Greetings, Nonzero community. I'm an admittedly occasional reader, but I keep seeing references to creating an "anti-tribal tribe" and I wanted to make a plug for the group Braver Angels (braverangels.org). They do workshops, discussion groups, and debates that promote deep and real conversation across the US's worst tribal divisions. I've been extremely impressed and inspired by their work and would encourage anyone interested in joining the "anti-tribal tribe" to check them out.
I've also been impressed by Andrew Yang's Forward Party, but have less experience with them.
Maybe someone from Braver Angels (I'd suggest John Wood, Jr.) or the Forward Party could be featured on the Wright Show?
I think to ascribe the retributive impulse to our past as hunters and gatherers (and selection for genes that spur the impulse) is rather speculative. I know that this continues to be a popular notion and model in evolutionary psychology (and I also found it appealing for a while--it just seemed very easy to join that tribe...).
But with new research emerging that upends our conventional ideas of what "our" shared evolutionary past looked liked, I'm coming away with the overwhelming impression that the sense of retribution is much more culturally determined (and having lived in different Western cultures, I've noticed that the retributive impulse is particularly strong in the US, especially as it's enshrined in the US justice system, but much less so in Europe).
As for the idea of a shared hunter and gatherer past, I recommend Graeber & Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" for a powerful rebuttal against the idea that humanity has a common shared past that fits the commonly assumed teleological schema of hunting/gathering-->agriculture-->industrialization-->technological/digital revolution. It also questions the long-held assumptions about how people governed themselves, including how they meted out justice.
I have no quibble with the notion that the retributive impulse often rears its ugly head--and that abandoning it is a wise and liberating action--but I no longer buy that it's encoded in our genetic repertoire.
Do you have an alternative explanation of why people in all known cultures share the intuition that good deeds should be rewarded and bad deeds punished? Did they just independently discover the social utility of that belief and then somehow convince themselves that it's not only a socially useful thing to believe but is actually true?
Because (almost) all cultures raise their children in this way? We're self-conscious, social beings who learn very quickly from one another. And, unfortunately, we also learn that some deeds known to be bad (such as harming another person or group of persons) are sometimes socially useful to be "good" (during war, when one jumps the queue in the store, or when a sacrifice or scapegoat is needed). If there were a reasonably strong genetic component to these intuitions, Kant, Spinoza, and other philosophers would have had little to write about.
There's no doubt that genes contribute to our general cognitive architecture, including learning, but their role in our moral intuitions might be rather small. It might be actually the other way round in our case--environmental factors impinge on gene-regulatory cascades in neural development (e.g., through epigenetics). In other words, we're not the wasps and beetles in EO Wilson's Sociobiology (a book I loved when it came out--the stories were so clean and compelling).
And "in all known cultures" should come with an enormous asterisk--as Graeber and Wengrow say (in the opening line of The Dawn of Everything), "Most of human history is irreparably lost to us." Plus, the picture of human developments (plural intended) they present, is a lot more multifaceted (i.e., messier) than, say, those of Jared Diamond and Noah Yuval Harari (whose perspectives and insights I also value).
you should check out Paul Bloom's experiments with *very* young kids suggesting an instinctive attraction to punishing actors (puppets) who do wrong. Also Franz de Waal's work with chimpanzees, our nearest ape relatives, showing a tendency to reward good deeds and punish bad ones. Plus computer simulations by Robert Axelrod of the evolution of cooperation. All told, I think the most plausible explanation is the ev psych one. All of this is laid out in my book The Moral Animal (though Bloom's experiments came after that). Ed Wilson's book Sociobiology doesn't even purport to get into this in an in depth way.
If this is an "up and coming thing" you probably need to address it in the book. Besides, maybe you can get more interest by sparing with folks who are in this camp. Why you can do debates with them. Should help sell more books while drawing attention to the whole topic area.
Thank you, Bob. I have no beef with the idea that there's a genetic component to this sort of behaviour. But I think it's becoming increasingly clear that it's rather minor (at least in our case, having very complex minds); even very young kids had likely numerous interactions with parents and others that began to solidify attitudes. And epigenetic changes (caused by environmental factors and affecting gene expression at sometimes global levels) are well-known to persist across generations.
I know that EO Wilson doesn't get into this (much), but his work was an important precursor to a lot of what came out of EvoPsych.
