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The first thing to always keep in mind is that intentionally attempting to engineer social behaviors has historically been the single most devastatingly destruc

The first thing to always keep in mind is that intentionally attempting to engineer social behaviors has historically been the single most devastatingly destructive motivation. Far more destructive than war, famine, disease, or other means of human suffering and death. It gave us eugenics, concentration camps, political purges, the obesity epidemic, and all manner of other ills. It backfires consistently and almost always. It is quite literally the most dangerous game that you can play. Unintended consequences are only something you can ignore if you can claim ignorance of their possibility head of time. We do not have that luxury. We have history. That being said, the solution is a fairly simple one. Stress critical thinking. In all things. In personal life most especially, but also in other actions. Encourage people to recognize their inescapable biases and to resist them because those biases are irrational and provide no actual benefit. There are unfortunately strong indications that this might not work, however, and that differing brain structures might actually be at play. Some people might have brains that are essentially hard-wired into an in-group/out-group way of processing the world which is inescapable. And seeking to change that would be seeking to change their fundamental character as people, clearly a morally wrong thing to do. But, we were never guaranteed that this whole 'society and civilization' thing was going to be simple or easy... so I guess we can't ask for our money back.

watwut 9y ago
I will take obesity epidemics over famine, war or some of historical epidemics. Also, holocaust was extension of war itself - the ultimate attempt to kill perceived enemies. For that matter, so was Rwanda genocide.
- otakucode 9y ago
  Why would you think that there are such choices? The obesity epidemic did not come about out of a desire to avoid famine. It came about because the American Heart Association took flimsy scientific evidence that high levels of saturated fat in the diet increased risk of heart disease and then sought to reduce the American intake of saturated fat. They succeeded. They successfully reduced the percent of the average Americans dietary calories which came from saturated fat by 15% which was their goal. Unfortunately, removing saturated fat from foods makes them taste like cardboard. So to combat that, food makers added salt and sugar to restore some flavor. As a result, the total amount of calories consumed on average ballooned, diabetes became an epidemic, and even the heart disease they were intending to avoid through their efforts reached all-time high levels along with a host of other health problems. No one was starving, and famine wasn't the alternative. The alternative was educating the public and leaving them with the choice, a situation which is less totally effective but more flexible and seemingly less prone to large scale unintended consequences. I won't get into genocides in too much detail, but the concentration camps were an outgrowth of eugenics, an attempt to improve human health and well-being through "scientific" engineering of the gene pool. It was based, however, upon fundamentally incorrect ideas about how genetics and evolution work, flaws which were known at the time but which were ignored because the idea of rounding up anyone not liked and wiping them out was apparently too alluring for them to step back and say 'we don't have sufficient evidence this would even work'.
pjc50 9y ago
"intentionally attempting to engineer social behaviors" is the history of civilisation, surely?
- wazyk 9y ago
  Exactly, so perhaps civilization is the problem.
BeetleB 9y ago
>That being said, the solution is a fairly simple one. Stress critical thinking. In all things. In personal life most especially, but also in other actions. Encourage people to recognize their inescapable biases and to resist them because those biases are irrational and provide no actual benefit. That's the simple solution? I have two things to say about it: First, there are many, many traps to fall into when you develop critical thinking. The way out of those traps is to refine your understanding of critical thinking even more and be more aware of biases. Frankly, this is sustainable only for those who are strongly interested in it - which in my experience is probably less than 10% of the population. Hardly "simple". Also, having spent time amongst top scientists in academia, and seeing how irrational they can become outside of their field of expertise, I have little faith that critical thinking alone is a solution. Second, there is a fair amount of research that shows that rational thinking devoid of emotions is infeasible. People with brain injuries where emotions essentially go away (perfectly "logical" creatures) can barely function. Every decision had to be justified. Like why you chose to eat an orange instead of an apple. This may be an argument from extreme, but the consensus appears to be that a full emotion free approach to problem solving is less than ideal.
- otakucode 9y ago
  You are right. It is simple only in so far as it is simple to state. It does require of the populace a lifetime of exertion of effort. It is certainly sustainable by most of the population in principle, we know that from history and from situations of deprivation where existential or other dangers forced populations to exert that effort in order to avoid danger. Civilization itself is the act of removing such dangers, and when they are removed, the society often then begins abandoning the exertion of effort as it provides no real benefit to larger and larger numbers of the population. Unfortunately this eventually results in the population being unwilling to sustain or expand the infrastructure that protects them. As far as I can tell, this is the largest problem that faces the human species as a whole. Civilization brings about its own undoing. Emotion and rational thinking are not opposites. I am aware of the neurological cases you're likely referencing, and think that they are extremely important to understanding the interplay of emotion and reason. Without emotion, it is impossible for people to make decisions regardless of the amount of information or understanding available about a situation. Even with a list a mile long of "pro"s set next to a list with only a single "con", a person without emotion can not make the decision to act. It is indeed debilitating. Emotion certainly doesn't need to be eliminated or anything of the sort. It doesn't have to be misleading, it simply can't be relied upon in the absence of reason. Emotions are a basic trained response, and inexplicably linked to the physiological processes of their manifestation. They would probably be extremely useful if we lived in an illiterate possibly pre-lingual tribe on the savannah in Africa where they evolved as an important tool. Our world is far different from that, though, and so we have some baggage we have to deal with. As far as I'm aware, critical thinking is the only tool we've got to recognize and deal with that baggage intentionally.

