8 ms·

Are people too flawed, ignorant, and tribal for open societies?

65 points by jseliger 2y ago

pjkundert 2y ago
Open Society: "Its ideals include commitments to the rule of law, freedom of association, democratic institutions, and the free use of reason and critical analysis." Interesting that this set doesn't include the one thing that seems to be required for Civil Society: high trust. In other words, an general internal locus of control and set of shared morals that essentially allows you to leave your doors unlocked. If a classic sociopath can completely agree with your set of ideals, perhaps you shouldn't complain about the outcomes?
- abeppu 2y ago
  > internal locus of control Can you expand on that? It seems potentially but not necessarily consistent with "democratic institutions" but the "control" must be limited to preserve the various freedoms required for openness. > shared morals But the degree to which two people's moral views need to overlap is minimal. Yes, I shouldn't invade your home, but I also don't need to approve of what charities you donate to, what happens in your bedroom, how you worship, etc, all of which some people will perceive as part of their morality.
- hnbad 2y ago
  Also the idea that "commitment to the rule of law" should be a virtue assumes high trust. It's entirely rational not to be "committed to the rule of law" in a society where law enforcement faces less scrutiny or risk of consequences than those on the receiving end of the enforcement. It also ignores that laws can be unjust and defiance of unjust laws can be a political driving force - although I guess in this ideal society unjust laws would just be discovered by thinking really hard and agreeing that they're unjust. The article also throws the term "democracy" around without ever defining it. "Freedom of association" implies a direct democracy, possibly allowing for delegates, but "democratic institutions" and "politicians" implies a representative democracy at which point the distinction between democracy and technocracy becomes less clear. Lastly, the article is very much begging the question by idealizing the "disinterest truth seekers". This implies there is an underlying truth that is orthogonal to ideology and social norms. Even in the natural sciences this is hardly a given. Mathematics famously is the only science that can claim absolute correctness but such "truths" are only relevant within their respective systems, e.g. the obvious statement "1 + 1 = 2" is only true if we agree to submit ourselves to the underlying assumptions, many of which are ultimately arbitrary. Physics is probably a close second but the consensus on what might currently be the closest approximation of a model perfectly describing empirical reality is so complex that most applications instead use models that are known to be wrong but are simpler and ultimately good enough for the given purpose. At this point in science it is functionally impossible for a single person to have a holistic understanding of any given field, let alone the renaissance man ideal of a holistic understanding of a broad range of fields. So all views of "truth" are ultimately filtered through biases (e.g. discarding information as "irrelevant" or "unrelated") and often layers of abstractions. Imagining that this alone can result in a functioning society is the ultimate folly of liberalism: the total blindness to its own ideology. Ideology is not a flaw. Ideology is a lens through which we can understand society and a value system which informs us in how we want to progress as a society. If you don't take the time to build out a coherent ideology or at least a coherent value system - and understand it as such - you'll just be left chasing an inconsistent and often contradictory assortment of "virtues" and ad hoc preferences like those 85% of people who are not "politically engaged" (and arguably being politically engaged is neither necessary nor sufficient to having a coherent value system or else we wouldn't have the widespread problem of very vocal Lions Eating People's Faces Party voters).
  - pjkundert 2y ago
    The set of underlying assumptions implied by the phrase "commitment to the rule of law" is astounding. Most people blithely assume it means something like "acceptable behavior is defined by these laws, not by arbitrary edicts of men". But, it means no such thing. First, any "rule of law" can only operate in the assumption that law-breakers can be easily captured and sentenced. This is so clearly impossible (witness the almost complete inability of law-enforcement to interdict drugs entering prisons) as to be laughable. No, unless a group of free people basically agree, internally, not to do something -- of their own free will -- you aren't going to have a civil society free of that thing. Basically, the "rule of law" is a guard-rail that allows a civil society to expel individuals who choose to not abide by the "high trust" commitments of members of that society. Which is fine -- they just have to pursue their behaviours elsewhere. And this is where it becomes sticky. Most people want the benefits of "high trust" and "rule of law" -- as long as it enforces behaviors on others and not themselves. Which is also fine, so long as they are living with others, of like mind, in their own society. Just let us know in a generation or two how that works out for you! Furthermore, they also demand not just Reasonable Accommodation, but full Mental Assent to their (fill in the blank) beliefs. Which, also, is fine -- so long as they are living in a society of their choice, with others who (also, presumably) have the same demands on each-other for Mental Assent to (whatever). But, for whatever reason, people are generally not OK with a society that says: "Well, you are clearly not in agreement with these constraints that we believe leads to Civil Society, so we'd like to you to go somewhere more amenable with your beliefs. And, no, this is not a request." Which I don't understand.
- em-bee 2y ago
  exactly this. what is also missing (although maybe this will be included in the follow up article) is education. education is a powerful tool to change peoples attitude and create this high trust. it will take time, but it is achievable. same goes for the problem raised in the article. if people are to flawed, ignorant and tribal, then we need to change how we educate our children so that the next generation will be less flawed, less ignorant and less tribal. the earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.
jazz9k 2y ago
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darig 2y ago
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stonethrowaway 2y ago
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jauntywundrkind 2y ago
The current noosphere doesnt have good autonomic defense systems. Every impulse sent our way comes unguarded, as a dark forest of signals being sent at us. My hope is that we can start to emerge some larger tools & networks to help give us meta-review, of who else argues this & what folks say about arguments like this. What have these people warned us about in the past, what have their concerns been over the past 10 years & how many of those were right or wrong? Being endlessly blown about by fear & popularism has been the name of the game on Fox News & talk radio for decades. Bill O'Reilly was on a very hot Daily Show recently, decrying polarization, & it was amazing to see such a cheer leader for disdain & disgust trying to say enough (in a way dripping with disdain & disgust) and him & John Stewart having this hostile chat even though they sort of are trying to say some similar things. https://youtu.be/h7qZE4C_neo https://youtu.be/h7qZE4C_neo It's amazing how little progress we've made getting sharp at thos online world. But notable things were terrible in the old broadcast world too; we were defenseless there too.
- walterbell 2y ago
  > people Alongside software-managed person[udge]s impersonating people. > noosphere doesnt have good autonomic defense systems Or threat models, e.g. funding unlocked by 2012 Smith-Mundt Act for industrial-scale weaponization of online speech.
