The thing we actually care about… Is that social reality? People being happy and content and getting along, love and meaning—it seems to be based in large part on the fundamental question of how people feel about other people, how we get along, etc.
It might be uderstandable if you’re a person that cares about those things you might think that the near term effects of how people think and feel relate to what happens effect the long term of how people think and feel and relate. If you don’t have a lot of power, you might even subconsciosly think this is your best ability to effect the “ultimate goal” of everyone getting along.
And when you run into someone who (in your mind) doesn’t care about that reality of how their actions effect the harmony of the group, you might think them cold and calculating and importantly in opposition to that ultimate goal.
Then you might write up a post about how sure, you can think of causal reality sometimes, but the important thing is the reality of understanding what will make us all get along.
And you might have just as important point as the excellent points made in the above post.
It feels hard to respond to your comment directly, like there’s an ontology mismatch or something. But here are thoughts in response:
The things it feels I strongly care about are experiences and preferences. These exist in causal reality just the same as human minds themselves do. People “getting along” somehow feels a bit instrumental, at least stated that way. It does seem that people in social reality are putting more effort into getting along, but often by sacrificing everything else? I certainly have the feeling that social reality very often makes people miserable. Also something like that within social reality, I still expect most people to be optimizing for their own position/wellbeing within that social reality, not for the wellbeing of the social collective.
A line of thought, inspired by your comment (perhaps just rewritten in my own ontology) is that we can say that having a shared conception of what is good is extremely important for coordination and connection, including abiding by that shared conception of that good.
My post was definitely motivated by thinking that many people are wrongly forgetting about causal reality because they’re so stuck in social reality. Probably the opposite happens some too, but it doesn’t strike me as obviously the cause of as much harm/lost potential.
Just to make it clear, I think your post is pointing at something real, and my post can it part be seen as a thought experiment/playing devils’ advocate
My post was definitely motivated by thinking that many people are wrongly forgetting about causal reality because they’re so stuck in social reality.
I agree this is a thing, although I think another thing that happens is not that they forget about causal reality, its’ that they never even get to the point where they realize that causal reality is a thing that’s important to their goals and they things they care about (there’s nothing to forget yet).
Probably the opposite happens some too, but it doesn’t strike me as obviously the cause of as much harm/lost potential.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about recently is the increasing atomization of society in the face of globalization, and how much harm this does. The systems we’ve created are very stable, very useful, and very powerful—and they’ve lost something of the power of what it feels like to be humans together relating—the power of belonging in a tribe.
I don’t think we can go back to tribes—we don’t want to because they have their own problems, and we can’t because we “know too much”, we’re just too connected. But, at the same time, there’s something powerful about treating humans as humans (or consciousnesses as consciousnesses) and not subordinating that to the systems we create. We have names for the types of problems that arise when we do this, and we call them things like “externalities” and “moral hazards” and “moloch”.
And one of the ways to look at this problem and play with it is to understand how it is our relating to others effects them, and to not lose sight of the embodied/feeling of relationality because we’re slotting people into a system that treats them as a customer, or a purveyor of goods, or an obstacle, or a means to an end.
So I guess what I’m getting at is I think there’s quite a bit of harm/lost potential in forgetting the thing that social reality is pointing at—that our actions make other consciousnesses feel things, and that we care about the things those consciousnesses feel. And while that fact exists in causal reality, the felt sense of our actions effecting others and it mattering how others relate to us comes from something very akin to social reality.
I think you’re lumping “the ultimate goal” and “the primary mode of thinking required to achieve the ultimate goal” together erroneously. (But maybe the hypothetical person you’re devilishly advocating for doesn’t agree about utilitarianism and instrumentality?)
I agree that this is the case, but the lumping together of them actually I think holds an important point: What we care about is the embodied sensation of happiness/togetherness/excitement/other emotions, etc.
There’s something suspicious about working for a world where people have the embodied experience of togetherness while cutting yourself off from embodied experience of togetherness (this is not exactly what Ruby was talking about here but again, devil’s advocate). It can lead you to errors because you’re missing key first hand information about what that feeling is and exactly in what situations its’ created and endures.
