Recently HA and I have been discussing the nature of evil and whether it is a useful concept. Here is some stuff I said at his blog.
From Response to Recen Anders Sandberg and TGGP Posts: Mao, Stalin -the most evil?
Why do I “pin the blame”? If you read the link in my comment here it explains that holding people responsible for their actions, even if they don’t have free-will, is useful because it can be used to disincentivize their behavior. Even though Stalin & Mao are dead, one of the things people of their ilk are concerned with is their reputation, and if they are held in ill-repute people in the future in their positions will be less likely to engage in similar behavior. Social forces are the results of many actions taken by different individuals, and cannot be treated as anything else. You cannot strike part of a social whole and expect the mass to treat that as a strike against it. You can only inculcate in each individual the expectation that if they engage in certain behavior they will be punished for it. Attacking something amorphous like “deadweight loss” isn’t going to make Mr. Dead W. Loss turn his tail and run. All we can do is encourage people not to create that loss. Lastly, as I said I’m not as committed as you are to maximizing persistence odds, but I’d have to say that discouraging mass murder seems likely to improve odds of survival.
Overall, I think you’re demonstrating a commission/ommission bias, where you attribute blame to people and entities that “commit” bad things, but do not attribute equal or proportionate blame to people and entities that allow these bad things to happen through ommission.
I agree with Gordon Tullock than for any given individual acting against a system is unlikely to result in anything other than their own punishment, even if all of them acting together could possibly result in great benefits for each dissident. That is difficult coordination problem to resolve. Harping on an individual that they should do something does not seem likely to succeed. There are usually a much smaller number of people who are doing something harmful rather than merely permitting harmful things to be done, so it would seem more effective to focus on them.
You’ll notice that here I’m using a manner of thinking called “methodological individualism” which is often considered “reductionist” within the social sciences. It is possible to get even more reductionist than this by focusing on, say, neurons as the unit of analysis, which was suggested as a reductio ad absurdum by Robert Nozick. Here is a post from the Austrian Economists on why that isn’t done. Personally, I don’t know much neuroscience outside of this, so that wouldn’t be a productive route for me.
September 15, 2007 at 5:21 pm
I agree with Gordon Tullock than for any given individual acting against a system is unlikely to result in anything other than their own punishment, even if all of them acting together could possibly result in great benefits for each dissident.
True for the vast majority of people – but Stalin and Mao were not ordinary men. A few individuals across history have deployed extraordinary amounts of energy, will, and talent towards developing or creating power over others, for good or (usually) ill – Napoleon, Lenin, Hitler, etc. Stalin and Mao weren’t just part of the system, they _created_ their system, in a way that say, a US president cannot. So I agree with you that they are responsible – these guys worked hard and worked smart for what they got, they were truly creative in that they built up what had not existed before – to harmful ends, of course.
September 16, 2007 at 6:02 am
My play for the Asperger’s cup:
TGGP, on what basis do you agree with Gordon Tullock’s statement. Because it sounds right? How about individuals expending great effort to advance themselves materially, or to enjoy themselves hedonistically, and in doing so choosing to ommit to act with similar effort against “great evil” or against significant increases in existential risk?
I don’t think you’re seriously attempting to examine and dissect biases here. In my opinion it comes down to hegemonic narrative alignment. This is a problem for me only inasmuch as it’s preventing adopting social policies to more optimally msximize our persistence odds.
September 16, 2007 at 12:34 pm
TGGP, on what basis do you agree with Gordon Tullock’s statement.
Because a great many people have fought the law, and the law pretty much always wins. The most an individual can hope for is an outcome like that of Marvin “Killdozer” Heemeyer, and he was still a failure.
How about individuals expending great effort to advance themselves materially, or to enjoy themselves hedonistically, and in doing so choosing to ommit to act with similar effort against “great evil” or against significant increases in existential risk?
Since they weren’t going to accomplish much anyways, I see little reason to exhort them.
