Playing Along With Sam Harris

I'm having some fun playing along with Sam Harris' recent podcast with Ben Shapiro and Eric Weinstein.  Every time I hear a good probing interview with one of those Weinstein brothers, I come off very appreciative of their level-headedness.  Reminds me of my family a bit.

Anyway, here is my attempt at playing along with Sam's interview.  I've taken his major questions and tried to write a bit of my response to each of them.  I've tried to keep things more like dialogue, but I've also expanded a bit more that I would ever do in a real conversation.  After the first bit, I figured I should add in minute intervals so you can follow along on the original podcast.

Has social media caused today’s extreme polarization levels?

No.  Polarization tends to follow a Father & Son’s cycle.  I look to Peter Turchin’s great historical work here.  I think your’e better off viewing today’s polarization as a somewhat nasty “Great Religious Awakening”.  About every 50 years or so you get a period of moral unfreezing & configuration.  For instance, look to the social turmoil of the late 60’s and the fairly significant left sourced period of politically oriented violence in the early 70’s.  Before that you had some really controversial times during the great depression and then the near civil war in the late 1800’s due to their immigration crisis, real wage decline and extreme income disparity.

Each cycle had different proximate causes, but I tend to view the underlying physics as emerging from the same ultimate cause.  Here I really like Nowak & Sigmund. They have a really great under appreciated Nature paper called Tides of Tolerance which models how slight preference for tolerance leads to sudden temporary phase changes to intolerance. The posit that this occurs when a generation loses direct touch for the reasons of tolerance itself.  I think the term “you can’t be tolerant of intolerance,” is apropos here.

My personal reference for this came from a great book by Chris Beneke on the emergence of religious secularism in America.  When you look back at the religious awakenings of the early 1700’s, late 1700’s and early 1800’s you tend to see many of the same dynamics we are now experiencing.

You have “priests” who lead and pace self-organizing movements.  They articulate new morals and as a natural sweet spot for group formation, push a hard in-group out-group dynamic by labelling anyone who doesn’t agree with them or support their morals as sinners.  When a society’s foundational social contract is questioned, this is a really explosive position to take.  It works, for a time, very well.  But it also produces some nasty paralysis once everyone other than your own group is a sinner who can’t be trusted.  Social capital, or as Ibn Kuhn states it, asabiyah, is real and is foundational for group coherence. 

I tend to think group coherence is slated to be the next global warming issue.  The irony here, is that the political sides on this very real phenomena are ironically switched.

What is the value of religion in social coherence?  What do you believe that I don’t believe?

Religious is a great adaptive tool.  I take David Sloan Wilson’s side and the body of researches studying the Scientific Study of Religion.  You can have beliefs that are factually incorrect but which are more adaptive (fitter) than beliefs which are factually correct.  I believe Brett Weinstein frames this as metaphorical truth, Wilson as practical vs. factual reality, and another pop scientist, Jordan Peterson uses the term Darwinian truth.  Of these I tend most to Wilson’s approach.

I think we do religion a great disservice by casting the baby out with the bath water. In this I guess the safest position is a classic God of the Gaps position. But I also think it is very important to recognize the intertwined role religion (in the group sense of things) and governance have played in the evolution of human society and the gene-cultural evolution of our own abilities to function at ever increasing levels of selection.  Whether you think these levels need to be biologically real or simply ephemerally real is a fairly technical question that I don’t think adds much to the conversation.

But in general I think this generation’s loss of touch with religion and some of the adaptive reasons for religion has left them without many of the pluralistic tools which are needed for effective social coherence at the high levels we now operate in.  Extreme divergence and diversity at our social scale have only exasperated, or rather tried the limits of pluralistic skills.  I’m afraid they are rather lacking.

Now that doesn’t mean I think religion is necessary for society.  I just don’t think the data with atheism stands up to that.  I’m fairly Norezayan there. But it does mean we’re going to have to re-learn pluralism again.  This time without most of the supernatural trappings, but unfortunately with heightened levels of sacredness, blasphemy and sacrosanctness.  This is where I think Trump really hit a home run.

Imagine the world was rebooted.  How would someone rediscover this thing [this particular form of True religion]

Well I don’t think you’d see any particulars re-emerging.  But you would be likely to see some generalities re-emerge.  Sort of like the difference between homologous and analogous structures.  In this I suspect I lean to Peterson’s view of things.  There are some darwinian, if you like, wells in our cognitive architecture.  Some things are adaptive and some things aren’t.  If you look across human societies, get the right scale, worry about the very real effects of cultural evolution you can probably get a pretty good idea of what type of structures are likely to re-emerge.  Of course the colour of things will be complex, but in general I suspect you’d get some fairly common sense pro-sociallty concerns coming up, and some pretty interesting ways of teasing out in-groups and out-groups.

