First, thank you for engaging with my essay(s). Second, the conscientiousness point was over-stated and has been corrected.
I agree, modern elites are status insecure. That’s why they cling to various markers of status so fiercely. The point that ibn Khaldun and I are making is not that competition for status and resources goes away, but that it becomes inwardly focused (so corrosive) rather than outwardly focused (so cohesive).
The notion of efficient self-deception is not an explanation on its own. Efficient self-deception is a persistent feature of human existence. The question is what are the patterns and levels of efficient self-deception in a society. If the levels of efficient self-deception are rising, and are particularly high among elites, that will have consequences.
But I agree, lots of other things are going on. For instance, if one wants to identify a period most analogous to our own, then it is the Christianisation of the Roman Empire in the C4th and C5th. We see very similar factors: collapse of a religious order, massive increase in bureaucratisation, flipping of the gender-orientation of sexual mores.
Christianisation feminised sexuality (no sex outside marriage for anyone: sex-as-commitment being the dominant female orientation, given our remarkably biologically expensive children, for obvious evolutionary reasons). The Sexual Revolution masculinised sexuality (sex as cathartic pleasure). A pattern dating apps have ramped up.
So, the patterns and levels of efficient self-deception in our society is only part of the pattern.
"analysis of group cohesion as intensifying in harsh or threatening environments, but degrading from peace and sedentary living, fits with this."
Isn't it somewhat more complex than this because of all the niche and fractured micro cultural identity groups and the internet. In Turchin's "War and Peace and War" he references Khaldun to talk about high asabiyya required to form an empire and the meta-ethnic frontier that brings this about for a society. Don't people on the left and the right currently have high in group asabiyya because the meta-ethnic frontier is now digital? You can go online and join any group and with social media you will see trolls and detractors of your in group everywhere even if they are very small in number. Noah Smith made a comment that he has never experienced much if any anti-semitism in real life, and yet he can see people espousing it online regularly to no end. Martin Gurri made a similar point with regard to the fascism/anti-fascism discourse to say the number of actual Nazis living in America might number somewhere around 3000, in a nation of over 300 million.
Neither I nor ibn Khaldun think folk stop being groupish. The question is whether competition for status and resources is inwardly focused (so corrosive) or outwardly focused (so cohesive). Obviously, there is always some level of both. The question is how strongly the balance is in one direction or the other.
The use of migration as an elite weapon against the local working class in the US, UK and France, but way less so in Australia or Canada, is one factor in how that balance is operating in various societies.
The bit about conscientiousness in the academy is a little odd to me. I recall Caplan pointing out that being good at school (good grades, don't get in trouble, keep at it through degrees) is a signal of high conscientiousness. So while high conscientiousness might make you more likely to be conservative, it also makes you more likely to be an academic. Considering only something like 1-2% of Americans have PhDs, it doesn't seem like a stretch to say that the university system selections for conscientiousness by accident but also filters out conservatives.
I am the last person to laud the virtues of academics, but a certain willingness to jump through hoops set forth by others and grind through long term projects tends to be one. Of course, vices like dishonestly, cowardice etc. are also endemic.
Lorenzo's essay also highlights for me why he is not my favorite writer: fuzzy thinking. Consider this sentence:
Instead, [hyper-norms] come from coordinating status, social leverage and cognitive identity in prosperity-and-technology-cocooned societies flooded with information.
What, exactly, does that mean? What does "coordinating status" entail? Are we changing the status of the people? How does that work outside of the group doing the coordinating? Are we coordinating people with the same status? If so, isn't that just a version of the notion of class identity? How does the notion of hyper-norms differ?
To me, inventing hyper-norms seems like reinventing group membership signals. "All good people believe these 5 non-obvious and probably wrong things. If those people don't believe them, they are not good people, and we can attack them." Usually the impracticality of the notion is the point; everyone wants to believe useful things, and has to at some level, but only the truly ascended can afford to believe madness. That's how the group differentiates insiders from outsiders.
The conscientiousness point was over-stated and has been corrected.
The previous essays developed the points about status, social leverage and cognitive identity.
Prestige opinions provide a common status game. Such status games are then used for coordinated social leverage: that right thinking people should get the social goodies and those not invested in the same status-through-prestige-opinions should not. We see this continually. (That Kevin Williamson was an unacceptable person, because wrongthinker, to have the status of writing for The Atlantic was a case in point.)
Prosperity-and-technology-cocooned means folk are insulated from consequences. Modern societies are multiplying such social niches.
That modern societies are flooded with information is fairly obvious. If you see yourself as “one of those who knows”, if that is your cognitive identity, that makes the need for marker-of-smartness-and-virtue opinions much stronger.
Hyper-norms are, as stated, norms that are asserted against the constraints of structure, to the extent of attempt to de-legitimise serious considerations of trade-offs. (E.g. defund the police, chosen identity trumps biology.) That is very different from just having a shared opinion.
That's the thing though, "just having a shared opinion" isn't what group membership signals are about. What matters is that the signal is costly. The cost, and the willingness and ability to accept it, is what separates the true believer from the mere poser. Signaling dedication and "seriousness" is what gets you your status within the group.
Once you identify the group members, and importantly the outsiders, you can channel resources towards members of the group while limiting free riders and other leakage. That is why you need such high cost signals, to keep people from pretending to be part of the group for their own benefit. (Funny how you can identify as male/female and it is true, but not identify as black. The signal for that group is more costly.)
The status game has been the same for as long as humans have existed. The beliefs might be more damaging now than in most times, but signaling via costly beliefs has always been a human activity.