The thing we actually care about… Is that social reality? People being happy and content and getting along, love and meaning—it seems to be based in large part on the fundamental question of how people feel about other people, how we get along, etc.
It might be uderstandable if you’re a person that cares about those things you might think that the near term effects of how people think and feel relate to what happens effect the long term of how people think and feel and relate. If you don’t have a lot of power, you might even subconsciosly think this is your best ability to effect the “ultimate goal” of everyone getting along.
And when you run into someone who (in your mind) doesn’t care about that reality of how their actions effect the harmony of the group, you might think them cold and calculating and importantly in opposition to that ultimate goal.
Then you might write up a post about how sure, you can think of causal reality sometimes, but the important thing is the reality of understanding what will make us all get along.
And you might have just as important point as the excellent points made in the above post.
It feels hard to respond to your comment directly, like there’s an ontology mismatch or something. But here are thoughts in response:
The things it feels I strongly care about are experiences and preferences. These exist in causal reality just the same as human minds themselves do. People “getting along” somehow feels a bit instrumental, at least stated that way. It does seem that people in social reality are putting more effort into getting along, but often by sacrificing everything else? I certainly have the feeling that social reality very often makes people miserable. Also something like that within social reality, I still expect most people to be optimizing for their own position/wellbeing within that social reality, not for the wellbeing of the social collective.
A line of thought, inspired by your comment (perhaps just rewritten in my own ontology) is that we can say that having a shared conception of what is good is extremely important for coordination and connection, including abiding by that shared conception of that good.
My post was definitely motivated by thinking that many people are wrongly forgetting about causal reality because they’re so stuck in social reality. Probably the opposite happens some too, but it doesn’t strike me as obviously the cause of as much harm/lost potential.
Just to make it clear, I think your post is pointing at something real, and my post can it part be seen as a thought experiment/playing devils’ advocate
I agree this is a thing, although I think another thing that happens is not that they forget about causal reality, its’ that they never even get to the point where they realize that causal reality is a thing that’s important to their goals and they things they care about (there’s nothing to forget yet).
One of the things I’ve been thinking about recently is the increasing atomization of society in the face of globalization, and how much harm this does. The systems we’ve created are very stable, very useful, and very powerful—and they’ve lost something of the power of what it feels like to be humans together relating—the power of belonging in a tribe.
I don’t think we can go back to tribes—we don’t want to because they have their own problems, and we can’t because we “know too much”, we’re just too connected. But, at the same time, there’s something powerful about treating humans as humans (or consciousnesses as consciousnesses) and not subordinating that to the systems we create. We have names for the types of problems that arise when we do this, and we call them things like “externalities” and “moral hazards” and “moloch”.
And one of the ways to look at this problem and play with it is to understand how it is our relating to others effects them, and to not lose sight of the embodied/feeling of relationality because we’re slotting people into a system that treats them as a customer, or a purveyor of goods, or an obstacle, or a means to an end.
So I guess what I’m getting at is I think there’s quite a bit of harm/lost potential in forgetting the thing that social reality is pointing at—that our actions make other consciousnesses feel things, and that we care about the things those consciousnesses feel. And while that fact exists in causal reality, the felt sense of our actions effecting others and it mattering how others relate to us comes from something very akin to social reality.
I think you’re lumping “the ultimate goal” and “the primary mode of thinking required to achieve the ultimate goal” together erroneously. (But maybe the hypothetical person you’re devilishly advocating for doesn’t agree about utilitarianism and instrumentality?)
I agree that this is the case, but the lumping together of them actually I think holds an important point: What we care about is the embodied sensation of happiness/togetherness/excitement/other emotions, etc.
There’s something suspicious about working for a world where people have the embodied experience of togetherness while cutting yourself off from embodied experience of togetherness (this is not exactly what Ruby was talking about here but again, devil’s advocate). It can lead you to errors because you’re missing key first hand information about what that feeling is and exactly in what situations its’ created and endures.