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jmrphy · 6 years

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Hard Forking Reality (Part 1)

On complexity, inequality, and ontological exits

I would like to explore how the multiple versions of reality that circulate in any society can become locked and irreconcilably divergent. Deliberation, negotation, socialization, and most other forces that have historically caused diverse agents to revolve around some minimally shared picture of reality — these social forces now appear to be approaching zero traction, except within very narrow, local bounds. We do not yet have a good general theory of this phenomenon, which is amenable to testing against empirical data from the past few decades. A good theory of reality divergence should not only explain the proliferation of alternative and irreconcilable realities, it should also be able to explain why the remaining local clusters of shared reality do persist; it should not just predict reality fragmentation, it should predict the lines along which reality fragmentation takes, and fails to take, place.

In what follows, I will try to sketch a few specific hypotheses to this effect. I have lately been stimulated by RS Bakker's theory of Semantic Apocalypse. Bakker emphasises the role of increasing environmental complexity in short-circuiting human cognition, which is based on heuristics evolved under very different environmental conditions. I am interested in the possibility of a more fine-grained, empirical etiology of what appears to be today's semantic apocalypse. What are the relevant mechanisms that make particular individuals and groups set sail into divergent realities, but to different degrees in different times and places? And why exactly does perceptual fragmentation — not historically unprecedented — seem uniquely supercharged today? What exactly happened to make the centrifugal forces cross some threshold of runaway divergence, traceable in the recorded empirical timeline of postwar Western culture?

I will borrow from Bakker the notion of increasing environmental complexity as a major explanatory factor, but I will generate some more specific and testable hypotheses by also stressing two additional variables. First, the timing and degree of information-technology advances. Second, I would like to zoom in on how the effect of increasing environmental complexity is crucially conditional on cognitive abilities. Given that the ability to process and maneuver environmental complexity is unequally distributed and substantially heritable, I think we can make some predictions about how semantic apocalypse will play out over time and space.

The intuition that alternative realities appear to be diverging among different groups — say, the left-wing and the right-wing — is simple enough. But judging the gravity of such an observation requires us to trace its more formal logic. Is this a superficial short-term trend, or a longer and deeper historical track? To answer such questions, we need a more precise model; and to build a more precise model, we need to borrow from a more formal discipline.

A garden of forking paths

When software developers copy the source code of some software application, their new copy of the source code is called a fork. Developers create forks in order to make some new program on the basis of an existing program, or to make improvements to be resubmitted to the original developer (these are called "pull requests").

The picture of society inside the mind of individual human beings is like a fork of the application that governs society. As ultrasocial animals, when we move through the world, we do so on the basis of mental models that we have largely downloaded from what we believe other humans believe. But with each idiosyncratic experience, our "forked" model of reality goes slightly out of sync with the source repository. In a thriving community composed of healthy, thriving individuals, every individual fork gets resubmitted to the source repository on a regular basis (over the proverbial campfire, for instance). Everyone then votes on which individual revisions should be merged into the source repository, and which should be rejected, through a highly evolved ballot mechanism: smiles, frowns, admiration, opprobrium, and many other signals interface with our emotions to force the community of "developers" toward convergence on a consensus over time.

This process is implicit and dynamic; it only rarely registers official consensus and only rarely hits the exact bullseye of the true underlying distribution of preferences. At its most functional, however, a community of social reality developers is surprisingly good at silently and constantly updating the source code in a direction convergent toward the most important shared goals and away from the most dire of shared horrors.

These idealized individual reality forks are typically soft forks. The defining characteristic of a soft fork is, for our purposes, backward-compatibility. Backward-compatibility means that while "new rules" might be created in the fork, the "old rules" are also followed, so that when the innovations on the fork are merged with the source code, all the users operating on the old source code can easily receive the new update. An example would be a someone who experiments with a simple innovation in hunting method; if it's a minor change that's appreciably better, it will easily merge with all the previously existing source code, because it doesn't conflict with anything fundamental in that original source code.

Every now and then, one individual or subgroup in the community might propose more fundamental innovations to the community's source code, by developing some radically novel program on a fork. This change, if accepted, would require all others to alter or delete portions of their legacy code. An example might be an individual who starts worshipping a new god, or a subordinate who wishes to become ruler against the wishes of the reigning ruler; each case represents someone submitting to the source code new rules that would require everyone else to alter their old rules deep in the source code; these forks are not backward-compatible. These are hard forks. Everyone in the community has to choose if they want to preserve their source code and carry on without the new fork's innovations, or if they want to accept the new fork.

Recall that when the innovator on a fork resubmits to the source repository, in the ancestral human environment, the decisions to accept or reject are facilitated through the proverbial campfire. This process is subject to costs, which are highly sensitive to contextual factors such as the complexity of the social environment (increasing the number of things to worry about), social capital (decreasing the number of things to worry about), and information communication technology (decreasing transaction costs facilitating convergence, but also decreasing exit costs facilitating divergence). Finally, individual heterogeneity in cognitive ability is likely a major moderator of the influence of environmental complexity, social capital, and information technology on social forking dynamics. A consideration of these variables, I think, will provide a compelling and parsimonious interpretation of ideological conflict in liberal societies since World War II, on a more formal footing than is typically leveraged by commentators on these phenomena.

#complexity #inequality #exit #software #engineering #social science #theory

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maaarine · 6 years

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MBTI & Ideas

Neuberg, Steven L., Douglas T. Kenrick, and Mark Schaller. "Evolutionary social psychology." Handbook of social psychology (2010).

“Given these fitness benefits associated with ultrasociality, one would expect humans to be highly motivated to be accepted by their fellow group members—to experience a profound need to belong.

When their bodies require nutrition, people experience hunger, which motivates them to find food and eat; when people encounter threatening footsteps on the dark city street, they feel fear, which motivates them to find a safe haven.

Self-esteem may serve a similar signaling function for the belongingness motive, operating as a sociometer that informs people whether they are falling below the threshold for social inclusion.

On this account, high self-esteem indicates successful social inclusion; lowered self-esteem signals actual or impending social exclusion.”

