I’m saying that she has an obligation, whatever she does, not to think about her society as a pit of crocodiles (except hypothetically, for abstract arguments, etc—never in semi-conscious daily thinking, as a matter of “attitude”), because that’ll only increase the class divide and its problems. Society is affected by its members’ perception of it, and if everyone just wanted to maximize safety for themselves and their families… why, that society would be utterly helpless! What’s the difference between civic responsibility in the face of war or natural disasters and civic responsibility in the face of social division and alienation?
If the middle class just evacuates from everywhere where they have any contact with the “underclasses”, so that the latter are left in utter and visible isolation, like the “Untouchable” castes in India… do you think that spells any hope of survival for the American nation, its culture, its spirit?
I’m saying that she has an obligation, whatever she does, not to think about her society as a pit of crocodiles
If my society is a pit of crocodiles, I want to believe my society is a pit of crocodiles! I’m sure German Jews in the 1930s, or Cambodians intellectuals (or short-sighted people) in the 1970s would agree with me.
Society is affected by its members’ perception of it, and if everyone just wanted to maximize safety for themselves and their families… why, that society would be utterly helpless!
Nowadays the standard way of solving coordination/tragedy-of-the-commons problems is through the government; for example Singapore has quality public housings that house 85% of the population and have ethnic quotas to prevent self-segregation.
Singaporeans and Americans probably both want to maximize safety for themselves and their families, but the incentives in Singapore mean that sticking to “people like you” is not as attractive a strategy as it is in the US.
I’m saying that she has an obligation, whatever she does, not to think about her society as a pit of crocodiles (except hypothetically, for abstract arguments, etc—never in semi-conscious daily thinking, as a matter of “attitude”), because that’ll only increase the class divide and its problems. Society is affected by its members’ perception of it, and if everyone just wanted to maximize safety for themselves and their families… why, that society would be utterly helpless!
This sounds much like a tragedy of the commons. Remind me again what the rational response is if one has little hope of organizing measures to overcome it.
If the middle class just evacuates from everywhere where they have any contact with the “underclasses”, so that the latter are left in utter and visible isolation, like the “Untouchable” castes in India…
Where is the evidence that living with the underclass benefits the underclass more than it hurts the middle class? In case you haven’t notice the underclass has due to social changes nearly fully assimilated the wrecked working class that existed in the United States at one point and its cultural norms and dysfunction are spreading and becoming worse. I believe the non-blue collar middle class is next and nearly all social indicators seem to be moving in that direction.
For a brief overview of just how far the cultural class divides have grown I suggest reading Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart”. Why group such different cultures under the marker “American culture” in a sense beyond geographical designation?
Remind me again what the rational response is if one has little hope of organizing measures to overcome it.
= “Remind me again what the rational response is in non-iterated PD when you’re sure your partner is a stupid Defect-Bot.” And my answer to that is, if you value something beyond one-turn success, you’ll at least consider that the PD might be iterated after all, in the historic long run. But if no-one on the “reasonable” side acts like it’s iterated, it wouldn’t be, and the Defect-Bots will eventually tear apart everything you love.
How much can society last in such a way before the abandoned and despised “underclass” finally boils over? I don’t think that it’s more than a few generations. Would you want a somewhat nicer and safer life for your children without a future for their children?
= “Remind me again what the rational response is in non-iterated PD when you’re sure your partner is a stupid Defect-Bot.”
Indeed that was my intended message.
How much can society last in such a way before the abandoned and despised “underclass” finally boils over? I don’t think that it’s more than a few generations. Would you want a somewhat nicer and safer life for your children without a future for their children?
I think it is unavoidable. As to saving “everything you love” or rather salvaging the things I value about our civilization. I have spent a lot of time on this problem. Let us say that my current best hope is FAI. Any effort towards which I consider nearly certain to fail horribly, yet still think should be attempted.
