The fundamental things in life
As a recovering theoretical physicist, I often have the urge to break things down into the smallest possible component to see why and how they work. For those not in the know about the king of all sciences, the general trend over at least the last hundred years in physics has been for reductionism. During the 20th Century, the holy grail of modern physics was to formulate a single set of equations that would adequately describe the behaviour of both the very largest and very smallest things in the Universe, up till now described fairly adequately by the predictions of General Relativity (at the big end) and Quantum Mechanics / Field Theory (at the little end). The problem comes when you try to combine the two, and to cut a long story short, almost a hundred years of hard maths and conceptual dead-endery has left the world of theoretical physics pretty much none the wiser. Although we have quaffed a lot of coffee, and in the long run, that’s all that counts.
The upshot of all of this is that scientists, particularly in the hard physical sciences, tend to get reductionism beaten into them as a matter of course. It is what we do as a profession – try to take things apart and come up with simple rules as to how the components work. If we can describe and predict the behaviour of the components, we can often extrapolate the behaviour of the whole (not always true in practice, but theoretically fairly sound…).
This is why political blogging in particular is incredibly frustrating at times, because all political blogging ends up at the old scientific conundrum, in a metaphorical sense:
What happens when an irresistable force meets with an immovable body?
What I mean by that is that I can state a fundamental viewpoint, argue a rock-solid logical case from that, and come up with something that confirms my worldview, only for the other side of the political fence to start throwing rocks at my axiom. The irresistable force of my argument (and they all are, Andrew fans…) meets with the immovable force of your fundamental beliefs. So how do we ever get anything done? How do we ever decide anything, reach a compromise, agree a consensus, or God help us all, form a coalition?
I guess at some point we just have to state our political axioms – those fundamental self-evident beliefs that you can’t prove from anything else, that you can’t derive from more fundamental principles – and just defend them to the death. After all, there’s nothing worse in the blogosphere than being proven wrong, arrogant lot that we are. So, to get the ball rolling, and to kick off a political reductionism of Hilbertian proportions, I thought I’d declare one of my axioms, and invite commenters to do the same. Maybe we can find some common ground. Here it is:
1. People are basically selfish bastards. They follow a code in a broad hierarchy that goes something like Self > Immediate Family > Neighbouring Community > City > Country > God, although there is flexibility between levels. Any political act that requires a person or group of people to deviate from this code for any serious length of time is doomed to failure.
Who’s up next?
Disclaimer: Any scientific inaccuracy in the above is not ignorance or forgetfulness on my part. Rather, it is an elaborate in-joke, designed to confuse and bewilder you, but which the rest of us are secretly chuckling at you for not getting.
Disclaimer 2: The bit about God above is a ruse, secularist types, designed to provoke you into fits of spluttering rage. Go ahead punks, make my day.
Nosemonkey political axiom 1: Party politics is the evil which lies at the root of pretty much all problems in a mature democracy.
Nosemonkey non-political axiom 1: Science (and maths) makes my head hurt.
Okay, in a (long) sentence:
We have obligations and debts to each other that stem from shared humanity, and deliberative and democratic politics is about determining the extent of those obligations and arguing over the best way to fulfil them, preferably by mutually advantageous agreement, but by force if necessary.
The central question in politics is: Who gets to kick who around?
Politics is fundamentally about power; often soft power, the sort of cuddly power that’s involved in making sure babies get proper medical care and such like; but also hard power like when the state invades Iraq or shoots Brazilian electricians. To misquote Ken MacLeod, the state’s killer application is organised violence.
And that’s what’s so pernicious about the government’s proposed ban on glorifying terrorism. “Terrorism”, you see, just means those acts of violence which the govenrment happens to disapprove of. And that’s a fundamental matter of political philosophy: all political philosophies (apart from pacifism) approve of violence, they just disagree about what kinds of violence should be used against which people. So a ban on praising certain acts of violence strikes at the heart of free political debate.
I’ve been down this road before, although I wasn’t staking any claims as to which axioms are Really Truly True (and I’m not going to start now). I was just curious about the fact that, despite being a socialist, I feel I have less in common with some socialists than I do with some Conservatives.
I wound up identifying four criteria (which I’ll write up at greater length on my own blog – been meaning to do this for ages).
1. The ideal society looks pretty much like this one
vs
The ideal society looks nothing like this one
2. Change is great; standing still is stagnation
vs
Preservation is essential; change is destructive
3. People are basically good (and should be set free)
vs
People are basically bad (and should be controlled)
and
4. Law, the government, the state is what politics is about
vs
Families, communities, participatory organisations are what politics is about
That’s a total of sixteen equally plausible axiomatic starting-points – and I have absolutely no interest in attempting to prove that any one of them is right (or wrong). It’s interesting to distinguish between them, though.