In this I always tend to smirk looking back at the fork the new atheists faced a number of years ago.  They definitely seemed to be poised to start reproducing evangelical like quasi-religion.  I’m just glad Dawkins and some of the others pulled back from that brink. But it is interesting to see some of the atheist “worship” services and such.  There are certain patterns of actions and beliefs that just feel right and just work.

Confronting that is I think one of the big questions of the next decade or so.  The scientific understanding of the role of quasi-factual but adaptive “truth”.  Neat times.

Can’t we just chart a course to greater well being [pro-scoaiity] just from intelligent analysis?  Why do we need an un-moved mover?

Yes. You can certainly try. I think you’ll find that the religious dynamics come up as fairly efficient solutions to most any problem.  Does this always entail supernaturalism? No. I think psychology would say it just needs the right amount of quasi-propositional (slightly exaggerated and slightly unbelievable but very memorable) ideas. I take a homeostatic view here.  It isn’t just the individual ideas or meme’s that need the right quasi-propositionality, its probably balanced out with a variety of other things.  Thus you see atheists in Europe having unbelievably high belief levels in ET’s and new age spiritualism.

But yes, intelligent analysis refined by selection would over time produce many of the solutions we now have.  It would probably produce some very good ones we don’t now have. But over time I think, like you do, we’ll have to face the question about what to do to get past the tribal like berries of conventional religion.  Where we [Sam Harris] differ is probably that I think we might still call this product “religion” where you certainly wouldn’t. 

But I also don’t see much fundamental difference between hyper-rational utopianism and some forms of religious belief.  Hence, what I worry about is more the journey than the destination.  Destination zealots, perhaps because of my religious background, always make me worried. I’m sorry I’m worried about you Sam.  Just kidding.  I think we’ll come to a balance between practical and factual truth sometime.  I just don’t think such a resolution will necessarily be kind to everyone’s sacred values.

It is pure hubris (36:00) to think the 7 billion of us here have pushed what is cognitively possible [or cognitive closed doors] to the limit.  [The assumption here is that religion is a closed cognitive door where what is now here is all that you need]

I think there are some mistaken assumptions here.  The God of the Gaps approach my quick solution.  I don’t think we need an unmoved mover. I’m quite content to think of God as a person who went through everything we did and is far ahead of us.

I think if you take religion and assume that it must be static you’re in trouble too.  The usual answer to this is revelation. But that’s a pretty simple ingenious and deflective answer. I think what fundamentally matters is that the rate of change of beliefs fits adaptive patterns.  Sometimes that can mean some fairly rapid change.  I am a gene-culturist who buys into the fairly extreme position of multi-path inheritance.  I think if you change religion too much and say “hey let’s do atheism and reinvent our moral beliefs based upon some good science” you’re going to get some really nasty things come out of it.  Heck, look at Marxism.  

Science is good at some things. Religion is good at others.  I suspect we’ll see coherence, but I just don’t think our social science is up to the playing field of religion yet.  Look at where we are with inter sectionalism.  I certainly don’t want that pushed as a mandated universal belief system empowered by all these latent religious like intensities people are subject too.  Especially not when those in charge deny the very religious like nature of their movement, making it all too easy to deny the ingrained tendencies that go with it.  I don’t think we need another cycle of religious wars. We did that after Martin Luther.  I don’t think we need to do that again.

But I do hope we get better at the science of religion. For instance, I think its a big shame few people have every grappled in an honest way with Stuart Kauffman’s Beyond Belief book.

Revelation is so limiting because we’re anchoring ourselves to a book that we just know is going to be outdated (37:10)

Yes, fixation can be a problem. But I think it behooves one to ask whether no fixation is also a problem.  Is it?  

It certainly  seems like societies with no moral anchors enable some rather despotic caste formation, moral flipping and nasty abusive freeloading.  See my blog post

I think what you need is the “right amount” of change and re-interpretation.  Re-interpretation that is aware of our Darwinian traps and natural propensities.  I’m a very real believer in abuse and the set-up of systems of abuse.  But that may just be the organizationalist in me talking….