- hnbad 2y ago
  As much as I appreciate using precise language, I had to look this one up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere I guess the use of the term instead of a more common descriptor like "society" implies a religious or at least spiritualist world view, but the way you're using it implies the attacks stemming from an unspecified "other", which doesn't quite fit at least from a cursory look at the philosophy behind it. My criticism would be that much like Thatcher said though in a very different sense: there is no such thing as society, there are just individuals. Or more specifically: there's no such thing as a unified whole of society or humanity across history, there are actors with different interests and different levels of influence and each actor may consist of more than one person and each person may be part of more than one actor. The assumption that debate between political opposites on shared interests must bring them closer presupposes that both sides want to be closer and that the purpose of the debate is to find truth rather than to loop in the audience to join your side.
smitty1e 2y ago
Yes. I argue "people don't scale". The only time you see large amounts of people accomplishing big projects is in a military context, with constrained individuality, explicit chains of command, and authoritarian, top-down leadership. And why might that be? John Lennon answers: "You may say I'm a dreamer". Yes, John, you and the various idle rich humming your tune are just that. Your dream does not encompass the full spectrum of human experience, to include all the dark, chaotic stuff that makes scalability so terribly hard.
- hnbad 2y ago
  You're comparing top-down structures with each other. We all live in top-down structures. Even Switzerland is a representational democracy (or a bunch of representational democracies in a trenchcoat) at its core. States are extremely allergic against relinquishing power so they usually only allow for federations in constrained, often bureaucratic forms: clubs, corporations, interest groups, etc, all of which often end up being top-down structures themselves, either through mimicry (gotta have your by-laws) or legal compliance (someone has to foot the bill). The assumption seems to be that "scale" must be vertical. The various idle rich humming John Lennon's tune are completely oblivious to its message. We know that human brains are evolved to deal with "small" groups of people (think families or housing blocks) and that this breaks down once you get into the dozens let alone hundreds. We also know that close-knit groups of humans are very stable and often engage in acts of altruism, even within groups beyond this scale (think neighborhoods, villages) as long as they follow a web of trust they can intuitively comprehend. Humans are really good at scaling horizontally. We even invented diplomacy and currency to settle disputes with groups outside our web of trust without having to engage in violence and war. This is the brotherhood of man. The only problem with this kind of scaling is that it doesn't allow for the concentration of power and wealth in individuals because it is ultimately a network of peers rather than a hierarchy of domination. I think Democratic Confederalism is an interesting approach to a horizontal model that satisfies our modern need for a certain level of formality and structure while still building on our evolutionary strengths. Remember: our evolutionary advantage isn't our individual intellect, it's other people. Our intellect may allow us to defeat any natural predator but we come into this world naked, defenseless and entirely dependent on the kindness of others. Helping other humans is literally in our DNA, not just when it comes to child-rearing.
Timber-6539 2y ago
Cynically, people collectively are a sum of their evolutionary lessons. Evolution is never wrong.
- qsdf38100 2y ago
  You seem to define right and wrong in terms of winners and loosers at the game of life. If you survive, you’re right? No matter what you do, the end justify the means? Is that what you’re saying?
  - Timber-6539 2y ago
    In a way yes. However my emphasis is more that the collective society can't be just wrong, as much as we may sometimes want to paint the picture as such.
- wood_spirit 2y ago
  Evolution often fails. Of all the species that have existed on Earth at some point over the past 3.5 billion years, over 95% have gone extinct. That's part of the natural process of evolution. (Stat from https://www.theworldcounts.com https://www.theworldcounts.com)
  - Timber-6539 2y ago
    Comparing human evolution to 3.5 billion years of millions of other species is irrelevant to the subject matter (assuming it is even possible to foolproof data that goes back that long). And your claim doesn't mean that evolution failed necessarily.
OutOfHere 2y ago
People of other countries aren't morally better, yet they are at a lesser risk of losing democracy than the US now is. Why is this? It's because the politicians there have to cooperate to form coalition governments. In the US, the deficient voting system is structured such that third-parties practically cannot emerge. When you fix the voting system, third-parties immediately will emerge, at least in some states, and coalition governments will have to be formed at the national level. Coalitions will require a compromise on positions, being less susceptible to extremism and tribalism. Unfortunately, the two main parties are too selfish to want this to happen, not realizing that one of them risks losing permanently to a one-party system due to a partial judiciary. It's a core structural flaw. For democracy to thrive, the information content extracted from a voter has to be higher in terms of votes cast, points voted on, and the data type of the vote. Currently it is too low in the US. Imagine if you had to do all your programming with a handful of booleans without the freedom to implement any higher data structures.
- sixbangs 2y ago
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- oldpersonintx 2y ago
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- qsdf38100 2y ago
  Are you saying the two parties are equally to blame? It seems to me that one party is trying to turn the US into a dictatorship while the other is trying to prevent that to happen, and failing.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    > Are you saying the two parties are equally to blame? Even though I agree with the points in your second statement, the counterintuitive conclusion is that the Democrats are slightly more to blame because even after realizing that they're in a losing position, that democracy is at stake, that one-party rule is risked, they still fail to want to fix the voting system, preferring instead to risk losing everything forever.
inglor_cz 2y ago
I don't think that the complexity problem is so crucial, at least if we accept that the society doesn't need to find optimal solutions to complex problems, rather it just needs to avoid the really bad ones. You need experts for optimizations, but not necessarily for avoidance of really bad solutions.
idontknowtech 2y ago
It's an unanswerable question, but the only option we have is to try and make them work. At least until the next best system comes about. Regressing backwards because old things lasted awhile is hardly the place we should aspire towards.
zdragnar 2y ago
Society is an illusion; "people" is not a singular entity. Imagine a loaf of sliced bread: so long as the pieces are fairly consistent and sound, it can resemble a loaf. If one or more of the pieces is unsound, irregular in shape or consistency, the illusion of a singular loaf breaks. It isn't the nature of "people", it is the imperfect nature of the metaphor of "people" itself.
- Murky3515 2y ago
  Silly and pointless reductionism. You assign meaning to each slice, but not to the loaf, even though the same logic applies to the "illusion" of a slice? It's turtles all the way down, and the concept of society is as real and as important as any of the other layers.
- jancsika 2y ago
