5 ms·

I disagree that a more rational person would have higher fitness. Like the article points out, sticking with your beliefs even in the face of contrary evidence

I disagree that a more rational person would have higher fitness. Like the article points out, sticking with your beliefs even in the face of contrary evidence means sticking with your community. Having friends and a support system increases survival rates. A flat earther who has alienated all their previous friends and then stops believing in flat earth is now all alone. Loneliness kills. If the idea is to survive and thrive, the “rational” approach is to continue with what our species has always done - stick with the tribe.

pydry 5y ago
Picking the wrong tribe or a tribe that doesnt really care about you also kills.
- nindalf 5y ago
  Sure. But that has little to do with what the group believes. They could believe that the earth is flat or hollow, but as long as they’re there for each other, they would increase the fitness of everyone in the group. It just has nothing to do with how “rational” and evidence based the group is. Therefore there is no selective pressure towards being rational.
  - pydry 5y ago
    I wouldnt hold out much hope of a flat earth tribe being able to deal with objective reality well enough to aid me. I'm pretty sure there is selective pressure towards being rational, it's just really hard to select for and even then probably not the most important thing. I remember when I met my first evangelical fundamentalist I couldn't for the life of me figure out why he earnestly believed this nonsense about the world being 7000 years or whatever. It was only when he said that he used to be a homeless drug addict and he was helped out of addiction by a Christian group that it twigged - they showed him kindness that the rest of the world had not. I'm pretty sure being rescued not only rearranged his whole world view such that the world is 7000 years old. I'm pretty sure it also rearranged his world view to view facts as less important than kindness.
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      >I'm pretty sure it also rearranged his world view to view facts as less important than kindness. If I was a strident atheist and my life was saved by a Christian fundamentalist, it seems plausible to me that I would subsequently be less prejudiced against such people and less concerned about the areas in which I thought they were incorrect. But not that I would believe whatever they do.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      >I wouldnt hold out much hope of a flat earth tribe being able to deal with objective reality well enough to aid me. I'm pretty sure there is selective pressure towards being rational, it's just really hard to select for and even then probably not the most important thing. I'm pretty sure there is selective pressure against being rational. Take your drug addict. The flexibility to rearrange his whole worldview likely increased his fitness significantly. Now he has a support network and community, not to mention the help with addition. To put it differently: While joining rationalist tribe may confer more fitness than joining the irriationalist tribe, the best fitness is having flexibility to adapt to any tribe you can and not be alone.
  - scotty79 5y ago
    How about sticking with anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers? This literally killed some people.
    - nindalf 5y ago
      Not supporting anti-vaxxers. Anti-vaxxers would be spreading disease, sure. Although it would lower their survival rates, they also affect the survival rates of the out-group by spreading it to vulnerable folks. So being stupid doesn’t affect them exclusively. Next, once you’ve become an anti-vaxxer and burned bridges with sane people there’s no turning back. At that point becoming “rational” and accepting vaccines is the irrational choice because you lose your only community, and you are all alone. Like I said, loneliness kills. This is moot because the psychological pain of admitting they’re wrong is too much anyway. So they’ll stick to the group. But my only contention is that post-bridge burning, the rational thing to do is to stick to the community that will care for you.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      Ah, but one of the reasons they became anti-vaxxers is they believe vaccines are hurting/killing people who take them, and thus being in the vaxx-all-the-time camp could also literally kill people. Or at least is not necessarily the safest tribe to be a part of. Now, you may feel that's a ridiculous belief. But your belief it's ridiculous comes mostly from your own intuitions about the trustworthiness of institutions, perhaps some personal experience or intuited cost/benefit ratios, etc. It's not something that can be portably summed up in a neat box labelled "facts".
      - scotty79 5y ago
        > believe vaccines are hurting/killing people who take them Yes, that's a false belief of this tribe that is directly contributing to their mortality > and thus being in the vaxx-all-the-time camp could also literally kill people No, because that belief does not conform with reality. > Now, you may feel that's a ridiculous belief. It is. > It's not something that can be portably summed up in a neat box labelled "facts". It can be. For reasonable definitions of a word 'fact'.
Melting_Harps 5y ago
> If the idea is to survive and thrive, the “rational” approach is to continue with what our species has always done - stick with the tribe. I think you are advocating for herd mentality here without realizing it, and to be honest the effect that fitness has can also be upended in large scale conflicts: consider how many died before being able to have children in large scale wars (like WW2) because they felt their charismatic leader's cause was more righteous than the other guys. Their is safety in numbers, if looked at solely via a predation model but as a Human (with supposed elevated faculties than other animals) their is also a need for self-reflection and introspection that I think most people in modern Society simply will never value (because it's not rewarded much) even when the perils are clear to judge--COVID's ongoing malaise that has caused rift in Soceity highlighted so much of what is wrong with it at it's core, which in my view were their all along because it was better 'not to rock the boat.' Being th eoptimist that I am I simply had thought we could collectively realize we are sooner to perish as a Species from this Earth than have this model we have been coaxed into correct itself, which warrants a global effort to restructure how we engage with one another and the environment we share. Social cohesion doesn't not mean to be intolerant of contrasting views, and in my view it's best viewed when people accept that the Social Contract applies to all, including those whom you vehemently disagree with and are not of 'your tribe.' Why? Because solely sticking to the tribe would stagnate and create a mono-culture of not just ideas, but likely a genetic pool where a single unpredictable variance can wipe most of it out completely: European migration into the Americas being an apt metaphor here. If you're going to follow models that rely on ecology like fitness, you also need to understand that genetic variation is as crucial for survival as replication itself.

