I think you should be in favor of caring more (shut up and multiply) over caring less (shut up and divide) because your intuitive sense of caring evolved when your sphere of influence was small. A tribe might have at most a few hundred people, which happens to be ~where your naive intuition stops scaling linearly.
So it seems like your default behavior should be extended to your new circumstances instead of extending your new circumstances to default state.
(Although, I think SUAD might be useful for not getting trapped in caring too much about unimportant news, for example).
(I’m writing this on my phone, please correct typos more than you otherwise would. For the same reason, this is fairly short, please steelman in additional details as necessary to convince yourself)
I think you should be in favor of caring more (shut up and multiply) over caring less (shut up and divide) because your intuitive sense of caring evolved when your sphere of influence was small.
My sex drive evolved before condoms existed. I should extend it to my new circumstances by reproducing as much as possible.
My subconscious bias against those who don’t look like me evolved before there was a globalized economy with opportunities for positive-sum trade. Therefore, I should generalize to my new circumstances by becoming a neonazi.
My love of sweet foods evolved before mechanized agriculture. Therefore, I should extend my default behavior to my modern circumstances by drinking as much high-fructose corn syrup as I can.
I’m advocating for updating in the general direction of trusting your small-scale intuition when you notice a conflict between your large scale intuition and your small scale intuition.
Specifically:
Have as much sex as you want (with a consenting adult, etc). Have as many children as you can reasonably care for. But even if you disagree with that, I don’t think this is a good counterexample. It’s not a conflict between small scale beliefs and large scale beliefs.
This is new information, not a small-large conflict.
As Wei Dai mentioned, tribes in the EEA weren’t particularly fond of other tribes. Why should people’s ingroup-compassion scale up, but their outgroup-contempt shouldn’t? Your argument supports both conclusions.
your intuitive sense of caring evolved when your sphere of influence was small
Even in our EEA we had influence beyond the immediate tribe, e.g., into neighboring tribes, which we were evolved to care much less about, hence inter-tribal raids, warfare, etc.
So it seems like your default behavior should be extended to your new circumstances instead of extending your new circumstances to default state.
I’m just not sure what you mean here. Can you explain with some other examples? (Are Daniel Kirmani’s extrapolations of your argument correct?)
From my (new since you asked this) reply to Kirmani’s comment:
I’m advocating for updating in the general direction of trusting your small-scale intuition when you notice a conflict between your large scale intuition and your small scale intuition.
Honestly, its a pretty specific argument/recommendation so I’m having trouble thinking of another example that adds something. Maybe the difference between how I feel about my dog vs farmed animals, or near vs far people. If you’d like/it would help you or someone else, I can spend some more time thinking of one.
In response to “Shut Up and Divide:”
I think you should be in favor of caring more (shut up and multiply) over caring less (shut up and divide) because your intuitive sense of caring evolved when your sphere of influence was small. A tribe might have at most a few hundred people, which happens to be ~where your naive intuition stops scaling linearly.
So it seems like your default behavior should be extended to your new circumstances instead of extending your new circumstances to default state.
(Although, I think SUAD might be useful for not getting trapped in caring too much about unimportant news, for example).
(I’m writing this on my phone, please correct typos more than you otherwise would. For the same reason, this is fairly short, please steelman in additional details as necessary to convince yourself)
Your argument proves too much:
My sex drive evolved before condoms existed. I should extend it to my new circumstances by reproducing as much as possible.
My subconscious bias against those who don’t look like me evolved before there was a globalized economy with opportunities for positive-sum trade. Therefore, I should generalize to my new circumstances by becoming a neonazi.
My love of sweet foods evolved before mechanized agriculture. Therefore, I should extend my default behavior to my modern circumstances by drinking as much high-fructose corn syrup as I can.
I’m advocating for updating in the general direction of trusting your small-scale intuition when you notice a conflict between your large scale intuition and your small scale intuition.
Specifically:
Have as much sex as you want (with a consenting adult, etc). Have as many children as you can reasonably care for. But even if you disagree with that, I don’t think this is a good counterexample. It’s not a conflict between small scale beliefs and large scale beliefs.
This is new information, not a small-large conflict.
Same as above.
As Wei Dai mentioned, tribes in the EEA weren’t particularly fond of other tribes. Why should people’s ingroup-compassion scale up, but their outgroup-contempt shouldn’t? Your argument supports both conclusions.
This is a good point, I guess.
I don’t think I understand what your argument is.
Even in our EEA we had influence beyond the immediate tribe, e.g., into neighboring tribes, which we were evolved to care much less about, hence inter-tribal raids, warfare, etc.
I’m just not sure what you mean here. Can you explain with some other examples? (Are Daniel Kirmani’s extrapolations of your argument correct?)
From my (new since you asked this) reply to Kirmani’s comment:
Honestly, its a pretty specific argument/recommendation so I’m having trouble thinking of another example that adds something. Maybe the difference between how I feel about my dog vs farmed animals, or near vs far people. If you’d like/it would help you or someone else, I can spend some more time thinking of one.