I think one aspect which softens the discrepancy is that our intuitions here might not be adapted to large-scale societies.
If everyone really lives mainly with one’s own tribe and has kind of isolated interactions with other tribes and maybe tribe-switching people every now and then (similar to village-life compared to city-life), I could well imagine that “are they truly part of our tribe?” actually manages to filter out a large portion of harmful cases.
Also, regarding 2):
If indeed almost no one is evil, almost everyone is broken: there are strong incentives to make sure that the social rules do not rule out your way of exploiting the system. Because of this I would not be surprised if “common knowledge” around these things tends to be warped by the class of people who can make the rules.
Another factor is that as a coordination problem, using “never try to harm others” seems like a very fine Schelling point to use as common denominator.
It’s possible, but I would previously have assumed that sociopathy/intentional maleficence etc to be less common in the ancestral environment relative to other harmful social situations. My own just-so story would suggest that people’s intuitions from a tribal context are maladaptive in underpredicting sociopathy or deliberate deception.
I am not sure we disagree with regards to the prevalence of maleficience. One reason why I would imagine that
“are they truly part of our tribe?” actually manages to filter out a large portion of harmful cases.
works in more tribal contexts would be that cities provide more “ecological” niches (would the term be sociological here?) for this type of behaviour.
intuitions [...] are maladaptive in underpredicting sociopathy or deliberate deception
Interesting. I would mostly think that people today are way more specialized in their “professions” such that for any kind of ability we will come into contact with significantly more skilled people than a typical ancestor of ours would have. If I try to think about examples where people are way too trusting, or way too ready to treat someone as an enemy, I have the impression that for both mistakes examples come to mind quite readily. Due to this, I think I do not agree with “underpredict” as a description and instead tend to a more general “overwhelmed by reality”.
I think one aspect which softens the discrepancy is that our intuitions here might not be adapted to large-scale societies. If everyone really lives mainly with one’s own tribe and has kind of isolated interactions with other tribes and maybe tribe-switching people every now and then (similar to village-life compared to city-life), I could well imagine that “are they truly part of our tribe?” actually manages to filter out a large portion of harmful cases.
Also, regarding 2): If indeed almost no one is evil, almost everyone is broken: there are strong incentives to make sure that the social rules do not rule out your way of exploiting the system. Because of this I would not be surprised if “common knowledge” around these things tends to be warped by the class of people who can make the rules. Another factor is that as a coordination problem, using “never try to harm others” seems like a very fine Schelling point to use as common denominator.
It’s possible, but I would previously have assumed that sociopathy/intentional maleficence etc to be less common in the ancestral environment relative to other harmful social situations. My own just-so story would suggest that people’s intuitions from a tribal context are maladaptive in underpredicting sociopathy or deliberate deception.
I am not sure we disagree with regards to the prevalence of maleficience. One reason why I would imagine that
works in more tribal contexts would be that cities provide more “ecological” niches (would the term be sociological here?) for this type of behaviour.
Interesting. I would mostly think that people today are way more specialized in their “professions” such that for any kind of ability we will come into contact with significantly more skilled people than a typical ancestor of ours would have. If I try to think about examples where people are way too trusting, or way too ready to treat someone as an enemy, I have the impression that for both mistakes examples come to mind quite readily. Due to this, I think I do not agree with “underpredict” as a description and instead tend to a more general “overwhelmed by reality”.