level behavior like stealing cookies, this kind of norm internalization is ethically neutral. But when applied to protocols and coordination mechanisms, this becomes part of how shame-based coordination infiltrates and subverts communities doing something more interesting—people who recognize and try to leave bad communities end up recreating those same dysfunctional behaviors in the better communities they seek out.
In my reply to CstineSublime on pecking orders I explored how this works through specific social mechanisms like using self-deprecation to derail accountability.