This remind me of the debate I had with Rick Warren where he said without God people would just be out raping and murdering and such.  I just don’t think that is true. 40:00

Well, I think this is the “climate change” moment we have to face.  Would society crumble or not?  I think the answer is we don’t know.  And that type of destruction isn’t something I think should be played around with willy nilly.  There have been some rather horrible world disasters emerging from well intentioned by Darwinianingly naive social engineering.

So I think in your question, would everyone be better off without religion? Some might. Some might not.  But if you go for a long-game argument, in the long-run people would be better off because hyper-rationalism is the most rational solution because it is the quickest way to factual based reality which is highly probable to be the most adaptive as long as we can surprise our natural instincts, I think you necessarily face the same criticisms that get levelled at any utopian styled movement.  Just because something is possible through out naive lenses, doesn’t mean it will actually work out that way.  I’m very practical, in the D.S. Wilson pun of the word, here.

Invoke utilitarianism or consequentialism here if you like, but I think we need to be really careful to maintain pluralism and the ideals of pluralism.  That’s why I think religions are very wise when the adopt a “multi-path” approach and say, yes that path may be better for you, but I like this one and think it will get me to a similar enough spot, but with a much more pleasant-for-me journey.  Sometimes it is the side effects and after effects that we’re after. Religion can have some rather nice pro-social side effects. Even seemingly irrational beliefs and norms, can if viewed right, produce some strong and unique social and pro-social qualities.

I just think we have to watch our own hubris to think that everything can be engineered. But I also think religions tend to go way overboard on denying the utility of science and the scientific process in this regard.  But then again, they aren’t worrying about the individual, they are worrying about the group as expressed by the sum of all the individuals, or even in some cases just as the group as a whole.  But feel free to make another multi-level selection joke here Sam.

43:00 I think Eric Weinstein did a great job summing up my position.  Sam Harris comes across as very religious or quasi-religious at his core.

44:25 Here is how is and ought converge is with a complete understanding. If you have all the information there really is, if that can’t give you a complete picture of what you ought to do then where would you go to get that picture?

I think it is interesting that you just made a mormon theological argument here.  That is what I suspect religions, well at least many formal world religions would say.  Complete understandings can do this. But are we any where near that.  What is the error introduced by what we don’t know? How much should we trust the long arm of evolved selection versus the hubris of modern rationalism? 

I think the two exist in tension. I don’t think putting all your eggs in one basket is good.  Not because middle ground is always the best solution (think of the let’s kill all ethic group X,  can’t you meet them halfway, negotiating cartoon). I think you need tension between elements in a group which are conservative, let’s call them in-group oriented, and elements which are outward oriented, let’s call them out-group oriented.  I think tension between those two perspectives is an essential dialectic. It is adaptive and highly so.

So I fully support your right for your position.  I also fully support the right of others for their position. I do not think the case should get decided based upon who makes the most rational case. That type of solution process is just too subject to gaming. I think we need much more sophisticated checks and balances. And, I think our evolutionary history has given us some rather formidable tools in this regard, and I think we should trust cautions that those systems suggest we take with regard to moral engineering.

Creeds & Creedal Defences: They're Adaptive & They Bi-normalize

A while ago I made some comments about how I was worried about a nascent trend in academia for formal creedal statements concerning the morality of certain positions.  While the original manifesto came from a religious studies department, the whole dynamics had me a bit worried for academia.

My main fears were that it could open the door for litmus tests about peoples' politics and political moralities.  "Where do you sit on the morality of position X?"  Morality tests are not something I generally think many academics should willingly bring into the pursuit of objective truth.  Of course I also don't think science should be "intersectional".  Research needs space to be research. It requires the space and freedom to  be able to look at controversial ideas with minimum deference to how people might use or interpret the results.

Of course once you start telling or suggesting how people should act, or what policies should be followed, moral ethics seem mandatory. From one frame, current tensions in academia reflect the tension of higher education as a pursuit of abstract knowledge versus a pursuit of applied knowledge. While the two intermingle, abstract pursuits are really only suited to a small minority of people. Applied pursuits appeal to a much broader range of people.  The expansion of higher ed into an ever increasing percentage of the population no doubt informs the shift in these tensions.

CREEDAL DEFENSES

As most people know, Brett Weinstein of Evergreen college sent out an email where he said that telling people to leave college for a day due to their skin color was an act of racism.  The ultimate intentions of the act (to combat racism) did not justify the racist of the act itself.  One dimensionality is of course a hallmark of modern intersectional theories.  For this defence against classical racism he was branded a racist nazi.  He was racist because he did not accede to the right level of support for students of color.  Thus his act was racist by omission.  It was not racist by commission.  Second, he was a Nazi because his lack of support for people of color was a form of violence. It perpetuated and gave space for rhetorics of violence, which could cause actual violence.  Further, the flash-point this created spawned a backlash involving unsavoury people who created a hostile environment due to who they were and what they were perceived to support.

