Quote:
Originally Posted by .Alex.
We're not. The mathematically optimal approach is a mixed strategy having an emphasis on reciprocity. The most successful ones seem to be tit-for-tat based with a moderate forgiveness/mercy element built in to them. Makes a lot of sense to me.
Absolutely. I wrote about this earlier.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DVaut1
The human psyche is pretty complex. Also there might be more toxins in the environment (e.g., lead, parasites) than we realize. We're necessarily creatures of our upbringings, our experiences, our circumstances and that influences our politics, of course, but also our ability to be better even when we know better. It's not in all of us.
And so: the expectation that people can simply do better when they know better (consider smokers, people who are overweight, addicts, whatever) perhaps does lack a certain bit of pity and may be ultimately impractical.
No one is going to be able to tell you what to do with your brother in law, and I would certainly not suggest you patronize him by listening quietly while he says a bunch of crazy right winger ****, and you may be absolutely righteous in cutting him out of your life or whatever you have planned. Your mileage for whatever life throws at you may vary. I ain't asking you to break bread with a bunch of Nazis here.
BUT, I will say this, forgetting any individual atomized decision about this relative or that friend: our best and most durable political outcomes almost certainly must achieve a certain level of popular consensus. The left, people who believe in social justice, people who want a better world apart from depravity and and viciousness, they're going to have to find a path to detente, to forgiveness, to redemption for people who were once deplorable, who got caught up in a fascist fervor, who perhaps should have known and been better and should be ashamed they weren't, but will be hard-pressed to admit it. People who were apathetic and had the capacity to care. People who should have been accountable but skated by on privilege.
How you go about this process personally is your own business and almost uninteresting but I would bear this in mind that collectively, there is no successful mass political movement that doesn't at least sometimes look the other way and allow failed people into its midst. And there are very few perfect people among us, and perhaps very few genuinely good.
Perhaps your family is irredeemable; and if they are, no one will remember or care how you treated them, really. If you join their ranks, it's a different story, but the idea that there's an invisible audience who will care about whether you tell your brother in law to **** right the **** off or tolerate a dinner with him for the sake of family serenity is fallacious; the audience is you and surely only you. And mind you, I'm not arguing you tolerate a bunch of deplorable types. That's your moral calculation to make. I'd just remind that there is almost no hopefully future, no set of good outcomes that is possible WITHOUT, frankly, some measure of forgiveness and redemption for people who should have done better. And the art of winning them over might be bound up in how we let them save face without accepting any of their bull****. And I'd never seen anyone be able to easily save face after they've been told to **** the **** off.
BUT, and this is the critical BUT: Tucker Carlson and the rest of the Fox News punditocracy are absolutely ****ing irredeemable, it's not who I'm talking about here, and if you are irredeemable and you have a huge audience and spread nihilist dehumanizing bull**** on a nightly basis and you make a highly lucrative career off of it, yeah burn the guy's ****ing house down, don't sweat that.
We should make the penalties for small errors like voting for Trump or being fascist-curious very light to non-existant but make the penalties for being like chief propaganda minister for an authoritarian state absolutely catastrophic. well named is correct that this is obviously a very crude, simplified heuristic but effectively an easy way to consider how to behave.