I think Andrew perhaps also would introduce an unstated second axiom, which goes something along the lines of “And because we are selfish bastards our wickedness needs to be properly restrained and chanelled”. If that’s his point of view it certainly needs stating as a second axiom because it doesn’t follow from the first.
In the long run there is something unsatisfying, for all concerned, about any type of relationship where one party unduly dominates the other. Perfect equality in something as complex as human life may be impossible, but something approaching balance is required, for us to achieve full enjoyment of our own lives.
Based on this, I have a belief that society should be as egalitarian as possible.
I’s admit this is a totally selfish belief. It’s based on what would give me personal satisfaction – not just in my own immediate life, but in the pleasure I take from knowing the kind of society I live in.
And if it wouldn’t do the same for you, then I can’t be bothered to be unselfish enough to care. And unlike milk-and-water right wing theorists, I refuse to limit the courage of my own gratifications.
People are not potatoes. That is, while they share certain common characteristics they also widely vary. One would see very little commonality between Mother Theresa and Charles Manson.
However, playing your game and taking the macroview approach:
If people are basically good, then they are trustworthy and should be set free.
If people are basically evil, then governments formed by people are basically evil and should be abolished.
Hmmm, I haven’t been an anarchist for a few decades so I’ll stick to my “freedom” stance.
Interesting that a couple of you conflate ‘selfish’ with ‘evil’ or ‘wicked’. I was careful to make no such assertion in the post. If anything, the selfishness of people would point towards more limited government and greater freedom, as a recognition that government can never overcome people’s inate desires for any length of time. And if anything, that makes a more egalitarian society less achievable, because there will always be selfish bastards (like me) who want more.
“almost a hundred years of hard maths and conceptual dead-endery has left the world of theoretical physics pretty much none the wiser”: much what I’d concluded, so thanks for the more expert frankness. So, since Clerk Maxwell, Einstein and Planck, it’s either been i-dotting and t-crossing, or fruitless fannying. What’s missing: more evidence, an insight of genius, a genius of insight, what? P.S. does it matter?
dearieme: Hmm – wasn’t expecting to comment on this angle of the post, but what the hell…
I wasn’t being entirely fair to the discipline, in all honesty. There is lots of good work being done, particularly by those people who have given up (or never started) on the reductionist road to the Theory of Everything, but it tends to be dull, and so doesn’t get any press – good examples are in Condensed Matter theory, on things like high temperature superconductivity. On the TOE side, there are two problems. Firstly, no-one has come up with any theory that is elegantly simple, that explains away the current gaps, that can be explained in simple and accurate terms to a layperson, and that therefore almost seems by its nature to be self-evidently correct. That’s partly a problem of incremental progress, rather than a big-bang revolutionary breakthrough. Secondly, the theories that we do have that may work and explain what is going on in the margins are essentially untestable at present, and will probably remain so for decades, if not longer. In science, there is always an interplay between theory and experiment, and sometimes you find that one massively outpaces the other, and it takes some time for the two to get back in synch. In physics at the moment, the theory is decades ahead of the experimental.
Does it matter? Tough one. I’d say yes, because theoretical breakthroughs tend to be accompanied by technological marvels, as the price for confirmation that what we think is true actually is. But who’s to say what is round the corner? It may be that we’re reaching the margins of what we can physically engineer (at least in the near future) now that we’re looking at very extreme limits of the behaviour of matter and energy. Or it may not.
I think constablesavage highlights the pointlessness of just stating ‘people are basically selfish bastards’. You need to say ‘and’, because otherwise it leads nowhere.
If we look at human evolution, a large part of the success of the species over other species was co-operation. You could argue this was ultimately a selfish act but included in ‘these selfish acts’ are acts of altruism between the un-related or even between different species.
As constablesavage argues, it is selfish for him to want an egalitarian society. Selfishness can be developed into a long term strategy that sees further than just the ‘end of one’s nose’ or ‘the family’ or whatever. Selfishness can mean totally different things to different people. Co-operation can be a ‘long term selfish’ ideal, which in effect renders the concept of selfishness redundant. So that leaves you arguing for ‘short term’ advantage over ‘long term’ advantage, I prefer ‘long term’ advantage. By the way, Andrew, you haven’t replied to my response on the German PR thread.
