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The problem is two fold. Your imperialistic ego is an evolutionary advantageous quality. You are paying some kind of price for "stymieing" it as your ancestors

The problem is two fold. Your imperialistic ego is an evolutionary advantageous quality. You are paying some kind of price for "stymieing" it as your ancestors who did not have this "ego" died through natural selection. The second problem is that everyone is unaware of their own ego. How can you stymie something when you're unaware of it? When you think that the other party is being unreasonable and that you are being calm and logical the other party sees the reverse. This lack of self awareness is the real problem here. Your brain will reroute all your misguided attempts to confound it's bias and you unknowingly will only recite "I think" or "maybe" for just inconsequential things. If you have been doing something wrong or holding an incorrect belief system for a good portion of your life, your biased brain will kick into gear and shield your awareness from the harsh reality of being wrong your entire life. Religion is a good example of this, but the thing that causes a person to stay religious is an infectious thing that not only influences religion, but all of human behavior and all aspects of life. Personally I think fighting your own biases is a losing battle thus my philosophy is to just not fight it.

alexpetralia 6y ago
I think the ego absolutely has an evolutionary benefit, but I don't think it follows that more ego then confers more evolutionary benefit. If so, less ego does not confer less evolutionary benefit. We can identify correlation in the past, but this does not imply the same degree of correlation or causation in the future. I don't think it is true that everyone is unaware of their own ego. Being aware of your own ego is almost by definition "self-awareness". If your point is that all self-awareness is, by definition, illusory, then that is fine but I don't think that is a definition most people would agree with. I do think people who successfully study mindfulness (among other forms of meditation) are able to identify and relegate their egos in large measure. I don't think "wrong" or "incorrect" are the right terms here. The brain optimizes to minimize prediction error. It can perform this process of "active inference" by either rejecting information (confirmation bias), updating its model (Bayesian updating) or manipulating its environment (changing the data which arrives). I agree many people choose the first. But I don't think it's the only way. You can also update your model by training yourself to be open-minded, or you can update the world by changing your environment around you (this is much harder, and often futile). So while I agree with many of your points, I don't think I take as much of a cynical approach. I am optimistic we can work with the ego when it benefits us (from a happiness perspective, not an evolutionary one [0]), and sequester it when it does not. . [0] For all intents and purposes, we as humans are beyond natural selection. Sexual selection still matters, but as a society we don't really permit "survival of the fittest." Most people survive - independent of their genetic endowments - and still many reproduce. As a result I am not sure natural selection is the right objective function (perhaps it is weighted more toward artificial or sexual selection instead).
- Geminidog 6y ago
  >I don't think it is true that everyone is unaware of their own ego. Being aware of your own ego is almost by definition "self-awareness". If your point is that all self-awareness is, by definition, illusory, then that is fine but I don't think that is a definition most people would agree with. I do think people who successfully study mindfulness (among other forms of meditation) are able to identify and relegate their egos in large measure. Maybe ego is not even the right word. Certainly a cultist doesn't always defend his belief of the sun god because of ego. Additionally it's not total unawareness, it's more of a spectrum. People will stubbornly defend an illogical agenda based off of emotional cost and time they invested into the idea. When the cost is high and a good portion of your life is placed into an idea, a simple self affirmation "I think" isn't going to change your tune. I'll take a bit of a risk here and introduce an example that (may not be 100% true) but I believe will likely miss the long standing cultural beliefs in your mind and nevertheless illustrate my point. It depends on your background but I'll give it shot. There is no logical reason why all races should be considered equal in intelligence. The very same genes that define how one race looks can define how intelligent that race is. Yet most of our culture believes there is some black magic that makes it so that while genes can control the color of your skin it absolutely never controls the level of your intelligence by race. What this means is that the lower IQ results of say black people may very well be indicative of lower intelligence biologically. Immediately your brain kicks into high gear... I presented logical statements that goes in deep contradiction with long standing beliefs in the United States for equality. What I said makes perfect sense. Yet your brain immediately goes searching for evidence to prove me wrong. You may be thinking about IQ scores of black people measured from higher socio economic backgrounds may be used to prove me wrong and you may be going onto google to find these normalized results. You may or may not find the relevant evidence that can prove the above statements wrong or right, nevertheless your brain already refused to admit sound logic and went searching for contrary evidence because it went against an inner agenda. You are attempting to construct a logical scaffold around long standing beliefs so that those beliefs may be maintained. Possibly by going meta I can pull you of your bias but I doubt even the meta strategy can pull you out if you yourself are black or an activist. How can such people live with themselves and logic stating that black people are biologically stupider? They must find and construct logical scaffolding to build a truth convenient to their emotional stability. Which truth is real? That's not the point of this post so let's not get into it. Either way most people, which I assume of you as well, will have at some point entertained the biased thought of looking for statistics to support the more convenient conclusion of equality and most people wouldn't even be Aware they are doing it out of bias. In fact likely you went in that direction thinking I was biased and that you were the logical one for believing equality. Genetic Racial equality for intelligence by itself is not a logical concept without evidence. There may be evidence that proves it correct but the concept by itself without evidence is absurd given the fact that genes influence everything including differences among race and intelligence. This is what I'm talking about and it cannot be trained away, not unless you want to be clinically depressed (there's science on this too).