  To add to the point you were making: an "individual" who's been starting at a screen doing nothing but typing aphorisms for a week straight will look visibly unhealthy to their friends. That change in countenance reveals all the hidden social connections on which that person necessarily relies for their mental, physical, and emotional well-being.
gchamonlive 2y ago
There are many reasons we can point to as to why we don't see changes in society that will bring a about a better place for everyone. Maybe it's because capitalism doesn't allow for it, or only in its later stages and we are just not there yet. Or maybe because there still needs to be a revolution that will feed the masses that are starving both physically and mentally. There are many thinkers trying to point to flaws in the current way of viewing things that might be blocking us from moving forward. Byung-Chul Han, Slavoj Zizek, Michael Sandel... I really enjoy the podcast Philosophize This, the author does a nice job of introducing many concepts that are important. In my case, I wrote a recent essay that might fit this discussion: https://xd1.dev/2024/07/against-political-realism https://xd1.dev/2024/07/against-political-realism In it I try to extend the concept of Capitalist Realism to the realm of politics to use it as a motivation to call for a kind action in the private sphere that could increase the odds of us having meaningful debates in the society about the kind of changes we want to bring about for the next generations to come.
bdw5204 2y ago
One of the most important lessons of classical history is that no form of government is suited to all peoples at all times. When a democracy degenerates into tribalism, it enters into a period of conflict until somebody manages to transcend the tribal conflicts. This individual has the potential to become a king if he so desires. The king remains in control for his lifetime and his son will likely also hold real power but eventually you get a king who doesn't want to be bothered with the business of government when he can be doing other things like hunting in his personal forests. So the king relinquishes most of his power to the nobility and you get an aristocratic government. This aristocratic government, at first, wants to rule for the good of the people. Eventually, after several generations, it serves its own interests instead creating a crisis. At this point, the king can re-assert real power and restore an absolutist monarchy. Or the wealthier portion of the common people can decide they want some power too and gradually get some of it from the nobles. Once the wealthier portion of the common people have power, the general logic of democracy is to expand the suffrage. This is a one way ratchet because no politician can hope to win elections running on reducing suffrage. So you gradually end up with a mass democracy. Eventually, this mass democracy degenerates into tribalism and the cycle repeats itself. This cycle, which was recognized by Polybius and called anacyclosis, played itself out in both Athens and Rome in antiquity. It is likely playing itself out yet again in our own time. Because human nature doesn't change and all governments degenerate.
- thom 2y ago
  An irony of Polybius’s writings is that he complimented Rome on its balanced constitution which had the appearance of holding all these forces at bay (the consuls with limited monarchical powers, the senate representing the aristocracy, the tribunes the people and army etc), but he stopped writing at the exact moment the tide began to turn. With Amazon Prime’s new Roman series I’ve just been rereading Tacitus, who sees the collapse as equally inevitable: That old passion for power which has been ever innate in man increased and broke out as the Empire grew in greatness. In a state of moderate dimensions equality was easily preserved; but when the world had been subdued, when all rival kings and cities had been destroyed, and men had leisure to covet wealth which they might enjoy in security, the early conflicts between the patricians and the people were kindled into flame. At one time the tribunes were factious, at another the consuls had unconstitutional power; it was in the capital and the forum that we first essayed civil wars. Then rose C. Marius, sprung from the very dregs of the populace, and L. Sulla, the most ruthless of the patricians, who perverted into absolute dominion the liberty which had yielded to their arms. After them came Cn. Pompeius, with a character more disguised but no way better. Henceforth men's sole object was supreme power. Legions formed of Roman citizens did not lay down their arms at Pharsalia and Philippi, much less were the armies of Otho and Vitellius likely of their own accord to abandon their strife. They were driven into civil war by the same wrath from heaven, the same madness among men, the same incentives to crime. That these wars were terminated by what we may call single blows, was owing to want of energy in the chiefs.
KennyBlanken 2y ago
There are plenty of open societies that are working just fine right now. It's American society that isn't working. We as a society are incredibly hostile to the non-wealthy individual American, and not in a "you should feel guilty for being white and christian" kind of way like the right claims. We have a massive number of laws governing individual behavior, a justice system that incarcerates more people than any other country in the world in total or per capita, and is almost entirely focused on being punitive rather than reformative despite plenty of evidence the latter works better and costs less. Meanwhile, we let the leadership of corporations murder people, engage in widespread environmental pollution, etc and rarely to never face criminal punishment - usually just a financial slap on the wrist. We heap benefits and freebies onto corporations with almost nothing required back in results or documentation, and give little to nothing to our poorest while requiring them to go through more paperwork and rules and conditions for pittances in aide. We refuse to treat medical care, shelter, water, and food as a human right - ditto for a livable wage for work performed (despite being one of the most productive-per-worker countries in the world) has been an unmitigated disaster. Very predictably, more and more of Americans are slipping into poverty. But phew, good thing corporations have the right to a "voice" in politics (because apparently the leadership of the corporation doesn't...) Most of the ills can be directly traced to the grossly oversized influence rural midwestern Americans have politically. They're highly religious, uneducated, bigoted, selfish, vindictive, gullible, and arrogant (they are the 'real' America, they are 'hard working' and 'earn their keep'...despite being a net negative in federal revenue vs spending, hilariously enough. The quiet part: "unlike those people in the cities").
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Animats 2y ago
Important subject, so-so article. One decline in democracy: do you belong to any organization where the members regularly vote, make binding decisions, and occasionally fire the leader? A co-op? A union? A club? A homeowner's association? Anything? Most non-profits and voluntary organizations used to be organized that way, but in the US today, they tend to have self-perpetuating boards, ones which choose their successors. This is a problem for democracy, because Americans don't regularly do democracy any more. It takes practice. You need to see the process work. If people are not familiar with the process, it won't get used. Democracy is a consensus-forcing process. There's argument, then a vote. Then a decision, which is carried out. The expectation, and this is a tough one, is that after a decision is made, the opposition mostly accepts it, whether they like it or not. That's tough. Countries currently struggling hard with that include the US, France, and Israel. If voting can't force a decision and action, democracy stalls. This leads for calls for a "strong leader" and some form of autocracy. Countries which failed at democratic consensus and ended up as authoritarian states in recent years include post-USSR Russia, and Iraq. Then you get a coup or conquest, sometimes you get a revolution, and once in a while, a stable democracy emerges. You have to have people who know how to do democracy to make that work.
