The Intellectual Dark Web should help expand the moral circle and shrink the extremism circle
Civilization progresses by expanding the moral circle over history. We care not only about our immediate family and village, but also about people in our nation, or group of nations like Europe, and even people in other richer or poorer countries.
In the Western democratic and industrialized countries, we managed to expand rights for women, ethnic and religious minorities, and more recently also for sexual minorities. Couple of countries also progressed in the animal rights issues, for example ending the classification of some animals as things. Other countries abolished some old laws against blasphemy and thus expanded freedom of speech and expression.
If we imagine what will our grandchildren in the future perceive as moral failing of our times, one can probably mention farm animal suffering, homelessness, mental health, drug war and massive incarceration, extreme poverty, and the suffering of war refugees (as distinguished from economic migrants in relative poverty, more on that later).
There might be even more important issues under the umbrella of preserving future generations and thus fighting existential and extreme risks, also called XRisks. These might be preventing extreme climate change; or biotechnology, AI and nanotechnology gone wrong; along with the more traditional threats of nuclear wars or accidents, and genocides.
Tribalism prevents us from expanding the moral circle, but we need Goldilocks conditions of moderate but not extreme ideologies — left, right, conservative and liberal
In my previous article I wrote about shrinking of what I called “the extremism circle”. It draws on the idea of Triple Threat by Maajid Nawaz. He means extremists from 1. the far right (neo-Nazis, alt-right advocates of ethno-states and ethnic superiority, etc.), 2. from above (extremist theologians inciting hatred and violence), and from 3. the far left (extremists advocating violence and espousing the bigotry of low expectations and overplaying the identity politics). I added the fourth element — extremists 4. from the underground, organized crime and gangs (that seem to be quite connected also to terrorism, often pursue power over politicians and use violence and threats).
But in my previous article I was wrong to think that one shall aim to reduce the extremism circle to zero, to something that some people call Radical Centre politics, or the rationality of technocratic experts. No, shrinking it too much would be a mistake as in the very center there is basically nihilism. But expanding the circle too much, into the extreme gives us totalitarianism of mafia states.
The core concept that I was missing is the sense of a good measure, what we call Goldilocks conditions (not too cold and not too warm) or “being in the zone”, or having “a flow state of mind” while working on sufficiently challenging, but not too threatening challenge. This is what Buddhism might call the middle way.
More technically this is the zone of not too much chaos and not too much order, called the Ashby Space in complexity science. The similar idea is of a good measure in relationships and network science is the idea of weak ties (one finds e.g. life partners more easily through weak ties — acquaintances, friends of friends). Similar idea was more recently presented in regards to social change and social networks by a mathematician Benjamin Allen who says that the interactions on social networks are not enough, and the structure of networks matters for propagation of cooperation, and that local ties and physical meetings are necessary to propagate positive global behavior (Campaigning on social media is not enough and might even weaken the efforts for change).
Complexity researcher Bill McKelvey writes how (too) strong ties where everyone is connected with everyone else can create “a complexity catastrophe” (technical term) of a groupthink, but the optimal level of complexity creates “the rugged landscapes, which lead to the highest system-wide fitness levels”.
I didn’t know what a complexity catastrophe means some days ago, so don’t worry if you got lost on some of the examples — basically it is the same principle of having a sense of balance, or a sense of a good measure, or the Goldilocks principle of not too cold and not too warm, or what recently got a mainstream attention in the person of Jordan Peterson and his insistence on the balance between order and chaos (as we need both).
But what does it exactly mean keeping the ideology in the Goldilocks zone?
The most controversial would be the Goldilocks zone for the fourth “underground” dimension of crime — here my attempt of an answer would be e.g. not jailing kids for one joint, or ending the drug war or having slight exceptions to traffic rules for some occasions and some groups. Maybe being a slight libertarian at times — meaning e.g. not calling police on street vendors that you might suspect of not having a license.
On the Left a good example is a political ideology called social democracy or democratic socialism (e.g. SPD in Germany). Because it consists of two words that indicate a certain trade-off: achieving the goals of universalism and demonetization of certain services that are considered rights (e.g. 2 different healthcare systems in Britain and Continental Europe) but doing it through democratic means (as opposed to totalitarian ones). To help people distinguish the phenomena of 1. online call out culture, 2. extreme identity politics and e.g. 3. various forms of Left politics democratic socialism, here is an interview with a Swedish social democrat Bo Rothstein criticizing too much identity politics. Here is an author of Kill or Normies book, Angela Nagle on Zero Books podcast, a critical theory publisher with Marxist influences, answering her critics that called her out online on Twitter and misrepresented her views or blamed her for being sympathetic to the so called alt-right.
The broader point is that e.g. Sam Harris or Jordan Peterson are not the only people getting hate online, even Marxists get the same, and therefore we as humans are more united and more similar than we tend to think. So blaming Marxism or postmodernism alone is not enough and probably wrong (they are often contradictory terms as explained by ContraPoints, a trans-sexual youtuber, who also gets hate online from some far left elements for e.g. opposing the notion of cultural appropriation). The problem might be a lack of attention due to social media addiction, shrinking media market, weak economy with a whole generation that might not own homes, and some resulting virtue signaling, tribalism and game theory that might resemble a Mexican standoff. Podcasts and youtube seems to be the technology that disrupts this suboptimal media landscape and allows people to engage in deeper learning and discussions that results in good faith attempts to steelman the opponent viewpoints.