watwut 9y ago

I will take obesity epidemics over famine, war or some of historical epidemics. Also, holocaust was extension of war itself - the ultimate attempt to kill perceived enemies. For that matter, so was Rwanda genocide.

otakucode 9y ago
Why would you think that there are such choices? The obesity epidemic did not come about out of a desire to avoid famine. It came about because the American Heart Association took flimsy scientific evidence that high levels of saturated fat in the diet increased risk of heart disease and then sought to reduce the American intake of saturated fat. They succeeded. They successfully reduced the percent of the average Americans dietary calories which came from saturated fat by 15% which was their goal. Unfortunately, removing saturated fat from foods makes them taste like cardboard. So to combat that, food makers added salt and sugar to restore some flavor. As a result, the total amount of calories consumed on average ballooned, diabetes became an epidemic, and even the heart disease they were intending to avoid through their efforts reached all-time high levels along with a host of other health problems. No one was starving, and famine wasn't the alternative. The alternative was educating the public and leaving them with the choice, a situation which is less totally effective but more flexible and seemingly less prone to large scale unintended consequences. I won't get into genocides in too much detail, but the concentration camps were an outgrowth of eugenics, an attempt to improve human health and well-being through "scientific" engineering of the gene pool. It was based, however, upon fundamentally incorrect ideas about how genetics and evolution work, flaws which were known at the time but which were ignored because the idea of rounding up anyone not liked and wiping them out was apparently too alluring for them to step back and say 'we don't have sufficient evidence this would even work'.

pjc50 9y ago

"intentionally attempting to engineer social behaviors" is the history of civilisation, surely?

wazyk 9y ago
Exactly, so perhaps civilization is the problem.

BeetleB 9y ago

>That being said, the solution is a fairly simple one. Stress critical thinking. In all things. In personal life most especially, but also in other actions. Encourage people to recognize their inescapable biases and to resist them because those biases are irrational and provide no actual benefit. That's the simple solution? I have two things to say about it: First, there are many, many traps to fall into when you develop critical thinking. The way out of those traps is to refine your understanding of critical thinking even more and be more aware of biases. Frankly, this is sustainable only for those who are strongly interested in it - which in my experience is probably less than 10% of the population. Hardly "simple". Also, having spent time amongst top scientists in academia, and seeing how irrational they can become outside of their field of expertise, I have little faith that critical thinking alone is a solution. Second, there is a fair amount of research that shows that rational thinking devoid of emotions is infeasible. People with brain injuries where emotions essentially go away (perfectly "logical" creatures) can barely function. Every decision had to be justified. Like why you chose to eat an orange instead of an apple. This may be an argument from extreme, but the consensus appears to be that a full emotion free approach to problem solving is less than ideal.

otakucode 9y ago
You are right. It is simple only in so far as it is simple to state. It does require of the populace a lifetime of exertion of effort. It is certainly sustainable by most of the population in principle, we know that from history and from situations of deprivation where existential or other dangers forced populations to exert that effort in order to avoid danger. Civilization itself is the act of removing such dangers, and when they are removed, the society often then begins abandoning the exertion of effort as it provides no real benefit to larger and larger numbers of the population. Unfortunately this eventually results in the population being unwilling to sustain or expand the infrastructure that protects them. As far as I can tell, this is the largest problem that faces the human species as a whole. Civilization brings about its own undoing. Emotion and rational thinking are not opposites. I am aware of the neurological cases you're likely referencing, and think that they are extremely important to understanding the interplay of emotion and reason. Without emotion, it is impossible for people to make decisions regardless of the amount of information or understanding available about a situation. Even with a list a mile long of "pro"s set next to a list with only a single "con", a person without emotion can not make the decision to act. It is indeed debilitating. Emotion certainly doesn't need to be eliminated or anything of the sort. It doesn't have to be misleading, it simply can't be relied upon in the absence of reason. Emotions are a basic trained response, and inexplicably linked to the physiological processes of their manifestation. They would probably be extremely useful if we lived in an illiterate possibly pre-lingual tribe on the savannah in Africa where they evolved as an important tool. Our world is far different from that, though, and so we have some baggage we have to deal with. As far as I'm aware, critical thinking is the only tool we've got to recognize and deal with that baggage intentionally.