- poslathian 2y ago
  It seems this muscle has atrophied in nearly every niche it once thrived: neighborhood kids self organizing play, multigenerational households and family run businesses, boarding houses where personal spaces are shared with strangers, participation in civic clubs and churches (which was as much about business networking and social prestige as anything but still organized collective effort to worthy causes), self organized physical markets (like the grove in LA in the 30s), chambers of commerce, local business (cartels) parceling up their markets, barn raising, “culture scenes” like the west village in the 60s… perhaps most saliently to me personally, the end of faculty led university management.
d_burfoot 2y ago
It's right for everyone to be questioning the foundations of our political order, because our political order isn't working great these days. My assessment is that the US is a structure built on several solid conceptual pillars, and one pillar that is absolutely broken. The strong pillars are concepts like democracy, civil rights, economic freedom, and science. The broken pillar is "E Pluribus Unum" - the idea that we'll all naturally converge on some set of shared ethical values with enough reasoning, debate, and discussion. In reality, the opposite happened - we've split into at least two separate nations. There are millions of people in the US who believe that gun ownership is basically murder and abortion is a sacred human right, and millions of people who believe the exact opposite. These groups cannot be expected to share a political structure, especially one that vests such enormous amounts of power in the central government. And this point of violent disagreement is merely the beginning, there are dozens of other bitterly contested ethical issues. Americans should begin to ask what we actually gain by being locked in a political system with millions of people with moral systems that are utterly different from our own. Remind me why it is so great to live in such an enormous and unwieldy country? What do I gain, exactly? I believe that those who follow this train of thought will see that the only answer to our present problems is National Divorce. Texas should be governed by Texan values; California should be governed by Californian values.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  You can have stronger federalism without a “national divorce”.
- rokkamokka 2y ago
  Remember that this is really by design rather than something that just happened by itself. The creation of an us-vs-them is critical in order to keep the status quo for the ruling class (otherwise _they_ would eventually be the "them").
- energy123 2y ago
  Right diagnosis, wrong treatment. My treatment would be to first try to address the root cause of polarization, which is in large part social media. Somehow eliminate the foreign troll farms that have been caught running far-right and far-left Facebook groups for example. Mandatory proof of humanness. Then try less extreme civic measures like more Federalism and a weakening of the executive.
arnaudsm 2y ago
This article doesn't mention the biggest solution, that we can directly observe in the healthiest democracies : having a strong free education system. Switzerland and Northern Europe countries are amazing for that. The political consciousness of the average Joe is incredible in comparison of the average American. It's a chicken-egg problem. You need free education for democracy to work. And you need democracy to fund free education.
- seabass-labrax 2y ago
  It's a nice idea, but I'm not sure the statistics line up. Searching online gives the proportion of the population (age 25+) holding at least a bachelor's degree in the USA to be around 50%, which is higher than in Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands, to make an arbitrary selection. In fact there is no northern European country whose population has a higher proportion of tertiary education attainment than the USA. As far as I'm aware, primary and secondary education is available without cost in both the USA and across the entirety of Europe. Percentages aren't of course the whole story; maybe secondary education in these countries is of such higher quality that fewer people need to study further to participate intelligently in political discourse. Perhaps the implications of free degree education on graduates' personal finances gives northern Europeans more free time to use that knowledge and participate in politics. I like the idea of free education, but I am not confident that this is to blame for the USA's issues - mostly because of the situation in my country, the United Kingdom. Despite having had no tuition fees until 1998, this has not done anything to prevent an almost completely two-party system from prevailing for the last hundred years. For me, the non-proportional electoral system has become both the probable symptom and the probable cause of voting tribalism in both countries.
  - arnaudsm 2y ago
    Ah that's a good counterexample. Political education could play a big part, as well as independent media.
ikekkdcjkfke 2y ago
An important aspect of the human psyche is that we can band together around arbitrary ideas, both negative and positive
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kkfx 2y ago
I think people are simply too little "social" (in the real world sense) for open society: modern societies tend to concentrate people to a point of starting some real-life human variant of an old experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink and that's why we see many flawed, tribal behaviors IMO. Aside I suspect that most people are unable to know/understand the purpose of a society, why we do anything, so they do their best to avoid any change and anyone who is "different" as a way to "remain on the right track". However this seems to be always the case at least in large part of known human history and in the past we have had many open societies so such behavior while presenting many social issue should not be a showstopper for an open society anyway.
pagade 2y ago
> On the one hand, the costs of becoming politically informed—learning about politicians, issues, policies, and relevant social science—are very high for individual voters. It takes a lot of time and energy, which could be spent on other important—or simply more fun—activities. On the other hand, the negligible impact of individual votes means that being informed has little benefit. Given this, political ignorance is rational. I have been toying with the idea of a system that allows voluntarily delegating my vote to someone who I think is rational, more informed than me, and cares about things important to me, more than me. I would love to know the flaws in such a system.
- dvdkon 2y ago
  That's just representative democracy, no? I don't think adding a level to it would help, a new class of voter-politicians would soon emerge anyway, and they'd probably merge with "proper" political parties.
  - pagade 2y ago
    I mean I mark my vote as same as XYZ's vote in the system. XYZ doesn't have to know about it.
- marc_abonce 2y ago
  Wikipedia calls it Liquid Democracy but I've never seen nor heard that term outside and I don't think it's used anywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
paulmd 2y ago
my guy, people are too flawed, ignorant, and tribal to select a cellular telephone, let alone participate in society
incomingpain 2y ago
Nope. For decades if not centuries people were just fine and could function in societies. The main problem of the last ~15 years. Multiple dying political movements, kind of all at once and its a bit of a meltdown for those who still believe. They see their proposed idea as dying and going away, which makes them think that democracy is ending or something along those lines. Which is absurd at best.