Luckily Brett had a pretty good memo.  He specifically called to end racism. But he defined racism in the classical sense (against a phenotype) rather than in an intersectional sense (one-way down punching).  Did many of his attackers look at the nuance in his memo?  No.  It didn't support the right side of things and so was wrong by omission.  He omitted the "right" kind of support.

The purposefully pejorative over application of "supremacist" labels,  mean many people are in the same boat, or have the potential to so be.  I think Lindsay Shephard is the latest example.

UNDERSTANDING DEFENSIVE NEEDS

Over the last few years I've tried to listen to enough "alt-right" youtube feeds to get a sense of their paradigm.  Why?  I'm interested in understanding deep seated, genetic-level social dynamics.  This means coming to grips with the moral flash-points around which the left and right adaptively resonate.  Models are only as good as the data you feed into them.  Part of the picture I get is that at least some "alt-righters" are protesting what they see as white directed racism.  That is, classical racism against whites. "Kill all whites", "whiteness is the problem", "I lick your white tears", "No more old white men", etc;

What I worry about is that various supremacist groups on the left and right are going to see the value in creedal like statements.  For instance, imagine if like Brett Weinstein, you are protesting against white directed racism but are lumped in with a bunch of vile supremacists.  Instead of pleading your case, which seems utterly pointless in highly polarized environments, it is easier to refer people to a well vetted creedal statement that summarizes why you think all racism is bad, but which also indicates that you see your role as protesting against a specific incarnation of classical racism because no one else will.  Or, your creed could sophistically defend why racism, as a one-directional punch-up phenomenon, is valid and actually not phenotypically supremacist.

That sounds pretty reasonable.  It may not make much of a difference on the ground, but it may help a teeny bit with any larger media outlets which haven't fully fallen for click-bait polemics.  You just lump people into good or bad groups and encourage them to get on board with the right verbiage or right groups.  Sounds very religious like doesn't it?

CREEDS AS A DEFENSIVE GUISE FOR ADVANTAGE TAKING

The problem is that this type of orthodox foil can be used to protect against all sorts of hypocritical behaviour.  Hey, you can't call me a racist because I won't hire white people - see this academically accepted statement on intersectionality and the impossibility of punch-up racism. Our intent is to make America Equitable Again!

Note, that it doesn't actually matter whether the individual's intention was actually for equity or whether the intention was unbridled white racism.  Reference to formal creedal statement ends conversation. Sure intrepid investigators can try to tease out whether you're actually following the creed or not.  In fact it provides the investigator an easy way to see theoretical tension points.  But, creedal confessions tend to only require basic understandings and acquiescence to creedal intent. How many Nicenists are really up on homoousia or homousia distinctions vs. how many are up on the creed's overall intent?  I force you, the journalist, to get lost in sophisticated sophistry whose cover frees up my action space.

In practice, what creeds allows is individuals to hide under a cloak of group acceptance. Groups are adaptive for a reason! Never underestimate human propensity for "freeloading" (advantage taking self-interest).  When I publicly acquiesce to a creed I also enable orthodoxic protection, which for those so inclined, can free them up for much greater ranges of motion.  For others though, it provides a unifying goal.  The whole thing is rather bimodal...

In this sense it mirrors what gene-culture models suggest.  Large groups require transparent norms. You can't judge individuals (too much anonymity). You can only judge power acquiescence.  The loosening of norms, compensated by their easier comprehension, enables group size to expand. But is also bifurcates the population. You get a core group of altruists who supply much of the group's day-to-day adaptive fitness.  You also get a large group of freeloaders who pursue self-interest and advantage taking.  Out-group (between-group) competition keeps things in check.  But without existential doom hanging over you, what keeps the freeloaders in check?

Creeds without existential pressure serve as a pandora's box for advantage takers.

But for those of us in academia, the adaptive groups they facilitate might just be the only way we can protect ourselves against Spanish Inquisitions.  What a conundrum!

Metaphorical Truth / Practical Reality vs. Hyper Rationalism

Post modernism injected a lot of new energy into academic thinking.  Some of it for the better.  Some of it for the worse. Coming to grips with the "irrational" side of human nature is a major challenge for social science.