——

“From the evolutionary perspective, thinking and feeling are for doing: It is not enough to feel the sting of rejection, but one must also do something to redress the deficit.

One strategy is to actively avoid and punish those doing the rejecting, and the literature on social exclusion indicates that the aversive state of exclusion precipitates various kinds of anti-social behavior.

Strategies for re-establishing social connections, however, are likely to solve the problem of exclusion more effectively than aggression, which can trigger increased rejection.

Consistent with this reconnection hypothesis, when people are threatened with social exclusion, they tend to express greater interest in making new friends, increase their desire to work cooperatively with others, and form more positive first impressions of new potential interaction partners.”

#mbti #mbtiideas

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sitiosolarblanco · 4 years

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Biopoder Ultrasocial Camponês

“Transição Agroecológica” é um termo criado pela comunidade científica dos Estados Unidos e Europa, financiados por banqueiros Rockefeller & corporações imperialista agroalimentares e agora pela Fundação Bill & Melinda Gates para dar o tempo necessário, para que a periferia científica da América Latina se recicle da domesticação e consumo da Agricultura Industrial (Agronecrócios) com seu pacote genocida de insumos mercadológicos.

Transição Agroecológica não se dá no sistema produtivo, mas no tempo necessário para um conjunto de unidades camponesas construa uma cooperativa forte, seja a montante, de produção de manufaturas camponesas - “bioinsumos” - para a reprodução do sistema produtivo e manutenção da fertilidade do solo, e a jusante (processamento e comercialização). O coletivo organizado (com disciplina e estudo) para reprodução e uso dos recursos naturais é a alternativa para a quebra do capital corporativo.

A evolução só se compreende na Natureza, e no interior do Ser - quanto maior o respeito a biodiversidade, maior será a espiritualidade, e a fraternidade de uma sociedade.

Não existe o espaço de agricultura na Natureza, portanto qualquer ação humana no agir provoca desequilíbrios e retrocessos da evolução. Sendo assim um indivíduo, que denominamos Bombeiro Agroecológico, é um elemento negentrópico (consciente em sintropia) que é um elemento social, com ferramentas democráticas, que contribuirá para o equilíbrio e maior envolvimento organizacional do espaço rural, rompendo com toda tecnologia crematística.

Quando se discute hoje sobre os caminhos da sustentabilidade precisa necessariamente debater o papel dos camponeses. “A arte da agriCultura” depende enormemente do bom-senso para avaliar os diferentes equilíbrios” possíveis e que também depende de SUJEITOS e não de dispositivos automatizados. O camponês/a e o agricultor/a são o mesmo sujeito, embora cientistas contemporâneos procuram diferenciá-los. O camponês resiste.

A FAO (2014) nos trás esses dados: são 570 milhões de estabelecimentos agropecuários no mundo todo, sendo que 500 milhões (90%) são dirigidos ou dependem de mão-de-obra familiar em que 475 milhões detém 2 hectares de terra; nessas unidades camponesas de produz 80% dos alimentos no mundo.

“A comunidade camponesa incorpora uma efetiva capacidade de desenvolvimento e transformação” Mariátegui, essenciais para a produção de alimentos, preservação dos recursos naturais e o continum serviços ambientais. O Biopoder Ultrasocial Camponês precisa ter seu espaço político-econômico necessário e respeitado para a sobrevivência da humanidade.

Questões como o problema das minorias étnicas no mundo (indígenas, remanescente de quilombolas e camponeses migrantes) são de extrema relevância, pois são nossas referências de agriCultura ecológica. São os códigos de sabedoria que transcendem o tempo/espaço. As mulheres rurais e os desafios ambientais atuais que temos daqui pela frente, são essenciais para preservar a herança cultural, as tradições, e a vida no Planeta.

Assim, temos que pensar sobre o poder sob a produção de conhecimento hoje no país. O imperialismo contemporâneo fundamentado na desterritorialização e destruição da vida no solo usando as artimanhas dos mafiosos cartórios para legalizar a grilagem (são 285 milhões de hectares no Brasil ilegais) como relação social devem ser deflagradas pela justiça dos homens antes que a justiça da Natureza nos elimine a todos.

A posição de classe do biopoder ultrasocial camponês, “reforça esses princípios imemoriais”, aprofundam o seu valor cultural para a sociedade, transformando-a espiritualmente a dar forma a uma “organização técnico-social no campo tal que eles não só podem manifestar a excepcional força de resistência passiva que desde sempre lhes foi própria, mas também em ter vida ativa, agilidade e, se quiserem, forças propulsoras” para gerarem a energia vital dos alimentos, recompor a membrana Biosfera que nos levará à luz dos horizontes da Noosfera.

A recampesinação é uma tendência no mundo não como uma oportunidade de lucros, mas sim para regenerar uma economia familiar (oikos) campesina local que outrora assegurava a soberania no território, e que agora está ameaçada e em algum lugares já extinta pelo galope genocida dos cavalos apocalípticos na ilusão do Agro é Pop riqueza do Brasil com a mentira de remuneração em larga escala que só tem uma forma de se realizar neste maldito capitalismo que é com extorsão sob o trabalho. No caso da agriCultura humana que não se deve nunca ser regulada pelo mercado, economia ou sustentabilidade mas pelos elementos do triângulos do biopoder camponês: território, questão agrária e modelo de agricultura adotado. A agricultura Camponesa resiste!

Sonhamos, mas para concretizar sonhos, temos que estar muito bem alimentados. Luta segue.

Oliver Blanco - agrônomo social, bombeiro agroecológico pela Juquira Candiru Satyagraha

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the-utmost-bound · 7 years

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The Happiness Hypothesis: Chapter 10, “Happiness Comes from Between”

This chapter was about the meaning of life. Haidt doesn’t think that there’s a meaning of life, but he does think it’s possible to find meaning within life. According to Haidt, there’s no one single thing that will give you meaning within life; instead, it’s about recognizing your needs as a human being (which include love, fulfilling work, and participation in larger emergent structures) and trying to make sure those are satisfied.

This chapter basically talked about fulfilling work, and about participation in larger structures.

