I'm a tad biased but this is entirely in line with my thinking on the topic and what I was trying to communicate (unsuccessfully) to Sam. I also think his tendency to 'reduce' his biases to interpersonal biases was a bit strange because the people who you end up going to dinner with (or making podcasts with) are not a random assortment of individuals, by and large they will be people who you have something in common with. And as you discuss above there is no requirement that you have a single group relevant identity or a single set of values/beliefs that you must bring up in every circumstance and every situation in order to have biases.
In short, great work Bob. I wanted to write something like this and now you have and done it better!
Bob. I think that John Tooby's ideas regarding Coalitionary Instincts may be at the root of tribalism.
He says:
COALITIONAL INSTINCTS
Every human—not excepting scientists—bears the whole stamp of the human condition. This includes evolved neural programs specialized for navigating the world of coalitions—teams, not groups. (Although the concept of coalitional instincts has emerged over recent decades, there is no mutually-agreed-upon term for this concept yet.) These programs enable us and induce us to form, maintain, join, support, recognize, defend, defect from, factionalize, exploit, resist, subordinate, distrust, dislike, oppose, and attack coalitions. Coalitions are sets of individuals interpreted by their members and/or by others as sharing a common abstract identity (including propensities to act as a unit, to defend joint interests, and to have shared mental states and other properties of a single human agent, such as status and prerogatives).
Why do we see the world this way? Most species do not and cannot. Even those that have linear hierarchies do not. Among elephant seals, for example, an alpha can reproductively exclude other males, even though beta and gamma are physically capable of beating alpha—if only they could cognitively coordinate. The fitness payoff is enormous for solving the thorny array of cognitive and motivational computational problems inherent in acting in groups: Two can beat one, three can beat two, and so on, propelling an arms race of numbers, effective mobilization, coordination, and cohesion.
Ancestrally, evolving the neural code to crack these problems supercharged the ability to successfully compete for access to reproductively limiting resources. Fatefully, we are descended solely from those better equipped with coalitional instincts. In this new world, power shifted from solitary alphas to the effectively coordinated down-alphabet, giving rise to a new, larger landscape of political threat and opportunity: rival groups or factions expanding at your expense or shrinking as a result of your dominance.
And so a daunting new augmented reality was neurally kindled, overlying the older individual one. It is important to realize that this reality is constructed by and runs on our coalitional programs and has no independent existence. You are a member of a coalition only if someone (such as you) interprets you as being one, and you are not if no one does. We project coalitions onto everything, even where they have no place, such as in science. We are identity-crazed.
The primary function that drove the evolution of coalitions is the amplification of the power of its members in conflicts with non-members. This function explains a number of otherwise puzzling phenomena. For example, ancestrally, if you had no coalition you were nakedly at the mercy of everyone else, so the instinct to belong to a coalition has urgency, preexisting and superseding any policy-driven basis for membership. This is why group beliefs are free to be so weird. Since coalitional programs evolved to promote the self-interest of the coalition’s membership (in dominance, status, legitimacy, resources, moral force, etc.), even coalitions whose organizing ideology originates (ostensibly) to promote human welfare often slide into the most extreme forms of oppression, in complete contradiction to the putative values of the group. Indeed, morally wrong-footing rivals is one point of ideology, and once everyone agrees on something (slavery is wrong) it ceases to be a significant moral issue because it no longer shows local rivals in a bad light. Many argue that there are more slaves in the world today than in the 19th century. Yet because one’s political rivals cannot be delegitimized by being on the wrong side of slavery, few care to be active abolitionists anymore, compared to being, say, speech police.
Moreover, to earn membership in a group you must send signals that clearly indicate that you differentially support it, compared to rival groups. Hence, optimal weighting of beliefs and communications in the individual mind will make it feel good to think and express content conforming to and flattering to one’s group’s shared beliefs and to attack and misrepresent rival groups. The more biased away from neutral truth, the better the communication functions to affirm coalitional identity, generating polarization in excess of actual policy disagreements. Communications of practical and functional truths are generally useless as differential signals, because any honest person might say them regardless of coalitional loyalty. In contrast, unusual, exaggerated beliefs—such as supernatural beliefs (e.g., god is three persons but also one person), alarmism, conspiracies, or hyperbolic comparisons—are unlikely to be said except as expressive of identity, because there is no external reality to motivate nonmembers to speak absurdities.
This raises a problem for scientists: Coalition-mindedness makes everyone, including scientists, far stupider in coalitional collectivities than as individuals. Paradoxically, a political party united by supernatural beliefs can revise its beliefs about economics or climate without revisers being bad coalition members. But people whose coalitional membership is constituted by their shared adherence to “rational,” scientific propositions have a problem when—as is generally the case—new information arises which requires belief revision. To question or disagree with coalitional precepts, even for rational reasons, makes one a bad and immoral coalition member—at risk of losing job offers, one's friends, and one's cherished group identity. This freezes belief revision.