Some approaches try to get at this by extending game theory interactions while holding onto homo-economicus reasoning.  Behavioural economics is one field that does this. Other approaches assume everything is subjective to some degree or another and figure free-hand explorations curtailed by progressive moral guidelines will lead to just neo-marxist ends. Many "studies" departments do this.

Here's a list of how different researcher's I'm familiar with have tackled the question of the adaptiveness of human "irrationality".

BRET WEINSTEIN: Metaphorical Truth

Bret Weinstein raised the achilles heel of hyper-rationalism in a recent interview with Sam Harris.  The issue is whether things like religious belief (which are non-factual) can still be adaptive.  Unfortunately Harris didn't push the debate too much. But that is alright, they covered a lot of ground. I suspect Harris didn't want to get antagonistic in a conversation that was going so well.

My argument is that "metaphorical truth" is an important phenomenon necessary to understand human evolutionary history.

If the hypothesis is correct, 'metaphorical truth' is itself factual, like 'lekking' or 'echolocation'.

Your truck is beside the point (and double parked). https://t.co/0h0Vikzd0y

— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) December 19, 2017

Bret's reasoning on the adaptiveness of counter-factual religious beliefs was entirely evolutionary. His logic, as far as I can remember it, goes like this:

1. Religion is adaptive.  It is a universal human expression up until the era of modernity.
2. Religious beliefs are adaptive. The weak form of this argument is that the belief system as a whole is adaptive.  The strong form of this argument is that individual beliefs which have persisted are in and of themselves adaptive. Bret took the strong form of this argument, much to Harris' surprise.
3. Beliefs which have persisted for a "long" period of time are not just memetically fit, but are gene-culturally (culturegen) fit.  They provide a real fitness advantage for group members.
4. If the beliefs were not fit, they would have been selected out by competing, lower cost beliefs.
5. Only beliefs which are stable enough over time are likely to have been adaptive.
6. We can not infer that any of this applies to modern beliefs.  Modern beliefs have not necessarily been stable enough to justify point 4. You might only be able to say that a certain belief lineage is likely to have been adaptive, and even then, only for past conditions.

It is really nice to see Bret taking dynamic evolution into play here.  When combined with his caveat to modernity you escape many of the easy criticisms people have with respect to evolutionary thinking.

I think the main counterpoint to this argument is that one can never guarantee that any idea is in fact adaptive.  Can't maladaptive memes and culturegens persist over time?  Yes. But Bret's argument makes it a case of probabilities.  What is the probability that any meme or culturegen stable over a "long time period" is maladaptive? This is a productive area of discussion.  Nowak's work on virulence seems informative.  Viruses moderate their virulence over time.  The steady state solution for parasitic behaviour exists in tension between high virulence and low longevity vs. low virulence and high longevity. Moderation in both is Nash stable.  Mutation rates also decrease to match moderation.

DAVID SLOAN WILSON: Practical Reality

Wilson spent pretty much a whole book expounding his view on how religion is adaptive.  Darwin's Cathedral is an under appreciated work of art.  If the arguments aren't convincing, read Norezayan's Big Gods and then go back to it.

Here is D.S. Wilson's take on adaptively false belief.  In Darwin's Cathedral he states:

If there is a trade-off between the two forms of realism [factual & practical], such that our beliefs can become more adaptive only by becoming factually less true, then factual realism will be the loser every time. … Factual realists detached from practical reality were not among our ancestors. 

For context, here's how he frames the two forms of realism:

What do I mean by factual and practical realism? A belief is factually realistic when it accurately describes what’s really out there (e.g., there are no people up there sitting on clouds). A belief is practically realistic when it causes the believer to behave adaptively in the real world.

Wilson's approach in inexorably tied to multi-level selection theory and the biological reality (real-enough reality) of human groups.

As of 2002 he said "Thinking of religious groups as adaptive units comparable to guppies and finches is so new that it is impossible at present to identify the appropriate spatial and temporal scale."  And,

The concept of local adaptation allows religion to be studied from an evolutionary perspective using the same methods employed on nonhuman species, as I discussed in chapter 2.  If the environment changes over time and space, and if religions adapt human groups to their environments, we should be able to predict the properties of religion at a fine spatial and temporal scale as surely as we can predict the properties of upstream and downstream guppies.