pydry 5y ago

Picking the wrong tribe or a tribe that doesnt really care about you also kills.

nindalf 5y ago
Sure. But that has little to do with what the group believes. They could believe that the earth is flat or hollow, but as long as they’re there for each other, they would increase the fitness of everyone in the group. It just has nothing to do with how “rational” and evidence based the group is. Therefore there is no selective pressure towards being rational.
- pydry 5y ago
  I wouldnt hold out much hope of a flat earth tribe being able to deal with objective reality well enough to aid me. I'm pretty sure there is selective pressure towards being rational, it's just really hard to select for and even then probably not the most important thing. I remember when I met my first evangelical fundamentalist I couldn't for the life of me figure out why he earnestly believed this nonsense about the world being 7000 years or whatever. It was only when he said that he used to be a homeless drug addict and he was helped out of addiction by a Christian group that it twigged - they showed him kindness that the rest of the world had not. I'm pretty sure being rescued not only rearranged his whole world view such that the world is 7000 years old. I'm pretty sure it also rearranged his world view to view facts as less important than kindness.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    >I'm pretty sure it also rearranged his world view to view facts as less important than kindness. If I was a strident atheist and my life was saved by a Christian fundamentalist, it seems plausible to me that I would subsequently be less prejudiced against such people and less concerned about the areas in which I thought they were incorrect. But not that I would believe whatever they do.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    >I wouldnt hold out much hope of a flat earth tribe being able to deal with objective reality well enough to aid me. I'm pretty sure there is selective pressure towards being rational, it's just really hard to select for and even then probably not the most important thing. I'm pretty sure there is selective pressure against being rational. Take your drug addict. The flexibility to rearrange his whole worldview likely increased his fitness significantly. Now he has a support network and community, not to mention the help with addition. To put it differently: While joining rationalist tribe may confer more fitness than joining the irriationalist tribe, the best fitness is having flexibility to adapt to any tribe you can and not be alone.
- scotty79 5y ago
  How about sticking with anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers? This literally killed some people.
  - nindalf 5y ago
    Not supporting anti-vaxxers. Anti-vaxxers would be spreading disease, sure. Although it would lower their survival rates, they also affect the survival rates of the out-group by spreading it to vulnerable folks. So being stupid doesn’t affect them exclusively. Next, once you’ve become an anti-vaxxer and burned bridges with sane people there’s no turning back. At that point becoming “rational” and accepting vaccines is the irrational choice because you lose your only community, and you are all alone. Like I said, loneliness kills. This is moot because the psychological pain of admitting they’re wrong is too much anyway. So they’ll stick to the group. But my only contention is that post-bridge burning, the rational thing to do is to stick to the community that will care for you.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Ah, but one of the reasons they became anti-vaxxers is they believe vaccines are hurting/killing people who take them, and thus being in the vaxx-all-the-time camp could also literally kill people. Or at least is not necessarily the safest tribe to be a part of. Now, you may feel that's a ridiculous belief. But your belief it's ridiculous comes mostly from your own intuitions about the trustworthiness of institutions, perhaps some personal experience or intuited cost/benefit ratios, etc. It's not something that can be portably summed up in a neat box labelled "facts".
    - scotty79 5y ago
      > believe vaccines are hurting/killing people who take them Yes, that's a false belief of this tribe that is directly contributing to their mortality > and thus being in the vaxx-all-the-time camp could also literally kill people No, because that belief does not conform with reality. > Now, you may feel that's a ridiculous belief. It is. > It's not something that can be portably summed up in a neat box labelled "facts". It can be. For reasonable definitions of a word 'fact'.

Melting_Harps 5y ago

> If the idea is to survive and thrive, the “rational” approach is to continue with what our species has always done - stick with the tribe. I think you are advocating for herd mentality here without realizing it, and to be honest the effect that fitness has can also be upended in large scale conflicts: consider how many died before being able to have children in large scale wars (like WW2) because they felt their charismatic leader's cause was more righteous than the other guys. Their is safety in numbers, if looked at solely via a predation model but as a Human (with supposed elevated faculties than other animals) their is also a need for self-reflection and introspection that I think most people in modern Society simply will never value (because it's not rewarded much) even when the perils are clear to judge--COVID's ongoing malaise that has caused rift in Soceity highlighted so much of what is wrong with it at it's core, which in my view were their all along because it was better 'not to rock the boat.' Being th eoptimist that I am I simply had thought we could collectively realize we are sooner to perish as a Species from this Earth than have this model we have been coaxed into correct itself, which warrants a global effort to restructure how we engage with one another and the environment we share. Social cohesion doesn't not mean to be intolerant of contrasting views, and in my view it's best viewed when people accept that the Social Contract applies to all, including those whom you vehemently disagree with and are not of 'your tribe.' Why? Because solely sticking to the tribe would stagnate and create a mono-culture of not just ideas, but likely a genetic pool where a single unpredictable variance can wipe most of it out completely: European migration into the Americas being an apt metaphor here. If you're going to follow models that rely on ecology like fitness, you also need to understand that genetic variation is as crucial for survival as replication itself.