Is Steering Humanity A Good Idea? by Armin Nikkhah Shirazi

Dear Armin,

What a great essay!

In my essay Democracy of the dice people one of the dice people, Ted, develops a little plan which I think hints at "pathocracy" but you expose this side of society in a clinical way that is compelling, going straight for the jugular.

Saaay, you're not a psychopath are you? Just kidding, but some people have a genetic predisposition.

James Fallon, a professor doing brain scans of psychopaths, was recently in the news after he identified himself when he stood out as part of the control group (the "normals", for want of a better word). Turns out he has genetic traits as well, and is related to Lizzie Borden! He attributes his controlled behaviour to nurture - a good childhood - but he recognizes that emotional bonds are not there.

Well done,

Colin

Dear Armin,

Your dealing with foundations of quantum mechanics led you the foundations of mathematics. Shouldn't you accordingly get aware of pathological tenets in science? At least the reported results of cold fusion were already labeled pathological.

You are suspecting "pathocracy". I am not sure if this directly answers the question how humanity should steer the future.

Regards,

Eckard

"...notion of "steering" seems to imply a form of direction by a small and presumably enlightened group which has the best interests of humanity at heart , the best knowledge of how to further these interests and the means to do so.

The central thesis of this paper questions the premise that such steering is desirable. Rather, if every citizen were instilled with certain foundational values from childhood on which are integrated as guidelines for living , then the individual actions of each in accordance with these values may cascade upward so that the aggregate manifests itself eventually at a societal level..."

I agree. But "steering" may be done by each type of social organization and people may vote with their feet. Thus, nature chooses.

Such education by the state is indoctrination, which I also question. Parental indoctrination is necessary. But that would not be "a suitable shared value system".

,

We need only steer away from war and starvation.

The US was a "Prosperous Society" but also got into a lot of wars. Now we have a welfare state (not "Own your share of responsibility for everything that happens to you."

I think you discussed psychopaths. I think those that result in contribution are actually seekin fulfillment (seeking understanding, [you and me], truth, and justice in a changing world). The others are seeing happiness ( seeking hope, love, and mercy in an unchanging world). I think your comments are directed at those that are destructive for both types.

I think the succession of presidents (you mentioned Bush and Obama) are just the evolution of a democracy as has been experienced in history.

I would like to list your essay as a reference for my essay in a comment. The suggested text is "The following essays may be viewed as added references in the introduction of this essay: ...".

Dear Armin,

I am sorry to have brought back your experience. You are right, it is those events that let us know who we are. I am pretty sure I am not a psychopath either.

I looked up ZFC and found an explanation of the axioms at Wolfram Mathworld website. They also briefly mention NBG set theory which is a "finitely axiomatizable" version of ZFC extended to classes of sets. I do not know if that is relevant, or even what it means exactly.

Set theories like these are the sort of thing that brought Whitehead to declare after working with his student, Russell, on Principia that he no longer felt as sharp as he used to be. He was 50 at the time and it took three years. I would like to see what you come up with, but you may have to do some extra explaining.

I try to avoid the term evil, but the "banality of evil" occurs when ordinary people find themselves in situations where conformity demands that they act criminally. The phrase comes from Hannah Arendt after the trial of Adolf Eichmann who seemed to be a quite mundane person, whose acts were the result of "just following orders". We humans are too adaptable and conformist to be led by misanthropic leaders, although that is too often the situation. I think you have identified a major problem whose solution bears pondering.

Colin

Definition of diversity: The Shia Islam and Sunni Islam are currently killing each other. I conclude there is diversity so that nature is being given a choice - which lives, which dies. The tribes of Africa are also killing each other so there is diversity there. I also suggest the children of the rich and the children of the poor are being given different values. We need the diversity of the farmer, hunter, laborer, scientist, businessman (exploit others), soldier (Killing is good), etc.

Steering away from war and starvation (collapse) is the first necessary step. Until we reach this step, we don't know if there is another. It may be sufficient, but I think there must be another about which I have no idea. The German Democratic Republic lived for such a short time (less than a century) it hardly qualifies as an organization competing with its values. I would call it a slave state and as such was in a war as a part of the USSR in their war. You know a great deal more about this than I. Perhaps you could share the inside scoop about the idea of shared values and what values fail. I think there should be only one shared value - tolerance.

Yes, Europe is farther down the road to the welfare state.

