There’s a reason we have a “beware fictional evidence” article. Perhaps the two tribes who think they are ruled by a powerful empire don’t go bankrupt buying weapons, but the belief that they are ruled by a powerful empire causes them to do things that are so bad for them that going bankrupt buying weapons is a better deal.
The idea of rationalist seder is to—carefully! -- use the effect described in “beware fictional evidence” to promote ideas to our awareness.
We know that “the obviously better thing wouldn’t be a Nash equilibrium” traps exist, but we have trouble seeing them, and keep seeing malice and power where there is only desperation. We know that stories can give structure to societies (or, at least, we do if we’ve read Haidt), but we have trouble seeing it, instead seeing madness and gullibility. We know social structures have both costs and benefits which are difficult to weigh against each other, but tend to see only the side that is effecting us right now.
So I wrote this story, this obviously not true story, stripped to its barest bones, so that it could stick in our heads. So that when we should be noticing the things from the preceding paragraph, a spark of recognition fires in our brains and we generate the hypothesis. Once the hypothesis is generated, we can evaluate it with all the tools at our disposal, and this story will (hopefully) get out of the way.
Certainly there can (and have) been tribes/nations that did bad things because of false beliefs (and sometimes true beliefs!).
The point here is more about various relationships between stories and freedom, than it is about tribes. It’s not meant to dictate a concrete moral, so much as to illustrate a few different things that can happen, that are worth being cognizant of.
In the Seder context, this is the first of many stories, some true, some fictional, that illustrate different concepts, some with clearcut morals and some deliberately openended, but A Story of War is there to set the general metaframe of “we’re here to talk about stories and freedom and how they relate”.
Even if we’re going to use fiction to show something about potential behaviors, why wouldn’t we pick a more rationalist story, where most members just don’t care about the border, and happily trade and marry across the border until the entire concept of tribalism is shown to be ridiculous?
Believing that there are fundamental differences between tribes that prevent mixing and demand that you overspend on armaments is not just different goals, it’s a failure of rationalism.
You’re begging the question with the use of phrases like “fundamental differences” and “overspend”. Those are value judgments; they’re not facts. There’s no one “rational” way to decide what counts as a fundamental difference, nor can you decide that some amount is “overpsending” without deciding how to weighthe outcomes.
Stories like that allow plausible deniability, so it’s hard to tell. “Of course the story isn’t about that, now that you’ve refuted it.” .
My first thought was that the story taught that it doesn’t matter whether religion is true, because it helps people cooperate. “There’s a powerful empire that will get you if you don’t do the right thing, but people only think it’s there” is basically God. Of course, if you do this, God is going to “tell” the people a lot of things, and they won’t all be as good as “you’d better cooperate”, and some of them can be pretty terrible.
Also, I was replying to you, not just the original post. People who don’t want open borders and who prioritize their country (or just their friends and family) over others are not being irrational. They just have different goals and different utility functions than you do.
Oh, I was commenting on the concept of “rationalist seder” and what we can/should learn and teach via fiction.
I think you and I disagree on whether there are rational and consistent sets of beliefs about strangers on one side of a border vs another side of it that lead to willingness to subsidize one and let the other starve, but that wasn’t the topic of this thread.
There’s a reason we have a “beware fictional evidence” article. Perhaps the two tribes who think they are ruled by a powerful empire don’t go bankrupt buying weapons, but the belief that they are ruled by a powerful empire causes them to do things that are so bad for them that going bankrupt buying weapons is a better deal.
The idea of rationalist seder is to—carefully! -- use the effect described in “beware fictional evidence” to promote ideas to our awareness.
We know that “the obviously better thing wouldn’t be a Nash equilibrium” traps exist, but we have trouble seeing them, and keep seeing malice and power where there is only desperation. We know that stories can give structure to societies (or, at least, we do if we’ve read Haidt), but we have trouble seeing it, instead seeing madness and gullibility. We know social structures have both costs and benefits which are difficult to weigh against each other, but tend to see only the side that is effecting us right now.
So I wrote this story, this obviously not true story, stripped to its barest bones, so that it could stick in our heads. So that when we should be noticing the things from the preceding paragraph, a spark of recognition fires in our brains and we generate the hypothesis. Once the hypothesis is generated, we can evaluate it with all the tools at our disposal, and this story will (hopefully) get out of the way.
Certainly there can (and have) been tribes/nations that did bad things because of false beliefs (and sometimes true beliefs!).
The point here is more about various relationships between stories and freedom, than it is about tribes. It’s not meant to dictate a concrete moral, so much as to illustrate a few different things that can happen, that are worth being cognizant of.
In the Seder context, this is the first of many stories, some true, some fictional, that illustrate different concepts, some with clearcut morals and some deliberately openended, but A Story of War is there to set the general metaframe of “we’re here to talk about stories and freedom and how they relate”.
Even if we’re going to use fiction to show something about potential behaviors, why wouldn’t we pick a more rationalist story, where most members just don’t care about the border, and happily trade and marry across the border until the entire concept of tribalism is shown to be ridiculous?
Caring about your own tribe is a matter of different goals, not different degrees of rationalism.
Believing that there are fundamental differences between tribes that prevent mixing and demand that you overspend on armaments is not just different goals, it’s a failure of rationalism.
You’re begging the question with the use of phrases like “fundamental differences” and “overspend”. Those are value judgments; they’re not facts. There’s no one “rational” way to decide what counts as a fundamental difference, nor can you decide that some amount is “overpsending” without deciding how to weighthe outcomes.
Ok, maybe I’m completely misreading the post. What do you think is the point of the stories?
Stories like that allow plausible deniability, so it’s hard to tell. “Of course the story isn’t about that, now that you’ve refuted it.” .
My first thought was that the story taught that it doesn’t matter whether religion is true, because it helps people cooperate. “There’s a powerful empire that will get you if you don’t do the right thing, but people only think it’s there” is basically God. Of course, if you do this, God is going to “tell” the people a lot of things, and they won’t all be as good as “you’d better cooperate”, and some of them can be pretty terrible.
Also, I was replying to you, not just the original post. People who don’t want open borders and who prioritize their country (or just their friends and family) over others are not being irrational. They just have different goals and different utility functions than you do.
Oh, I was commenting on the concept of “rationalist seder” and what we can/should learn and teach via fiction.
I think you and I disagree on whether there are rational and consistent sets of beliefs about strangers on one side of a border vs another side of it that lead to willingness to subsidize one and let the other starve, but that wasn’t the topic of this thread.