Belief systems must cope with

• Justification
• Cheating
•  Economical (easy to understand)
•  More motivating than a real system
•  More efficient at producing behaviour

An adaptive belief systems must be economical.  The beliefs that justify the behaviors must be easily learned and employed in the real world.  A fictional belief system that is user-friendly and that motivates an adaptive suite of behaviors will surpass a realistic belief system that requires a Ph.D. to understand and that leads to a paralysis of indecision.

Wilson explicitly states that "religions [or any group] adaptiveness must be judged by the behaviours they motivate not by their factual correspondence to reality."  The counterpoint to this is that over time, correspondence to reality is usually more fit than a-factuality.  While this is likely true, it is pragmatics not theory that is the ultimate arbiter of what is fit.

This is where things get messy with hyper-rationalists.  New atheists like Harris take a utopian position here, arguing that our ability to chose enables us to pursue transformative paths that can exceeds the cold hearted calculus of nature (evolution).  Weinstein explicitly mentioned this in his conversation with Harris.  All organisms have the same ultimate goal - spread their genes.  Thus, evolution's goal may not be what we actually want - maximal domination.  Instead what we might want is some balance.  This means a conscious limiting of fundamentally insatiable proclivities.

Thus, I am sensitive to Harris' stance. But, like many others, I smirk at the ironically "religious" utopian aspects he has to make. While they might be rational, they are still dogmatic.  But, ultimately, the question comes down to who do we want to be in control, us or nature?

The real issue then becomes over what time period do we need to "supress" out genetic proclivities to get benefits which outweigh the real human costs a quick change to hyper-rationalism might entail?  After all, most people aren't likely to give up the yoke of pro-social religion for the yoke of pro-social hyper-rationalism without a fight.  Pro-social hype rationalism hasn't yet shown itself a very adept, very friendly hegemon.  Pro-social religion, though messy, is at least a known entity with evolutionary robust mechanisms and norms (like inescapable eternal damnation and Big God arbiters who can't be fooled nor bribed). 

Here's a final quote from Wilson (p. 156)

along with Durkheim, I predict that most enduring religions survive on the basis of their secular utility…  What will not be observed, or rather seldom observed, are major beliefs that have no function other than to satisfy the human urge to explain, or that actually handicap the believer by motivating dysfunctional behaviors.

a sect or cult doesn’t senesce [decay] as it grows into a church; it adapts to the changing wealth of its members caused by its own success.

JORDAN PETERSON: Darwinian Truth

Peterson takes a very Jungian approach to his idea of Darwinian Truth.  He views religion as a meta-truth as per a Joseph Campell monomyth.  However, Peterson adds some evolutionary colour to the monomyth.  Here is his logic (as near as I can tell)

1. Stories emerged amongst early humans as a way to convey information, especially information that was morally/evolutionarily important. In other words, stories conveyed classically adaptive information.
2. These stories have been refined for millennia, producing a series of near universal monomyths. 
3. The length of refinement ensures fitness payoffs are stable over long time periods. While there may be competing payoffs, such as low cost commitment beliefs, the payoff of these cheaper beliefs are uncertain and are less likely to have been as (evolutionarily) vetted.
4. These Darwinian truths are fit because they keep us in contact with basic aspects of human nature which are so deep seated that they only change on long genetic time scales.

The challenge about this view is its unfalsifiability and avoidance of dynamic evolution.  Is the "deep seated enough" inference enough to obviate modernity?  I doubt it.  But I also worry about the "just so" critique sloppy functional evolution is subject to.  How do you tease out that which is "deep seated" from that which is superficial and potentially maladaptive?  I interpret Peterson's likely answer to be that of probabilities.  If you find that the ideas and tensions which are most fundamental to long-lived human moral cultural, you increase the probability that any leaven added to these ideas is less maladaptively significant that any leaven added to modern dogma and hyper-rationality.  In essence, you need connection to deep metahistories to temper the forward-predicting blinders hyper-rationality and modern quasi-secular religion necessarily has.

To be honest, I'm sympathetic to this last critique. Purposeful recreation of secular religion has a bad track record. Marxism is a classic example. I think Animal Farm critiques are apropos here.  It is very hard to re-invent all the human dynamical checks and balances necessary to keep self-interest at bay.  While we get better at social engineering all the time, eons of "arms races" on this front make for a very nuanced and sophisticated space. In fact I suspect our hubris with respect to rational atheistic moral quasi-religion is akin to 19th century biological engineering.  What could possibly go wrong with cane toads?

The Market for Information Arbiters

There is little question that mainstream media's role as a trusted informational arbiter has crashed.  Some people suspect it may be due to ideological monoculture effects finally coming home to roost.  Others cite the role digital media plays with respect to popularism and click bait & tribal dynamics.
We'll skip this rabbit hole and just see what a market analysis has to say about landscape changes.