65 points by jseliger 2y ago

Open Society: "Its ideals include commitments to the rule of law, freedom of association, democratic institutions, and the free use of reason and critical analysis." Interesting that this set doesn't include the one thing that seems to be required for Civil Society: high trust. In other words, an general internal locus of control and set of shared morals that essentially allows you to leave your doors unlocked. If a classic sociopath can completely agree with your set of ideals, perhaps you shouldn't complain about the outcomes?

abeppu 2y ago
> internal locus of control Can you expand on that? It seems potentially but not necessarily consistent with "democratic institutions" but the "control" must be limited to preserve the various freedoms required for openness. > shared morals But the degree to which two people's moral views need to overlap is minimal. Yes, I shouldn't invade your home, but I also don't need to approve of what charities you donate to, what happens in your bedroom, how you worship, etc, all of which some people will perceive as part of their morality.
hnbad 2y ago
Also the idea that "commitment to the rule of law" should be a virtue assumes high trust. It's entirely rational not to be "committed to the rule of law" in a society where law enforcement faces less scrutiny or risk of consequences than those on the receiving end of the enforcement. It also ignores that laws can be unjust and defiance of unjust laws can be a political driving force - although I guess in this ideal society unjust laws would just be discovered by thinking really hard and agreeing that they're unjust. The article also throws the term "democracy" around without ever defining it. "Freedom of association" implies a direct democracy, possibly allowing for delegates, but "democratic institutions" and "politicians" implies a representative democracy at which point the distinction between democracy and technocracy becomes less clear. Lastly, the article is very much begging the question by idealizing the "disinterest truth seekers". This implies there is an underlying truth that is orthogonal to ideology and social norms. Even in the natural sciences this is hardly a given. Mathematics famously is the only science that can claim absolute correctness but such "truths" are only relevant within their respective systems, e.g. the obvious statement "1 + 1 = 2" is only true if we agree to submit ourselves to the underlying assumptions, many of which are ultimately arbitrary. Physics is probably a close second but the consensus on what might currently be the closest approximation of a model perfectly describing empirical reality is so complex that most applications instead use models that are known to be wrong but are simpler and ultimately good enough for the given purpose. At this point in science it is functionally impossible for a single person to have a holistic understanding of any given field, let alone the renaissance man ideal of a holistic understanding of a broad range of fields. So all views of "truth" are ultimately filtered through biases (e.g. discarding information as "irrelevant" or "unrelated") and often layers of abstractions. Imagining that this alone can result in a functioning society is the ultimate folly of liberalism: the total blindness to its own ideology. Ideology is not a flaw. Ideology is a lens through which we can understand society and a value system which informs us in how we want to progress as a society. If you don't take the time to build out a coherent ideology or at least a coherent value system - and understand it as such - you'll just be left chasing an inconsistent and often contradictory assortment of "virtues" and ad hoc preferences like those 85% of people who are not "politically engaged" (and arguably being politically engaged is neither necessary nor sufficient to having a coherent value system or else we wouldn't have the widespread problem of very vocal Lions Eating People's Faces Party voters).
- pjkundert 2y ago
  The set of underlying assumptions implied by the phrase "commitment to the rule of law" is astounding. Most people blithely assume it means something like "acceptable behavior is defined by these laws, not by arbitrary edicts of men". But, it means no such thing. First, any "rule of law" can only operate in the assumption that law-breakers can be easily captured and sentenced. This is so clearly impossible (witness the almost complete inability of law-enforcement to interdict drugs entering prisons) as to be laughable. No, unless a group of free people basically agree, internally, not to do something -- of their own free will -- you aren't going to have a civil society free of that thing. Basically, the "rule of law" is a guard-rail that allows a civil society to expel individuals who choose to not abide by the "high trust" commitments of members of that society. Which is fine -- they just have to pursue their behaviours elsewhere. And this is where it becomes sticky. Most people want the benefits of "high trust" and "rule of law" -- as long as it enforces behaviors on others and not themselves. Which is also fine, so long as they are living with others, of like mind, in their own society. Just let us know in a generation or two how that works out for you! Furthermore, they also demand not just Reasonable Accommodation, but full Mental Assent to their (fill in the blank) beliefs. Which, also, is fine -- so long as they are living in a society of their choice, with others who (also, presumably) have the same demands on each-other for Mental Assent to (whatever). But, for whatever reason, people are generally not OK with a society that says: "Well, you are clearly not in agreement with these constraints that we believe leads to Civil Society, so we'd like to you to go somewhere more amenable with your beliefs. And, no, this is not a request." Which I don't understand.
em-bee 2y ago
exactly this. what is also missing (although maybe this will be included in the follow up article) is education. education is a powerful tool to change peoples attitude and create this high trust. it will take time, but it is achievable. same goes for the problem raised in the article. if people are to flawed, ignorant and tribal, then we need to change how we educate our children so that the next generation will be less flawed, less ignorant and less tribal. the earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.

jazz9k 2y ago

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darig 2y ago

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stonethrowaway 2y ago

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jauntywundrkind 2y ago

The current noosphere doesnt have good autonomic defense systems. Every impulse sent our way comes unguarded, as a dark forest of signals being sent at us. My hope is that we can start to emerge some larger tools & networks to help give us meta-review, of who else argues this & what folks say about arguments like this. What have these people warned us about in the past, what have their concerns been over the past 10 years & how many of those were right or wrong? Being endlessly blown about by fear & popularism has been the name of the game on Fox News & talk radio for decades. Bill O'Reilly was on a very hot Daily Show recently, decrying polarization, & it was amazing to see such a cheer leader for disdain & disgust trying to say enough (in a way dripping with disdain & disgust) and him & John Stewart having this hostile chat even though they sort of are trying to say some similar things. https://youtu.be/h7qZE4C_neo https://youtu.be/h7qZE4C_neo It's amazing how little progress we've made getting sharp at thos online world. But notable things were terrible in the old broadcast world too; we were defenseless there too.