I think the seeking of fulfillment and seeking of happiness are not mutually exclusive. But few people become wise enough to have both.

"...evolution of a democracy...". The long-term trend of a large, complex society from democracy is to a totalitarian organization (see Tainter, although he doesn't address this in just this way - he talks of collapse then reorganization). There are many subtleties that can be argued.

Armin,

We largely agree on what a prosperous society should be. Most all, free of coercion.

I am not familiar with Lobaczewski's work, and I found it interesting. It seems to correspond to the "banality of evil" that Hannah Arendt found in the Nazis. Just normal folk doing what they perceive as their duty to impose their beliefs on others. Truly a recipe for tragedy and disaster.

All in all, a creditable essay!

Best,

Tom

To All:

My paper evidently reminded some of Hanna Arendt's famous phrase "banality of evil", which appears in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem.

I would like to clarify here that that phrase refers to a kind of situation which is different but related to the main topic in my essay, and that it is important not to confuse the two.

The phrase "banality of evil" is usually meant to refer to the situation in which a normal person-in particular, a person with a well-developed conscience-, under just the right social circumstances and pressures can be compelled or manipulated into doing horribly evil things.

Arendt herself seems to attribute this weakness to "stupidity", but social psychologists have already known for decades that this is true for the vast majority of people. For instance, see the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Again, the main problem these bring to the forefront is that most (normal) people are sufficiently influenced by their environment that they are capable of doing things they would have never dreamt of.

My essay is NOT about these people. Rather it is about a small minority of the population who do not need any external pressures to push them to do something evil, who rise to positions of power and create precisely the kinds of circumstances and pressures that will manipulate a portion of the rest of the population into such actions. In other words, "banality of evil" refers mainly to followers while my paper is about leaders.

Had there been more room I might have included a discussion of the dynamic between leaders and followers as well, but I was already at the character count limit. For those who would like to know more abut this dynamic, I know of no book that lays it out more clearly than "The Authoritarians" by the social psychologist Bob Altemyer, and which you can read for free here (It is also much easier to read than Lobaczewski's book)

His research shows that although the vast majority of people can be influenced by external pressures, there is a subset, about 20-25% of the population, which is especially susceptible to being manipulated into following authority no matter where it leads them. He calls them "the right wing authoritarians"(RWA) where right-wing does NOT denote political persuasion but a persuasion to uphold the status quo by following orders (LWA, by contrast are authoritarians who strictly follow a revolutionary authority to overthrow the status quo). He finds a large overlap between RWA's and the religious fundamentalist subset of a population. He analyzes their thinking in detail, and finds that often their thought processes are irrational, compartmentalized, and reflective of believing what they want to believe to be true rather than what is actually true. He states in the beginning that his objective is not to give opinions but only report the results of the studies (mainly surveys) he did , but I was still at times disturbed by how one-sidedly negative the authoritarians came out. On the other hand, when one reads that the majority of Republicans still think that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction or that more Americans think that torture is okay than they did in 2005, one begins to wonder maybe that is really how the world is.

In the later chapters, Altemyer shifts his attention from the followers to the leaders, whom he calls "social dominators". Although he does not go so far as to call them psychopaths, his description of their personalities and characteristics leaves one to seriously wonder what exactly the difference is. See for example p. 166 The "Exploitive Manipulative Amoral Dishonesty Scale".

Although It does not appear that Altemyer and Lobaczewski were aware of each other's works, they seem surprisingly congruent with each other.

I hope that the above clarified the distinctions.

Armin

Wow!, and I say it again wow! You wrote something I have thought for some time. We seem to be seeing the rise of mentally disturbed people in positions of power, and those who rise particularly are sociopaths.

I make a few distinctions and I have a couple of other observations. The first is that the sociopath is often equated with the psychopath. Both are often defined too heavily according to behavior that is erratic and violent. Yet the sociopath, or what might be called the "good psychopath," is one who has some control over such behaviors. These are most often people who are successful in the world of political, financial, military and religious power. These four are what I call statecraft, tradecraft, warcraft and priestcraft, which have largely defined the sorts of control structures through most of our history. The effective psychopath, whom I usually call the sociopath, is the person who is able to manipulate people to their advantage and who have no moral or empathetic sense of what they do to other people. The nonsociopathic individual is one who is prevented from within from demolishing other people, usually such demolitions in our age are professionally or by crushing out the livelihoods of others, by their sense of connection to others. Call it an emotionally healthy theory of the mind. The sociopath has a limited sense of their commonality with other people, and narcissistically sees little beyond their own gain.