MARKET ANALYSIS

A market-based analysis is likely to show a big gap in the provision of authority-mediated communication. Religion certainly doesn't fill this role anymore. Rule of law has supplanted much of its functional (evolutionary) role. Neither does politics. There is no existential crisis unifying the populace. We're devolving into tribes rather than unifying. For politics to function as a broad-based trusted informational arbiter, it needs new-religious-movement momentum and dynamics.

The media has become tribabilized & hence delegitimized as a source of authority. While it still functions as a conveyer of interesting information, the way the left thinks of Fox news is the way the right thinks of all mainstream news - solidly in the tank for their political and ideological "group". Restraining tendencies are gone. There are no cross-platform authorities.

Or are there?

FILLING THE GAP

I'd suggest that popular "scientists" are on the verge of filling this market gap.

For example, look at the way Jordan Peterson has been popularized. 550,000 youtube subscribers and millions of interview views! It's not because he is a great orator nor a charismatic person.  He tends to the aspergery side of academic inquiry.  In other words, his perspective tends to be on technical concerns. He also come across as leaving any and all offence as a listener's duty to "get over".  This affect & approach is extremely off putting for many liberal minded folk - like Sam Harris.  But the same "tell it like it is" affect is extremely attractive for many Trumpers.  His affect is a leverage for both sides.  They both use it to validate or reject the academic research he cites and the inferences he draws from it.

One group uses his affect to disavow that socially objectionable ideas should have a place in open discourse.  One group uses his affect to justify that bigotry can't be bigotry if it is based upon objective research.  Obviously both groups talk past each other.*

Jonathon Haidt, another popular social scientist, tends towards more of a "harm" paradigm. Implications and nuance matter.  This assumes not everyone is up on the technicalities of what is being discussed, and therefore potential misapplications and the enabling of erroneous conclusions matter. Energy is spent on what basically amounts to interfaith dialogue dialectics.

Critical theorists (inter sectionalists) appear as Peterson's foil. Just switch the autistic focus on objectivity for an autistic focus on social "justice".

Twitter and youtube has raised the profile of popular scientists.  Major players I know about include:

• Noam Chomsky
• Richard Dawkins
• Sam Harris
• Nicholas Christakis
• Jonathon Haidt
• Steven Pinker
• Bret Weinstein
• Claire Lehmann
• Clay Routledge
• Peter Boghassian
• Razib Khan
• Michael Shermer
• Lee Jussim
• Christina Sommers
• Gad Saad
• Jordan Peterson
• Sargon of Akkad
• Dennis Prager

Judging from their net twitter subscribers and net youtube views, these folk play a noticeable role.  While their popularity does not yet approach that of journalists, I suspect things are changing.

In the cold culture war, having science on your side is the ultimate Trump card. Both political sides have their anti-science flanks.  The right has climate change and environmentalism.  The left has blank slatism and GMO's. The legitimacy of each "side's" scientists is a major battle zone.**

Any position gains protection and legitimization via science's seal of authority. If your group's position doesn't have a scientific backing, you're at a significant rhetorical disadvantage.  Further than this though, your whole worldview may need a coherent defensible position.  It is not enough to cite random articles. To survive today's rhetorical environment you must link to a robust paradigmiacal defence.  And this paradigm may also need a moral and ethical underpinning and explicit purpose (e.g. protecting blasphemous objectivity or promoting social justice equity)

I suspect this is part of the reason there is so much fight over Critical Theory departments. The imprimatur of scientific legitimacy for highly subjective and potentially unfalsifiable lines of reason create a nuclear bomb that has the potential to sidestep the restraints imposed by falsifiable scientific methods.

The weaponization of pure subjectivity is something to worry about. Jonathan Haidt has confronted this issue if his"two teloses" interpretation of post-secondary trajectories.

SUMMARY

More relevant though, is how far lay people will be able to push association with hard science's imprimatur via association with "pop scientists".  In many ways Sam Harris' hyper-rational anti-religionists aren't much different from Jordan Peterson's anti-PC in-groupers.  Both use proximity to a well-spoken and knowledgeable figurehead to authorize and legitimize their own world views.  While many years ago people's theological bonfides were authorized by which protestant sect and theology they followed, today people may be doing the same by latching on to well known scientific figureheads.  You don't have to figure out a whole rational scientific paradigm, you just need to latch onto someone who is able to defend their own in a popular way which also connotes enough "authority" to buffer you from outside attacks.