Forming coalitions around scientific or factual questions is disastrous, because it pits our urge for scientific truth-seeking against the nearly insuperable human appetite to be a good coalition member. Once scientific propositions are moralized, the scientific process is wounded, often fatally. No one is behaving either ethically or scientifically who does not make the best case possible for rival theories with which one disagrees.
Let’s say there are 100 issues on which someone can have an opinion. I have an opinion about each of those issues. Am I in 100 tribes? What’s the upper limit? A thousand? A million tribes?
Say in the venn diagram of opinion-holders I sit in the intersection of one hundred circles with only one other person who agrees with me on all one hundred issues. Are we a tribe? Let’s say a new issue comes along, and me and my tribe-mate disagree. Am I now a tribe of one?
I worry that you are dangerously close to rendering the term tribe meaningless. Surely it must mean more than just “I agree with the people that hold opinion X on this subject and I am swayed by what they have to say on that subject.” This is simply bias.
I think tribe should mean that you hold a broad constellation of views with other people, enough to be able to identify them as a tribe. If you exist in a tribe of one, or you are the member of 100 tribes, how do you know what to think when the next issue comes along?
The key part of the definition is not that you are swayed by the people who agree with you on a particular issue, but that you agree with them automatically on a different issue that you haven’t even thought about.
I think everyone who subscribes to the Nonzero Newsletter agrees tribalism and cognitive biases are big problems. I certainly do. Political tribalism is *the main* issue I'm concerned about these days because it makes progress on everything else I care about so much harder in so many ways. That’s the main reason I’m a huge Bob Wright fan. I started following you after you appeared on Econtalk promoting Why Buddhism is True and you clinched my enduring interest and support when you launched the Mindful Resistance Newsletter.
I am also a fan of Sam Harris. But I agree he exhibits strong cognitive biases that cloud his judgment.
After "Sam Harris’s Anti-tribalism Report Card", I listened to the three relevant Decoding the Gurus podcasts and reread "Sam Harris and the Myth of Perfectly Rational Thought".
After all that, I'm still totally unconvinced that Sam Harris' cognitive biases result (in any significant way) from consciously or unconsciously identifying as a member of one or more of the tribes you suggest. Identifying with an in-group is an important component of how I think of tribalism and I just don’t see that as big part of how he forms his beliefs.
However, I'm also totally convinced (and long have been) that his cognitive biases are significantly connected to his perceptions of the threats posed by various groups. I think it would be very fair to say he identifies these groups as enemy tribes. If he's clearly at war with enemy tribes, maybe he doesn't need his own tribal affiliations to be considered highly tribal.
So, do I think he's tribal or not? I don't know. Should I care? I don't know, but I'm leaning towards no?
What is at stake in all these prolonged and repeated efforts to prove that Sam Harris, specifically, is motivated by the psychology of tribalism?
If you're trying to get uncritical Sam Harris followers to see what they've been missing about him. I think your tone is greatly undermining your efforts. From my biased perspective, a significant component of your motivation in all this seems to be a longstanding beef with Sam Harris, the so-called IDW, Quillete, etc. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong. But if other Sam Harris fans perceive the same thing (rightly or wrongly) it's going to be very hard to get them to look past that and pay attention to Harris' biases.
If you're trying to win hearts and minds in a broader battle against tribalism, it seems like there are soooo many more appropriate foils to conscript in that campaign.
Steve Bannon, Bari Weiss, Nikole Hanna-Jones, Rod Dreher, Ann Coulter — all “tribal”. They perceive everything, rightly or wrongly, consciously or not, through their identities as members of a seemingly besieged cohesive group.
Anyone with a passing familiarity with any of their work would have no trouble succinctly defining their tribe.
Bob can neither find a literal nor a colloquial definition of “tribal” that genuinely fits Harris.
The evolutionary psychology approach he elucidates would seems to contradict both the dictionary and formal anthropological use of the word “tribe” in its gross broadness & flexibility. It’s so broad it doesn’t even work as a metaphor. There‘s no need for seeming cohesion or definable boundaries, huh? It’s pretty much just in the eye of the beholder, the labeler, the person telling you you’re being “tribal”?
Harris disagrees with Bob about some things. Bob, of course, is right. Harris’s view is “distorted” (otherwise, needless to say, he’d agree with Bob.) If only Harris was less “tribal” he’d see things clearly, i.e., like Bob.
This is silly.
There are many criticisms that can be made of Harris. Bob’s a very smart guy. He may want to drop the “tribal” accusation and go back to addressing Harris’s actual work and words.
