A commenter points to John Tooby, Leda Cosmides, and Michael E. Price (2006)

We think that human evolutionary history has equipped the human mind with specialized psychological adaptations designed to realize gains in trade that occur both in 2-party exchanges and in n-party exchanges, including collective actions. We believe that the specific characteristics of these mechanisms (e.g. cheater detection circuits) reflect the ancestrally recurrent structure of these adaptive problems (the existence of payoffs to cheating). . .we
think that many of the ‘irrational’ behavioral expressions of these mechanisms (such as voting behavior or donating blood) will come to be recognized as engineering byproducts of these functional designs when they are activated outside of the ancestral envelope of conditions for which they were designed.

Later:

the greater the number of participants is, the greater the comparative advantage of conservatively perpetuating pre-existing arrangements will be, however beneficial or flawed those pre-existing arrangements were.

Because it is difficult to foster cooperation among large numbers of people, we rightly seek to preserve systems that work.

We feel pleasure upon becoming a valued member of a group, satisfaction in its creation and successes, and sadness at its dissipation.

Think of finding a job or losing a job.

Still later:

we think that the human mind contains an evolved, functionally specialized motivational mechanism that, when exposed to a situation of personal exploitation, generates a punitive sentiment toward the agent that is deriving an unfair advantage in an exchange

Hence the furor over “price gouging.”

Punitive strategists switch on the productive possibilities of the groups they are in, unleashing collective efforts that would otherwise be inhibited by the presence of free riders. This happens because the presence of punitive strategists in potential exchange interactions repels free riders, causing them either to avoid such interactions or to become (facultatively, in the presence of punitive strategists) behavioral cooperators. Because free riders avoid punitive strategists, punitive strategists will far more often find themselves in groups without free riders

Many people feel sentiments according to the following social exchange logic: I will give up the benefits of violating this moral rule if others in my social world do. If I followed the rule, and you did not, I have been cheated by you. The more others cheat on a rule I follow, the more exploited I feel, and the more tempted I am to discontinue following the rule when it is costly to do so

A podcast, with a transcript of Martin Gurri and me discussing the breakdown in social truth. I think it was a good discussion.

1. Michael Huemer writes,

I started thinking about other very important, general epistemological lessons. Lessons that most human beings have not gotten, which has led to lots of other errors. So here’s one; this probably wouldn’t be a good single sentence to leave to the future (since it requires further explanation), but it’s still one of the most important facts of epistemology: Your priors are too high.

Equivalently, he writes

Almost all beliefs require evidence, and they require a lot of it. Way more than you’re thinking.

One consequence of “your priors are too high” is that your mind is too hard to change.

2. Edward R. Dougherty writes,

Four conditions must be satisfied to have a valid scientific theory: (1) There is a mathematical model expressing the theory. (2) Precise relationships, known as “operational definitions,” are specified between terms in the theory and measurements of corresponding physical events. (3) There are validating data: there is a set of future quantitative predictions derived from the theory and measurements of corresponding physical events. (4) There is a statistical analysis that supports acceptance of the theory, that is, supports the concordance of the predictions with the physical measurements—including the mathematical theory justifying the application of the statistical methods.

The theory must be expressed in mathematics because science involves relations between measurable quantities and mathematics concerns such relations. There must also be precise relationships specified between a theory and corresponding observations; otherwise, the theory would not be rigorously connected to physical phenomena. Third, observations must confirm predictions made from the theory. Lastly, owing to randomness, concordance of theory and observation must be characterized statistically.

…Practically speaking, a leader need not know the mathematical particulars of a theory, but he must understand the validation process: what predictions are derived from the theory and to what extent have those predictions agreed with observations?

This is not to argue that leadership be confined to scientists and engineers, only that education include serious scientific, mathematical, and statistical courses. Certainly, one cannot expect good political leadership from someone ignorant of political philosophy, history, or economics, or from someone lacking the political skill to work productively amid differing opinions. The basic point is that good decision-making in a technical civilization requires fundamental knowledge of scientific epistemology.

…To validate a deterministic model, one can align the model and experiment with various initial states and check to see if predictions and observations agree. There might be some experimental variation, but in principle this can be reduced arbitrarily and slight disagreements ignored.

The situation with stochastic models is completely different. For a single initial condition, there are many destination states and these are described via the model by a probability distribution giving the likelihoods of ending up in different states. An experiment consists of many observation trajectories from a single initial state and the construction of a histogram giving the distribution of the experimental outcomes relative to that state. Validation concerns the degree of agreement between the theoretical, model-derived probability distribution and the data-derived histogram. Acceptance or rejection of the theory depends on some statistical test measuring the agreement between the two curves—and here it should be recognized that there is no universally agreed upon test.

…Confronting the problems of complexity, validation, and model uncertainty, I have previously identified four options for moving ahead: (1) dispense with modeling complex systems that cannot be validated; (2) model complex systems and pretend they are validated; (3) model complex systems, admit that the models are not validated, use them pragmatically where possible, and be extremely cautious when interpreting them; (4) strive to develop a new and perhaps weaker scientific epistemology.14

The first option would entail not dealing with key problems facing humanity, and the second, which seems popular, at least implicitly, is a road to mindless and potentially dangerous tinkering. Option three is risky because it requires operating in the context of scientific ignorance; but used conservatively with serious thought, it may allow us to deal with critical problems. Moreover, option three may facilitate productive thinking in the direction of option four, a new epistemology that maintains a rigorous formal relationship between theory and phenomena.

3. https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/18/coronalinks-5-18-20-when-all-you-have-is-a-hammer-everything-starts-looking-like-a-dance/

In a new essay, Martin Gurri writes,

Post-truth, as I define it, signifies a moment of sharply divergent perspectives on every subject or event, without a trusted authority in the room to settle the matter. A telling symptom is that we no longer care to persuade. We aim to impose our facts and annihilate theirs, a process closer to intellectual holy war than to critical thinking.

He and I are going to try to do a podcast on the topic, since I have also been interested in it.

A commenter wrote,

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.