Very interesting. Thanks for the post. Are there other books you have in mind besides this one at 704 pages? Thought I would ask before I jumped into that large a book. Then I could buy one of the summary Kindle books I suppose. I like to understand the various arguments before I come to a conclusion on most anything.
I recommend reading the Graeber & Wengrow book itself. To understand the authors' reasoning and arguments, one needs to delve into the evidence they present. It's a book with rich content, and it's very well written.
Excellent mini-lectures. Concise and clear. I wonder, though, how much can be gained by trying to change people's heads one at a time. Institutions and social norms have the highest leverage in affecting behavior.
But don't norms sometimes change as a result of a lot of individual minds changing? And, that question aside, how would you use norms as a "lever"? I can kind of see using an institution as a lever--if you happened to find yourself running a large and powerful institution (which, sadly, isn't my situation). But norms? Changing norms seems to me more like the goal than a means to the goal.
as an economist, I think that incentives can change norms. Incentives are not necessarily money. Look at the incentives embedded in Twitter for road-rage discourse. Much as I love your videos, I am afraid that they seem over-matched by bad incentives in the media environment in general.
This series is really hitting home as what is needed now in our fair country. I'm sure these are things I already know, but to hear them again fresh is calming and inspiring. It's a nice mantra of rationality (evolutionary psychology) and inspiration (relax and imagine a better world).
i enjoy these talks, they address important things, but the animation not only doesn't add anything, it distracts. Doesn't really look like Bob either...
Do you agree that tribalism waxes and wanes with time? Interested in knowing more about the environmental factors that influence that. Seems like that's the better/easier place to intervene? Maybe? Sure seems like looking at history and even recent history in US that social factors can have big sway.
I think the underlying human tendencies stay constant, but the expression of these tendencies does wax and wane, yes. Right now in America these tendencies (the tendencies that constitute the 'psychology of tribalism') are being expressed especially strongly. (In other words, the conventional view is right: we live in polarized times.) Not sure what you mean by 'environmental factors,' but if you define environment broadly I think it's responsible for all the waxing and waning and is the only place to intervene.
Greetings, Nonzero community. I'm an admittedly occasional reader, but I keep seeing references to creating an "anti-tribal tribe" and I wanted to make a plug for the group Braver Angels (braverangels.org). They do workshops, discussion groups, and debates that promote deep and real conversation across the US's worst tribal divisions. I've been extremely impressed and inspired by their work and would encourage anyone interested in joining the "anti-tribal tribe" to check them out.
I've also been impressed by Andrew Yang's Forward Party, but have less experience with them.
Maybe someone from Braver Angels (I'd suggest John Wood, Jr.) or the Forward Party could be featured on the Wright Show?
I find this idea interesting and amusing. Democrats as the top 2 quadrants and Republicans as the bottom 2 quadrants. Interested in Bob's take.
https://youtu.be/3O9FFrLpinQ
I think to ascribe the retributive impulse to our past as hunters and gatherers (and selection for genes that spur the impulse) is rather speculative. I know that this continues to be a popular notion and model in evolutionary psychology (and I also found it appealing for a while--it just seemed very easy to join that tribe...).
But with new research emerging that upends our conventional ideas of what "our" shared evolutionary past looked liked, I'm coming away with the overwhelming impression that the sense of retribution is much more culturally determined (and having lived in different Western cultures, I've noticed that the retributive impulse is particularly strong in the US, especially as it's enshrined in the US justice system, but much less so in Europe).
As for the idea of a shared hunter and gatherer past, I recommend Graeber & Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" for a powerful rebuttal against the idea that humanity has a common shared past that fits the commonly assumed teleological schema of hunting/gathering-->agriculture-->industrialization-->technological/digital revolution. It also questions the long-held assumptions about how people governed themselves, including how they meted out justice.
I have no quibble with the notion that the retributive impulse often rears its ugly head--and that abandoning it is a wise and liberating action--but I no longer buy that it's encoded in our genetic repertoire.
Do you have an alternative explanation of why people in all known cultures share the intuition that good deeds should be rewarded and bad deeds punished? Did they just independently discover the social utility of that belief and then somehow convince themselves that it's not only a socially useful thing to believe but is actually true?