If you are looking for a term to replace "tribalism," you might consider "myside bias." Or perhaps, following Julia Galef (see her book The Scout Mindset), you could use "soldier mindset." And Galef points out that one of the ways we deceive ourselves is to believe that we are never in soldier mindset and always in scout mindset.
I think Wright is among the world's clearest thinkers, but I don't see this one.
Harris has said he would drag Israeli settlers out by their beards if he could. How many in the "pro-Israel" tribe agree with this sentiment?
By this definition of tribal it seems no one can have an opinion on anything without becoming part of a tribe (that tribe being defined so narrowly as to encompass only people who have that opinion)
I get that wright's answer is that not all members of the tribe agree on everything. But this just weakens the definition (I think in Harris's case so much as to make the word meaningless)
I challenge wright to present cases on hot button issues (wokism, Israel, Trump) in which people's thinking is flawed but the reasons for the flaw are not "tribal" as he defines it. (and if there are no examples then I think the term tribal is superfluous, or at least misleading.)
I agree with most of the Wired article, and was sorely disappointed Harris didn't respond. I just think "tribal" is an unfortunate word choice. I do agree it's something closely related (perhaps "bias") But I don't think one needs to speculate about the psychological reasons for flaws in logic - pointing out the flaw is more than enough.
Well for me I have to say at times the whole thing that Bob has with Sam and/or Sam has with Bob just is beyond my ability to understand. The distinctions get so fine I give up trying to follow the situation. I certainly don't want to spend more hours listening and reading to try to figure out who is "right" if you will. Then maybe it is an argument over how many angels can dance on a pin head. Then on another note maybe it is a thing with public intellectuals. Looking to Eric Berne's classic book "Games People Play" why they are playing the game public intellectuals do. It is just another example of human being showing up. I am not picking sides particularly since it seems to be an argument above my intellectual capacity or willingness to master the issues at the level they are playing. I follow and have been following both for years now and have gotten value from both.
I happen to like both Bob and Sam. And, though the subject of correctly defining tribalism is a somewhat interesting and possibly important one, I am starting to find this particular pseudo-beef really f***ing tiring.
Thanks for the long and valuable exposition of what tribalism is and isn't. FWIW, I've come to see Sam Harris more of a perpetual renegade, someone who likes to upset apple carts. My main issue with him is not that he's tribal, but that he's not all that learned as his public persona would suggest. His scientific training is fairly thin (as far as I know, he never held an academic position and authored maybe a couple of scientific papers), and he has a fairly selective and superficial knowledge of philosophy.
This may sound effete and elitist, but I noticed that he's often introduced as a neuroscientist and philosopher, suggesting an intellectual gravitas he simply doesn't possess at this point--his radio voice and self-assured demeanour suggest more substance than currently exists. By all appearances, he's a fast learner, so he can hold his own quite well in debates and interviews, but when the topic gets deeper or takes an unexpected direction, he often flounders (for me, exhibit A is still the recent discussion he had with Evan Thompson who's someone who really does know his stuff and then some; Harris also didn't do particularly well in the Guru Podcast interview imo).
I should say that I was initially quite impressed by Harris (some 4-5 years ago)--he made some astute observations about American politics, his book "Waking Up" is a great read, and his Waking Up app features some really good content. Having learnt more about him over the last few years, I just think he's been given a disproportionate amount, and perhaps the wrong kind of, attention. He's become a minor celebrity of sorts. I hope he can wiggle out of this and set some priorities that are likely to reap the most benefits both for himself and his audience.
I have my disagreements about some things that Bob says, e.g., the about the utility of evolutionary psychology for explaining much of human behaviour and history. But if I'd ever had to pick a tribe, it would be the "Wright tribe" (I'm sure someone else already made that pun, so sorry), not because I agree with everything Bob says or does, but because I feel quite at home with the idea of a nuanced discussion (such as about American foreign policy and politics) informed by deeper knowledge or by the recognition that knowledge and wisdom are often hard to come by or articulate.
I used to think tribalism was a useful concept. Now, after your convoluted attempt to paint Harris with the label, it seems like bullshit. Yes, Harris and you and I exhibit biases, and we don’t readily identify them in ourselves. And Harris’s claims to be super rational can be annoying.
Previously, you admitted to being pissed that Sam overstated his belief that the ideology of Islamism is a major cause of terrorism. Then, you began calling him “tribal”, which seems to be a particularly effective insult. As other commenters here requested, please stop this ridiculous war of semantics and just address the ideas themselves.
Clearly, I am interested in what and how you think, or I wouldn’t spend time/effort reading this post and commenting.
This almost reads as a case of projection. Part of tribalism is agreement as to who is not in one’s tribe, In this case, Harris and presumably his defenders.
Unless I missed the point, I think the thesis here is that if a person argues that they aren't influenced by the world they live in (and the folks within it), they are deluding themselves.
It reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with a friend, looking at a billboard ad for McDonald's. My friend loudly proclaimed that he "was not effected by advertising." It had no impact on his life.
That's patently false. Unless you live in a cave and ignore external stimuli, you'll be impacted by what surrounds you. The response from Sam Harris sounds defensive to me – to claim to be not part of any tribe – and I think that's the point. Why defend against the everyday influence of the world and the people around you?
The best you can hope to do is "bracket" for your biases and notice how you react, even if it's defensively.
My reason for joining in this specific conversation is mainly practical. What I care about is how the idea of tribes (however unfortunate the term may be) and tribal thinking impact our country and its ability to function at a level justified by its potential. On that basis, I believe tribalism merits thought and what Robert gave us so far is a good start. If this is about perfection or purists, we are talking about another planet.
Being heavily involved in promoting voting rights for Independent Voters (those not affiliated with any political party), I believe work on tribalism is quite useful. Confronted with mountains of written and oceans of spoken words on our political scene, I finally captured on a single page the perspective that works for me in sorting through that avalanche of material. It constitutes the “why” of my involvement in public issues, including interacting with this newsletter. I will summarize it as helping to restore and sustain Our Great American Experiment. The role of tribalism in that process cries for clarity, given the meanness, myopia, and obfuscation that dominate our public square.
I welcome the opportunity to think out loud (which writing allows), debate ideas, argue if necessary, render opinions, refine, and come to conclusions, even if temporary, pending further learning. Yet, the only thing that makes an actual difference is action: doing something, informed by what we have wrestled with and learned. For me, that means bringing as much insight as I can to expanding voting rights that will be responsibly exercised.
With that as a base, I’m going to start where you end—your first cut at defining tribalism:
You are being tribal when your identification with a group, or the cause it embodies, creates distortions of thought and perception that lead to behaviors that heighten antagonisms with other groups.
I agree that’s a solid point of beginning and it addresses the pervasive inter-tribal (and many intra-tribal, as well) rifts that define America today. For that aspect of our civic dysphoria, I offer this modification: adding another dimension of tribalism gone amuck—the relationships of this internecine tribal warfare with our National Tribe, of which we are all members, either by birth or naturalization. So, yes, I view nationhood as a tier in the pyramid that embraces many scales and levels of tribalism, whether real, imagined, or even denied.
You prefaced your definition with a caveat that any of us would face in the attempt to capture the essence of tribalism in one sentence; it is a hopeless endeavor. Still, you gave it a go.
Your introductory phrase, You are being tribal when your identification with a group, or the cause it embodies, could readily be connected to consequences resulting from multiple forms of tribalism. I think it should also be refined to avoid the accusatory tone of “you are guilty of this, and I get to accuse you of it.” This change embraces ownership by every one of us. We all need to be self-aware. Here’s how that might look if we connect it to the implications of tribalism for the tribe known as the United States of America:
You and I are being tribal when our identification with a group, or the cause it embodies,
1) creates distortions of thought and perception that lead to behaviors that heighten antagonisms with other groups; and/or
2) results in caring more—or even exclusively—about our tribe’s interests compared with the aggregate of all tribes assembled under a larger confederation from which we benefit and of which we are members, either by natural birth or naturalization; and/or
3) ?
The United States of America would be one such “larger confederation.” This does not negate the inter-tribal relationships expressed in your definition. In my mind, it encompasses a different dimension of tribal identity. Moreover, there could be other tiers or parallel “silos” meriting attention by way of filling in my question mark and perhaps others as well (both/and, not either/or). I haven’t thought that through yet. You could accuse me of cheating by suggesting a format that would allow endless clauses appended to the base idea. Go ahead.
Tribalism is a form of intentional myopia, with the attendant limits that blindness imposes.
Which leads me to your discussion of the five unfortunate things about the term’s ubiquitous appearance in our current culture. They are all enlightening and, I believe, operate more or less concurrently and in different proportions, even shifting in that regard through time. While I am tempted to comment on them, I don’t know that I can add anything useful at this point and this comment is already at over nine hundred words. Enough.
I will note that most people I know (and whose thinking I would like to jog) would never read anything on this subject as long as my response, let alone your 3,300 words or the extensive commentary thread so far. So, sometime when I’m feeling unhinged, I will try to condense the ideas into something they will read. I will share the result if you wish. Or not.
I hope this advances the dialogue you initiated on what I believe is an essential conversation in our Nation. It strikes me as being significantly related to the non-zero perspective.
Thank you for taking this on.
Oh, one final note: I belong to nine clearly identifiable “tribes” and regularly find significant points of disagreement with every one of them—and they with me. Hmmm.
