My model of this is that the human brain evolved, over the last ~3000 years (possibly 10,000 or 1000), to avoid being “hacked” by the words of other humans; specifically, hacked into sacrificing physical resources or social status to someone who optimized for finding a combination of words or ideas that could do that. For example, the people who were persuaded by ancient priests to give an unusually large tithe to the sun god temple (e.g. via proto pascal’s wager arguments) had less viable offspring, and people resistant to persuasion about anything had dominated the genepool by the time of the industrial revolution. A dynamic like this, but much more nuanced (e.g. maybe conformity-obsession was the mechanic itself, not resistance to new ideas).
Unfortunately, the current state of our culture (in EU and particularly NA) is that because nobody bled to death or got burned to a crisp by the million for almost 80 years, we then end up in the pitiful situation where most people extrapolate the last 80 years of peace of our parents and grandparents, onto the next 80 years for our lives and our children and grandchildren. Given that the world was alright for 80 years, that means that the predictions of many “doomsayers” necessarily must have been wrong for 80 years. Ancient Rome had a similar situation before it collapsed.
There’s also the problem of EA being “Punchable”, in the worlds of Holden; EA is in fact an attack on the legitimacy of the Left and Right by default, merely by making an effort to be altruistic:
Having seen the EA brand under the spotlight, I now think it isn’t a great brand for wide public outreach. It throws together a lot of very different things (global health giving, global catastrophic risk reduction, longtermism) in a way that makes sense to me but seems highly confusing to many, and puts them all under a wrapper that seems self-righteous and, for lack of a better term, punchable?
The issue is that when you arrive and make your pitch, the average person is oriented towards their reality where they are in the right for expecting a peaceful existence, rather than the real reality where you are in the right for making your pitch. It is helpful to think of it maybe more like a startup founder pitching their idea to an investor, except rather than a transaction of cash that the investor is professional and experienced about, it’s an exchange of a way of life, and you are arguing that their lifeplan was pretty poorly planned out, and they aren’t professional or experienced about hearing this the way that investors are professional and experienced about hearing elevator pitches.
In the 2020s, you also have to tack on the rise of social media misinformation and competing messages. People’s friend groups are now filled with hot takes that optimize for memetic spread, and people see ideas that cause fear as something that their friends have fallen victim to, specifically on social media. Competing intense messages make people withdraw into their shell as a pretty basic adjustment/immune response, regardless of what reality looks like.
What helped me was reading about dath ilan, specifically the basement. Seeing it from the perspective of a civilization where people give the problem a proportionate amount of weight, gave me a point of reference that helped have more precise thoughts about the current situation.
My model of this is that the human brain evolved, over the last ~3000 years (possibly 10,000 or 1000), to avoid being “hacked” by the words of other humans; specifically, hacked into sacrificing physical resources or social status to someone who optimized for finding a combination of words or ideas that could do that. For example, the people who were persuaded by ancient priests to give an unusually large tithe to the sun god temple (e.g. via proto pascal’s wager arguments) had less viable offspring, and people resistant to persuasion about anything had dominated the genepool by the time of the industrial revolution. A dynamic like this, but much more nuanced (e.g. maybe conformity-obsession was the mechanic itself, not resistance to new ideas).
Unfortunately, the current state of our culture (in EU and particularly NA) is that because nobody bled to death or got burned to a crisp by the million for almost 80 years, we then end up in the pitiful situation where most people extrapolate the last 80 years of peace of our parents and grandparents, onto the next 80 years for our lives and our children and grandchildren. Given that the world was alright for 80 years, that means that the predictions of many “doomsayers” necessarily must have been wrong for 80 years. Ancient Rome had a similar situation before it collapsed.
There’s also the problem of EA being “Punchable”, in the worlds of Holden; EA is in fact an attack on the legitimacy of the Left and Right by default, merely by making an effort to be altruistic:
The issue is that when you arrive and make your pitch, the average person is oriented towards their reality where they are in the right for expecting a peaceful existence, rather than the real reality where you are in the right for making your pitch. It is helpful to think of it maybe more like a startup founder pitching their idea to an investor, except rather than a transaction of cash that the investor is professional and experienced about, it’s an exchange of a way of life, and you are arguing that their lifeplan was pretty poorly planned out, and they aren’t professional or experienced about hearing this the way that investors are professional and experienced about hearing elevator pitches.
In the 2020s, you also have to tack on the rise of social media misinformation and competing messages. People’s friend groups are now filled with hot takes that optimize for memetic spread, and people see ideas that cause fear as something that their friends have fallen victim to, specifically on social media. Competing intense messages make people withdraw into their shell as a pretty basic adjustment/immune response, regardless of what reality looks like.
What helped me was reading about dath ilan, specifically the basement. Seeing it from the perspective of a civilization where people give the problem a proportionate amount of weight, gave me a point of reference that helped have more precise thoughts about the current situation.
TL;DR The root cause of this phenomenon is well described by Kevin Simler’s Down the Rabbit Hole, and this image:
This is just how people are. It’s the full context of the situation. The enemy’s gate is down.