Read this, all of you
by Tom • Sep 21st, 2007 at 8:51 am •
It is not often that I read something that leads me to comprehend people in general and societies in particular so much better than it can only be called an epiphany. I’m not going to even hint at what the article below says, since I don’t want any judgments going in–it’s too important.
Jonathan Haidt interview from 2005.
Thanks so much to Vox Day for pointing me to this.
Comment by Seneca the Younger on 21 September 2007 at 10:09 am:
Jonah Goldberg says some interesting stuff and links to a bunch of other people talking about this.
Comment by Allan Niemerg on 21 September 2007 at 10:53 am:
Reading this seemed very familiar to me, and then I realized that I had read some of his work before:
When morality opposes justice
http://cbdr.cmu.edu/seminar/Haidt.pdf
Comment by Phil on 21 September 2007 at 11:41 am:
I don’t think he’s entirely right, but he’s definitely onto something. His ideas definitely resonate with some of my own personal ones. Damn but I wish I could have a week where I was free of other obligations and could concentrate on seriously writing something; I think it would take that long to fully untangle the threads of thought I have about morality and write about it coherently.
I think he’s definitely right when he says that for almost all people almost all the time, we form our moral judgments emotionally and then rationalize them. I think he’s also right in identifying that there are built-in, evolution-based properties of the human animal that form the basis of those initial judgments. Where I think he goes off course is in asserting that there are just 4 of these built-in pillars and they’re all equally important. I think there are many, that they are far from having equal weight in our mental processes, and, significantly, they are not all positive. In fact, I see the definition of the moral advancement of civilization as the progressive suppression of more of the bad stuff.
Comment by kittent on 21 September 2007 at 12:05 pm:
I picked up the last copy of The Happiness Hypothesis while I was at lunch. Bill found the last copy they had, because the paperback is out and they were sending the hardback back to the publisher.
I just started The Black Swan. He used the phrase “The map is not the territory” in the prologue and the first paragraph of the first part justifies my habit of buying books.
I’m happy.
Comment by tet on 21 September 2007 at 12:13 pm:
Took the test that Jonah was talking about:
3.8 Harm
3.4 Fairness
3.3 Loyalty
2.5 Authority
1.5 Purity
The high score for Authority concerns me.
Tom
Comment by Hanno on 21 September 2007 at 5:06 pm:
4.6 Harm
4.9 Fairness
3.0 Loyalty
1.6 Authority
1.6 purity
Interesting, but the questions weren’t exactly all that good and a 6 point scale is highly irregular. A more useful scale would be 5 point with the center being neutrality. A 6-point scale doesn’t allow that sort of ambivalence or uncertainty.
Comment by J. Prescott on 21 September 2007 at 6:37 pm:
I scored relatively high on everything, but I think that the test lacked some nuance. For example, the following orders question was a little weird. For example, if my commanding officer commanded me to do something that I disagreed with tactically or strategically, I would probably go along with it. If the command was “bayonet that child” or “wipe out the village of the old and young children,” probably not. But I guess the test overall wasn’t that bad.
Comment by J. Prescott on 21 September 2007 at 7:25 pm:
1 caveat…”relatively high” is the three range.