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> A lack of executive control limits our ability to comply with demands, including the demands of authority. The demands of authority generally include followin

> A lack of executive control limits our ability to comply with demands, including the demands of authority. The demands of authority generally include following the dictates of authority I'd say this framing is upside down. Lots of people can "demand" lots of things. The only thing that gives the demands of "authorities" any import is their possible consequences - they're only privileged pragmatically. Furthermore I wouldn't say that a brain that grants priority to someone else barking orders has "executive control" - in fact I'd say it lacks executive control, likely due to sustained abuse of being forced to act (comply) first and think later. I would say what makes "seem to accept authority happily" ring true is not the fact that most people straightforwardly comply. Rather it's that when someone does not comply, most people line up in support of the authority even when the authority is clearly wrong. This points to a dynamic of not merely pragmatically following authorities, but rather seemingly being in support of authorities for authority's sake.

SanderNL 3y ago
Look, if I have to give up my shit to get where I want I’ll damn well make sure you will too. If there is anything I hate more than following arbitrary rules it’s dealing with people that think they are above them. I think it’s less “supporting the paradigm” and more “if I am going down we are all going down here”.
- mindslight 3y ago
  My original comment was going to reference the "crab bucket" phenomenon but I toned it down a bit. Whether such support is reasonable or not is highly dependent on the specific rule/topic under discussion, and some of them are certainly not reasonable. And often such times such discussions don't even center around rules per se, but rather whether someone was "respectful" enough to said authority figure on a personal level.
RationalDino 3y ago
Your reference to "barking orders" shows a major misunderstanding. The demands we face may not be simply barked orders. They may instead be reasonable requests to work on the tasks assigned in the sprint, rather than helping out a random coworker whenever the whim strikes. Or to work on a test during the allotted time so you can get a good grade. Both are demands, and both are problems for a person with poor executive control. You may well be right that a neurotypical person who simply follows barked orders is doing damage to their executive control. I have no opinion on that. I just know that doing so consistently requires more executive control than I have. That said, you have a point that I find it outrageous when people fall into ranks behind stupid authority. Particularly when I know that the people doing so should know better. I intellectually know what's going on. But my natural emotional response against it is pretty strong.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mindslight 3y ago
  I was talking about "hard" authority that one cannot really avoid, because at this point in my life that's what I think of when I hear the word authority. By adulthood it feels "soft" authority relationships are much more opt-in (even if calling them full choices is somewhat fallacious). So I'm not respecting soft authorities simply because they're "authority" but rather because I've personally decided that their direction is reasonable in service of some larger goal. I didn't mean to say that someone following barked orders is actively damaging their executive control, but rather saying that if the barked orders are directly affecting the prioritization of their executive control, then in a sense that control has already been damaged. Executive control and obedience to authority should really be seen as orthogonal aspects, and I'd say conflating the two is a shortcut preferred by those seeking the easy route of authoritarianism (eg a schoolteacher wondering why a "problem kid" doesn't "behave" when attempting to make them sit still for hours on end) Those are two clarifications. I feel there is definitely some constructive synthesis here but can't quite wrap my head around it right now.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    Ruminating on this today - I think it runs even deeper than what I've said, even for "soft" authority. We're all familiar with the archetype of the person who had overbearing parents giving them strong direction, and then has a harder time in the real world without this direction. That's a case where over-reliance on deferring to authority ends up destroying independent executive function. It's also a little weird to me to assert a dichotomy between "executive control" and "want to", when the two seem quite tied. Sure, we all use the rhetorical device of saying we have to do something that we "don't want to", but fundamentally we generally do actually want to do those things, but based on larger non-immediate concerns as opposed to immediate enjoyment.
strken 3y ago
I'm not sure "clearly wrong" is so clear. Consider a police officer detaining two people who were fighting in public, when one of them was acting in self-defence. This is the kind of thing I imagine when I hear "clearly wrong", but the authority figure is acting on the higher principle of maintaining public order, and may not have the necessary proof to let one person go. It could be more important to prioritise the immediate safety of everyone involved and sort out the details later, even at the cost of detaining the victim for a short time. There's not always time to explain what's going on, and an explanation would be a distraction from calming down the main conflict. On the software side, consider a presentation given by a co-worker who recently got off bereavement leave, where there's a significant error in one of the slides that makes it seem like the design of the whole component is fatally flawed. Your boss tries to move on from the slide without giving you time to criticise it, because she knows your co-worker is emotionally vulnerable right now and wants to address the flaw in private. Your boss can't necessarily explain this in public because doing so would cause the same problem she's seeking to avoid. When people talk in the abstract about authority being clearly wrong, I'm never sure whether it's a case like these ones where higher moral principles are at stake.
- mindslight 3y ago
  > It could be more important to prioritise the immediate safety of everyone involved and sort out the details later I'd say there is a higher principle involved, and per your justification the authority's action is not clearly wrong. I deliberately avoided specific examples due to the inevitable lines of people that will jump in to justify authorities' actions, but surely you can imagine some of what you consider to be clearly unjust by authorities that people will nevertheless defend? > even at the cost of detaining the victim for a short time. I'd say this is where things start to go wrong, as people start to defer to unjust authority and just accept its collateral damage, rather than demanding eventual justice. In this situation, the victim has been harmed by the officer and the state, regardless of the officer's actions being the most prudent from their perspective. Justice would be that victim being made whole, rather than externalizing the true cost of policing in a perverse reverse lottery.
  - 3y ago