walterbell 2y ago
> people Alongside software-managed person[udge]s impersonating people. > noosphere doesnt have good autonomic defense systems Or threat models, e.g. funding unlocked by 2012 Smith-Mundt Act for industrial-scale weaponization of online speech.
hnbad 2y ago
As much as I appreciate using precise language, I had to look this one up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere I guess the use of the term instead of a more common descriptor like "society" implies a religious or at least spiritualist world view, but the way you're using it implies the attacks stemming from an unspecified "other", which doesn't quite fit at least from a cursory look at the philosophy behind it. My criticism would be that much like Thatcher said though in a very different sense: there is no such thing as society, there are just individuals. Or more specifically: there's no such thing as a unified whole of society or humanity across history, there are actors with different interests and different levels of influence and each actor may consist of more than one person and each person may be part of more than one actor. The assumption that debate between political opposites on shared interests must bring them closer presupposes that both sides want to be closer and that the purpose of the debate is to find truth rather than to loop in the audience to join your side.

smitty1e 2y ago

Yes. I argue "people don't scale". The only time you see large amounts of people accomplishing big projects is in a military context, with constrained individuality, explicit chains of command, and authoritarian, top-down leadership. And why might that be? John Lennon answers: "You may say I'm a dreamer". Yes, John, you and the various idle rich humming your tune are just that. Your dream does not encompass the full spectrum of human experience, to include all the dark, chaotic stuff that makes scalability so terribly hard.

hnbad 2y ago
You're comparing top-down structures with each other. We all live in top-down structures. Even Switzerland is a representational democracy (or a bunch of representational democracies in a trenchcoat) at its core. States are extremely allergic against relinquishing power so they usually only allow for federations in constrained, often bureaucratic forms: clubs, corporations, interest groups, etc, all of which often end up being top-down structures themselves, either through mimicry (gotta have your by-laws) or legal compliance (someone has to foot the bill). The assumption seems to be that "scale" must be vertical. The various idle rich humming John Lennon's tune are completely oblivious to its message. We know that human brains are evolved to deal with "small" groups of people (think families or housing blocks) and that this breaks down once you get into the dozens let alone hundreds. We also know that close-knit groups of humans are very stable and often engage in acts of altruism, even within groups beyond this scale (think neighborhoods, villages) as long as they follow a web of trust they can intuitively comprehend. Humans are really good at scaling horizontally. We even invented diplomacy and currency to settle disputes with groups outside our web of trust without having to engage in violence and war. This is the brotherhood of man. The only problem with this kind of scaling is that it doesn't allow for the concentration of power and wealth in individuals because it is ultimately a network of peers rather than a hierarchy of domination. I think Democratic Confederalism is an interesting approach to a horizontal model that satisfies our modern need for a certain level of formality and structure while still building on our evolutionary strengths. Remember: our evolutionary advantage isn't our individual intellect, it's other people. Our intellect may allow us to defeat any natural predator but we come into this world naked, defenseless and entirely dependent on the kindness of others. Helping other humans is literally in our DNA, not just when it comes to child-rearing.

Timber-6539 2y ago

Cynically, people collectively are a sum of their evolutionary lessons. Evolution is never wrong.

qsdf38100 2y ago
You seem to define right and wrong in terms of winners and loosers at the game of life. If you survive, you’re right? No matter what you do, the end justify the means? Is that what you’re saying?
- Timber-6539 2y ago
  In a way yes. However my emphasis is more that the collective society can't be just wrong, as much as we may sometimes want to paint the picture as such.
wood_spirit 2y ago
Evolution often fails. Of all the species that have existed on Earth at some point over the past 3.5 billion years, over 95% have gone extinct. That's part of the natural process of evolution. (Stat from https://www.theworldcounts.com https://www.theworldcounts.com)
- Timber-6539 2y ago
  Comparing human evolution to 3.5 billion years of millions of other species is irrelevant to the subject matter (assuming it is even possible to foolproof data that goes back that long). And your claim doesn't mean that evolution failed necessarily.

OutOfHere 2y ago

People of other countries aren't morally better, yet they are at a lesser risk of losing democracy than the US now is. Why is this? It's because the politicians there have to cooperate to form coalition governments. In the US, the deficient voting system is structured such that third-parties practically cannot emerge. When you fix the voting system, third-parties immediately will emerge, at least in some states, and coalition governments will have to be formed at the national level. Coalitions will require a compromise on positions, being less susceptible to extremism and tribalism. Unfortunately, the two main parties are too selfish to want this to happen, not realizing that one of them risks losing permanently to a one-party system due to a partial judiciary. It's a core structural flaw. For democracy to thrive, the information content extracted from a voter has to be higher in terms of votes cast, points voted on, and the data type of the vote. Currently it is too low in the US. Imagine if you had to do all your programming with a handful of booleans without the freedom to implement any higher data structures.

sixbangs 2y ago
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oldpersonintx 2y ago
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qsdf38100 2y ago
Are you saying the two parties are equally to blame? It seems to me that one party is trying to turn the US into a dictatorship while the other is trying to prevent that to happen, and failing.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  > Are you saying the two parties are equally to blame? Even though I agree with the points in your second statement, the counterintuitive conclusion is that the Democrats are slightly more to blame because even after realizing that they're in a losing position, that democracy is at stake, that one-party rule is risked, they still fail to want to fix the voting system, preferring instead to risk losing everything forever.

inglor_cz 2y ago

I don't think that the complexity problem is so crucial, at least if we accept that the society doesn't need to find optimal solutions to complex problems, rather it just needs to avoid the really bad ones. You need experts for optimizations, but not necessarily for avoidance of really bad solutions.

idontknowtech 2y ago

It's an unanswerable question, but the only option we have is to try and make them work. At least until the next best system comes about. Regressing backwards because old things lasted awhile is hardly the place we should aspire towards.

zdragnar 2y ago

Society is an illusion; "people" is not a singular entity. Imagine a loaf of sliced bread: so long as the pieces are fairly consistent and sound, it can resemble a loaf. If one or more of the pieces is unsound, irregular in shape or consistency, the illusion of a singular loaf breaks. It isn't the nature of "people", it is the imperfect nature of the metaphor of "people" itself.