What does this tell you? But let me try and put it another way, especially since you bring up the stupid always-defect-bot. Imagine you have a unfriendly self-improving AI. Now imagine it is built out of people’s brains, brains that you care about. Those brains have dreams and values of their own, but they are not the dreams and values of the uFAI that is running on them. It will continue running and self-improving making their dreams and values matter less and less for how the universe is ordered and indeed it will edit and change those values arbitrarily and unpredictably. Imagine the only alternative to this is that it pretty much blows itself up together with all the brains it contains.
But in that world, defecting to ensure your own short-term gain is best replaced with wireheading; nothing fragile survives anyway, so why rob and oppress other brains for a fleeting illusion of contentment? Therefore, we should find happiness in simple things, avoid increasing strife and competition for resources and, ideally, just stop being troubled by the whole mess.
I don’t need gains to be “eternal” or “non-fragile” to count. Remember our debate about the “Hansonian hell word”, where I pointed out that a few centuries of human minds living in plenty followed by aeons of alien minds isn’t really a “hell world” to me?
My conclusions about the world simply mean that I have centuries or decades instead of billions of years of minds I care about arranging matter. I don’t find such a shortening a convincing reason to embrace counterfeit utility with wire-heading.
So you’ve no reinforcing reasons to give up your own fleeting well-being for anyone else’s sake, especially that of far people? Well, at least that’s honest. But I still want to aim for more than temporary gratification when deciding what to do—partly because I still feel very irresponsible and worried when trying not to care about what I see in society.
Sure, of course you care. I meant, well, I’ll think of how to explain it. But basically I’m talking about quasi-religious values again. I have this nagging feeling that we’re hugely missing out on both satisfaction and morality for not understanding their true use.
Ok I hope you can write it out because it sounds interesting. But let me pose a query of my own.
You seem to think that over a period a few billion years means that real utility optimization should occur rather than going for wire-heading. And think that if limited to a few centuries counterfeit utility is better. How would you feel about 10 000 years of the values you cherish followed by a alien or empty universe? What about 10 million years?
If it makes you feel better if everything I cared was destined to disappear tomorrow I think I would go for some wire-heading, so I guess we are just on different spots on the same curve. Is this so?
I’m thinking. But keep in mind that I’m basically a would-be deontologist; I’m just not sure what my deontic ethics should be. If only I could get a consistent (?) and satisfying system, I’d be fine with missing out on direct utility. I know, for humans that’s as impossible as becoming an utility maximizer, because we’re the antithesis of “consistency”.
A lot of your posts leave me with the impression that you think the right wing has all the facts on its side, but it only means you need to oppose them that much more heroically. This is a terribly perverse point of view, all the moreso because there are some facts that support left wing opinions too.
For instance, you’ll note that Vladimir_M is perfectly open about the scarcity of scientific literature supporting his gut feeling about peer effects. A parent came along to say she wasn’t worried about peer effects for her own children, not that it was her moral duty to throw their safety to the wind.
I’m not actually a parent yet, but I do plan to have kids and to raise them in a mixed-income neighborhood (somewhere in Cambridge MA).
I do think peer effects exist. Having worked in a local school full of both “underclass” kids and professors’ children, which is the mix you get in Cambridge, I do think the poorer kids have a somewhat negative effect on the richer kids. I expect there will be some negative effects to my kids from not living in a bubble. However, I love the area and I think that living there will be good for the family, better than going into the kind of debt Vladimir_M mentioned to afford all-rich neighborhoods or private schools. We like living in a city, we like not owning a car, we having no debt. Those things mean living near some poor people.
I accept the correction, but now I don’t see a difference between your points of view. Certainly what you write above is more delicately phrased than “poor people are crocodiles”, but VMs comment was also more delicately phrased than that.
Huh? Um, perhaps you have a point here, but why did you reply with that to my comment above specifically? I thought that, of all things, cross-class solidarity and opposition to the splintered modern society can be construed as just as much of a right-wing value as a left-wing one. Hell, fascists used rhetoric similar to mine.
