[ExI] Fwd: [twister] Meta Conspiracy

[Mirco Romanato]

Il 02/12/2009 4.50, Bryan Bishop ha scritto:

> E.g., there is definitely a faction here who see themselves as
> scientific, rational, no-nonsense, obvious truth, keep it simple,
> don't be silly, and everybody knows (or, at least, everybody with a
> Phd knows).  And then there is an often opposing faction who see
> themselves as scientific, rational, consider everything, the truth
> isn't always what it appears to be on the surface, and science makes
> progress one death at a time.

> If I could take a first stab at qualifying the difference between the
> two, the first seems universally more optimistic about human nature,
> in terms of objectivity, motive, and sometimes ability, and
> especially in power of the group mean or consensus to win over
> individual defects in these things.  The latter sees man as a
> rationalizing animal, self- deluding, sometimes malicious, regularly
> deceptive whether by unwitting bias or conscious intent, and with
> group-think tending to exaggerate rather than mediate these defects.

This question could be related with the Premise Checker message:
Meme 200: Frank Forman: Conservatism and Technology
sent 9.10.14
The main point made was "Conservatism is the application of time to 
politics. By time, I mean that history is the cumulation of random or 
unrelated causes."

I would modify a bit the axioms describing the first group and would 
change "universally more optimistic about human nature" with 
"universally more optimistic about their human nature".

One could think the first group have a more mechanistic understanding of 
human behavior (like clock gears), where the second have a more 
agricultural vision of human behavior (like animals/plants).
The first believe they can manipulate other humans to an aim, without 
unwanted effects, where the second think other humans must respected for 
what they are and no amount of tinkering will change their fundamental 
way of being.

If we take the definition (axioms) of Brian for the first group and try 
to build over them, we could find that being more optimistic about human 
nature, abilities and objectivity the first group will not feel the need 
of the same level of checks and balances on the power of themselves, the 
groups [they belong], their majority and their leadership.

The second group, instead, will feel the need of more checks and 
balances for themselves, the groups, the majority and the leadership.

Another difference, counterintuitive at first, is that the first group, 
as optimist they are, when confronted with people not sharing their 
views on some topics [they consider important] and when unable to change 
their mind, will try to push out the opposition from the debate (in some 
less civilized part of the world, liquidate them outright). It is 
logical, as if humanity is good, eliminating the obviously not good 
people will leave only the good ones and, if humanity is good, not good 
people is not so human as they resemble. There is no need to provocation 
or real interference to cause this reaction; the simply fact that 
someone don't share their point of view is enough to marginalize the 
dissenter or worse.

The other side will not resort to this (unless physical harm is feared) 
as they understand human being have flaws. They will not like to resort 
to exclusion and elimination of dissenters or opposer because this would 
legitimize others (the wrong side) to act in the same way. And given 
disagreements will not be eliminated this would cause endless problems 
for both people in the right (them) and in the wrong side.

The individuals of the first group have evolved (with time) the ability 
to change their belief so it will match the belief dominant; this is 
done mainly without conscious thinking. This evolution must be expected 
as people in the losing party/parties have an advantage to flip to the 
other side and sticking with the losing party would be damaging in the 
long run. The fact that the winning party is wrong is often immaterial 
in the short (and not so short) run. Positively, being able to align 
faster with the [apparent] winner is useful against other rival groups 
and the ability to change opinion is useful when the other opinion is right.

> And sometimes I get a glimpse of how this happens, and the story is
> usually pretty close to this:  One side thinks there are scorpions
> everywhere, and one should always wear shoes.  The other side says
> there are none, and has never seen a scorpion their entire life.  The
> difference, it turns out, is simply that one, expecting to find
> scorpions, lifts up rocks, and often finds them, and the other,
> certain there are none, never looks and never sees. But that's a
> biased analogy--favorable to the second faction--so I am still
> curious to distill it down to something more essential and central.

To add to the metaphor, I would say they never look into the shoes 
before putting them on and never look where they step on after they have 
put them on, where the bare foot people usually look where they put 
their feet.

Mirco
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