Chana—thanks for your wisdom and insights in this post.
To expand upon this issue of EA wanting to ‘protect ‘EA the brand’, and feelings of soldier-iness and EA tribalism:
It’s worth remembering that tribalism evolved for good game-theoretic reasons, in the context of group-vs-group competition.
As Darwin put it in The Descent of Man (1871): “A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.”
Or, as Jonathan Haidt put it in this passage from The Righteous Mind, humans are sort of 90% chimpanzee and 10% bee (in the sense of having the capacity to act similar to eusocial insects, for the good of the group, under some conditions). (NB the concept of ‘group selection was often rejected by evolutionary biologists from c. 1966 through about the mid-90s, but has been revived in the form of ‘multi-level selection’, and the evolutionary game theory of ‘group selection’ is now recognized as functionally interchangeable with ‘selfish gene’ thinking, when genes can form individual-level and group-level aggregates).
So, humans evolved tribalism and soldier-iness, including tribal emotions, motivations, cognitions, and reactions, over millions of years of intensive group-vs-group competition.
Is this a defense of tribalism in modern EA, in response to crises and criticism?
No.
The dynamics of prehistoric group-vs-group competition, warfare, territory disputes, and resource competition don’t map perfectly onto the dynamics of 21st century moral/social movements. There are some deep similarities that should not be discounted, but there are also important differences—especially given the way that social media shapes PR narratives, and the fact that we’re not engaged in physical, life-or-death warfare over land or resources, but in psychological wars of influence over beliefs and values.
I’m just trying to remind people not to feel too guilty or self-critical if we feel these ‘protect our EA tribe at all costs!’ kind of emotions bubbling up. Of course they will bubble up. We’re hyper-social primates who evolved in clans and tribes.
Another thing to be cautious about is that, given human tribal psychology, people who are perceived as traitors or defectors to their group, especially in times of crisis, may suffer some heavy reputational costs in the future. This concern for tribal loyalty is partly something to guard against, but partly something to take pragmatically into account, when weighing whether, when, and how to ‘speak up’ with criticisms of EA culture and organizations.
Note: I’m being descriptive about human tribal psychology here, not prescriptive or normative about what exact lessons we should take away from all this. I am concerned that EAs who have more exposure to moral philosophy, computer science, and cognitive biases research than to evolutionary psychology (my field) might become overly hard on themselves for feeling ordinary human tribalistic feelings in times of crisis.
Chana—thanks for your wisdom and insights in this post.
To expand upon this issue of EA wanting to ‘protect ‘EA the brand’, and feelings of soldier-iness and EA tribalism:
It’s worth remembering that tribalism evolved for good game-theoretic reasons, in the context of group-vs-group competition.
As Darwin put it in The Descent of Man (1871): “A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.”
Or, as Jonathan Haidt put it in this passage from The Righteous Mind, humans are sort of 90% chimpanzee and 10% bee (in the sense of having the capacity to act similar to eusocial insects, for the good of the group, under some conditions). (NB the concept of ‘group selection was often rejected by evolutionary biologists from c. 1966 through about the mid-90s, but has been revived in the form of ‘multi-level selection’, and the evolutionary game theory of ‘group selection’ is now recognized as functionally interchangeable with ‘selfish gene’ thinking, when genes can form individual-level and group-level aggregates).
So, humans evolved tribalism and soldier-iness, including tribal emotions, motivations, cognitions, and reactions, over millions of years of intensive group-vs-group competition.
Is this a defense of tribalism in modern EA, in response to crises and criticism?
No.
The dynamics of prehistoric group-vs-group competition, warfare, territory disputes, and resource competition don’t map perfectly onto the dynamics of 21st century moral/social movements. There are some deep similarities that should not be discounted, but there are also important differences—especially given the way that social media shapes PR narratives, and the fact that we’re not engaged in physical, life-or-death warfare over land or resources, but in psychological wars of influence over beliefs and values.
I’m just trying to remind people not to feel too guilty or self-critical if we feel these ‘protect our EA tribe at all costs!’ kind of emotions bubbling up. Of course they will bubble up. We’re hyper-social primates who evolved in clans and tribes.
Another thing to be cautious about is that, given human tribal psychology, people who are perceived as traitors or defectors to their group, especially in times of crisis, may suffer some heavy reputational costs in the future. This concern for tribal loyalty is partly something to guard against, but partly something to take pragmatically into account, when weighing whether, when, and how to ‘speak up’ with criticisms of EA culture and organizations.
Note: I’m being descriptive about human tribal psychology here, not prescriptive or normative about what exact lessons we should take away from all this. I am concerned that EAs who have more exposure to moral philosophy, computer science, and cognitive biases research than to evolutionary psychology (my field) might become overly hard on themselves for feeling ordinary human tribalistic feelings in times of crisis.