“What is to be done?” I often scan answers to this question as left-wing, but perhaps that heuristic is a hundred years out of date.
Whether or not “pro-crocodile” and “anti-crocodile” map to “left” and “right”, there is something perverse about saying: the evil anti-crocodiles have it exactly right, so we pro-crocodiles have our work cut out for us!
Let’s call it what it is, OK? IMO there are two related matters here: 1) What is the size of the groups you’re willing to empathize with? and how much relative concern you feel obliged to show for each—your family? neighbours? ethnicity? social class? compatriots? culture? religion? species? 2) What’s your attitude towards social alienation and various unsavoury processes that accompany it? Is it just an inevitable side of humanity, to be ignored if possible? Only to be ignored if you’re sure it’s not about to explode? A moderately tragic natural disaster? A concrete ethical evil, akin to not helping victims in an accident? A disease of the nation-organism, which ultimately concerns all its other parts? A profane/sinful Awful Thing that’s an affront to your preferred Grand Design? I don’t have a clear answer for myself, neither logically nor emotionally.
(Great. You try to break shit down into more manageable bits—aligned with LW’s mission, it is! - and there’s an instant downvote.)
What is the size of the groups you’re willing to empathize with?
I think this question is a bit misleading, as if size is the only important (or most important) information about any group.
Let’s ask instead: “What groups you are willing to cooperate with?” (Because the empathy should lead to cooperation, right?) Now the question is: Is the given group able and willing to cooperate with me? The answer does not depend directly on the size—I can imagine an enlightened galactical society where everyone cares about the well-being of others; and I can also imagine a small group of people harming their neighbors to achieve short-term gains. It is not about the size of the group; it is about what those people do, what they think like.
What’s your attitude towards social alienation and various unsavoury processes that accompany it?
I’d rather not have it, but merely pretending that it does not exist is not enough. In a long term, if I am able to help people in bad situations, I will try. In a short term, I care about my survival, and survival of my children.
Is it just an inevitable side of humanity, to be ignored if possible?
I don’t know. World changes; what was impossible yesterday, may be possible today; but sometimes what was possible yesterday is no longer possible today. Instead of asking whether it is inevitable or not, we should discuss specific strategies, their costs and probabilities of success. There is a difference between asking whether “there is a solution” or whether “a specific strategy X is a solution”. (In this specific case, X being: “living and raising your children among people of lower classes”.)
Perhaps this deserves a specific top-level thread in “Open Thread”. But we should start by trying to define what “social alienation” approximately is (maybe it is an unnatural category consisting of several different cases); then discuss relevant factors; and only then start suggesting solutions.
But we should start by trying to define what “social alienation” approximately is (maybe it is an unnatural category consisting of several different cases); then discuss relevant factors; and only then start suggesting solutions.
...[the] inequality generated by Capitalism is morally wrong, because it fragments society and prevents us from relating to one another. Can the tycoon in his luxurious penthouse relate to the pensioner shivering in her flat, or the unemployed man waiting for the bus in the rain?
Giving one example—a hugely mindkilling one—is not the same as providing a definition. It can help me understand your feelings about “social alienation”, but I still don’t know what exactly it means—where are the boundaries of this concept.
Is “social alienation” any kind of situation when one group of people has problems imagining themselves as members of another group? Or is it necessary to have some asymetry, where almost everyone agrees that it is better to belong to group A than to group B? Is there a difference whether belonging to group A or B is caused by family one was born in, or by one’s abilities, or by one’s decisions?
A too wide definition could lead to: “Any difference in anything (including opinions, hobbies, values) is morally wrong.”
For more specific definitions we could perhaps discuss the possible paradox of morally acceptable differences causing morally wrong differences later, and how could that paradox be solved.
And then, later, we could discuss speficic strategies that could be used to solve specific problems.