I'm a tad biased but this is entirely in line with my thinking on the topic and what I was trying to communicate (unsuccessfully) to Sam. I also think his tendency to 'reduce' his biases to interpersonal biases was a bit strange because the people who you end up going to dinner with (or making podcasts with) are not a random assortment of individuals, by and large they will be people who you have something in common with. And as you discuss above there is no requirement that you have a single group relevant identity or a single set of values/beliefs that you must bring up in every circumstance and every situation in order to have biases.
In short, great work Bob. I wanted to write something like this and now you have and done it better!
Bob. I think that John Tooby's ideas regarding Coalitionary Instincts may be at the root of tribalism.
He says:
COALITIONAL INSTINCTS
Every human—not excepting scientists—bears the whole stamp of the human condition. This includes evolved neural programs specialized for navigating the world of coalitions—teams, not groups. (Although the concept of coalitional instincts has emerged over recent decades, there is no mutually-agreed-upon term for this concept yet.) These programs enable us and induce us to form, maintain, join, support, recognize, defend, defect from, factionalize, exploit, resist, subordinate, distrust, dislike, oppose, and attack coalitions. Coalitions are sets of individuals interpreted by their members and/or by others as sharing a common abstract identity (including propensities to act as a unit, to defend joint interests, and to have shared mental states and other properties of a single human agent, such as status and prerogatives).
Why do we see the world this way? Most species do not and cannot. Even those that have linear hierarchies do not. Among elephant seals, for example, an alpha can reproductively exclude other males, even though beta and gamma are physically capable of beating alpha—if only they could cognitively coordinate. The fitness payoff is enormous for solving the thorny array of cognitive and motivational computational problems inherent in acting in groups: Two can beat one, three can beat two, and so on, propelling an arms race of numbers, effective mobilization, coordination, and cohesion.
Ancestrally, evolving the neural code to crack these problems supercharged the ability to successfully compete for access to reproductively limiting resources. Fatefully, we are descended solely from those better equipped with coalitional instincts. In this new world, power shifted from solitary alphas to the effectively coordinated down-alphabet, giving rise to a new, larger landscape of political threat and opportunity: rival groups or factions expanding at your expense or shrinking as a result of your dominance.
And so a daunting new augmented reality was neurally kindled, overlying the older individual one. It is important to realize that this reality is constructed by and runs on our coalitional programs and has no independent existence. You are a member of a coalition only if someone (such as you) interprets you as being one, and you are not if no one does. We project coalitions onto everything, even where they have no place, such as in science. We are identity-crazed.
The primary function that drove the evolution of coalitions is the amplification of the power of its members in conflicts with non-members. This function explains a number of otherwise puzzling phenomena. For example, ancestrally, if you had no coalition you were nakedly at the mercy of everyone else, so the instinct to belong to a coalition has urgency, preexisting and superseding any policy-driven basis for membership. This is why group beliefs are free to be so weird. Since coalitional programs evolved to promote the self-interest of the coalition’s membership (in dominance, status, legitimacy, resources, moral force, etc.), even coalitions whose organizing ideology originates (ostensibly) to promote human welfare often slide into the most extreme forms of oppression, in complete contradiction to the putative values of the group. Indeed, morally wrong-footing rivals is one point of ideology, and once everyone agrees on something (slavery is wrong) it ceases to be a significant moral issue because it no longer shows local rivals in a bad light. Many argue that there are more slaves in the world today than in the 19th century. Yet because one’s political rivals cannot be delegitimized by being on the wrong side of slavery, few care to be active abolitionists anymore, compared to being, say, speech police.
Moreover, to earn membership in a group you must send signals that clearly indicate that you differentially support it, compared to rival groups. Hence, optimal weighting of beliefs and communications in the individual mind will make it feel good to think and express content conforming to and flattering to one’s group’s shared beliefs and to attack and misrepresent rival groups. The more biased away from neutral truth, the better the communication functions to affirm coalitional identity, generating polarization in excess of actual policy disagreements. Communications of practical and functional truths are generally useless as differential signals, because any honest person might say them regardless of coalitional loyalty. In contrast, unusual, exaggerated beliefs—such as supernatural beliefs (e.g., god is three persons but also one person), alarmism, conspiracies, or hyperbolic comparisons—are unlikely to be said except as expressive of identity, because there is no external reality to motivate nonmembers to speak absurdities.
This raises a problem for scientists: Coalition-mindedness makes everyone, including scientists, far stupider in coalitional collectivities than as individuals. Paradoxically, a political party united by supernatural beliefs can revise its beliefs about economics or climate without revisers being bad coalition members. But people whose coalitional membership is constituted by their shared adherence to “rational,” scientific propositions have a problem when—as is generally the case—new information arises which requires belief revision. To question or disagree with coalitional precepts, even for rational reasons, makes one a bad and immoral coalition member—at risk of losing job offers, one's friends, and one's cherished group identity. This freezes belief revision.
