During good times culture dominates but under stressful periods consciousness dominates
Interesting how this seems like the complete flip of Scott Alexander’s thrive/survive model of progressive/conservative political minds. Oddly both models seem to make sense. Maybe I’m making a false equivalence
During good times the society should keep doing what it has been doing. When it is stressed, it may be better off trying something different.
I think that Scott is looking at things from an individual’s point of view. The conservative individual is biased toward sticking with the tried and true, on the theory that things could be worse. The progressive individual is biased toward novelty, on the theory that things could be better.
One can link the two notions by suggesting that in good times the society does best by relying on conservatives, while in times of stress it may do better relying on progressives.
I would rather not think in terms of personality types. My philosophy of risk taking is to take risks that have high upside and low downside and avoid risks that have high downside and low upside. That philosophy sometimes favors novelty and sometimes doesn’t.
“Reform, that we may preserve.”
– Thomas Babington Macaulay
I think people need to be cautious about upside / downside assessments or as I prefer to put it cost / benefit assessments. There is the trite observation that a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. For example we might learn enough to understand what a fair interaction looks like. Fairness as a rule may be deeply wrong because people are heterogeneous and they will see interactions differently. The lesson should be that to avoid conflict you have to be willing to be generous in the interaction and be willing to absorb the negative offset to your gain in well being. It’s not a cost; it’s just a negative offset.
Another example is Chesterton fences. We can think about and research the fence. We might encounter people willing to offer a word of caution. We might avoid the mistakes described by others but the problem remains that we might create new ways to make mistakes or they are at least new to us. May be the fence is meant to protect the ordinary behaviours and not the esoteric behaviours. Unfortunately ordinary behaviours get ordinary results and sometimes were not interested in that.