Obvious notion that shouldn’t be obvious: Getting what you want.
If you’ve had a good education, lived in an affluent society all your life, and learned useful social skills, the notion that goals are achievable will sound ridiculously redundant to you, barely worth pointing out in words.
Hypothesis: Poor societies do not develop game theories.
I’m not sure which way this bears on that, but one of the ancient Greeks, I forget who, seeing ten thousand men prepared for battle, reflected that here also were gathered as many dreams and desires, and pondered how few of them would ever be achieved.
Are you talking about a sense of entitlement to what one wants, or the broader notion of goals as achievable future world-states that one can work towards?
Societies conditioned to hopelessness by daily material frustration do not conceive of a systematized method for satisfying their needs.* They invent gods to plead with, and may backstab each other to ascend in power, but they will not develop an entire theory, involving other-modeling, based on the concept that goals are achievable by careful planning and effort.
*This puts me in a chicken-and-egg situation: What came first, mass-scale agriculture or plant breeding?
Machiavelli’s “The Prince” is very illustrative in that regard. He spends a few pages arguing that men can indeed control his own fate instead of just being at whim to the grace of God.
What came first, mass-scale agriculture or plant breeding?
Interestingly, the answer seems to be “plant breeding”. Evidence of selective breeding of bottle gourd plants predates the Neolithic Revolution, for example.
In the New World, too, it wasn’t uncommon for people to selectively propagate plants without cultivating them; but it’s hard to say whether that predates agriculture on this side of the Atlantic.
But the satisfaction of our non-social needs in a modern environment depend much much less on other people’s strategies. Today, you can obtain all your non-social needs with hardly any social interaction; living alone, working from home, buying groceries from strangers; ignoring news and local trends.
In the past, meeting non-social needs required more social support, and could be thwarted more easily by the whims of others. Think of living in a band or tribe level society!
I agree that certain sorts of planning are more modern, but these new forms seem to require less sophisticated social understanding than old method. Compare: Investing in a retirement fund, and investing in connections with the next generation because you need them to feed you in your old age.
In the past, meeting non-social needs required more social support
I am not sure about that—subsistence farming is pretty self-sufficient. Individual, separated homesteads were the norm in several cultures/time periods and given how you don’t count trading with others as social interaction, someone living with his family on a distant farm (without any telecommunications) probably had much less “social support” than a modern nerd spending his time on the ’net.
″...given how you don’t count trading with others as social interaction”
It’s more complicated than that. Checking out at the grocery store is low on social modeling. Trade in a barter economy is more social. “Trade” in the sort of gift economy that characterized most previous societies is really really social.
″ Individual, separated homesteads were the norm in several cultures/time periods...”
What time periods are we talking? My model of most historic farming practices still involves things like extended families living in same area for long periods of time (“clans”), reliance on “group work” for things like harvesting, and the common presence of a relatively close village. In many place, like ancient China, you had very nuanced communal farming systems, centered around shared access to irrigation.
Perhaps more importantly, in the absence of a strong impersonal state, all disputes would be settled in ways that required great demands on social modeling, rather than the straightforward appeal to a justice system.
I am not defending polymathwannabe’s position, I do not support his assertion. My point is, rather, that I am not sure that all the traditional societies required more of social skills / participation than the modern one.
There are a whole bunch of factors at play here. For example, on the one hand in the modern society an individual is, generally speaking, more powerful in the sense of being able to achieve more by himself and that makes his need for social support less. On the other hand, traditional societies were simpler in many ways and required less cooperation and coordination than the contemporary interlinked and interdependent world.
And, of course, all ages had their social butterflies and their hermits. People differ both in their need for social interaction and in the kinds they prefer and that has always been so.
Although I raised a challenge to the original claim, I’m genuinely curious about this, and I don’t feel strongly that I either agree or disagree with it. I don’t mean to claim all traditional or modern societies will have any particular pattern.
I agree with your second paragraph.
