Wonderful resource and a great read.
A few responses:
Information flow is a key feature of a lot of mainstream economics and I’ve done some work in this area, so maybe I could point you in the right direction given a more particular question.
Seems from your characterization of his argument that Robert Wright gets the relationship between wealth and zero sum games backwards. Plus sum games trivially increase wealth but higher wealth may promote conspicuous consumption which is a negative sum games in terms of wealth, so this direction seems dubious.
Very curious about the apparent paucity of writing on the relationship of moral progress and personality psychology.
Regarding (1), I’ll get in touch with you if I have a specific question.
(2) I’ll rewrite my characterization of Robert Wright’s work. I think his main line of argument is that cultural evolutionary processes lead to bigger networks of cooperation, which foster positive sum games, which in turn foster further cooperation in a positive feedback loop. (Though certainly not everything fosters further growth or cooperation, conspicuous consumption being one exception)
(3) Could you say more? Do you mean differences between people’s personalities (as in the OCEAN Big 5 Personalities)? Or more like character traits such as obedience to authority? Whatever the case, I definitely haven’t seen much of this work. Might be my personal ignorance or lack of search in psychology journals, but I think there’s general lack of work. Perhaps something that partly explains it are the controversies that surrounded the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram’s Experiment, which set back psychological research on morality quite a bit for several decades. Hopefully some moral psychologists pick up the topic of moral progress.
Wonderful resource and a great read. A few responses:
Information flow is a key feature of a lot of mainstream economics and I’ve done some work in this area, so maybe I could point you in the right direction given a more particular question.
Seems from your characterization of his argument that Robert Wright gets the relationship between wealth and zero sum games backwards. Plus sum games trivially increase wealth but higher wealth may promote conspicuous consumption which is a negative sum games in terms of wealth, so this direction seems dubious.
Very curious about the apparent paucity of writing on the relationship of moral progress and personality psychology.
Thanks for your comments!
Regarding (1), I’ll get in touch with you if I have a specific question.
(2) I’ll rewrite my characterization of Robert Wright’s work. I think his main line of argument is that cultural evolutionary processes lead to bigger networks of cooperation, which foster positive sum games, which in turn foster further cooperation in a positive feedback loop. (Though certainly not everything fosters further growth or cooperation, conspicuous consumption being one exception)
(3) Could you say more? Do you mean differences between people’s personalities (as in the OCEAN Big 5 Personalities)? Or more like character traits such as obedience to authority? Whatever the case, I definitely haven’t seen much of this work. Might be my personal ignorance or lack of search in psychology journals, but I think there’s general lack of work. Perhaps something that partly explains it are the controversies that surrounded the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram’s Experiment, which set back psychological research on morality quite a bit for several decades. Hopefully some moral psychologists pick up the topic of moral progress.