Murky3515 2y ago
Silly and pointless reductionism. You assign meaning to each slice, but not to the loaf, even though the same logic applies to the "illusion" of a slice? It's turtles all the way down, and the concept of society is as real and as important as any of the other layers.
jancsika 2y ago
To add to the point you were making: an "individual" who's been starting at a screen doing nothing but typing aphorisms for a week straight will look visibly unhealthy to their friends. That change in countenance reveals all the hidden social connections on which that person necessarily relies for their mental, physical, and emotional well-being.

gchamonlive 2y ago

There are many reasons we can point to as to why we don't see changes in society that will bring a about a better place for everyone. Maybe it's because capitalism doesn't allow for it, or only in its later stages and we are just not there yet. Or maybe because there still needs to be a revolution that will feed the masses that are starving both physically and mentally. There are many thinkers trying to point to flaws in the current way of viewing things that might be blocking us from moving forward. Byung-Chul Han, Slavoj Zizek, Michael Sandel... I really enjoy the podcast Philosophize This, the author does a nice job of introducing many concepts that are important. In my case, I wrote a recent essay that might fit this discussion: https://xd1.dev/2024/07/against-political-realism https://xd1.dev/2024/07/against-political-realism In it I try to extend the concept of Capitalist Realism to the realm of politics to use it as a motivation to call for a kind action in the private sphere that could increase the odds of us having meaningful debates in the society about the kind of changes we want to bring about for the next generations to come.

bdw5204 2y ago

One of the most important lessons of classical history is that no form of government is suited to all peoples at all times. When a democracy degenerates into tribalism, it enters into a period of conflict until somebody manages to transcend the tribal conflicts. This individual has the potential to become a king if he so desires. The king remains in control for his lifetime and his son will likely also hold real power but eventually you get a king who doesn't want to be bothered with the business of government when he can be doing other things like hunting in his personal forests. So the king relinquishes most of his power to the nobility and you get an aristocratic government. This aristocratic government, at first, wants to rule for the good of the people. Eventually, after several generations, it serves its own interests instead creating a crisis. At this point, the king can re-assert real power and restore an absolutist monarchy. Or the wealthier portion of the common people can decide they want some power too and gradually get some of it from the nobles. Once the wealthier portion of the common people have power, the general logic of democracy is to expand the suffrage. This is a one way ratchet because no politician can hope to win elections running on reducing suffrage. So you gradually end up with a mass democracy. Eventually, this mass democracy degenerates into tribalism and the cycle repeats itself. This cycle, which was recognized by Polybius and called anacyclosis, played itself out in both Athens and Rome in antiquity. It is likely playing itself out yet again in our own time. Because human nature doesn't change and all governments degenerate.

thom 2y ago
An irony of Polybius’s writings is that he complimented Rome on its balanced constitution which had the appearance of holding all these forces at bay (the consuls with limited monarchical powers, the senate representing the aristocracy, the tribunes the people and army etc), but he stopped writing at the exact moment the tide began to turn. With Amazon Prime’s new Roman series I’ve just been rereading Tacitus, who sees the collapse as equally inevitable: That old passion for power which has been ever innate in man increased and broke out as the Empire grew in greatness. In a state of moderate dimensions equality was easily preserved; but when the world had been subdued, when all rival kings and cities had been destroyed, and men had leisure to covet wealth which they might enjoy in security, the early conflicts between the patricians and the people were kindled into flame. At one time the tribunes were factious, at another the consuls had unconstitutional power; it was in the capital and the forum that we first essayed civil wars. Then rose C. Marius, sprung from the very dregs of the populace, and L. Sulla, the most ruthless of the patricians, who perverted into absolute dominion the liberty which had yielded to their arms. After them came Cn. Pompeius, with a character more disguised but no way better. Henceforth men's sole object was supreme power. Legions formed of Roman citizens did not lay down their arms at Pharsalia and Philippi, much less were the armies of Otho and Vitellius likely of their own accord to abandon their strife. They were driven into civil war by the same wrath from heaven, the same madness among men, the same incentives to crime. That these wars were terminated by what we may call single blows, was owing to want of energy in the chiefs.

KennyBlanken 2y ago

There are plenty of open societies that are working just fine right now. It's American society that isn't working. We as a society are incredibly hostile to the non-wealthy individual American, and not in a "you should feel guilty for being white and christian" kind of way like the right claims. We have a massive number of laws governing individual behavior, a justice system that incarcerates more people than any other country in the world in total or per capita, and is almost entirely focused on being punitive rather than reformative despite plenty of evidence the latter works better and costs less. Meanwhile, we let the leadership of corporations murder people, engage in widespread environmental pollution, etc and rarely to never face criminal punishment - usually just a financial slap on the wrist. We heap benefits and freebies onto corporations with almost nothing required back in results or documentation, and give little to nothing to our poorest while requiring them to go through more paperwork and rules and conditions for pittances in aide. We refuse to treat medical care, shelter, water, and food as a human right - ditto for a livable wage for work performed (despite being one of the most productive-per-worker countries in the world) has been an unmitigated disaster. Very predictably, more and more of Americans are slipping into poverty. But phew, good thing corporations have the right to a "voice" in politics (because apparently the leadership of the corporation doesn't...) Most of the ills can be directly traced to the grossly oversized influence rural midwestern Americans have politically. They're highly religious, uneducated, bigoted, selfish, vindictive, gullible, and arrogant (they are the 'real' America, they are 'hard working' and 'earn their keep'...despite being a net negative in federal revenue vs spending, hilariously enough. The quiet part: "unlike those people in the cities").

