(Not defending any particular example on Lutterâs list, which is clearly an early-stage project and needs some filtering.)
The modern environmental movement seems to have changed the course of history, using policies and positions supported by a majority of the movementâs supporters.
Whether the net effect of all this change was actually good, by the movementâs own lights, may be in doubt, but it seems to have done much of what it set out to do, to a greater extent than many similar movements. (Similarly, the French Revolution could be called âsuccessfulâ even if many of its own leaders died in the process and the average French person was harmed more than helped.)
Well, no. Whether that change was actually good, by its own lights, is the whole point. Change that looks big but doesnât actually help is not something that you should meaningfully count as a success. Magnitude of effect is not in itself good. I have no interest in emulating social movements that cause big effects in the world, in ways that donât actually help, or maybe even actively harm, my goals. I donât see at all why I should classify something that just had a big effect, without that effect actually being useful, as a âsuccessâ.
This is a really important distinction because in my model of the world it is much much easier to have some big effect on the world, than it is to have a specifically targeted big effect on the world. So measuring social movements by just âthe size of their effectâ is almost purely sampling from movements that took a path of lowest resistance of just doing things that are big, which is a path that doesnât seem like it generalizes at all to helping with things that we care about.
While you could call the French Revolution âsuccessfulâ, in the dictionary sense of âaccomplishing an aim or purposeâ, you certainly donât have to. Thatâs a reasonable distinction to draw.
As I said, I wouldnât have put the list together the same way, and Iâd also much prefer to learn from movements and groups that actually achieved things I value.
*****
That said, Iâve seen a lot of people in rationalist spaces discuss the rise of certain religions as interesting phenomena worthy of study, at least in piecemeal ways. Even if religious rituals are used to bond small social groups together, around shared belief in something false, one can still consider whether itâs possible to copy the bonding elements without getting false beliefs at the same time. On a larger scale, can we learn from people who successfully lobbied for bad policies if we want to lobby for good policies?
(Another spin on this is to find examples of groups that started with worthy goals, then lost sight of the goals as they grew more capable of changing the world. What happens to groups like that, and what makes them different from groups that keep hold of their goals? How can we keep our own groups in the second category rather than the first?)
(Not defending any particular example on Lutterâs list, which is clearly an early-stage project and needs some filtering.)
The modern environmental movement seems to have changed the course of history, using policies and positions supported by a majority of the movementâs supporters.
Whether the net effect of all this change was actually good, by the movementâs own lights, may be in doubt, but it seems to have done much of what it set out to do, to a greater extent than many similar movements. (Similarly, the French Revolution could be called âsuccessfulâ even if many of its own leaders died in the process and the average French person was harmed more than helped.)
Well, no. Whether that change was actually good, by its own lights, is the whole point. Change that looks big but doesnât actually help is not something that you should meaningfully count as a success. Magnitude of effect is not in itself good. I have no interest in emulating social movements that cause big effects in the world, in ways that donât actually help, or maybe even actively harm, my goals. I donât see at all why I should classify something that just had a big effect, without that effect actually being useful, as a âsuccessâ.
This is a really important distinction because in my model of the world it is much much easier to have some big effect on the world, than it is to have a specifically targeted big effect on the world. So measuring social movements by just âthe size of their effectâ is almost purely sampling from movements that took a path of lowest resistance of just doing things that are big, which is a path that doesnât seem like it generalizes at all to helping with things that we care about.
While you could call the French Revolution âsuccessfulâ, in the dictionary sense of âaccomplishing an aim or purposeâ, you certainly donât have to. Thatâs a reasonable distinction to draw.
As I said, I wouldnât have put the list together the same way, and Iâd also much prefer to learn from movements and groups that actually achieved things I value.
*****
That said, Iâve seen a lot of people in rationalist spaces discuss the rise of certain religions as interesting phenomena worthy of study, at least in piecemeal ways. Even if religious rituals are used to bond small social groups together, around shared belief in something false, one can still consider whether itâs possible to copy the bonding elements without getting false beliefs at the same time. On a larger scale, can we learn from people who successfully lobbied for bad policies if we want to lobby for good policies?
(Another spin on this is to find examples of groups that started with worthy goals, then lost sight of the goals as they grew more capable of changing the world. What happens to groups like that, and what makes them different from groups that keep hold of their goals? How can we keep our own groups in the second category rather than the first?)