Forming coalitions around scientific or factual questions is disastrous, because it pits our urge for scientific truth-seeking against the nearly insuperable human appetite to be a good coalition member. Once scientific propositions are moralized, the scientific process is wounded, often fatally. No one is behaving either ethically or scientifically who does not make the best case possible for rival theories with which one disagrees.
Enlightening piece.
What books about the psychology of tribalism do you recommend?
Let’s say there are 100 issues on which someone can have an opinion. I have an opinion about each of those issues. Am I in 100 tribes? What’s the upper limit? A thousand? A million tribes?
Say in the venn diagram of opinion-holders I sit in the intersection of one hundred circles with only one other person who agrees with me on all one hundred issues. Are we a tribe? Let’s say a new issue comes along, and me and my tribe-mate disagree. Am I now a tribe of one?
I worry that you are dangerously close to rendering the term tribe meaningless. Surely it must mean more than just “I agree with the people that hold opinion X on this subject and I am swayed by what they have to say on that subject.” This is simply bias.
I think tribe should mean that you hold a broad constellation of views with other people, enough to be able to identify them as a tribe. If you exist in a tribe of one, or you are the member of 100 tribes, how do you know what to think when the next issue comes along?
The key part of the definition is not that you are swayed by the people who agree with you on a particular issue, but that you agree with them automatically on a different issue that you haven’t even thought about.
I think everyone who subscribes to the Nonzero Newsletter agrees tribalism and cognitive biases are big problems. I certainly do. Political tribalism is *the main* issue I'm concerned about these days because it makes progress on everything else I care about so much harder in so many ways. That’s the main reason I’m a huge Bob Wright fan. I started following you after you appeared on Econtalk promoting Why Buddhism is True and you clinched my enduring interest and support when you launched the Mindful Resistance Newsletter.
I am also a fan of Sam Harris. But I agree he exhibits strong cognitive biases that cloud his judgment.
After "Sam Harris’s Anti-tribalism Report Card", I listened to the three relevant Decoding the Gurus podcasts and reread "Sam Harris and the Myth of Perfectly Rational Thought".
After all that, I'm still totally unconvinced that Sam Harris' cognitive biases result (in any significant way) from consciously or unconsciously identifying as a member of one or more of the tribes you suggest. Identifying with an in-group is an important component of how I think of tribalism and I just don’t see that as big part of how he forms his beliefs.
However, I'm also totally convinced (and long have been) that his cognitive biases are significantly connected to his perceptions of the threats posed by various groups. I think it would be very fair to say he identifies these groups as enemy tribes. If he's clearly at war with enemy tribes, maybe he doesn't need his own tribal affiliations to be considered highly tribal.
So, do I think he's tribal or not? I don't know. Should I care? I don't know, but I'm leaning towards no?
What is at stake in all these prolonged and repeated efforts to prove that Sam Harris, specifically, is motivated by the psychology of tribalism?
If you're trying to get uncritical Sam Harris followers to see what they've been missing about him. I think your tone is greatly undermining your efforts. From my biased perspective, a significant component of your motivation in all this seems to be a longstanding beef with Sam Harris, the so-called IDW, Quillete, etc. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong. But if other Sam Harris fans perceive the same thing (rightly or wrongly) it's going to be very hard to get them to look past that and pay attention to Harris' biases.
If you're trying to win hearts and minds in a broader battle against tribalism, it seems like there are soooo many more appropriate foils to conscript in that campaign.
Steve Bannon, Bari Weiss, Nikole Hanna-Jones, Rod Dreher, Ann Coulter — all “tribal”. They perceive everything, rightly or wrongly, consciously or not, through their identities as members of a seemingly besieged cohesive group.
Anyone with a passing familiarity with any of their work would have no trouble succinctly defining their tribe.
Bob can neither find a literal nor a colloquial definition of “tribal” that genuinely fits Harris.
The evolutionary psychology approach he elucidates would seems to contradict both the dictionary and formal anthropological use of the word “tribe” in its gross broadness & flexibility. It’s so broad it doesn’t even work as a metaphor. There‘s no need for seeming cohesion or definable boundaries, huh? It’s pretty much just in the eye of the beholder, the labeler, the person telling you you’re being “tribal”?
Harris disagrees with Bob about some things. Bob, of course, is right. Harris’s view is “distorted” (otherwise, needless to say, he’d agree with Bob.) If only Harris was less “tribal” he’d see things clearly, i.e., like Bob.
This is silly.
There are many criticisms that can be made of Harris. Bob’s a very smart guy. He may want to drop the “tribal” accusation and go back to addressing Harris’s actual work and words.