Haidt starts with these two quotes:

Upanishads: Who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, loses all fear.... When a sage sees this great Unity and his Self has become all beings, what delusion and what sorrow can ever be near him?

Willa Cather: I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.

What was the question?

In this first section, Haidt analyzes the question “What is the meaning of life?” and asks what sort of meaning we’re looking for.

Sometimes, when people ask “What does X mean?” they’re looking for a definition, of the sort that can be found in a dictionary. But this isn’t what we’re looking for; we’re not looking for the meaning of the word “life”; we’re looking for the meaning of life itself.

“A second kind of meaning is about symbolism or substitution.” For instance, Carl Jung once had a dream about a subbasement, and he asked what the subbasement meant, and concluded that it was a symbol for the collective unconscious. But life doesn’t symbolize anything, so that’s not the question we’re asking either.

The third kind of meaning could be called “significance”. If you walk in during the middle of a movie, and see two characters kissing, and you ask “What does it mean that they kissed?”, then you’re asking about the significance of that scene in terms of the overall plot. You’re asking how it relates to other things that happened, and how it fits into the bigger picture. This is the kind of meaning we’re looking for when we ask for the meaning of life; we’re looking for the purpose that our lives play in terms of larger narratives.

The question can be divided into two components: “What is the purpose of life?” and “How can we find purpose within life?” A lot of people ask the first question, and conclude that life has no objective purpose, and then they give up. But just because life doesn’t have an inherent purpose doesn’t mean we can’t find purpose within life. The rest of this chapter is about how we can do so.

Love and Work

People need two things in order to flourish: love (that is, any strong social bonds with other people, either romantic or platonic) and work (that is, “having and pursuing the right goals, in order to create states of flow and engagement”).

Love and work are important because they both connect us to “people and projects beyond ourselves. Happiness comes from getting these connections right.”

There was already a chapter about love, so this chapter will just focus on work.

People have an “effectance motive”, which is “the need or drive to develop competence through interacting with and controlling one’s environment”. That is, we have a strong desire to make things happen in the world.

Effectance can help us understand why certain jobs are more satisfying than others. The industrial revolution alienated workers from the products they created, which decreased their sense of effectance.

“In 1964, the sociologists Melvin Kohn and Carmi Schooler surveyed 3100 American men about their jobs and found that the key to understanding which jobs were satisfying was what they called ‘occupational self direction’. Men who were closely supervised in jobs of low complexity and much routine showed the highest degree of alienation (feeling powerless, dissatisfied, and separated from the work). Men who ha more latitude in deciding how they approached work that was varied and challenging tended to enjoy their work much more.”

"[M]ost people approach their work in one of three ways: as a job, a career, or a calling.” The job people are just doing it for the money; they don’t actually enjoy the work. The career people are working towards promotions and advancements and see it as a life-long endeavor, but may ultimately wonder what the point is. The people who have a calling find their work inherently satisfying and would probably keep doing it even if they got rich and didn’t need to work anymore.

People doing blue-collar labor are more likely to see it as a job, managers are more likely to see it as a career, and high-status professionals like doctors and scientists are more likely to see it as a calling. But it’s possible for the lowliest menial worker to see their work as a calling; there are some hospital janitors, for instance, who think of their work as contributing to the larger project of healing people, and take pride in doing what they can to help.

According to positive psychology, you are more likely to enjoy your work if it engages your strengths.

Vital Engagement

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, the man who discovered flow, also discovered something called “vital engagement”.

He interviewed a lot of successful creative people: scientists, artists, etc. who have devoted their lives to a single all-consuming passion. He wanted to understand how they ended up so committed to their goal.

He and his colleagues found that most of them had similar life paths, which led “from initial interest and enjoyment, with moments of flow, through a relationship to people, practices, and values that deepened over many years, thereby enabling even longer periods of flow”. They called this deepening process “vital engagement”.

Haidt gives the example of a student named Katherine, who started riding horses at age 10, and soon started riding in competitions. She made most of her friends through horseback riding, and chose her college based on it, and “her initial interest grew into an ever-deepening relationship, an ever-thickening web connecting her to an activity, a tradition, and a community”.

Vital engagement doesn’t come just from a person, or just from their environment, but from a certain harmony between the two.

Careers differ on whether they promote vital engagement. If people feel like they need to sell out to do their job, or if their job requires them to violate their values, it won’t create vital engagement. Vital engagement requires coherence between one’s work and one’s values.

Cross-Level Coherence

As humans, we exist at multiple levels. “We are physical objects (bodies and brains) from which minds somehow emerge; and from our minds, somehow societies and cultures form.”

“Whenever a system can be analyzed at multiple levels, a special kind of coherence occurs when the levels mesh and mutually interlock.” As mentioned in a previous chapter, it’s important to find cross-level coherence between one’s basic personality traits and one’s life narrative. But it’s also important to find cross-level coherence between the physical, mental, and social levels. This is one of the major things that leads to a sense of meaning.

Haidt gives the example of Bhubaneswar in India, from the last chapter. The physical purity rules, and their social meaning, help connect the body to society, and people who have been raised in this culture experience the rituals at a very visceral level.

On the other hand, empty rituals fail to provide that coherence; even if you understand the symbolism intellectually, it won’t necessarily make you feel anything, unless it evokes specific bodily feelings and connects to a larger tradition.

When you live in a culture that has many rituals, and those rituals engage you across all the different levels of coherence, and your culture “also offers guidance on how to live and what is of value”, then you’re unlikely to experience an existential crisis because you’re enmeshed in a web of meaning.

But if your culture doesn’t provide coherence, and if the different levels conflict with each other, or your culture’s practices conflict with your values, then you’re likely to experience anomie.

God Gives Us Hives

Morality may have its origins in religion.

”Morality and religion both occur in some form in all human cultures and are almost always both intertwined with the values, identity, and daily life of the culture.”

How did altruism and morality evolve? Darwin said it was group selection, but modern researchers discovered kin altruism and reciprocal altruism, concluded that this was enough to explain morality, and dismissed the group selection theory.