One might ask but what about Marxism? Doesn’t it lead always to a totalitarian big state and Orwellian society. One might view Marxism just as one ideology and influence on social democracy that needs to be kept in balance and within the boundaries of liberal democracy and the rule of law. But to steelman Marxism would mean just acknowledge its main point — economic reality matters — for example generational poverty means kids hear much less words from their parents when they grow up, and it later shows in their learning ability.
So if people like Jordan Peterson want to draw a red line around the notion of equity — one needs to understand that this too is a question of a good measure and balance. I think the red line shall be drawn around extreme identity politics where you start to judge people, or order people, and even prosecute people according to their origin and class — for example business people, owners of big farms, some other minorities or ethnicities, including what some people call white privilege.
But one needs to again be sensible and understand that there are historic dynamics that are also technically called “rich get richer dynamics” and this creates the famous 80/20 Pareto distribution and power laws. The Atlantic illustrates this point perfectly in the article “The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy”:
“If you are starting at the median for people of color, you’ll want to practice your financial pole-vaulting. The Institute for Policy Studies calculated that, setting aside money invested in “durable goods” such as furniture and a family car, the median black family had net wealth of $1,700 in 2013, and the median Latino family had $2,000, compared with $116,800 for the median white family. A 2015 study in Boston found that the wealth of the median white family there was $247,500, while the wealth of the median African American family was $8. That is not a typo. That’s two grande cappuccinos. That and another 300,000 cups of coffee will get you into the 9.9 percent.”
So if the Intellectual Dark Web wants to steelman the arguments of their ideological opponents they don’t need to discard science — just understand that in many areas the most value comes from signaling, as opposed to intrinsic value (e.g. driving Tesla vs. driving from A to B), and virtue signaling is important. This means a need for a greater epistemic humility — acknowledging the fact that we have much to learn scientifically (Pareto science versus Gauss science) but also emotionally (trying to feel through the lived experiences of others).
Goldilocks conditions is one useful idea, and Pareto science is the second one
At the beginning I asked how to expand the moral circle and make people more sensitive towards the suffering of farm animals, or towards global catastrophic risks that might wipe out not only us but also our future generations, or towards global extreme poverty and local generational poverty.
And I proposed an argument, that in order to expand the moral circle, we need to reduce tribalism, and shrink the extremism circle with four sides — far right, far left, above (theocracy and totalitarianism) and underground (gangs, organized crime, mafia states).
But I stressed the need for moderation, for staying in the middle way, in the zone, in Goldilocks conditions of not too cold or warm, and keeping a sense of a good measure or balance (all examples of the same concept). Too much ideology might lead to extremism and totalitarianism and too little ideology might lead to nihilism, economism or a technocratic stalemate with no clear, optimistic and definite future (plans and visions).
Then I explained that the red line shall be attacks on liberal democracy as a playing field and space by groups from the left, right, above and underground, that want to overthrow the system through extreme identity politics (as opposed to moderate identity politics). Moderate identity politics is what Zizek calls “tolerating your Neighbour” and practically one can see it when standup comedians make fun about their identities or tell stories about their friends who made fun of their identities. Acceptable identity politics is when groups try to pursue collective action to expand their rights. And it is when people observe “the platinum rule” (treat others as they want to be treated by you) as opposed to the golden rule (treat others as you want to be treated). Then it gets quite simple — if girls call each other “bitches” and they are ok with it, it doesn’t mean that e.g. men can call them that and they are ok with it. Yes, the Overton window keeps shifting in time, and what is politically correct changes. But if it is sensible, charitable, in good faith and moderate, that we can get along.
As the last point I want to address the second concept of Pareto versus Gauss science. Liberals complain often that they observe a certain apocalyptic sect-like behavior on the Left — e.g. the belief that everything is going into ruin, the world will end in climate change catastrophe and the late capitalism will collapse because of rising inequalities. They try to counter that narrative with optimistic visions about science and enlightenment. The recent example is the latest book of Steven Pinker “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress”.
But I want to stress that the both sides are wrong, because they underestimate the positive opportunities of exponential technologies and but also the negative existential risks that go along with them. The problem is in the current paradigm of Gauss science and the absence of thinking in terms of earthquake science, or Pareto science and complexity science with extreme statistics.
In short the far Left sometimes slides towards the unacceptable behavior of “punching Nazis” or “calling everyone who disagrees with their ideas a gateway to alt-right”. It is understandable at some level, because they want to prevent another Holocaust or another second world war. But similar to tsunamis and earthquakes, they are underestimating the threat and fighting the last war. Of course, anyone sensible wants to prevent the next war where 50 million people would die. But the extreme statistics that observe the rare events in earthquake science tells us that we shall be worried even more about the first war that might kill 500 million people, or 5 billion people or even much more than 50 billion people (human extinction event that would destroy the future generations as well). So this is the same thinking that goes with observing earthquakes, there are hundreds of thousands of small earthquakes every year that we hardly observe, but scientists care about several magnitudes larger earthquakes that are rare (e.g. 8’s once in 300 years) but very consequential. Now you see the problem with Pinker’s narrative of ever improving world, and the need for including the Taleb’s concept of (anti)fragility. I write more about the magnitudes of positive and negative events that might occur in short e.g. here.
Exponential technologies might help humanity achieve sustainable prosperity, peace and even help us expand our moral circles. The current tribalism might be a result of new technologies and economic uncertainty that goes in hand with the lack of imagination for a positive and definite future. We need to use concepts of moderation (Goldilocks conditions) and Pareto science to keep liberal democracy safe from its enemies and even expand it and start to dream up positive and definite futures again — as in the moonshot era of the 1960s.
