The book, Strangers to Ourselves, by Timothy Wilson, has been around a while (2002). Some of the studies and methods pre-date the awareness of replication issues. But I still find it very stimulating. Note that Hanson and Simler refer to Wilson’s work and to the book.
There are all of these views about a divided brain. Daniel Kahneman talks about system 1 and system 2. Ian McGilchrist (recent econtalk with Russ Roberts) talks about the left brain as a set of maps and the right brain as having a sense of the territory. Wilson talks about the adaptive unconscious and the conscious brain.
Wilson’s point is that what we mean by our “self” is the conscious brain. But a lot of information is processed and decisions are made by the unconscious brain. The conscious brain is not the executive making all the decisions, nor is it a spectator/commentator without influence. It is somewhere in between.
I am interested in the overall question of moral behavior. My current thoughts are these:
1. The simplest moral heuristic is simply “Do what you observe other people doing.” If other people are driving between 65 and 70, then do that. If the sign says that the speed limit is 55, then that introduces some dissonance, but you still are probably better off doing what other people do.
2. If you don’t do what other people do, then you are defecting. If everyone defected a lot, then we probably could not have a workable society. But if nobody ever defected, then there would never be any improvement at all.
3. Moral life consists of choosing between obeying the simplest heuristic or defecting. I would say that to the extent that you are unable to make those decisions consciously, you lack moral capacity.
4. But our conscious brains can rationalize all sorts of behavior. Our instinct is to disguise or deny behavior that might make us look bad. We go so far as to disguise it or deny it to ourselves.
5. Be careful what you believe about yourself. Going back to Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, she seemed to believe that she was another Steve Jobs. This gave her a license to fire anyone who told her something she did not want to hear. It’s now obvious that she treated constructive critics as if they were hopeless malcontents, but ex ante that was harder to see. Making the opposite mistake–treating a hopeless malcontent like a constructive critic–can also be costly.
The environment is full off reminders and sign posts that are used on conscious activities. Everything from door knobs to stop signs can be interpreted with the conscious activity of synchronizing motion to these signs. There is not much more to consciousness, it is greatly over rated.
OT (or is it?): Kevin Williamson you and Tyler Cowen.
” Moral life consists of choosing between obeying the simplest heuristic or defecting.”
The whole question is how ought one to make that choice. I might make one subtle adjustment ot the basic heuristic and say “Do what others expect,” (at least from ordinary people similarly situated, who are usually but not always one’s social reference group the behaviors of which one can observe for imitation.)
This is the way stable Schelling Points arise in social circumstances of mutually understood behavioral boundaries. A minimal amount of predictability is essential to social coordination, harmony, and investment in long term relationships and projects. People expect the law to be predictable – Hayek repeatedly emphasized this point as essential – and the moral law and other norms can be looked at the same way.
When this is the case, it creates a kind of “Moral Nash Equilibrium” in the society of culture, where because you know I expect you to react a certain way, and what I’ll do if you don’t, and vice versa, everyone is able to settle into a general tacit (occassionally formalized) understanding of how they ought to behave, and in a manner which is compatible with trying to optimize their self-interest over the long term. Trying to get that Moral Nash Equilibrium to line up with a wise understanding of human nature leads to a lot of overlap with old “Natural Law” principles. It’s not much different from needing shared conventions, protocols, and common languages in order to communicate. I can’t speak to you if I can’t expect you to understand. The same goes for behavior. I can’t interact with you easily and safely unless I can expect you to behave and react in predictable ways.
If your actions are surprising and deviate noticeable from these expectations, then expect people to react and respond as if it has moral weight, that is, is a reflection on your character and personality and leads to an adjustment of priors as they try to infer the answer to the fundamental question, “What kind of person is this?” That helps answer the subconscious questions of “What can I expect from this person? Are they weird or defective in any way? What can they do for me? Are they trustworthy or reliable or loyal, even when tempted to defect on me when in their self-interest?”