Interesting that a couple of you conflate ’selfish’ with ‘evil’ or ‘wicked’.
Well, it was one I’d prepared earlier & I didn’t want to try and rework it in case the whole thing fell apart in my hands…
If anything, the selfishness of people would point towards more limited government and greater freedom, as a recognition that government can never overcome people’s inate desires for any length of time. And if anything, that makes a more egalitarian society less achievable, because there will always be selfish bastards (like me) who want more.
Having said which, I do think that ‘[most] people are [mostly] good’/'[most] people are [mostly] bad’ is a more fundamental opposition than ‘selfish’/’unselfish’, for reasons which I think you’ve just demonstrated. To say that people are inherently selfish, to the point of ignoring or undermining collectivist government action, and that this will tend to result in inequality, is ethically neutral: you could argue from there that society needs strong traditional institutions, or that society needs the privatisation of everything, or that society needs to be left as it is, or that society needs a revolution. To say that people are inherently bad rules out a couple of these (the second and fourth, oddly enough).
Neil: I think constablesavage highlights the pointlessness of just stating ‘people are basically selfish bastards’. You need to say ‘and’, because otherwise it leads nowhere.
Not so. It just doesn’t lead anywhere you’re interested in going. This doesn’t surprise me in the least bit.
If we look at human evolution, a large part of the success of the species over other species was co-operation.
And here’s me thinking it was opposable thumbs and intelligence…
You could argue this was ultimately a selfish act but included in ‘these selfish acts’ are acts of altruism between the un-related or even between different species.
This is awfully vague, Neil, even for you. Which acts of altruism are you referring to? And are you an evolution-denier now? Never heard the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’?
Co-operation can be a ‘long term selfish’ ideal, which in effect renders the concept of selfishness redundant.
Yes and no – this is partly the point of my hierarchy: Self > Immediate Family > Neighbouring Community > City > Country > God.
Asking people to break that chain for any sustained period will not work. Co-operation is only really possible at the lower levels (family, community) for any serious length of time, in the absence of a serious external threat like war, of course.
This doesn’t render the concept of selfishness redundant. I suspect you feel uncomfortable with the notion that people are generally selfish, which is probably partly because you equate it with being ‘bad’ in some way. Feel free to clarify if you think anyone is interested.
Phil: Well, it was one I’d prepared earlier & I didn’t want to try and rework it in case the whole thing fell apart in my hands…
Actually, I wasn’t referring to you – I should be more explicit when I reference people, but I’m a lazy commenter.
To say that people are inherently selfish…is ethically neutral.
Yes, and I don’t think that axioms have to be ethically non-neutral to be valuable. There are plenty of other reasons besides ethics and morality for making political choices – pragmatism being a reasonable example.
I’m also not sure that having oppositional axioms is helpful – to me, they should be self-evidently true, or as close as possible to that, and the oppositional nature means there is some dispute, unless one side is really ridiculous. I think that ‘most people are inherently good’ vs. ‘most people are inherently bad’ would probably split pretty equally amongst the population if you surveyed it (or at least, there would be a significant minority agreeing that most people are bad). That’s partly why I posted this – I wondered if people on the other side of the political divide had a strong view on what their own fundamentals were. Interesting then that a couple of them are only interested in what follows, rather than where it comes from…
Interesting my axions:
Happiness is Good, the purpose of life.
You cannot tell what will make people happy a priori.
From this my fairly extreme liberalism, and dislike of illiberalism, flows.
___I suspect you feel uncomfortable with the notion that people are generally selfish___
What utter rubbish, the vast majority of people live their lives respecting other people and do not just think of selfish needs for themselves or their family. Just look at the millions who take part in voluntary organisations helping others or for that matter support a rise in taxes despite being high earners. This is just the Thatcher ‘no such thing as society’ argument. Well I’m afraid Andrew, most people have utterly rejected that, even the Tories try and distance themselves from it.
___And here’s me thinking it was opposable thumbs and intelligence…___
Without huge levels of co-operative action the human species (and quite a few other species), would have disappeared.
___Which acts of altruism are you referring to? And are you an evolution-denier now? Never heard the phrase ’survival of the fittest’?___
As you know so little about evolution, I’ll quote Richard Dawkins’ answer to that one from his book ‘The selfish gene’ which explains the concept of ‘survival of the fittest’, (a concept totally misunderstood by right wingers).