The only exception is ultrasocial animals, like termites and bees, where it makes more sense to think of the hive itself as the organism, with the individual bees or termites being cells in it. The queen is the only one who can breed, and the survival of the group is the survival of the queen, so group selection pressures are definitely at work.

But evolutionary theorists claim that this doesn’t happen in humans, because all humans are capable of breeding, so individual selection will always play a role.

However, it could be both: there could be group selection pressures and individual selection pressures happening at the same time.

People don’t just have genes; we also have culture. Culture itself is subject to evolutionary and memetic processes. Haidt argues that cultures and genes have co-evolved.

Biologist David Sloan Wilson argues that religion and the part of the brain susceptible to religion co-evolved via group selection, since religion promotes groupishness and makes people act more morally.

But again, both group selection and individual selection operate on human populations. People can display altruism but they can also display selfishness; culture and circumstances will determine which one people exhibit.

Harmony and Purpose

People accuse religions of hypocrisy because they preach peace and kindness but then wage war against other groups. But this makes sense from the evolutionary perspective of group selection; religion encourages people to be altruistic within the group but even more aggressive to people outside the group.

This evolutionary argument also explains why mystical experiences involve transcending the self and becoming part of something larger.

Neuroscientists have investigated how this happens, and found that mystical experiences deactivate the part of the brain which tracks where the boundaries of your body are, as well as the part which tracks where you’re located in space. So “[t]he person experiences a loss of self combined with a paradoxical expansion of the self out into space, yet with no fixed location in the normal world of three dimensions. The person feels merged with something vast, something larger than the self.”

These states can be activated by ritual and coordinated movement. Human groups across history have used this to create group cohesion.

Here’s Haidt’s conclusion:

What can you do to have a good, happy, fulfilling, and meaningful life? What is the answer to the question of purpose within life? I believe that the answer can be found only by understanding the kind of creature that we are, divided in the many ways we are divided. We were shaped by individual selection to be selfish creatures who struggle for resources, pleasure, and prestige, and we were shaped by group selection to be hive creatures who long to lose ourselves in something larger. We are social creatures who need love and attachments, and we are industrious creatures with needs for effectance, able to enter a state of vital engagement with our work. We are the rider and we are the elephant, and our mental health depends on the two working together, each drawing on the others’ strengths. I don’t believe there is an inspiring answer to the question, “What is the purpose of life?” Yet by drawing on ancient wisdom and modern science, we can find compelling answers to the question of purpose within life. The final version of the happiness hypothesis is that happiness comes from between. Happiness is not something you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality. Other conditions require relationship to things beyond you: Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger. It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge.

#books #jonathan haidt #the happiness hypothesis #existential #cooperation and coordination

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wildcat2030 · 7 years

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Why Humans Have Such Big Brains

See on Scoop.it - Knowmads, Infocology of the future

Humans are the only ultrasocial creature on the planet. We have outcompeted, interbred or even killed off all other hominin species. We cohabit in cities of tens of millions of people and, despite what the media tell us, violence between individuals is extremely rare. This is because we have an extremely large, flexible and complex "social brain". To truly understand how the brain maintains our human intellect, we would need to know about the state of all 86 billion neurons and their 100 trillion interconnections, as well as the varying strengths with which they are connected, and the state of more than 1,000 proteins that exist at each connection point. Neurobiologist Steven Rose suggests that even this is not enough – we would still need know how these connections have evolved over a person's lifetime and even the social context in which they had occurred. It may take centuries just to figure out basic neuronal connectivity. Many people assume that our brain operates like a powerful computer. But Robert Epstein, a psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioural Research and Technology, says this is just shoddy thinking and is holding back our understanding of the human brain. Because, while humans start with senses, reflexes and learning mechanisms, we are not born with any of the information, rules, algorithms or other key design elements that allow computers to behave somewhat intelligently. For instance, computers store exact copies of data that persist for long periods of time, even when the power is switched off. Our brains, meanwhile, are capable of creating false data or false memories, and they only maintain our intellect as long as we remain alive.

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calicojack1718 · 3 years

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Conspiracy Theories 101: What is a Conspiracy Theory and Who are the Lunatics that Believe Them?

The Republican revolt against democracy, explained in 13 charts — VOX Conspiracy theories are all the rage these days. You can’t watch a program on MSNBC what without one of the hosts talking about a conspiracy theory. You can’t pass a public television blaring Fox News without some conspiracy theory huckster being featured pimping their theory. We’ve got QAnon, the Big Lie, and #COVID19…

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#COVID19 #Adjustment Reaction #Anni Sternisko #Anxiety #Big Lie #Conspiracy Theories #David McRaney #HBO #Joseph Uscinski #Patterns #Q: Into the Storm #QAnon #Ultrasociality #You Are Not So Smart

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caroline18mars · 7 years

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Our blonde, little man being his ultrasociable self saying his hellos and telling his big news to every person in the restaurant 😂❤

#stepson mainmanjr.#Storm #adorable #mypumpkin

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sumpix · 7 years

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Why did humans evolve such large brains? Because smarter people have more friends

(via Why did humans evolve such large brains? Because smarter people have more friends)

#brains #humans #sociable #friends

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garudabluffs · 6 years

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youtube

Animated History: The Evolution Of Parenting June 22, 2018

“So why did we evolve this ability to be so ultrasocial and ultrasharing? Why not chimps?

See what these scientists think may have happened.”

READ MORE / LISTEN 3:17 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/22/621857925/animated-history-the-evolution-of-parenting

#parenting evolution

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randomguywholikesstuff · 7 years

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Quotes From: Jonathan Haidt. “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”[2]

Reprocity

“Reciprocity is a deep instinct; it is the basic currency of social life...

For all the nonhuman ultrasoeial species, that feature was the genetics of kin altruism....

Here's where the ancestors of bees, termites, and mole rats took the common mechanism of kin altruism, which makes many species sociable, and parlayed it6 into the foundation of their u nco m m o n ultrasociality: They are all siblings. T h o s e species each evolved a reproduction system in which a single queen produces all the children, and nearly all the children are either sterile (ants) or else their reproductive abilities are suppressed (bees, mole rats); therefore, a hive, nest, or colony of these animals is one big family...

