Category: Psychology & Anthropology

What can we learn about ourselves from the things we ask online? Seth Stephens‑Davidowitz analysed anonymous Google search data, uncovering disturbing truths about our desires, beliefs and prejudices

Source: Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets | Technology | The Guardian

Google was invented so that people could learn about the world, not so researchers could learn about people, but it turns out the trails we leave as we seek knowledge on the internet are tremendously revealing.

I have spent the past four years analysing anonymous Google data. The revelations have kept coming. Mental illness, human sexuality, abortion, religion, health. Not exactly small topics, and this dataset, which didn’t exist a couple of decades ago, offered surprising new perspectives on all of them. I am now convinced that Google searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche.

I can’t pretend there isn’t a darkness in some of this data. … If people consistently tell us what they think we want to hear, we will generally be told things that are more comforting than the truth. Digital truth serum, on average, will show us that the world is worse than we have thought. … This is at times, I admit, difficult to face. But it can also be empowering. We can use the data to fight the darkness. Collecting rich data on the world’s problems is the first step toward fixing them.

every time we invoke free speech to justify some unpopular idea, the unpopular idea becomes a little more tolerated, and free speech becomes a little less popular.

think of respect for free speech as a commons. Every time some group invokes free speech to say something controversial, they’re drawing from the commons – which is fine, that’s what the commons is there for. Presumably the commons self-replenishes at some slow rate as people learn philosophy or get into situations where free speech protects them and their allies.

But if you draw from the commons too quickly, then the commons disappears. When trolls say the most outrageous things possible, then retreat to “oh, but free speech”, they’re burning the commons for no reason, to the detriment of everybody else who needs it.

this is a more general principle: associating X with Y won’t just make supporters of X like Y more, it will also make opponents of Y hate X.

If principles are stronger than partisanship, then invoking principles is a great idea to rally people to your cause. If partisanship has grown stronger than principles, then even an incontrovertible proof that a certain principle supports your own tribe is going to turn out to be a gigantic booby prize. It won’t make the other side reconsider what errors have led them to contradict such hallowed ideals. It’s just going make half the population start hating the sacred principles necessary for society to function.

Source: Sacred Principles As Exhaustible Resources | Slate Star Codex

 

if you are looking for a test case specifically to promote the value of free speech, and you do it by deliberately searching for the ugliest and most hate-able person you can find, you’re doing it wrong.

If your pitch to potential supporters is “our science club was trying to learn about science, and we invited a well-known scientist, and now oh no we’re embroiled in a controversy, please help”, that’s a good test case. If your pitch is “our controversy club was trying to cause controversy, and we invited a well-known controversial person, and now oh no we’re embroiled in a controversy, please help”, that’s a bad test case. Even if you invited the same person both times.

Source: Clarification To “Sacred Principles As Exhaustible Resources” | Slate Star Codex

Source: If Humble People Make the Best Leaders, Why Do We Fall for Charismatic Narcissists?

The research is clear: when we choose humble, unassuming people as our leaders, the world around us becomes a better place.

it’s not that humble leaders can’t ever be charismatic. Researchers agree that we could classify charismatic leaders as “negative” or “positive” by their orientation toward pursuing their self-interested goals versus those of their groups. These two sides of charismatic leadership have also been called personalized and socialized charisma. Although the socialized charismatic leader has the aura of a hero, it is counteracted with low authoritarianism and a genuine interest in the collective welfare. In contrast, the personalized charismatic leader’s perceived heroism is coupled with high authoritarianism and high narcissism. It is when followers are confused and disoriented that they are more likely to form personalized relationships with a charismatic leader. Socialized relationships, on the other hand, are established by followers with a clear set of values who view the charismatic leader as a means to achieve collective action.

It’s not that charismatic and narcissistic people can’t ever make good leaders. … The problem is that we select negative charismatic leaders much more frequently than in the limited situations where the risk they represent might pay off.

While this may sound hopeless, there is another way of looking at it. Essentially, we have the leaders we deserve. As we collectively select and construct our leaders to satisfy our own needs and desires, we can choose humility or socialized charisma over narcissism.

Source: If Humble People Make the Best Leaders, Why Do We Fall for Charismatic Narcissists?

I want to talk about crying, or to be more precise, weeping or emotional tears. Humans … are the only ones who unite tears and noisy crying together in a single behavior.

the question to ask about crying isn’t, “What causes it (as a symptom)?” but rather, “What is a human creature trying to achieve by doing it (as a behavior)?”

The goal of our investigation is to explain three things: First, what weeping accomplishes. Second, how we evolved to do it. And third, why only humans weep.

In particular, they’re a social behavior, something we evolved to do because of their effects on the people around us. In the language of biology, then: Tears are a signal.

communication is fundamentally cooperative. When there’s no overlap of interest, there’s no basis for communication

we, as receivers, often feel manipulated by someone else’s tears is the giveaway that crying is a signal — i.e., because it aims to change our behavior. … a submission signal … a distress signal

I’d like to throw my hat into the ring, by providing my own hypothesis for how and why tears evolved.
…

it’s a way of giving up dominance in the hope of earning allies.

inherently they’re just a piece of social technology, a device for coordinating the tradeoff between dominance and social support. And this invention turns out to be useful in a variety of scenarios.

Source: Tears | Melting Asphalt by Kevin Simler

More: Why Only Humans Weep by Ad Vingerhoets

Source: Guided By The Beauty Of Our Weapons | Slate Star Codex, by Scott Alexander

Imagine a classroom where everyone believes they’re the teacher and everyone else is students. They all fight each other for space at the blackboard, give lectures that nobody listens to, assign homework that nobody does. When everyone gets abysmal test scores, one of the teachers has an idea: I need a more engaging curriculum. Sure. That’ll help.

I’ve changed my mind on various things during my life, and it was never a single moment that did it. It was more of a series of different things, each taking me a fraction of the way.

Given all of this, I reject the argument that Purely Logical Debate has been tried and found wanting. Like GK Chesterton, I think it has been found difficult and left untried.

Therapy might change minds, and so might friendly debate among equals, but neither of them scales very well.

The media already spends a lot of effort recommending good behavior. What if they tried modeling it?

Logical debate has one advantage over narrative, rhetoric, and violence: it’s an asymmetric weapon. That is, it’s a weapon which is stronger in the hands of the good guys than in the hands of the bad guys. … The whole point of logic is that, when done right, it can only prove things that are true. … Unless you use asymmetric weapons, the best you can hope for is to win by coincidence.

You are not completely immune to facts and logic. But you have been wrong about things before. You may be a bit smarter than the people on the other side. You may even be a lot smarter. But fundamentally their problems are your problems, and the same kind of logic that convinced you can convince them. It’s just going to be a long slog. You didn’t develop your opinions after a five-minute shouting match. You developed them after years of education and acculturation and engaging with hundreds of books and hundreds of people. Why should they be any different?

The problem is that Truth is a weak signal.

There is no shortcut.