I’m willing, even eager, to empathize with every human being. But that includes Singaporeans, and Republican squares raising their kids in the suburbs. You seem to have a blind spot or worse when it comes to those folks.
I can’t think of a definition of “social alienation” where I would like to see more of it. But I don’t know what you’re asking me to sign on for when you ask me to help you thwart it. I don’t like the sound of it.
Watching from the sidelines, and not being an American, it seems to me you (plural) are close to arguing about definitions (what is to be called right wing?) but that is probably not your intent. If you taboo “left and right” what is left of your discussion?
I’m saying that she has an obligation, whatever she does, not to think about her society as a pit of crocodiles (except hypothetically, for abstract arguments, etc—never in semi-conscious daily thinking, as a matter of “attitude”), because that’ll only increase the class divide and its problems. Society is affected by its members’ perception of it, and if everyone just wanted to maximize safety for themselves and their families… why, that society would be utterly helpless! What’s the difference between civic responsibility in the face of war or natural disasters and civic responsibility in the face of social division and alienation?
If the middle class just evacuates from everywhere where they have any contact with the “underclasses”, so that the latter are left in utter and visible isolation, like the “Untouchable” castes in India… do you think that spells any hope of survival for the American nation, its culture, its spirit?
If my society is a pit of crocodiles, I want to believe my society is a pit of crocodiles! I’m sure German Jews in the 1930s, or Cambodians intellectuals (or short-sighted people) in the 1970s would agree with me.
Nowadays the standard way of solving coordination/tragedy-of-the-commons problems is through the government; for example Singapore has quality public housings that house 85% of the population and have ethnic quotas to prevent self-segregation.
Singaporeans and Americans probably both want to maximize safety for themselves and their families, but the incentives in Singapore mean that sticking to “people like you” is not as attractive a strategy as it is in the US.
This sounds much like a tragedy of the commons. Remind me again what the rational response is if one has little hope of organizing measures to overcome it.
Where is the evidence that living with the underclass benefits the underclass more than it hurts the middle class? In case you haven’t notice the underclass has due to social changes nearly fully assimilated the wrecked working class that existed in the United States at one point and its cultural norms and dysfunction are spreading and becoming worse. I believe the non-blue collar middle class is next and nearly all social indicators seem to be moving in that direction.
For a brief overview of just how far the cultural class divides have grown I suggest reading Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart”. Why group such different cultures under the marker “American culture” in a sense beyond geographical designation?
= “Remind me again what the rational response is in non-iterated PD when you’re sure your partner is a stupid Defect-Bot.” And my answer to that is, if you value something beyond one-turn success, you’ll at least consider that the PD might be iterated after all, in the historic long run. But if no-one on the “reasonable” side acts like it’s iterated, it wouldn’t be, and the Defect-Bots will eventually tear apart everything you love.
How much can society last in such a way before the abandoned and despised “underclass” finally boils over? I don’t think that it’s more than a few generations. Would you want a somewhat nicer and safer life for your children without a future for their children?
Indeed that was my intended message.
I think it is unavoidable. As to saving “everything you love” or rather salvaging the things I value about our civilization. I have spent a lot of time on this problem. Let us say that my current best hope is FAI. Any effort towards which I consider nearly certain to fail horribly, yet still think should be attempted.
What does this tell you? But let me try and put it another way, especially since you bring up the stupid always-defect-bot. Imagine you have a unfriendly self-improving AI. Now imagine it is built out of people’s brains, brains that you care about. Those brains have dreams and values of their own, but they are not the dreams and values of the uFAI that is running on them. It will continue running and self-improving making their dreams and values matter less and less for how the universe is ordered and indeed it will edit and change those values arbitrarily and unpredictably. Imagine the only alternative to this is that it pretty much blows itself up together with all the brains it contains.
This is the world I think I am living in.