We h u m a n s also try to extend the reach of kin altruism by using fictitious kinship n a m e s for nonrelatives, as when children are encouraged to call their parents' friends Uncle Bob and Aunt Sarah”

“The human mind finds kinship deeply appealing, and kin altruism surely underlies the cultural ubiquity of nepotism”

“In his insightful book Influence, Robert Cialdinj of Arizona S t a t e University cites this a n d other s t u d i e s as e v i d e n c e that p e o p l e h a v e a mindless, automatic reciprocity reflex. Like other animals, we will p e r f o r m certain behaviors w h e n the world p r e s e n t s us with certain patterns of input...

ethological reflex: a p e r s o n receives a favor from an a c q u a i n t a n c e a n d wants to repay the favor...

“So what is really built into the person is a strategy: Play tit for tat. Do to others wha t they do unto you .”

“Like the Godfather, bats play tit for tat, and so do other social animals, particularly those that live in relatively small, stable groups where individuals can recognize each other as individuals.12”

“Vengeance and gratitude are moral sentiments that amplify and enforce tit' for tat. Vengeful and grateful feelings appear to have evolved precisely b e c a u s e they are such useful tools for helping individuals create cooperative relationships, thereby reaping the gains from non-zero-sum g a m e s . 1 3 A species equipped with vengeance and gratitude responses can support”

“larger and more cooperative social groups because the payoff to cheaters is reduced by the costs they bear in making enemies.Conversely, the benefits of generosity are increased because one gains friends.”

“the logarithm of the brain size is almost perfectly proportional to the logarithm of the social group size. In other words, all over the animal kingdom, brains grow to m a n a g e larger and larger groups. Social animals are smart animals”

Gossip

“Language allows small groups of people to bond quickly and to learn from each other about the bonds of others..

in short, Dunbar proposes that language evolved because it enabled gossip. Individuals who could share social information, using any primitive means of communication, had an advantage over those who could not...

And once people began gossiping, there was a runaway competition to master the arts of social manipulation, relationship aggression, and reputation management, all of which require yet more brain power”

“Gossip elicits gossip, and it enables us to keep track of everyone's reputation without having to witness their good and bad deeds personally...

Gossip creates a non-zero-sum game because it costs us nothing to give each other information, yet we both benefit by receiving information...

In a world with no gossip, people would not get away with murder but they would get away with a trail of rude, selfish, and antisocial acts, often oblivious to their own violations. Gossip extends our moral—emotional toolkit. In a gos-sipy world, we don't just feel vengeance and gratitude toward those who hurt or help us; we feel pale but still instructive flashes of c o n t e m p t and anger toward people whom we might not even know. We feel vicarious s h a m e and embarrassment when we hear about people whose s c h e m e s , lusts, and private failings are exposed. G o s s i p is a policeman and a teacher.

Without it, there would be chaos and ignorance...

As long as everyone plays tit-for tat a u g m e n t e d by gratitude, vengeance, and gossip, the whole system should work beautifully. (It rarely does, however, because of our self-serving biases a n d massive hypocrisy.”

Reprocity in Intimate Relaitonships

“Relationships are exquisitely sensitive to balance in their early stages, and a great way to ruin things is either to give too m u c h (you seem perhaps a bit desperate) or too little (you seem cold and rejecting). Rather, relationships grow best by balanced give and take, especially of gifts, favors, attention, and self-disclosure...

people often don't realize the degree to which the disclosure of personal information is a gambit in the d a t i n g game. W h e n s o m e o n e tells you about past romantic relationships, there is conversational pressure for you to do the same. If this disclosure card is played too early, you might feel ambivalence—your reciprocity reflex m a k e s you prepare your own matching disclosure but s o m e other part of you resists sharing intimate details with a near-stranger”

“humans are partially hive creatures, like bees, yet in the modern world we spend nearly all our time outside of the hive. Reciprocity, like love, reconnects us with others”

Hypocrisy

“There is a special pleasure in the irony of a moralist brought down for the very moral failings he has condemned. It's the pleasure of a well-told joke. With hypocrisy, the hypocrite's preaching is the setup, the hypocritical action is the punch line”

“Players f a c e a binary choice at each point: They can cooperate or defect. Each player then reacts to what the other player did in the previous round.

In real life, however, you don't react to what someone did; you react only to what you think she did, and the gap b e t w e e n action and p e r c e p t i o n is bridged by the art of impression management. If life itself is but what you deem it, then why not focus your efforts on persuading others to believe that you are a virtuous and trustworthy cooperator?”

“Niccolo Machiavelli”

“the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are...

People who reported being most concerned about caring for others and about issues of social responsibility were more likely to open the bag, but they were not more likely to give the other person the positive task. In other words, people who think they are particularly moral are in fact more likely to "do the right thing" and flip the coin but when the coin flip comes out against them, they find a way to ignore it and follow their own self-interest. Batson called this tendency to value the appearance of morality over the reality "moral hypocrisy”

“We are well-armed for battle in a Machiavellian world of reputation manipulation, and one of our most important weapons is the delusion that we are non-combatants. How do we get away with it?”

Confirmation Bias

“Studies of "motivated reasoning"13 show that people who are motivated to reach a particular conclusion are even worse reasoners than those in Kuhn's and Perkins's studies, but the mechanism is basically the s a m e : a one-sided search for supporting evidence only...

Over and over again, studies show that people set out on a cognitive mission to bring back reasons to support their preferred belief or action. And because we are usually successful in this mission, we end up with the illusion of objectivity. We really believe that our position is rationally and objectively justified...

“the rider—your c o n s c i o u s , reasoning self; a n d he is taking orders from the elephant—your automatic and u n c o n s c i o u s self. T h e two are in c a h o o t s to win at the g a m e of life by playing Machiavellian tit for tat, and both are in denial about it...

To win at this g a m e you m u s t present your best possible self to others.”