I think my current best try is something like: Coordination and cooperation are qualitatively different on different scales. Working on an assembly line (or designing an assembly line, or making business deals regarding an assembly line) is, in one sense, participating in a complex and massive coordination project. But it doesn’t make sense to compare this to the sort of social coordination that happens in interpersonal relationships, whose relative survival importance has generally declined.
To bring this back to the OP, my question is : Is the challenge of interpersonal coordination (or zero-sum status competition) sufficient for people to “conceive of a systematized method for satisfying their needs” that resembles the sort of thinking that we apply today?
Well, if we go to the OP, I think the claim is just not true. To give an obvious example, some early civilizations utilized massive and complicated irrigation systems. Such systems are clearly a “systematized method of satisfying their needs” which requires “careful planning and effort”. I am not sure what does it have to do with interpersonal coordination. Societies have been able to organize masses of people in service of a single goal for a very long time (Stonehenge, the Pyramids, etc.)
Of course, some societies did fail at this and you can still find a few of them hunting for bush meat in the jungle.
There is no such thing as a default LW user either, as far as I’m aware. “Statistically predominant” is not the same concept as “default”. We can decide whether or not to treat a certain behavior or property or whatever (if any) as the default in a particular context. We can’t in general decide which behavior/property/whatever is the statistically predominant one.
Obvious notion that shouldn’t be obvious: Getting what you want.
This is what was answered—it’s about what people in general want, it’s not about what the typical LW reader might want.
Now that I think about it, the idea that women should have ambitions outside their families is pretty new so far as I know. So is the idea that everyone should aim for being extraordinary.
My thanks to everyone who voted Lumifer’s comments up—I wasn’t will to take a karma penalty to reply.
the idea that women should have ambitions outside their families is pretty new so far as I know.
That all women should have ambitions outside of Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church) might be a new idea, but for women belonging to elites it was acceptable for a long time—ruling queens are certainly not unknown in antiquity: Cleopatra, Boadicea, etc.
Obvious notion that shouldn’t be obvious: Getting what you want.
If you’ve had a good education, lived in an affluent society all your life, and learned useful social skills, the notion that goals are achievable will sound ridiculously redundant to you, barely worth pointing out in words.
Hypothesis: Poor societies do not develop game theories.
I’m not sure which way this bears on that, but one of the ancient Greeks, I forget who, seeing ten thousand men prepared for battle, reflected that here also were gathered as many dreams and desires, and pondered how few of them would ever be achieved.
Are you talking about a sense of entitlement to what one wants, or the broader notion of goals as achievable future world-states that one can work towards?
I meant only the latter, but having the latter in your head may lead to the former.
Could you expand on this? And are we using the definition of ‘game theory’: Strategies whose values depend on strategies of other people?
Societies conditioned to hopelessness by daily material frustration do not conceive of a systematized method for satisfying their needs.* They invent gods to plead with, and may backstab each other to ascend in power, but they will not develop an entire theory, involving other-modeling, based on the concept that goals are achievable by careful planning and effort.
*This puts me in a chicken-and-egg situation: What came first, mass-scale agriculture or plant breeding?
Machiavelli’s “The Prince” is very illustrative in that regard. He spends a few pages arguing that men can indeed control his own fate instead of just being at whim to the grace of God.
Interestingly, the answer seems to be “plant breeding”. Evidence of selective breeding of bottle gourd plants predates the Neolithic Revolution, for example.
In the New World, too, it wasn’t uncommon for people to selectively propagate plants without cultivating them; but it’s hard to say whether that predates agriculture on this side of the Atlantic.
But the satisfaction of our non-social needs in a modern environment depend much much less on other people’s strategies. Today, you can obtain all your non-social needs with hardly any social interaction; living alone, working from home, buying groceries from strangers; ignoring news and local trends.
In the past, meeting non-social needs required more social support, and could be thwarted more easily by the whims of others. Think of living in a band or tribe level society!
I agree that certain sorts of planning are more modern, but these new forms seem to require less sophisticated social understanding than old method. Compare: Investing in a retirement fund, and investing in connections with the next generation because you need them to feed you in your old age.