But in that world, defecting to ensure your own short-term gain is best replaced with wireheading; nothing fragile survives anyway, so why rob and oppress other brains for a fleeting illusion of contentment? Therefore, we should find happiness in simple things, avoid increasing strife and competition for resources and, ideally, just stop being troubled by the whole mess.
Oops, looks like I accidentally Buddhism.
I don’t need gains to be “eternal” or “non-fragile” to count. Remember our debate about the “Hansonian hell word”, where I pointed out that a few centuries of human minds living in plenty followed by aeons of alien minds isn’t really a “hell world” to me?
My conclusions about the world simply mean that I have centuries or decades instead of billions of years of minds I care about arranging matter. I don’t find such a shortening a convincing reason to embrace counterfeit utility with wire-heading.
So you’ve no reinforcing reasons to give up your own fleeting well-being for anyone else’s sake, especially that of far people? Well, at least that’s honest. But I still want to aim for more than temporary gratification when deciding what to do—partly because I still feel very irresponsible and worried when trying not to care about what I see in society.
The set of minds I care about obviously includes my own but isn’t limited to it!
Sure, of course you care. I meant, well, I’ll think of how to explain it. But basically I’m talking about quasi-religious values again. I have this nagging feeling that we’re hugely missing out on both satisfaction and morality for not understanding their true use.
Ok I hope you can write it out because it sounds interesting. But let me pose a query of my own.
You seem to think that over a period a few billion years means that real utility optimization should occur rather than going for wire-heading. And think that if limited to a few centuries counterfeit utility is better. How would you feel about 10 000 years of the values you cherish followed by a alien or empty universe? What about 10 million years?
If it makes you feel better if everything I cared was destined to disappear tomorrow I think I would go for some wire-heading, so I guess we are just on different spots on the same curve. Is this so?
I’m thinking. But keep in mind that I’m basically a would-be deontologist; I’m just not sure what my deontic ethics should be. If only I could get a consistent (?) and satisfying system, I’d be fine with missing out on direct utility. I know, for humans that’s as impossible as becoming an utility maximizer, because we’re the antithesis of “consistency”.
Depends on my estimate of how little that hope is, and of how many other people like me there are.
How about an obligation to get good evidence about local groups, rather than listening to people who make a habit of scaring each other?
A lot of your posts leave me with the impression that you think the right wing has all the facts on its side, but it only means you need to oppose them that much more heroically. This is a terribly perverse point of view, all the moreso because there are some facts that support left wing opinions too.
For instance, you’ll note that Vladimir_M is perfectly open about the scarcity of scientific literature supporting his gut feeling about peer effects. A parent came along to say she wasn’t worried about peer effects for her own children, not that it was her moral duty to throw their safety to the wind.
I’m not actually a parent yet, but I do plan to have kids and to raise them in a mixed-income neighborhood (somewhere in Cambridge MA).
I do think peer effects exist. Having worked in a local school full of both “underclass” kids and professors’ children, which is the mix you get in Cambridge, I do think the poorer kids have a somewhat negative effect on the richer kids. I expect there will be some negative effects to my kids from not living in a bubble. However, I love the area and I think that living there will be good for the family, better than going into the kind of debt Vladimir_M mentioned to afford all-rich neighborhoods or private schools. We like living in a city, we like not owning a car, we having no debt. Those things mean living near some poor people.
I accept the correction, but now I don’t see a difference between your points of view. Certainly what you write above is more delicately phrased than “poor people are crocodiles”, but VMs comment was also more delicately phrased than that.
Huh? Um, perhaps you have a point here, but why did you reply with that to my comment above specifically? I thought that, of all things, cross-class solidarity and opposition to the splintered modern society can be construed as just as much of a right-wing value as a left-wing one. Hell, fascists used rhetoric similar to mine.
“What is to be done?” I often scan answers to this question as left-wing, but perhaps that heuristic is a hundred years out of date.