Self Comparisons

“W h e n comparing ourselves to others, the general process is this: F r a m e the question (unconsciously, automatically) so that the trait in q u e s t i o n is related to a self-perceived strength, then go out and look for e v i d e n c e that you have the strength...

In fact, evidence shows that people who hold pervasive positive illusions about themselves, their abilities, and their future prospects are mentally healthier, happier, and better liked than people who lack such illusions. But such biases can make people feel that they deserve more than they do, thereby setting the stage for endless disputes with other people who feel equally over-entitled....

Whenever people form cooperative groups, which are usually of mutual benefit, self-serving biases threaten to fill group m e m b e r s with mutual resentment.”

Naive Realism

“Pronin and Ross trace this resistance to a phenomenon they call "naive realism": Each of us thinks we see the world directly, as it really is. We further believe that the facts as we see them are there for all to see, therefore others should agree with us. If they don't agree, it follows either that they have not yet been exposed to the relevant facts or else that they are blinded by their interests and ideologies. People acknowledge that their own backgrounds have shaped their views, but such experiences are invariably seen as deepening one's insights; for example, being a doctor gives a person special insight into the problems of the health-care industry. But the background of other people is used to explain their biases and covert motivations;...

It just seems plain as day, to the naive realist, that everyone is influenced by ideology and self-interest”

“If I could nominate one candidate for "biggest obstacle to world p e a c e and social harmony," it would be naive realism because it is so easily ratcheted up from the individual to the group level: My group is right b e c a u s e we see things as they are. T h o s e who disagree are obviously biased by their religion, their ideology, or their self-interest. Naive realism gives us a world full of good and evil, and this brings us to the most disturbing implication of the sages' advice about hypocrisy: Good and evil do not exist outside of our beliefs about them.”

“The myth of pure evil is the ultimate self-serving bias, the ultimate form of naive realism. And it is the ultimate cause of most long-running cycles of violence because both sides use it to lock themselves into a Manichaean struggle”

“In another unsettling conclusion, Baumeister found that violence and cruelty have four main causes. The first two are obvious attributes of evil: greed/ambition (violence for direct personal gain, as in robbery) and sadism (pleasure in hurting people). But greed/ambition explains only a small portion of violence, and sadism explains almost none. Outside of children's car-toons and horror films, people almost never hurt others for the sheer joy of hurting someone. The two biggest causes of evil are two that we think are good, and that we try to encourage in our children: high self-esteem and moral idealism. Having high self-esteem doesn't directly cause violence, but when someone's high esteem is unrealistic or narcissistic, it is easily threatened by reality; in reaction to those threats, people—particularly young men—often lash out violently...

Threatened self-esteem accounts for a large portion of violence at the individual level, but to really get a mass atrocity going you need idealism—the belief that your violence is a means to a moral end. Idealism easily becomes dangerous because it brings with it, almost inevitably, the belief that the ends justify the means. But when a moral mission and legal rules are incompatible, we usually care more about the mission. They want the "good guys" freed by any means, and the "bad guys" convicted by any means...

The anthropologist Clifford Geertz wrote that "man is an animal suspended in webs of significance that he himself has spun”

Leveraging Repocity and Perception

“That is, the world we live in is not really one made of rocks, trees, and physical objects; it is a world of insults, opportunities, status symbols, betrayals, saints, and sinners. All of these are human creations which, though real in their own way, are not real in the way that rocks and trees are real. T h e s e human creations are like fairies in J. M. Barries Peter Pan: They exist only if you believe in t h e m .”

“Feeling Good, a popular guide to cognitive therapy, David Burns has written a chapter on cognitive therapy for anger...

Burns focuses on the should statements we carry around—ideas about how the world should work, and about how people should treat us...

Violations of these should statements are the major c a u s e s of anger and resentment...

Finding fault with yourself is also the key to overcoming the hypocrisy and judgmentalism that damage so many valuable relationships...

You can take a small piece of the disagreement and say, "I should not have done X, and I can see why you felt Y." Then, by the power of reciprocity, the other person will likely feel a strong urge to say, "Yes, I was really upset by X. But I guess I shouldn't have done P, so I can see why you felt Q . " Reciprocity amplified by self-serving biases drove you apart back when you were matching insults or hostile gestures, but you can turn the process around and use reciprocity to end a conflict and save a relationship”

“People win at the game of life by achieving high status and a good reputation, cultivating friendships, finding the best mate(s), accumulating resources, and rearing their children to be successful at the same game. People have many goals and therefore many sources of pleasure”

Positive Affect

“two types of positive affect. T h e first he calls "pre-goal attainment positive affect," which is the pleasurable feeling you get as you make progress toward a goal. T h e second is called "post-goal attainment positive affect," which Davidson says arises once you .have achieved something you want. In other words, when it comes to goal pursuit, it really is the journey that counts, not the destination. Set for yourself any goal you want. Most of the pleasure will be had along the way, with every step that takes you closer”

The Progress Principle

“the progress principle": Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them...

We are bad at "affective forecasting" that is, predicting how we'll feel in the future. We grossly overestimate the intensity and the duration of our emotional reactions. T h e human mind is extraordinarily sensitive to changes in conditions, but not so sensitive to absolute levels”

Adaptation Principle

“This is the adaptation principle at work: People's judgments about their present state are based on whether it is better or worse than the state to which they have become accustomed...

Instead of following Buddhist and Stoic advice to surrender attachments and let events happen, we surround ourselves with goals, hopes, and expectations, and then feel pleasure and pain in relation to our progress”

“In every permanent situation, where there is no expectation of change, the mind of every man, in a longer or shorter time, returns to its natural and usual state of tranquility. In prosperity, after a certain time, it falls back to that state; in adversity, after a certain time, it rises up to it.”