I am not sure about that—subsistence farming is pretty self-sufficient. Individual, separated homesteads were the norm in several cultures/time periods and given how you don’t count trading with others as social interaction, someone living with his family on a distant farm (without any telecommunications) probably had much less “social support” than a modern nerd spending his time on the ’net.
The family still counts as support from other people.
The stereotype of a person who can actually manage alone is a trapper.
Do you mean someone who hunts animals with traps, or a monk of the Order of La Trappe?
Someone who hunts animals with traps.
It’s more complicated than that. Checking out at the grocery store is low on social modeling. Trade in a barter economy is more social. “Trade” in the sort of gift economy that characterized most previous societies is really really social.
What time periods are we talking? My model of most historic farming practices still involves things like extended families living in same area for long periods of time (“clans”), reliance on “group work” for things like harvesting, and the common presence of a relatively close village. In many place, like ancient China, you had very nuanced communal farming systems, centered around shared access to irrigation.
Perhaps more importantly, in the absence of a strong impersonal state, all disputes would be settled in ways that required great demands on social modeling, rather than the straightforward appeal to a justice system.
I am not defending polymathwannabe’s position, I do not support his assertion. My point is, rather, that I am not sure that all the traditional societies required more of social skills / participation than the modern one.
There are a whole bunch of factors at play here. For example, on the one hand in the modern society an individual is, generally speaking, more powerful in the sense of being able to achieve more by himself and that makes his need for social support less. On the other hand, traditional societies were simpler in many ways and required less cooperation and coordination than the contemporary interlinked and interdependent world.
And, of course, all ages had their social butterflies and their hermits. People differ both in their need for social interaction and in the kinds they prefer and that has always been so.
Although I raised a challenge to the original claim, I’m genuinely curious about this, and I don’t feel strongly that I either agree or disagree with it. I don’t mean to claim all traditional or modern societies will have any particular pattern.
I agree with your second paragraph.
I think my current best try is something like: Coordination and cooperation are qualitatively different on different scales. Working on an assembly line (or designing an assembly line, or making business deals regarding an assembly line) is, in one sense, participating in a complex and massive coordination project. But it doesn’t make sense to compare this to the sort of social coordination that happens in interpersonal relationships, whose relative survival importance has generally declined.
To bring this back to the OP, my question is : Is the challenge of interpersonal coordination (or zero-sum status competition) sufficient for people to “conceive of a systematized method for satisfying their needs” that resembles the sort of thinking that we apply today?
Well, if we go to the OP, I think the claim is just not true. To give an obvious example, some early civilizations utilized massive and complicated irrigation systems. Such systems are clearly a “systematized method of satisfying their needs” which requires “careful planning and effort”. I am not sure what does it have to do with interpersonal coordination. Societies have been able to organize masses of people in service of a single goal for a very long time (Stonehenge, the Pyramids, etc.)
Of course, some societies did fail at this and you can still find a few of them hunting for bush meat in the jungle.
Like a full belly and a fertile woman to screw?
That sort of comment assumes that the default human is male, and probably heterosexual male.
The default population of LW is heterosexual male :-) There is no such thing as a default human.
There is no such thing as a default LW user either, as far as I’m aware. “Statistically predominant” is not the same concept as “default”. We can decide whether or not to treat a certain behavior or property or whatever (if any) as the default in a particular context. We can’t in general decide which behavior/property/whatever is the statistically predominant one.
True. Still, for certain basic drives one’s gender matters and writing out two (at least :-D) cases is often too much hassle for a simple comment.
This is what was answered—it’s about what people in general want, it’s not about what the typical LW reader might want.
Now that I think about it, the idea that women should have ambitions outside their families is pretty new so far as I know. So is the idea that everyone should aim for being extraordinary.
My thanks to everyone who voted Lumifer’s comments up—I wasn’t will to take a karma penalty to reply.
That all women should have ambitions outside of Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church) might be a new idea, but for women belonging to elites it was acceptable for a long time—ruling queens are certainly not unknown in antiquity: Cleopatra, Boadicea, etc.
Yes, I meant the idea that all women should have ambitions outside the home.
I’m not sure that ruling queens became such because of their ambition, or if they inherited the job.