Whether or not “pro-crocodile” and “anti-crocodile” map to “left” and “right”, there is something perverse about saying: the evil anti-crocodiles have it exactly right, so we pro-crocodiles have our work cut out for us!
Let’s call it what it is, OK? IMO there are two related matters here:
1) What is the size of the groups you’re willing to empathize with? and how much relative concern you feel obliged to show for each—your family? neighbours? ethnicity? social class? compatriots? culture? religion? species?
2) What’s your attitude towards social alienation and various unsavoury processes that accompany it? Is it just an inevitable side of humanity, to be ignored if possible? Only to be ignored if you’re sure it’s not about to explode? A moderately tragic natural disaster? A concrete ethical evil, akin to not helping victims in an accident? A disease of the nation-organism, which ultimately concerns all its other parts? A profane/sinful Awful Thing that’s an affront to your preferred Grand Design?
I don’t have a clear answer for myself, neither logically nor emotionally.
(Great. You try to break shit down into more manageable bits—aligned with LW’s mission, it is! - and there’s an instant downvote.)
The parent does not seem to be a response to the grandparent.
I think this question is a bit misleading, as if size is the only important (or most important) information about any group.
Let’s ask instead: “What groups you are willing to cooperate with?” (Because the empathy should lead to cooperation, right?) Now the question is: Is the given group able and willing to cooperate with me? The answer does not depend directly on the size—I can imagine an enlightened galactical society where everyone cares about the well-being of others; and I can also imagine a small group of people harming their neighbors to achieve short-term gains. It is not about the size of the group; it is about what those people do, what they think like.
I’d rather not have it, but merely pretending that it does not exist is not enough. In a long term, if I am able to help people in bad situations, I will try. In a short term, I care about my survival, and survival of my children.
I don’t know. World changes; what was impossible yesterday, may be possible today; but sometimes what was possible yesterday is no longer possible today. Instead of asking whether it is inevitable or not, we should discuss specific strategies, their costs and probabilities of success. There is a difference between asking whether “there is a solution” or whether “a specific strategy X is a solution”. (In this specific case, X being: “living and raising your children among people of lower classes”.)
Perhaps this deserves a specific top-level thread in “Open Thread”. But we should start by trying to define what “social alienation” approximately is (maybe it is an unnatural category consisting of several different cases); then discuss relevant factors; and only then start suggesting solutions.
Here’s a nice post to begin with, written by a local libertarian, Larks, in response to Eliezer’s “Traditional Capitalist Values”.
Giving one example—a hugely mindkilling one—is not the same as providing a definition. It can help me understand your feelings about “social alienation”, but I still don’t know what exactly it means—where are the boundaries of this concept.
Is “social alienation” any kind of situation when one group of people has problems imagining themselves as members of another group? Or is it necessary to have some asymetry, where almost everyone agrees that it is better to belong to group A than to group B? Is there a difference whether belonging to group A or B is caused by family one was born in, or by one’s abilities, or by one’s decisions?
A too wide definition could lead to: “Any difference in anything (including opinions, hobbies, values) is morally wrong.”
For more specific definitions we could perhaps discuss the possible paradox of morally acceptable differences causing morally wrong differences later, and how could that paradox be solved.
And then, later, we could discuss speficic strategies that could be used to solve specific problems.
Are you asking me?
I’m willing, even eager, to empathize with every human being. But that includes Singaporeans, and Republican squares raising their kids in the suburbs. You seem to have a blind spot or worse when it comes to those folks.
I can’t think of a definition of “social alienation” where I would like to see more of it. But I don’t know what you’re asking me to sign on for when you ask me to help you thwart it. I don’t like the sound of it.
Such values are pretty right wing for example.
I’m not even convinced this is a right-wing sentiment when it’s held by an American.
Watching from the sidelines, and not being an American, it seems to me you (plural) are close to arguing about definitions (what is to be called right wing?) but that is probably not your intent. If you taboo “left and right” what is left of your discussion?