alexpetralia 6y ago

I think the ego absolutely has an evolutionary benefit, but I don't think it follows that more ego then confers more evolutionary benefit. If so, less ego does not confer less evolutionary benefit. We can identify correlation in the past, but this does not imply the same degree of correlation or causation in the future. I don't think it is true that everyone is unaware of their own ego. Being aware of your own ego is almost by definition "self-awareness". If your point is that all self-awareness is, by definition, illusory, then that is fine but I don't think that is a definition most people would agree with. I do think people who successfully study mindfulness (among other forms of meditation) are able to identify and relegate their egos in large measure. I don't think "wrong" or "incorrect" are the right terms here. The brain optimizes to minimize prediction error. It can perform this process of "active inference" by either rejecting information (confirmation bias), updating its model (Bayesian updating) or manipulating its environment (changing the data which arrives). I agree many people choose the first. But I don't think it's the only way. You can also update your model by training yourself to be open-minded, or you can update the world by changing your environment around you (this is much harder, and often futile). So while I agree with many of your points, I don't think I take as much of a cynical approach. I am optimistic we can work with the ego when it benefits us (from a happiness perspective, not an evolutionary one [0]), and sequester it when it does not. . [0] For all intents and purposes, we as humans are beyond natural selection. Sexual selection still matters, but as a society we don't really permit "survival of the fittest." Most people survive - independent of their genetic endowments - and still many reproduce. As a result I am not sure natural selection is the right objective function (perhaps it is weighted more toward artificial or sexual selection instead).

Geminidog 6y ago
>I don't think it is true that everyone is unaware of their own ego. Being aware of your own ego is almost by definition "self-awareness". If your point is that all self-awareness is, by definition, illusory, then that is fine but I don't think that is a definition most people would agree with. I do think people who successfully study mindfulness (among other forms of meditation) are able to identify and relegate their egos in large measure. Maybe ego is not even the right word. Certainly a cultist doesn't always defend his belief of the sun god because of ego. Additionally it's not total unawareness, it's more of a spectrum. People will stubbornly defend an illogical agenda based off of emotional cost and time they invested into the idea. When the cost is high and a good portion of your life is placed into an idea, a simple self affirmation "I think" isn't going to change your tune. I'll take a bit of a risk here and introduce an example that (may not be 100% true) but I believe will likely miss the long standing cultural beliefs in your mind and nevertheless illustrate my point. It depends on your background but I'll give it shot. There is no logical reason why all races should be considered equal in intelligence. The very same genes that define how one race looks can define how intelligent that race is. Yet most of our culture believes there is some black magic that makes it so that while genes can control the color of your skin it absolutely never controls the level of your intelligence by race. What this means is that the lower IQ results of say black people may very well be indicative of lower intelligence biologically. Immediately your brain kicks into high gear... I presented logical statements that goes in deep contradiction with long standing beliefs in the United States for equality. What I said makes perfect sense. Yet your brain immediately goes searching for evidence to prove me wrong. You may be thinking about IQ scores of black people measured from higher socio economic backgrounds may be used to prove me wrong and you may be going onto google to find these normalized results. You may or may not find the relevant evidence that can prove the above statements wrong or right, nevertheless your brain already refused to admit sound logic and went searching for contrary evidence because it went against an inner agenda. You are attempting to construct a logical scaffold around long standing beliefs so that those beliefs may be maintained. Possibly by going meta I can pull you of your bias but I doubt even the meta strategy can pull you out if you yourself are black or an activist. How can such people live with themselves and logic stating that black people are biologically stupider? They must find and construct logical scaffolding to build a truth convenient to their emotional stability. Which truth is real? That's not the point of this post so let's not get into it. Either way most people, which I assume of you as well, will have at some point entertained the biased thought of looking for statistics to support the more convenient conclusion of equality and most people wouldn't even be Aware they are doing it out of bias. In fact likely you went in that direction thinking I was biased and that you were the logical one for believing equality. Genetic Racial equality for intelligence by itself is not a logical concept without evidence. There may be evidence that proves it correct but the concept by itself without evidence is absurd given the fact that genes influence everything including differences among race and intelligence. This is what I'm talking about and it cannot be trained away, not unless you want to be clinically depressed (there's science on this too).