Many of our instinctive notions of morality and virtue originate in these processes and attempts to think about it usually include something along the lines of these considerations, and as such, there’s really no escapaing some notion of ‘virtue’ in any society, especially among more cohesive and homogeneous classes or subpopulations, where they are more tuned to particular ways of life (e.g., bourgeois, aristocratic, military etc.). Our brains are hardwired to process moral notions according to the inventive structure of this social game, which is why logically abstract metaphysical systems such as utilitarianism often feel unnatural or rub people’s intuitions the wrong way.
Consider Aristotle’s virtue of “Righteous indignation”. This lines up with the typical soution to game theory problems of protecting boundaries, which appears to be an “overreaction” but is actually necessary to avoid losing everything by tolerated iterations os salami slicing. One should be neither rash nor cowardly but couragious in these circumstances, which if expected, allows people to safely interact and trust you, but disincentivizes anyone from trying to harm your interests, which, if everyone is expected to do likewise, defends the stability of the whole moral order of society.
Now, consider the motto of your blog, “taking the most charitable view of those who disagree.” That’s virtuous behavior, which complements your other virtues of integrity and prudence, but that doesn’t fit into either doing what everyone else is observed to be doing (hardly, alas!), or into “defecting”. (Ok, it’s arguable, but seems strained to me.)
On the other hand, it very much lines up with the idea of pursuing excellence with regard to personal character, and to conspicuously demonstrate the exercise of those cirtues in the hopes that your example can help to nudge the Moral Nash Equilibrium to a better place, perhaps you could think of it as a “more stable or higher local maximum,” and away from the unstable, bad, and deteriorating equilibrium we’re in.
Enjoyed this mini-essay – thanks!
Moral life consists of choosing between obeying the simplest heuristic or defecting.
Perhaps, but most morality is not so binary. The speeding issue is illustrative.
Are you really defecting at 56 or even 60 mph when most go 65?
Is one who goes 75, or 95, or 125 “equally” defecting?
I think not, and real morality in practice is far more about the nuances.
What about cursing? Some vulgar leads to worse vulgar, for emphasis. I now think that the ending of “shaming” for women & men having sex, & babies & abortions, outside of marriage, was a mistake, along with normalizing most of the vulgar words most of the time.
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@Handle’s slight change from doing what you see others do, into doing what others expect, is interesting and related, tho perhaps a bigger change than indicated.
In raising kids, my wife and I both agree that we need to agree on borders, and more importantly, on the actual punishments we give to those who overstep the borders.
For most injustices, there is no punishment which is “fully just”. The main goal of real law, and gov’t in practice, is to determine who gets how much punishment from society. The culture wars about this.
I’m very glad the Christian baker was ultimately not punished for his religious choice to not make a special same sex marriage cake. I think it’s ok that Christian & other bakers of wedding cakes have to sell their normal cakes to gays, Asians, Blacks, Whites, Men and Women.
Morality in real society is answering the question who gets how much punishment for what.
“What about cursing? Some vulgar leads to worse vulgar, for emphasis. I now think that the ending of “shaming” for women & men having sex, & babies & abortions, outside of marriage, was a mistake, along with normalizing most of the vulgar words most of the time.”
And I emphatically don’t. So, now what?
On #5 — I think most successful, and also unsuccessful, entrepreneurs fancy themselves on some level to be like Steve Jobs. And most have their own vision which they are following, thinking it’s a good and highly desired vision.
While data indicates they are statistically delusional, society is far better off from those who are successful, so the “delusion” of being your own better boss is socially good.
There are probably a lot of individual delusions that have many positive social side effects.
We have some answers to questions like these, and the answers are called literally all of sociology, plus large chunks of political science, psychology, and anthropology. If you want to address these issues in any significant manner, get ready to spend at least a few years reading up.
A press secretary isn’t a spectator without influence, staring out from the sunken place, but what influence does he have?
Imagine a PR flak who spins a narrative that the executives end up hewing closer to out of consistency or habit or because that story shapes an expectation of where management could go next. That’s his influence. What begins as an ex-post excuse becomes a controlling narrative or the dominant metaphor. If consciousness is your public relations department, then these stories can make a difference by setting out a path.