SanderNL 3y ago

Look, if I have to give up my shit to get where I want I’ll damn well make sure you will too. If there is anything I hate more than following arbitrary rules it’s dealing with people that think they are above them. I think it’s less “supporting the paradigm” and more “if I am going down we are all going down here”.

mindslight 3y ago
My original comment was going to reference the "crab bucket" phenomenon but I toned it down a bit. Whether such support is reasonable or not is highly dependent on the specific rule/topic under discussion, and some of them are certainly not reasonable. And often such times such discussions don't even center around rules per se, but rather whether someone was "respectful" enough to said authority figure on a personal level.

RationalDino 3y ago

Your reference to "barking orders" shows a major misunderstanding. The demands we face may not be simply barked orders. They may instead be reasonable requests to work on the tasks assigned in the sprint, rather than helping out a random coworker whenever the whim strikes. Or to work on a test during the allotted time so you can get a good grade. Both are demands, and both are problems for a person with poor executive control. You may well be right that a neurotypical person who simply follows barked orders is doing damage to their executive control. I have no opinion on that. I just know that doing so consistently requires more executive control than I have. That said, you have a point that I find it outrageous when people fall into ranks behind stupid authority. Particularly when I know that the people doing so should know better. I intellectually know what's going on. But my natural emotional response against it is pretty strong.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mindslight 3y ago
I was talking about "hard" authority that one cannot really avoid, because at this point in my life that's what I think of when I hear the word authority. By adulthood it feels "soft" authority relationships are much more opt-in (even if calling them full choices is somewhat fallacious). So I'm not respecting soft authorities simply because they're "authority" but rather because I've personally decided that their direction is reasonable in service of some larger goal. I didn't mean to say that someone following barked orders is actively damaging their executive control, but rather saying that if the barked orders are directly affecting the prioritization of their executive control, then in a sense that control has already been damaged. Executive control and obedience to authority should really be seen as orthogonal aspects, and I'd say conflating the two is a shortcut preferred by those seeking the easy route of authoritarianism (eg a schoolteacher wondering why a "problem kid" doesn't "behave" when attempting to make them sit still for hours on end) Those are two clarifications. I feel there is definitely some constructive synthesis here but can't quite wrap my head around it right now.
- mindslight 3y ago
  Ruminating on this today - I think it runs even deeper than what I've said, even for "soft" authority. We're all familiar with the archetype of the person who had overbearing parents giving them strong direction, and then has a harder time in the real world without this direction. That's a case where over-reliance on deferring to authority ends up destroying independent executive function. It's also a little weird to me to assert a dichotomy between "executive control" and "want to", when the two seem quite tied. Sure, we all use the rhetorical device of saying we have to do something that we "don't want to", but fundamentally we generally do actually want to do those things, but based on larger non-immediate concerns as opposed to immediate enjoyment.

strken 3y ago

I'm not sure "clearly wrong" is so clear. Consider a police officer detaining two people who were fighting in public, when one of them was acting in self-defence. This is the kind of thing I imagine when I hear "clearly wrong", but the authority figure is acting on the higher principle of maintaining public order, and may not have the necessary proof to let one person go. It could be more important to prioritise the immediate safety of everyone involved and sort out the details later, even at the cost of detaining the victim for a short time. There's not always time to explain what's going on, and an explanation would be a distraction from calming down the main conflict. On the software side, consider a presentation given by a co-worker who recently got off bereavement leave, where there's a significant error in one of the slides that makes it seem like the design of the whole component is fatally flawed. Your boss tries to move on from the slide without giving you time to criticise it, because she knows your co-worker is emotionally vulnerable right now and wants to address the flaw in private. Your boss can't necessarily explain this in public because doing so would cause the same problem she's seeking to avoid. When people talk in the abstract about authority being clearly wrong, I'm never sure whether it's a case like these ones where higher moral principles are at stake.

mindslight 3y ago
> It could be more important to prioritise the immediate safety of everyone involved and sort out the details later I'd say there is a higher principle involved, and per your justification the authority's action is not clearly wrong. I deliberately avoided specific examples due to the inevitable lines of people that will jump in to justify authorities' actions, but surely you can imagine some of what you consider to be clearly unjust by authorities that people will nevertheless defend? > even at the cost of detaining the victim for a short time. I'd say this is where things start to go wrong, as people start to defer to unjust authority and just accept its collateral damage, rather than demanding eventual justice. In this situation, the victim has been harmed by the officer and the state, regardless of the officer's actions being the most prudent from their perspective. Justice would be that victim being made whole, rather than externalizing the true cost of policing in a perverse reverse lottery.
- 3y ago