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Animats 2y ago

Important subject, so-so article. One decline in democracy: do you belong to any organization where the members regularly vote, make binding decisions, and occasionally fire the leader? A co-op? A union? A club? A homeowner's association? Anything? Most non-profits and voluntary organizations used to be organized that way, but in the US today, they tend to have self-perpetuating boards, ones which choose their successors. This is a problem for democracy, because Americans don't regularly do democracy any more. It takes practice. You need to see the process work. If people are not familiar with the process, it won't get used. Democracy is a consensus-forcing process. There's argument, then a vote. Then a decision, which is carried out. The expectation, and this is a tough one, is that after a decision is made, the opposition mostly accepts it, whether they like it or not. That's tough. Countries currently struggling hard with that include the US, France, and Israel. If voting can't force a decision and action, democracy stalls. This leads for calls for a "strong leader" and some form of autocracy. Countries which failed at democratic consensus and ended up as authoritarian states in recent years include post-USSR Russia, and Iraq. Then you get a coup or conquest, sometimes you get a revolution, and once in a while, a stable democracy emerges. You have to have people who know how to do democracy to make that work.

poslathian 2y ago
It seems this muscle has atrophied in nearly every niche it once thrived: neighborhood kids self organizing play, multigenerational households and family run businesses, boarding houses where personal spaces are shared with strangers, participation in civic clubs and churches (which was as much about business networking and social prestige as anything but still organized collective effort to worthy causes), self organized physical markets (like the grove in LA in the 30s), chambers of commerce, local business (cartels) parceling up their markets, barn raising, “culture scenes” like the west village in the 60s… perhaps most saliently to me personally, the end of faculty led university management.

d_burfoot 2y ago

It's right for everyone to be questioning the foundations of our political order, because our political order isn't working great these days. My assessment is that the US is a structure built on several solid conceptual pillars, and one pillar that is absolutely broken. The strong pillars are concepts like democracy, civil rights, economic freedom, and science. The broken pillar is "E Pluribus Unum" - the idea that we'll all naturally converge on some set of shared ethical values with enough reasoning, debate, and discussion. In reality, the opposite happened - we've split into at least two separate nations. There are millions of people in the US who believe that gun ownership is basically murder and abortion is a sacred human right, and millions of people who believe the exact opposite. These groups cannot be expected to share a political structure, especially one that vests such enormous amounts of power in the central government. And this point of violent disagreement is merely the beginning, there are dozens of other bitterly contested ethical issues. Americans should begin to ask what we actually gain by being locked in a political system with millions of people with moral systems that are utterly different from our own. Remind me why it is so great to live in such an enormous and unwieldy country? What do I gain, exactly? I believe that those who follow this train of thought will see that the only answer to our present problems is National Divorce. Texas should be governed by Texan values; California should be governed by Californian values.

Der_Einzige 2y ago
You can have stronger federalism without a “national divorce”.
rokkamokka 2y ago
Remember that this is really by design rather than something that just happened by itself. The creation of an us-vs-them is critical in order to keep the status quo for the ruling class (otherwise _they_ would eventually be the "them").
energy123 2y ago
Right diagnosis, wrong treatment. My treatment would be to first try to address the root cause of polarization, which is in large part social media. Somehow eliminate the foreign troll farms that have been caught running far-right and far-left Facebook groups for example. Mandatory proof of humanness. Then try less extreme civic measures like more Federalism and a weakening of the executive.

arnaudsm 2y ago

This article doesn't mention the biggest solution, that we can directly observe in the healthiest democracies : having a strong free education system. Switzerland and Northern Europe countries are amazing for that. The political consciousness of the average Joe is incredible in comparison of the average American. It's a chicken-egg problem. You need free education for democracy to work. And you need democracy to fund free education.

seabass-labrax 2y ago
It's a nice idea, but I'm not sure the statistics line up. Searching online gives the proportion of the population (age 25+) holding at least a bachelor's degree in the USA to be around 50%, which is higher than in Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands, to make an arbitrary selection. In fact there is no northern European country whose population has a higher proportion of tertiary education attainment than the USA. As far as I'm aware, primary and secondary education is available without cost in both the USA and across the entirety of Europe. Percentages aren't of course the whole story; maybe secondary education in these countries is of such higher quality that fewer people need to study further to participate intelligently in political discourse. Perhaps the implications of free degree education on graduates' personal finances gives northern Europeans more free time to use that knowledge and participate in politics. I like the idea of free education, but I am not confident that this is to blame for the USA's issues - mostly because of the situation in my country, the United Kingdom. Despite having had no tuition fees until 1998, this has not done anything to prevent an almost completely two-party system from prevailing for the last hundred years. For me, the non-proportional electoral system has become both the probable symptom and the probable cause of voting tribalism in both countries.
- arnaudsm 2y ago
  Ah that's a good counterexample. Political education could play a big part, as well as independent media.

ikekkdcjkfke 2y ago

An important aspect of the human psyche is that we can band together around arbitrary ideas, both negative and positive

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kkfx 2y ago

I think people are simply too little "social" (in the real world sense) for open society: modern societies tend to concentrate people to a point of starting some real-life human variant of an old experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink and that's why we see many flawed, tribal behaviors IMO. Aside I suspect that most people are unable to know/understand the purpose of a society, why we do anything, so they do their best to avoid any change and anyone who is "different" as a way to "remain on the right track". However this seems to be always the case at least in large part of known human history and in the past we have had many open societies so such behavior while presenting many social issue should not be a showstopper for an open society anyway.

pagade 2y ago

> On the one hand, the costs of becoming politically informed—learning about politicians, issues, policies, and relevant social science—are very high for individual voters. It takes a lot of time and energy, which could be spent on other important—or simply more fun—activities. On the other hand, the negligible impact of individual votes means that being informed has little benefit. Given this, political ignorance is rational. I have been toying with the idea of a system that allows voluntarily delegating my vote to someone who I think is rational, more informed than me, and cares about things important to me, more than me. I would love to know the flaws in such a system.

dvdkon 2y ago
That's just representative democracy, no? I don't think adding a level to it would help, a new class of voter-politicians would soon emerge anyway, and they'd probably merge with "proper" political parties.
- pagade 2y ago
  I mean I mark my vote as same as XYZ's vote in the system. XYZ doesn't have to know about it.
marc_abonce 2y ago
Wikipedia calls it Liquid Democracy but I've never seen nor heard that term outside and I don't think it's used anywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy

paulmd 2y ago

my guy, people are too flawed, ignorant, and tribal to select a cellular telephone, let alone participate in society

incomingpain 2y ago

Nope. For decades if not centuries people were just fine and could function in societies. The main problem of the last ~15 years. Multiple dying political movements, kind of all at once and its a bit of a meltdown for those who still believe. They see their proposed idea as dying and going away, which makes them think that democracy is ending or something along those lines. Which is absurd at best.