I don’t think you’re seriously attempting to examine and dissect biases here. In my opinion it comes down to hegemonic narrative alignment.
Huh, in school I was taught I could do whatever I want if I set my mind to it, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win” and so on. Whose narrative am I aligning with?
September 17, 2007 at 7:50 am
On your first two paragraphs: notice how you don’t advocate giving empiricism primacy for these topics? Be transparent about it.
On your third paragraph. You’re being coy here, in my opinion. You’re moving the discussion from trying to understand apparent reality to clever jousting for it’s own sake, it seems to me. It seems like you don’t like the approach: “let’s make it an empirical question to see the harm caused by committers and ommitters, and let’s make it an empirical question what someone like Stalin or Mao, vs. someone like hedonist X and slacker Y can do regarding the increase or reduction of harms”. Instead, it seems to me you want to start with the conclusion “Stalin and Mao are two of the worst people in history” and work backwards from that. I think power alignment can play a role when such departures from good investigative form escape challenge.
September 17, 2007 at 11:35 am
let’s make it an empirical question to see the harm caused by committers and ommitters
Is that harm caused in total by ommitters and commmitters or harm caused by a committer/omitter? We could say that a large amount of harm is caused by Caplan’s irrational voters, but any given voter is not going to be able to have much of an effect. Also, how might you suggest we go about empirically investigating the matter?
I’d actually be curious to hear who some of your worser people are. Or are their identities unknown?
September 17, 2007 at 1:48 pm
TGGP,
Your 1st question: yes I’m interested in both.
Your 2nd question: I’m interested in what we could do with computer models and simulations, as well as with historical investigation.
As for your last paragraph, it’s difficult for me to talk about this because I differ so much on first principles and interests (I’m skeptical of the utility of these blame heirarchies and representational pageantries).
But I’ll give it a civil shot. First, my measure would be who is not doing the most, compared to what they could be doing, to maximize my persistence odds (surprise, surprise). But since here the measure seems to be something like who is not doing the most, compared to what they could be doing, to maximize the general population’s healthy lifespans, I would probably put some twentieth century popes at or near the top of the list. Imagine what the catholic church could be doing, for example, with Michael Bloomberg in the drivers seat.
But this is a game that I’m not so interested in because I think it obfuscates more than it reveals, and I’m not on here anonymously to obfuscate things from people who may help me improve my models of reality.
At a time when there are loot of questions about agency, free will, predeterminism, etc. it’s more a social tactic than good science to talk about better and worse people in history in that way, in my opinion. Which makes me more interested in learning the social tactic than in performing it anonymously.
September 17, 2007 at 7:07 pm
“How many divisions does the Pope have?”
There was a time when popes could have a very large impact, but time was before the Treaty of Westphalia. The reason they have been doing less is not because the meek started inheriting the papacy but because the Church was displaced by States. What is it that the 20th century papacy could have done?
it’s more a social tactic than good science to talk about better and worse people in history in that way, in my opinion.
Of course good and bad aren’t science. I would just dislike living under a Stalin or Mao and the net population flow at that time indicates I would not be alone in feeling that way.
September 18, 2007 at 12:06 am
[...] gives this odd thought more credibility than it would have merely coming from an anonymous blogger competing for the Aspergers Cup. Plus, I dare you to look at that happy guy’s picture without being in the mood to look for [...]
November 20, 2010 at 10:36 am
I haven’t changed much in my thoughts on this in the past 3 years. How about you, TGGP? I’m struck by the lack of a strong voice or mind looking at how commission/ommission bias warps human existential risk minimization (or even leaks indicating a rationally coordinating fraction therein with an endgame in mind after they’ve eliminated the rest of us due to a bias-exploiting external propaganda).
November 20, 2010 at 4:57 pm
I can’t say I’ve changed. Is that disappointing?
November 20, 2010 at 11:35 pm
Yes, in a little man theory of ahistory sort of way.