I am in an employment situation where my boss's boss is a sociopath. I have been in this job for less than a year and it became clear at the end of last year there was a problem. This is a situation that I am going to have to navigate carefully. A number of people have recently either left the organization or just announced they will do so, and I am intending to stay only one more year so my work history does not look spotty. I have unfortunately also come under this man's gaze in a negative light as well. This is the second time I have found myself in this situation.

I think there is a range of other mental disorders at work as well. The GW Bush administration, what really was the Cheney administration, was a case of this. The sociopath was Dick Cheney, and he was the brains behind it all. GW Shrub has delusional personality disorder, schizotypal mental disorders, or maybe for that matter post alcoholic brain damage. He was the tool, and people like him are a necessary ingredient in the mix. In order for the sociopathic conman to pull their con they need to have a population of neurotics, delusional, and personality disordered types. These often form the "satellite crowd," such as Sarah Palin who fill in a celebrity role. Obama is a bit of both in a way, and he is an "operator." He has been quite disappointing.

The cyclic rise of sociopaths is dangerous, and it can ramp up into very insane situations, such as the rise of Nazi Germany or the evolution of Soviet Russia to the utter insanity of Stalinism. In these situations the sociopath in their charismatic power can transfer that behavior onto large number of people, and more and more of their lieutenants include violent "bad psychopaths." We are in an age marked by the rise of people with these behaviors, and while it is disturbingly the case in the United States, it is elsewhere in the world. The current game that Putin is playing to dismantle Ukraine is evidence of this.

Meanwhile our planetary life support system is disintegrating and in danger of collapse. My essay connects physics and cosmology with what I see as the prospect for any intelligent life reaching extreme levels of advanced technology.

I gave your essay a 9, even though that pulls you way ahead of me and everyone else. I removed one point because there is no connection with physics or hard science. However, your point is straight on.

Cheers LC

Dear Armin Shirazi,

The first two people I mentioned this contest to, a manager and a lawyer, both thought it was a terrible idea. I think you've captured the essence of their objections! I fully agree with your analysis of the situation, and the way it plays into my own analysis in the Thermodynamics of Freedom. One of my readers asked if it is necessary to assume the large gap implied by my model, between the controllers and the controlled. I answered that there is no physical reason, it always just seems to work out that way, and I referred him to your essay.

The alternative, in my model, is what you call "The Prosperous Society", and it is the one I prefer. Your very strong argument agrees with my analysis. I hope you will enjoy my essay, and I look forward to any comments you might have.

My best regards, and thanks for your fine essay,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Armin,

I'm reminded of the old African saying, "If you want to travel fast, go alone, but if you want to travel far, go with a group."

Have you considered how this might be modeled as a physical system, say a storm, or vortex, or possibly a volcano, or maybe a bolt of lightning, where the energy in a field breaks loose, travels through, overrides another, etc? Not to be amoral on my part, but it does seem much economic activities can be modeled in terms of convective processes and the wealthy, successful, lucky necessarily are riding a wave of energy along a gradient and those we consider immoral, or amoral, are riding waves which happen to wash over the lives of other people. If we really step back and consider these processes, we might be able to mitigate some of their effects, even if at the expense of accepting them as natural. Even death is natural, but we still try to mitigate some of the sideffects.

Regards,

John Merryman

Dear Armin,

Thanks for clarifying the distinction. I appreciate your viewpoint. At the same time, I'm afraid I am as firm in my starting assumption that evil is not inherent in human beings, as you are in yours. I think people do evil things because they believe they are doing good.

My reason stems from a very old study in statistics that led to the now well accepted principle of regression to the mean, or the principle of mediocrity. Darwin's cousin Francis Galton compiled and superimposed thousands of photos of Jewish people, looking for a "Jewish type," which turned out to be a type not different from any other human type, in the aggregate. I hold the opinion that there is no type of human that differs from every other type, given the individual's freedom to act alone.

So I think it's the structure of social systems -- external coercion -- that leads individuals and groups to evil, not innate characteristics. Whether the nature-or-nuture question is ever settled, though, we find plenty of common ground in promoting a way to assure both the nature and nurture of human beings as individuals free of coercive influences.

All best,

Tom

Hello Armin, May I offer a short, but sincere critique of your essay? I would ask you to return the favour. Here's my policy on that. - Mike