Why do some people so revile our passive feelings, and so venerate hypocrisy?
Because it helps coerce others into doing things that benefit us and reduces how much force is exercised upon us while trading off the minimal amount of altruistic action necessary. There wouldn’t (usually) be much point having altruistic principles and publicly reviling them.
That’s quite a theory. It’s like the old fashioned elitist theory that hypocrisy is necessary to keep the hoi polloi in line, except apparently applied to everyone.
Or not? Do you think you are made more useful to yourself and others by reviling your feelings and being hypocritical about your values?
The standard one. I was stating the obvious, not being controversial.
Do you think you are made more useful to yourself and others by reviling your feelings and being hypocritical about your values?
I never said I did so. (And where did this ‘useful to others’ thing come in? That’s certainly not something I’d try to argue for. The primary point of the hypocrisy is to reduce the amount that you actually spend helping others, for a given level of professed ideals.)
The primary point of the hypocrisy is to reduce the amount that you actually spend helping others, for a given level of professed ideals.
Sorry, I wasn’t getting what you were saying.
People are hypocritical to send the signal that they are more altruistic than they are? I suppose some do. Do you really think most people are consciously hypocritical on this score?
I’ve wondered as much about a lot of peculiar social behavior, particularly the profession of certain beliefs—are most people consciously lying, and I just don’t get the joke? Are the various crazy ideas people seem to have, where they seem to fail on epistemic grounds, just me mistaking what they consider instrumentally rational lies for epistemic mistakes?
Wedrifid is not ignorant enough to think that most people are consciously hypocritical. Being consciously hypocritical is very difficult. It requires a lot of coordination, a good memory and decent to excellent acting skills. But as you may have heard, “Sincerity is the thing; once you can fake that you’ve got it made.” Evolution baked this lesson into us. The beliefs we profess and the principles we act by overlap but they are not the same.
If you want to read up further on this go to social and cognitive psychology. The primary insights for me were that people are not unitary agents; they’re collections of modules who occasionally work at cross purposes, signalling is realy freaking important, and that in line with far/near or construal theory holding a belief and acting on it are not the same thing.
I can’t recommend a single book to get the whole of this, or even most of it across, but The Mating Mind and The Red Queen’s Race are both good and relevant. I can’t remember which one repeats Lewontin’s Fallacy. Don’t dump it purely based on one brainfart.
Wedrifid is not ignorant enough to think that most people are consciously hypocritical.
Would that be ignorant? I’m not sure. Certainly, there are sharks. Like you, I’d tend to think that most people aren’t sharks, but I consider the population of sharks an open question, and wouldn’t consider someone necessarily ignorant if they thought there were more sharks than I did.
Dennett talks about the collection of modules as well. I consider it an open question as to how much one is aware of the different modules at the same time. I’ve had strange experiences where people seem to be acting according to one idea, but when a contradictory fact is pointed out, they also seemed quite aware of that as well. Doublethink is a real thing.
Because it helps coerce others into doing things that benefit us and reduces how much force is exercised upon us while trading off the minimal amount of altruistic action necessary. There wouldn’t (usually) be much point having altruistic principles and publicly reviling them.
That’s quite a theory. It’s like the old fashioned elitist theory that hypocrisy is necessary to keep the hoi polloi in line, except apparently applied to everyone.
Or not? Do you think you are made more useful to yourself and others by reviling your feelings and being hypocritical about your values?
The standard one. I was stating the obvious, not being controversial.
I never said I did so. (And where did this ‘useful to others’ thing come in? That’s certainly not something I’d try to argue for. The primary point of the hypocrisy is to reduce the amount that you actually spend helping others, for a given level of professed ideals.)
Sorry, I wasn’t getting what you were saying.
People are hypocritical to send the signal that they are more altruistic than they are? I suppose some do. Do you really think most people are consciously hypocritical on this score?
I’ve wondered as much about a lot of peculiar social behavior, particularly the profession of certain beliefs—are most people consciously lying, and I just don’t get the joke? Are the various crazy ideas people seem to have, where they seem to fail on epistemic grounds, just me mistaking what they consider instrumentally rational lies for epistemic mistakes?
Wedrifid is not ignorant enough to think that most people are consciously hypocritical. Being consciously hypocritical is very difficult. It requires a lot of coordination, a good memory and decent to excellent acting skills. But as you may have heard, “Sincerity is the thing; once you can fake that you’ve got it made.” Evolution baked this lesson into us. The beliefs we profess and the principles we act by overlap but they are not the same.
If you want to read up further on this go to social and cognitive psychology. The primary insights for me were that people are not unitary agents; they’re collections of modules who occasionally work at cross purposes, signalling is realy freaking important, and that in line with far/near or construal theory holding a belief and acting on it are not the same thing.
I can’t recommend a single book to get the whole of this, or even most of it across, but The Mating Mind and The Red Queen’s Race are both good and relevant. I can’t remember which one repeats Lewontin’s Fallacy. Don’t dump it purely based on one brainfart.
Would that be ignorant? I’m not sure. Certainly, there are sharks. Like you, I’d tend to think that most people aren’t sharks, but I consider the population of sharks an open question, and wouldn’t consider someone necessarily ignorant if they thought there were more sharks than I did.
Dennett talks about the collection of modules as well. I consider it an open question as to how much one is aware of the different modules at the same time. I’ve had strange experiences where people seem to be acting according to one idea, but when a contradictory fact is pointed out, they also seemed quite aware of that as well. Doublethink is a real thing.
And thanks for the reference to Lewontin’s Fallacy—I didn’t know there was a name for that. The Race FAQ at the site is very interesting.