“Critics have occasionally misunderstood ‘The selfish gene’ to be advocating selfishness as a principle by which we should live! Others, perhaps because they read the book by title only or never made it past the first two pages, have thought that I was saying that, whether we like it or not, selfishness and other nasty ways are an inescapable part of our nature. This error is easy to fall into if you think, as many people unaccountably seem to, that genetic ‘determination’ is for keeps-absolute and irreversible…There is no reason why the influence of genes cannot be reversed by other influences.”
Examples of altruism in nature are manyfold but the gambling game ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ covers them all, a quote from Dawkins again;
“many wild animals and plants are engaged in ceaseless games of prisoner’s dilemma, played out in evolutionary time.”
For those who don’t know the rules, they are as follows;
There are 2 players and a banker who adjudicates and pays out winnings.
Each player can either COOPERATE or DEFECT by placing a card face down. The moves are effectively simultaneous and so neither side can see what the other is doing. There are four possible outcomes.
1. We both COOPERATE. The banker pays each of us $300. This respectable sum is called ‘reward for mutual cooperation’.
2. We both DEFECT. The banker fines us $10, ‘punishment for mutual defection’.
3. You COOPERATE, I DEFECT, the banker pays me $500 ‘temptation to defect’, and fines you ‘the sucker’ $100.
4. You DEFECT, I COOPERATE, the banker pays you the temptation payoff of $500, and fines me, the sucker, $100.
The name comes from the dilemma faced by prisoners. Do they ‘grass’ to potentially shorten their sentence in case their accomplice has ‘grassed’ on them or do they keep their mouths shut and hope their accomplice does the same so they both get off? The principle is the same.
In a one-off example there is no way of knowing you can trust the other player, so rationally you have to DEFECT, but life is more like what is called an ‘iterated prisoner’s dilemma’. Which is just the same game repeated over and over. Under this repeated game the best strategy is what’s called ‘tit for tat’. Which is simply ‘always co-operate on the first move, then copy the opponents previous move from then on’. This is the strategy that won the most in a computer simulation of various strategies.
More importantly than this is when these strategies were run to find an ‘evolutionary stable strategy’, the nasty or ‘majority defect’ strategies were extinct after 1000 generations (only 1 ‘nasty strategy’ survived 200 generations.
Even assuming an open system and by continually introducing ‘nasty strategies’, nasties soon disappeared under a tit for tat environment. Infact the only strategies that could successfully infiltrate tit for tat were EVEN more co-operative strategies. These ‘extra nice’ strategies were however reduced by introducing nasty strategies. This ‘majority co-operative’ strategy is what is observed in nature. Dawkins has got a whole chapter on this if you are interested in the details.
Neil: I don’t know what impresses me more – your belief that you can argue maths with a theoretical physicist, your attempt to patronise based on a very shaky grasp of game theory and evolution gained from reading one book from the popular science section, or your generally poor comprehension of the English language. You still seem to confuse ‘selfish’ with ‘nasty’. This is a misunderstanding of what ‘selfish’ means. In the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, a selfish strategy (i.e. one that maximises individual reward) is one that retaliates when the other player defects, one that doesn’t defect until the other player does, one that forgives once the other player cooperates again, and one that doesn’t seek to outscore the other player. But when all is said and done, life isn’t really like the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, because the choices we make are not generally that simple, and the payoff matrix isn’t constant over time. If life were a series of identical choices of exactly that structure, the results would be more useful. Changing the structure of the payoff matrix produces games with different conclusions, like Chicken, where the equilibrium is a dominance/submission hierarchy rewarding behaviour you really wouldn’t approve of.
That said, we’re off topic discussing evolutionary biology and game theory on this thread, so I suggest you take it to your own blog if you want to carry on the discussion. Googling ‘evolutionary game theory’ might be a good idea as well before you really embarrass yourself…
I wondered if people on the other side of the political divide had a strong view on what their own fundamentals were. Interesting then that a couple of them are only interested in what follows, rather than where it comes from
May I propose a couple of meta-axioms?
Edwards’ Meta-Axiom 1: Axioms are, well, axiomatic; debate doesn’t induce anyone to modify their starting axioms, only – very occasionally – to abandon them or adopt new ones.
EMA2: Axioms tend to provoke argument – but argument is not debate. Argument starts with the restatement of opposing axioms, then degenerates. Argument doesn’t change minds. (This is the point that Dawkins doesn’t get, of course. “You believe what? But that’s stupid! It’s obviously stupid! Can you hear me? I said it’s OBVIOUSLY STUPID!” And repeat.)
EMA3: The balance of a debate can (sometimes) reflect the merits of the ideas being discussed – but the balance of an argument around axioms tends to reflect the existing balance of adherence to those axioms.