Because (almost) all cultures raise their children in this way? We're self-conscious, social beings who learn very quickly from one another. And, unfortunately, we also learn that some deeds known to be bad (such as harming another person or group of persons) are sometimes socially useful to be "good" (during war, when one jumps the queue in the store, or when a sacrifice or scapegoat is needed). If there were a reasonably strong genetic component to these intuitions, Kant, Spinoza, and other philosophers would have had little to write about.
There's no doubt that genes contribute to our general cognitive architecture, including learning, but their role in our moral intuitions might be rather small. It might be actually the other way round in our case--environmental factors impinge on gene-regulatory cascades in neural development (e.g., through epigenetics). In other words, we're not the wasps and beetles in EO Wilson's Sociobiology (a book I loved when it came out--the stories were so clean and compelling).
And "in all known cultures" should come with an enormous asterisk--as Graeber and Wengrow say (in the opening line of The Dawn of Everything), "Most of human history is irreparably lost to us." Plus, the picture of human developments (plural intended) they present, is a lot more multifaceted (i.e., messier) than, say, those of Jared Diamond and Noah Yuval Harari (whose perspectives and insights I also value).
you should check out Paul Bloom's experiments with *very* young kids suggesting an instinctive attraction to punishing actors (puppets) who do wrong. Also Franz de Waal's work with chimpanzees, our nearest ape relatives, showing a tendency to reward good deeds and punish bad ones. Plus computer simulations by Robert Axelrod of the evolution of cooperation. All told, I think the most plausible explanation is the ev psych one. All of this is laid out in my book The Moral Animal (though Bloom's experiments came after that). Ed Wilson's book Sociobiology doesn't even purport to get into this in an in depth way.
If this is an "up and coming thing" you probably need to address it in the book. Besides, maybe you can get more interest by sparing with folks who are in this camp. Why you can do debates with them. Should help sell more books while drawing attention to the whole topic area.
Thank you, Bob. I have no beef with the idea that there's a genetic component to this sort of behaviour. But I think it's becoming increasingly clear that it's rather minor (at least in our case, having very complex minds); even very young kids had likely numerous interactions with parents and others that began to solidify attitudes. And epigenetic changes (caused by environmental factors and affecting gene expression at sometimes global levels) are well-known to persist across generations.
I know that EO Wilson doesn't get into this (much), but his work was an important precursor to a lot of what came out of EvoPsych.
Very interesting. Thanks for the post. Are there other books you have in mind besides this one at 704 pages? Thought I would ask before I jumped into that large a book. Then I could buy one of the summary Kindle books I suppose. I like to understand the various arguments before I come to a conclusion on most anything.
I recommend reading the Graeber & Wengrow book itself. To understand the authors' reasoning and arguments, one needs to delve into the evidence they present. It's a book with rich content, and it's very well written.
Excellent mini-lectures. Concise and clear. I wonder, though, how much can be gained by trying to change people's heads one at a time. Institutions and social norms have the highest leverage in affecting behavior.
But don't norms sometimes change as a result of a lot of individual minds changing? And, that question aside, how would you use norms as a "lever"? I can kind of see using an institution as a lever--if you happened to find yourself running a large and powerful institution (which, sadly, isn't my situation). But norms? Changing norms seems to me more like the goal than a means to the goal.
as an economist, I think that incentives can change norms. Incentives are not necessarily money. Look at the incentives embedded in Twitter for road-rage discourse. Much as I love your videos, I am afraid that they seem over-matched by bad incentives in the media environment in general.
This series is really hitting home as what is needed now in our fair country. I'm sure these are things I already know, but to hear them again fresh is calming and inspiring. It's a nice mantra of rationality (evolutionary psychology) and inspiration (relax and imagine a better world).
i enjoy these talks, they address important things, but the animation not only doesn't add anything, it distracts. Doesn't really look like Bob either...
I enjoy the animation -- helps me to relax for some reason along with the voice and background music. Tastes vary I suppose...
Do you agree that tribalism waxes and wanes with time? Interested in knowing more about the environmental factors that influence that. Seems like that's the better/easier place to intervene? Maybe? Sure seems like looking at history and even recent history in US that social factors can have big sway.
I think the underlying human tendencies stay constant, but the expression of these tendencies does wax and wane, yes. Right now in America these tendencies (the tendencies that constitute the 'psychology of tribalism') are being expressed especially strongly. (In other words, the conventional view is right: we live in polarized times.) Not sure what you mean by 'environmental factors,' but if you define environment broadly I think it's responsible for all the waxing and waning and is the only place to intervene.