If you are looking for a term to replace "tribalism," you might consider "myside bias." Or perhaps, following Julia Galef (see her book The Scout Mindset), you could use "soldier mindset." And Galef points out that one of the ways we deceive ourselves is to believe that we are never in soldier mindset and always in scout mindset.
I think Wright is among the world's clearest thinkers, but I don't see this one.
Harris has said he would drag Israeli settlers out by their beards if he could. How many in the "pro-Israel" tribe agree with this sentiment?
By this definition of tribal it seems no one can have an opinion on anything without becoming part of a tribe (that tribe being defined so narrowly as to encompass only people who have that opinion)
I get that wright's answer is that not all members of the tribe agree on everything. But this just weakens the definition (I think in Harris's case so much as to make the word meaningless)
I challenge wright to present cases on hot button issues (wokism, Israel, Trump) in which people's thinking is flawed but the reasons for the flaw are not "tribal" as he defines it. (and if there are no examples then I think the term tribal is superfluous, or at least misleading.)
I agree with most of the Wired article, and was sorely disappointed Harris didn't respond. I just think "tribal" is an unfortunate word choice. I do agree it's something closely related (perhaps "bias") But I don't think one needs to speculate about the psychological reasons for flaws in logic - pointing out the flaw is more than enough.
Well for me I have to say at times the whole thing that Bob has with Sam and/or Sam has with Bob just is beyond my ability to understand. The distinctions get so fine I give up trying to follow the situation. I certainly don't want to spend more hours listening and reading to try to figure out who is "right" if you will. Then maybe it is an argument over how many angels can dance on a pin head. Then on another note maybe it is a thing with public intellectuals. Looking to Eric Berne's classic book "Games People Play" why they are playing the game public intellectuals do. It is just another example of human being showing up. I am not picking sides particularly since it seems to be an argument above my intellectual capacity or willingness to master the issues at the level they are playing. I follow and have been following both for years now and have gotten value from both.
I happen to like both Bob and Sam. And, though the subject of correctly defining tribalism is a somewhat interesting and possibly important one, I am starting to find this particular pseudo-beef really f***ing tiring.
Thanks for the long and valuable exposition of what tribalism is and isn't. FWIW, I've come to see Sam Harris more of a perpetual renegade, someone who likes to upset apple carts. My main issue with him is not that he's tribal, but that he's not all that learned as his public persona would suggest. His scientific training is fairly thin (as far as I know, he never held an academic position and authored maybe a couple of scientific papers), and he has a fairly selective and superficial knowledge of philosophy.
This may sound effete and elitist, but I noticed that he's often introduced as a neuroscientist and philosopher, suggesting an intellectual gravitas he simply doesn't possess at this point--his radio voice and self-assured demeanour suggest more substance than currently exists. By all appearances, he's a fast learner, so he can hold his own quite well in debates and interviews, but when the topic gets deeper or takes an unexpected direction, he often flounders (for me, exhibit A is still the recent discussion he had with Evan Thompson who's someone who really does know his stuff and then some; Harris also didn't do particularly well in the Guru Podcast interview imo).
I should say that I was initially quite impressed by Harris (some 4-5 years ago)--he made some astute observations about American politics, his book "Waking Up" is a great read, and his Waking Up app features some really good content. Having learnt more about him over the last few years, I just think he's been given a disproportionate amount, and perhaps the wrong kind of, attention. He's become a minor celebrity of sorts. I hope he can wiggle out of this and set some priorities that are likely to reap the most benefits both for himself and his audience.
I have my disagreements about some things that Bob says, e.g., the about the utility of evolutionary psychology for explaining much of human behaviour and history. But if I'd ever had to pick a tribe, it would be the "Wright tribe" (I'm sure someone else already made that pun, so sorry), not because I agree with everything Bob says or does, but because I feel quite at home with the idea of a nuanced discussion (such as about American foreign policy and politics) informed by deeper knowledge or by the recognition that knowledge and wisdom are often hard to come by or articulate.
I used to think tribalism was a useful concept. Now, after your convoluted attempt to paint Harris with the label, it seems like bullshit. Yes, Harris and you and I exhibit biases, and we don’t readily identify them in ourselves. And Harris’s claims to be super rational can be annoying.
Previously, you admitted to being pissed that Sam overstated his belief that the ideology of Islamism is a major cause of terrorism. Then, you began calling him “tribal”, which seems to be a particularly effective insult. As other commenters here requested, please stop this ridiculous war of semantics and just address the ideas themselves.
Clearly, I am interested in what and how you think, or I wouldn’t spend time/effort reading this post and commenting.
This almost reads as a case of projection. Part of tribalism is agreement as to who is not in one’s tribe, In this case, Harris and presumably his defenders.
Unless I missed the point, I think the thesis here is that if a person argues that they aren't influenced by the world they live in (and the folks within it), they are deluding themselves.
It reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with a friend, looking at a billboard ad for McDonald's. My friend loudly proclaimed that he "was not effected by advertising." It had no impact on his life.
That's patently false. Unless you live in a cave and ignore external stimuli, you'll be impacted by what surrounds you. The response from Sam Harris sounds defensive to me – to claim to be not part of any tribe – and I think that's the point. Why defend against the everyday influence of the world and the people around you?
The best you can hope to do is "bracket" for your biases and notice how you react, even if it's defensively.
This is the most convoluted I have seen Bob reason. Definitely feels like motivated reasoning on steroids.
My reason for joining in this specific conversation is mainly practical. What I care about is how the idea of tribes (however unfortunate the term may be) and tribal thinking impact our country and its ability to function at a level justified by its potential. On that basis, I believe tribalism merits thought and what Robert gave us so far is a good start. If this is about perfection or purists, we are talking about another planet.
Being heavily involved in promoting voting rights for Independent Voters (those not affiliated with any political party), I believe work on tribalism is quite useful. Confronted with mountains of written and oceans of spoken words on our political scene, I finally captured on a single page the perspective that works for me in sorting through that avalanche of material. It constitutes the “why” of my involvement in public issues, including interacting with this newsletter. I will summarize it as helping to restore and sustain Our Great American Experiment. The role of tribalism in that process cries for clarity, given the meanness, myopia, and obfuscation that dominate our public square.
I welcome the opportunity to think out loud (which writing allows), debate ideas, argue if necessary, render opinions, refine, and come to conclusions, even if temporary, pending further learning. Yet, the only thing that makes an actual difference is action: doing something, informed by what we have wrestled with and learned. For me, that means bringing as much insight as I can to expanding voting rights that will be responsibly exercised.
With that as a base, I’m going to start where you end—your first cut at defining tribalism:
You are being tribal when your identification with a group, or the cause it embodies, creates distortions of thought and perception that lead to behaviors that heighten antagonisms with other groups.
I agree that’s a solid point of beginning and it addresses the pervasive inter-tribal (and many intra-tribal, as well) rifts that define America today. For that aspect of our civic dysphoria, I offer this modification: adding another dimension of tribalism gone amuck—the relationships of this internecine tribal warfare with our National Tribe, of which we are all members, either by birth or naturalization. So, yes, I view nationhood as a tier in the pyramid that embraces many scales and levels of tribalism, whether real, imagined, or even denied.
You prefaced your definition with a caveat that any of us would face in the attempt to capture the essence of tribalism in one sentence; it is a hopeless endeavor. Still, you gave it a go.
Your introductory phrase, You are being tribal when your identification with a group, or the cause it embodies, could readily be connected to consequences resulting from multiple forms of tribalism. I think it should also be refined to avoid the accusatory tone of “you are guilty of this, and I get to accuse you of it.” This change embraces ownership by every one of us. We all need to be self-aware. Here’s how that might look if we connect it to the implications of tribalism for the tribe known as the United States of America:
You and I are being tribal when our identification with a group, or the cause it embodies,
1) creates distortions of thought and perception that lead to behaviors that heighten antagonisms with other groups; and/or
2) results in caring more—or even exclusively—about our tribe’s interests compared with the aggregate of all tribes assembled under a larger confederation from which we benefit and of which we are members, either by natural birth or naturalization; and/or
3) ?
The United States of America would be one such “larger confederation.” This does not negate the inter-tribal relationships expressed in your definition. In my mind, it encompasses a different dimension of tribal identity. Moreover, there could be other tiers or parallel “silos” meriting attention by way of filling in my question mark and perhaps others as well (both/and, not either/or). I haven’t thought that through yet. You could accuse me of cheating by suggesting a format that would allow endless clauses appended to the base idea. Go ahead.
Tribalism is a form of intentional myopia, with the attendant limits that blindness imposes.
Which leads me to your discussion of the five unfortunate things about the term’s ubiquitous appearance in our current culture. They are all enlightening and, I believe, operate more or less concurrently and in different proportions, even shifting in that regard through time. While I am tempted to comment on them, I don’t know that I can add anything useful at this point and this comment is already at over nine hundred words. Enough.
I will note that most people I know (and whose thinking I would like to jog) would never read anything on this subject as long as my response, let alone your 3,300 words or the extensive commentary thread so far. So, sometime when I’m feeling unhinged, I will try to condense the ideas into something they will read. I will share the result if you wish. Or not.
I hope this advances the dialogue you initiated on what I believe is an essential conversation in our Nation. It strikes me as being significantly related to the non-zero perspective.
Thank you for taking this on.
Oh, one final note: I belong to nine clearly identifiable “tribes” and regularly find significant points of disagreement with every one of them—and they with me. Hmmm.