Happiness and Marriage

“Happiness causes marriage. Happy people marry sooner and stay married longer than people with a lower happiness setpoint, both because they are more appealing as dating partners and because they are easier to live with as spouses. But much of the apparent benefit is a real and lasting benefit of dependable companionship, which is a basic need; we never fully adapt either to it or to its absence...

a string of objective advantages in power, status, freedom, health, and sunshine—all of which are subject to the adaptation principle”

“Happy people grow rich faster because, as in the marriage market, they are more appealing to others (such as bosses), and also b e c a u s e their frequent positive emotions help them to commit to projects, to work hard, and to invest in their futures”

“One of the most consistent lessons the ancient sages teach is to let go, stop striving, and choose a new path”

Happiness Formula

“fundamentally different kinds of externals: the conditions of your life and the voluntary activities that you undertake”

“Conditions include facts about your life that you can't change (race, sex, age, disability) as well as things that you can (wealth, marital status, where you live). Conditions are constant over time, at least during a period in your life, and so they are the sorts of things that you are likely to adapt to.

Voluntary activities, on the other hand, are the things that you choose to do, such as meditation, exercise, learning a new skill, or taking a vacation. B e c a u s e s u c h activities must be chosen, and because most of them take effort and attention, they can't just disappear from your awareness the way conditions can.. Voluntary activities, therefore, offer m u c h greater promise for increasing happiness while avoiding adaptation effects”

“happiness formula: H = S + C + V”

“Th e level of happiness that you actually experience (H) is determined by your biological set point (S) plus the conditions of your life ( C ) plus the voluntary activities (V) you do.”

“Noise, especially noise that is variable or intermittent, interferes with concentration and increases stress.35 It's.worth striving to remove sources of noise in your life...

subjects who thought they had control were more persistent when working on difficult puzzles, but the subjects who had experienced noise without control gave up more easily..

changing an institution's environment to increase the sense of control among its workers, students, patients, or other users was one of the most effective possible ways to increase their sense of engagement, energy, and happiness...

freed from such a daily burden may lead to a lasting increase in self-confidence and well-being.”

Relationships Importance

“T h e condition that is usually said to trump all others in importance is the strength and number of a person's relationships. Good relationships make people happy, and happy people enjoy more and better relationships than unhappy people”

“conflicts in relationships is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness. You never adapt to interpersonal conflict; it damages every day, even days when you don't see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless.”

Flow and Pleasure (fleeting) vs Gratification (fulfilling)

“It is the state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one's abilities. T h e keys to flow: There's a clear challenge that fully engages your attention; you have the skills to meet the challenge; and you get immediate feedback about how you are doing at each step (the progress principle)...

In the flow experience, elephant and rider are in perfect harmony. T h e elephant (automatic processes) is doing most of the work, running smoothly through the forest, while the rider (conscious thought) is completely absorbed in looking out for problems and opportunities, helping wherever he can...

Seligman proposes a fundamental distinction between pleasures and gratifications. Pleasures are "delights that have clear sensory and strong emotional components, such as may be derived from food, sex, backrubs, and cool breezes. Gratifications are activities that engage you fully, draw on your strengths, and allow you to lose self-consciousness. Gratifications can lead to flow... Pleasures must be spaced to maintain their potency...

the elephant has a tendency to over-indulge, the rider needs to encourage it to get up and move on to another activity. Variety is the spice of life b e c a u s e it is the natural enemy of adaptation. The key to finding your own gratifications is to know your own strengths... and development of a catalog of strengths”

“You can increase your happiness if you use your strengths, particularly in the service of strengthening c o n n e c t i o n s — h e l p i n g friends, e x p r e s s i n g gratitude to benefactors...

Performing a random act of kindness every day could get tedious, but if you know your strengths a n d draw up a list of five activities that engage them, you can surely a d d at least o n e gratification to every day ...

choose your own gratifying activities, do them regularly (but not to the point of tedium), and raise your overall level of h a p p i n e s s”

“Evolution s e e m s to have m a d e us "strategically irrational" at times for our own good”

“another kind of irrationality: the vigor with which people pursue many goals that work against their o w n h a p p i n e s s.

Happiness and Consumerism

“Inconspicuous consumption, on the other hand, refers to goods and activities that are valued for themselves, that are usually consumed more privately, and that are not bought for the purpose of achieving status”

“experiences give more happiness in part b e c a u s e they have greater social value..

The elephant cares about prestige, not happiness, and it looks eternally to others to figure out what is prestigious...

The pursuit of luxury g o o d s is a happiness trap; it is a d e a d end that people race toward in the mistaken belief that it will make them h a p p y”

Paradox of Choice

" psychologist Barry Schwartz calls this the "paradox of choice"...

We value choice and put ourselves in situations of choice, even though choice often undercuts our happiness. But Schwartz and his colleagues find that the paradox mostly applies to people they call "maximizers"—those who habitually try to evaluate all the options, seek out more information, and make the best choice (or "maximize their utility," as economists would say)...

Maximizers end up making slightly better decisions than satisficers, on average (all that worry and information-gathering does help), but they are less happy with their decisions, and they are more inclined to depression and anxiety...

T h e point here is that maximizers engage in more social comparison, and are therefore more easily drawn into conspicuous consumption.”

“cybernetics—the study of how mechanical and biological systems can regulate themselves to achieve preset goals while the environment around and inside them changes.”

Attachment Theory and Childhood Development

“Attachment theory begins with the idea that two basic goals guide children's behavior: safety and exploration. A child who stays safe survives; a child who explores and plays develops the skills and intelligence needed for adult life...

If you want your children to grow up to be healthy and independent, you should hold them, hug them, cuddle them, and love them. Give them a secure base and they will explore and then conquer the world on their own...

he observed mothers at home and found that those who were warm and highly responsive to their children were most likely to have children who showed secure attachment in the strange situation. These children had learned that they could count on their mothers, and were therefore the most bold and confident. Mothers who were aloof and unresponsive were more likely to have avoidant children, who had learned not to expect much help and comfort from mom. Mothers whose responses were erratic and unpredictable were more likely to have resistant children, who had learned that their efforts to elicit comfort sometimes paid off, but sometimes not.