You’ve started the bidding with “people are mostly selfish – except that they’re not sometimes, but they’re still selfish underneath”. Which, in this society, is about as controversial as “you should always wear trousers if you’re a bloke, unless you’re Scottish or something”. I’m an old hippie pinko, which means that the axioms on which my political beliefs are based are something of a minority taste in this society – even more so now than when I was growing up. (And I’m old enough to remember being told to go back to Russia.) Putting them up for debate would be little more than putting up a KICK ME sign – even here. So thanks, but no thanks.
Phil: I can understand that, and I’d agree with most of what you’ve said. I wasn’t trying to provoke argument, just trying to get a feeling for where people are coming from. So what the hell – a failed experiment. I’ve had my share of those before.
You’re not arguing with me, Andrew, you are arguing with Richard Dawkins. He quite clearly statesl;
“Critics have occasionally misunderstood ‘The selfish gene’ to be advocating selfishness as a principle by which we should live!”
Which forgive me if I’m wrong, but that seems exactly what you are arguing.
It’s not me comparing selfish with nasty, it is Richard Dawkins;
“Others, perhaps because they read the book by title only or never made it past the first two pages, have thought that I was saying that, whether we like it or not, selfishness and other nasty ways are an inescapable part of our nature. This error is easy to fall into if you think, as many people unaccountably seem to, that genetic ‘determination’ is for keeps-absolute and irreversible…”
I’m afraid life IS exactly like the prisoners dilemma game. As Richard Dawkins puts it;
“many wild animals and plants are engaged in ceaseless games of prisoner’s dilemma, played out in evolutionary time.â€Â
If selfishness is about a majority who perpetually co-operate as ‘tit for tat’ strategy tends towards, then I think it rather rends your idea of selfishness redundant. Like I argued before, if selfishness (in your terms) includes acts of altruism then what exactly are you arguing.
The Dawkins chapter covers the basic strategy of game theory that won Robert Axelrod (in collaboration with W.D Hamilton) a nobel prize in 1982. Life is a non-zero sum game. As Dawkins states;
“So, it is natural to ask whether his [Axelrod’s] optimistic conclusions-about the success of non-envious, forgiving, niceness-also apply in the world of nature. The answer is yes, of course they do.”
Off topic, Neil. Take it to your own blog. Nice appeal to authority though. Very convincing.
I should also add that repeating yourself doesn’t make it any more true.
As you totally mis-represented what I quoted, I found it necessary to re-iterate.
Your new tactic seems to be to refuse to address the valid points I made.
You say ‘tit for tat’ strategy is a selfish strategy but it is a ‘default co-operative’ strategy. It’s opening move is always co-operative, after which it just copies the other person’s previous move.
As Phil E points out, if you include co-operation and altruism as selfish behaviour (as you seem to do), your argument appears meaningless.
Explain why using game theory to show this is off topic?
As you totally mis-represented what I quoted, I found it necessary to re-iterate.
Actually, I pointed out where you had misunderstood game theory. You repeated yourself in the absence of any actual knowledge or understanding on the topic.
Explain why using game theory to show this is off topic?
You haven’t used game theory. You have quoted a book that you clearly don’t understand.
You say ‘tit for tat’ strategy is a selfish strategy but it is a ‘default co-operative’ strategy.
It is selfish in that it maximises personal gain. The ‘altruism’ that emerges is a side-effect of each player attempting to play the game using the best personal strategy. Co-operation can emerge from selfish motives. This is a point you fundamentally misunderstand, because you equate ‘selfish’ with ‘nasty’.
As Phil E points out, if you include co-operation and altruism as selfish behaviour (as you seem to do), your argument appears meaningless.
I am not making an argument. I am stating an axiom. You are assuming an argument.
Now, a final warning: this is off-topic. Take it to your own blog or I will have to close the comment thread. ‘Debating’ with you is utterly pointless, as you are incapable of reading what someone else has written and responding to the points they have actually made. Life would be far easier if you took your own special brand of logic elsewhere.
People are neither basically good nor basically evil. They are just basically people.
Andrew, there really is no need to resort to personal insults.
If you are just stating an axiom that is not an argument for anything. What is the point of the thread?
Sorry, Neil. I hadn’t realised I’d insulted you. Perhaps if you re-read the original post, you will understand the point of the thread. Call it a know-thine-enemy piece, if you like.
People are basically co-operative. Any political act that requires a person or group of people to deviate from this for any serious length of time is doomed to failure.