The field is indeed weaponizing.

Notes

*  What's funny here is that both groups are using hypocritical based tools.  Intersectionalists who deny that punch-up racism is possible are a mirror image of academic libertarians who disavow that objective measures should ever be silenced.  Current differences are largely based on how far each approach has penetrated our larger sociality.  At one time "feminist" critical inquiries were an academic exercise within the confines of academia.  This is the same position rational objectivists take.  Un-PC objective inquiry is a key component of bounded academic spaces.  There needs to be a safe space where such ideas can be discussed.  It is easy to see both groups as dopplegangers who are just at a different evolutionary stage.

**Data suggests novices and experts tend to be the most dogmatic and inflexible with respect to their sacred values (here's a somewhat related paper on discrimination being equal across political spectrums - it just differs according to who you see as the out-group. And another similar paper).


For some more on the latest Jordan Peterson brouhaha....
http://quillette.com/2017/12/01/defence-jordan-b-peterson/

Guns & Levels of Selection

This week there's been a lot of talk again about gun control.  I really don't think there is enough social trust present to make any movement on this front a starter. Anything and everything just entrenches.

Brett Weinstein had a pretty good twitter storm on it

Beware the siren's song of statistics when analyzing very important, very rare events. There be dragons with statistical tales... 3

— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) October 3, 2017

While Brett's utilitarianism (including black swan events) is one way to look at the issue, another is via cultural evolution theory - specifically the multi-level selection approach.


BACKGROUND
Evolutionary transitions require three things

1. extreme dependency
2. coordination
3. conflict minimization.

While people aren't "evolving" into a spatially separated symbiotes, we continue to be subject to ephemeral evolution between larger and smaller group levels.  Basically, human groups are torn between near equal fitness advantage between group oriented altruism and self-sacrifice, and individualistically oriented self-interest and freeloading.

Analyzing the gun debate as a levels of selection question is productive.

DEPENDENCY

The rule of law makes people dependent upon the state. Disarming everyone empowers criminals and creates extreme dependency toward the state.  This factor favours an (ephemeral) evolutionary transition to a cosmopolitanesque state.

COORDINATION

I'm not sure how gun laws enable greater coordination.  I don't think they do.  Solving the problem of intra-state violence is not coordination. Usually coorindation enables an organism to outcompete other non-coordinated organisms.  Will a theoretically lower level of gun violence enable better competition between nation states?  Doubtful.

CONFLICT MINIMIZATION

New gun laws may minimize conflict.  The data is still uncertain here.  In my mind, the arguments boil down to "herd immunity" vs. "just one life saved".  

The herd immunity argument suggests a certain percentage of gun carries and users increases crime threshold costs.  If you never know whether your victim is armed, there is always a risk that crime costs will be very high.  I think the second amendment defence against tyranny argument boils down to the same thing.

The "just one life saved" argument is standard in the mainstream media.  There is no real purpose for guns for most people.  Hunting requires simple single shot rigs.  Therefore any personal enjoyment firearms bring are more than offset by their costs.

Because I think the data is still out on whether gun laws actually increase or decrease conflict levels, I don't think this one can be adjudicated.  Guns may increase the severity of violent acts, but they don't eliminate violence (car ramming & bombs vs. shootings)*.

SUMMARY

From a levels of selection point of view, gun laws increase dependency, do nothing for coordination - at least in any sense that matters evolutionarily, and have an uncertain effect on conflict minimization.  For these reasons, I suspect the US gun issue will not be solved. It doesn't meet the basic components necessary for an evolutionary transition.  Because of this, it is very unlikely that people will "feel it resonating".  You will certainly continue to have an elite class that feels very strongly about it.  Perhaps that is a pre-cursor necessary to seed the transition landscape.  Richerson has an interesting paper out at the moment tangentially related to this issue.  

At some point the gun issue may get tied to a real coordination and conflict minimization solution.  Unfortunately, I don't think this is where things are right now.  Because of this, I think the gun debate is a non starter and will only serve to further polarize and embitter US political discourse.  The morality on either side is so spandrel led on this issues, no ground will be given.  

But this is also why I really fear authoritarianism on the gun issue is likely to be the spark of the second US civil war.  My main hope is that there will be another convention of the states that will put this issue to rest. Without a clear rule of law on this front, bickering and authoritarianism will just spiral out of control...

 *I think suicide is a completely different class of discussion from violent acts against other people.