My skepticism is bolstered by the fact that studies done after Ainsworth's h o m e study have generally found only small correlations between mothers' responsiveness and the attachment style of their children.18”

No one event is particularly important, but over lime the child builds up what Bowlby called an "internal working m o d e l " of himself, his mother, and their relationship. If the model says that m o m is always there for you, you'll be bolder in your play and explorations. Round after round, predictable and reciprocal interactions build trust and strengthen the relationship

“fake one ancient attachment system, mix with an equal m e a s u r e of caregiving system, throw in a modified mating system and voila, that's romantic love”

Myth of True Love: Passionate vs Companionate Love

“As I see it, the modern myth of true love involves these beliefs: True love is passionate love that never fades; if you are in true love, you should marry that person; if love ends, you should leave that person because it was not true love; and if you can find the right person, you will have true love forever”

30 December 2016

“According to the love researchers Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Walster, passionate love is a "wildly emotional state in which tender and sexual feelings, elation and pain, anxiety and relief, altruism and jealousy coexist in a confusion of feelings.

“Berscheid and Walster define c o m p a n i o n a t e love, in contrast, as "the affection we feel for those with w h o m our lives are deeply intertwined.

“C o m p a n i o n a t e love grows slowly over the years as lovers apply their attachment and caregiving systems to each other, and as they begin to rely u p o n , care for, and trust e a c h other”

“If the m e t a p h o r for passionate love is fire, I he m e t a p h o r for c o m p a n i o n a t e love is vines growing, intertwining, a n d gradually binding two people together”

“At that point, tolerance has set in, and when the drug is withdrawn, the brain is unbalanced in the opposite direction: pain, lethargy, and despair follow withdrawal from cocaine or from passionate love.”

“So if passionate love is a drug—literally a drug—it has to wear off eventually. Nobody can stay high forever (although if you find passionate love in a long-distance relationship, it's like taking cocaine once a month; the drug can retain its potency because of your suffering between doses).”

“The Time Course of the Two Kinds of Love (Short Run) ding”

“True love, the love that undergirds strong marriages, is simply strong companionate love, with some added passion, between two people who are firmly committed to each other..

But if we change the time scale from six months to sixty years, as in the next figure, it is passionate love that seems trivial—a flash in the p a n”

“The Time Course of the Two Kinds of Love (Long Run”

“The Laws of Manu, an ancient Hindu treatise on how young Brahmin men should live, was even more negative about women: "It is the very nature of women to corrupt men here on earth.”

Philosophy of Love

“I have never seen anyone who loved virtue as much as sex.

For Plato, when human love resembles animal love, it is degrading. The love of a man for a woman, as it aims at procreation, is therefore a debased kind of love.”

“The essential nature of love as an attachment between two people is rejected; love can be dignified only when it is converted into an appreciation of beauty in general”

“Rather, Christian love has focused on two key words:- caritas and agape. Caritas (the origin of our word "charity") is a kind of intense benevolence and good will; agape is a Greek word that refers to a kind of selfless, spiritual love with no sexuality, no clinging to a particular other person

There are several reasons why real human love might make philosophers uncomfortable. First, passionate love is notorious for making people illogical and irrational, and Western philosophers have long thought that morality is grounded in rationality...

The extensive regulation of sex in many cultures, the attempt to link love to God and then to cut away the sex, is part of an elaborate defense against the gnawing fear of mortality”

Morality and Social ties

“The more weakened the groups to which [a man] belongs, the less he depends on them, the more he consequently depends only on himself and recognizes no other rules of conduct than what are founded on his private interests...

Having strong social relationships strengthens the immune system, extends life (more than does quitting smoking), speeds recovery from surgery, and reduces the risks of depression and anxiety disorders. It's not just that extroverts are naturally happier and healthier; when introverts are forced to be more outgoing, they usually enjoy it and find that it boosts their mood. Even people who think they don't want a lot of social contact still benefit from it.”

Freedom from Social Norms

“An ideology of extreme personal freedom can be dangerous b e c a u s e it encourages people to leave h o m e s , jobs, cities, and marriages in search of personal and professional fulfillment, thereby breaking the relationships that were probably their best hope for such fulfillment...

S e n e c a was right: " N o one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility...

We are an ultrasocial s p e c i e s , full of emotions finely tuned for loving, befriending, helping, sharing, and otherwise intertwining our lives with others. Attachments and relationships can bring us pain: As a character in Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit said, "Hell is other people."57 But so is heaven.”

The Adversity Hypothesis: Benefit from Adversity

“although traumas, crises, and tragedies c o m e in a thousand forms, people benefit from them in three primary ways..

rising to a challenge reveals your hidden abilities, and seeing these abilities changes your s e l f - c o n c e p t . N o n e of us knows what we are really capable of enduring...

h e second class of benefit concerns relationships. Adversity is a filter.

“When a person is diagnosed with cancer, or a couple loses a child, some friends and family members rise to the occasion and look for any way they can to express support or to be helpful. Others turn away, perhaps unsure of what to say or unable to overcome their own discomfort with the situation.

But adversity doesn't just separate the fair-weather friends from the true; it strengthens relationships and it opens people's hearts to one another. We often develop love for those we care for, and we usually feel love and gratitude toward those who cared for us in a time of need. ...

Trauma changes priorities and philosophies toward the present ("Live each day to the fullest") and toward other people...

T h e reality that people often wake up to is that life is a gift they have b e e n taking for granted, and that people matter m o r e than money...

The adversity hypothesis has a weak and a strong version. In the weak version, adversity can lead to growth, strength, joy, and self-improvement...

T h e weak version is well-supported by research, but it has few clear implications for how we should live our lives. The strong version of the hypothesis is m o r e unsettling: It states that people must endure adversity to grow, and that the highest levels of growth and development are only open to those who have laced and overcome great adversity. If the strong version of the hypothesis is valid, it has profound implications for how we should live our lives and structure our societies. It means that we should take more chances and suffer more defeats...

It means that we might be dangerously overprotecting our children, offering them lives of bland safety and too much counseling while depriving them of the "critical incidents" that would h e l p them to grow strong and to develop the most intense friendships. It m e a n s that heroic societies, which fear dishonor more than death, or societies that struggle together through war, might produce better human beings than can a world of peace and prosperity in which people's expectations rise so high that they sue each other for "emotional damages.”

#thehappinesshypothesis #happiness #depression #humannature

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