Rather, Lorenzo is reinventing group membership signals, an idea that has been around for a while. Robin Hanson did a lot of writing on the topic 10-15 years ago, and Iannaconne wrote about how religions are basically clubs providing club goods to the benefit of members, while costly beliefs and rituals and requirements served keep out free riders, in the late 90's. "Hyper-norms" seems to me to be a restatement of the idea.
I am not reinventing the idea of group membership, I am examining specific dynamics and developments thereof. The analogy with religion, including the use of specific doctrines as markers of belief, so membership, has been, and will continuing to be a theme of the essays.
One of the problems the “woke” have is prestige opinions are, in themselves, low-cost signals. Hence the push to up the cost to make them better signals. Such as David Henderson’s “luxury beliefs”. When I get to Trans, I point out that falsity can be an excellent signal.
The point about hyper-norms is the resistance to trade-offs. It is a secular way to sacralise discourse. The intense moralisation but contempt for facts about reality is really quite striking.
You're doing great work, Lorenzo, and "Hyper-norm" is a good general phrase for what you're describing.
But it's Rob, not (Libertarianish) David, that is the Henderson who is most associated with the also good phrase "luxury beliefs", like your prestige opinions.
Brink Lindsay's "hyper-individualism" is another good phrase.
Because we don't have an agreement on what phrases to use for a trans woman (a male who wants to pass for a female), we have difficulty being clear about the issues and the reality. [I'd like q'he & q'her & q'woman & q'man, but don't expect them.]
"Resistance to trade-offs" *** (Ding Ding Ding) is the huge problem with the magical thinking of so many secular moralists.
Lorenzo replied to your [7} questions earlier, about what it means. {1}
But he doesn't mention the difference between group membership signals, and delusions of reality. Most group membership signals are implicitly, and many explicitly, about us and "our group", not a universalist truth about reality.
The hyper-norm claims are group signals, as you say, but also claims about reality. False claims; a man can get pregnant, for instance. Those elites who make this claim implicitly coordinate to raise the status of others making that claim, and lower the status of those who oppose it - and especially lower the status of those who question it. {2} The elites, not the normals, ARE changing people's status (like Larry Summers getting fired as Harvard President for speaking the truth). {3}
Because the elites now control media, academia, and gov't bureaucracy, they are willing and able to punish the out groups {4}, and among those with similar status, those more willing to punish others have been rewarded with more status. {5}
Previous versions of class identity {6} did NOT include righteous morality outside of a religion. There was contempt at inferiority against "those people", but morality was constrained to the Christian religion among the Christianized WEIRD elites who dominate the world.
The hyper-norm difference {7} is that the Woke are claiming the sacredness and unquestionability of a (pseudo-) religion without God, nor sacred texts, nor even acknowledged norm-creating leaders. Had Lorenzo used "sacred-norms" instead, that might have made it clearer, yet perhaps less general or more objectionable.
The cost issue {8, not quite a question} of a signal is also an important difference, because there is little to no cost in accepting a norm, only in rejecting one norm in favor of another. Part of a hyper-norm is that most, or all the costs are against those who oppose it, not those who propound it and support it.
These are my current answers and they're related to Lindsay's loss of faith and Hanson's recently rekindled thinking about what is "sacred".
Plus your back & forth with Lorenzo was excellent. Hope you make the Mar 3 discussion at 12:00 noon CET.
To your point 1: Religious claims are explicitly universalist truths about reality. I mean... that's the whole point. Even if the claims are delusions and false, that is at best besides the point, and often actually the point of the belief. It is easy to believe things that are true and beneficial to you (not always the same thing!) so if a norm or belief is going to confer status and signal your dedication to the group and all that, it needs to be costly to you or so blatantly wrong that outsiders are not likely to share the belief by accident.
To your point 2: Yes, the elites are changing status but within the group of elites. Changing status within the group is the whole game. The trouble for us normal people is that too many want to be in the elite club, and so take the tenants of their religion as things to follow.
(I would note that I am not thrilled with using "elites" to define the group here. That is a little too general, when the phenomenon is more limited to leftists who see the far left so called Church of No Redemption ideology. That is the ideology that has been taking over academia, media and government, not to mention many businesses. Many elites are members, but not all elites, and not all members are elites.)
Now, you are correct that the followers of the Church of No Redemption have taken over many secular organizations and are pushing out non-believers and punishing those who do not conform. That is perfectly normal behavior for dominant religious groups, or even other non-religious clubs/cabals.
To point 6 and maybe 7 (I think) Wokeism or whatever is a religion I think. There are many religions other than Christianity (and Christianity itself is many religions) and a fair few don't require gods, sacred texts (although Wokeism seems to have some), or religious service proper. However, the religion as club good model doesn't necessarily require religion, but rather it uses the understanding of clubs that provide services and goods to members but want to keep out freeloading nonmembers to understand religion. It is the exact description of what is going on with the Woke even if you don't want to call them a religion.
To 8: Accepting norms absolutely carries a cost, even if you want to just limit it to the opportunity cost of rejecting another. Part of the cost of accepting the so called "hyper-norm" of say believing men can get pregnant is the fact you don't actually believe it. You have to ACT as though it were true, whether or not you BELIEVE it is true. This is why so many otherwise good leftists get caught out and burned at the proverbial stake: they mouth the "truths" their religion requires, but they don't believe them fully, and sooner or later that cognitive dissonance makes them say something they come to regret. Or are made to regret, at least.
Thanks again for your long reply and engagement :)
Question for you: What's the Mar 3 discussion? Is there somewhere to get more info?
…The causes of decadence, of mental and moral deterioration? Too long a period of wealth and power, selfishness, love of money, and the loss of a sense of duty."
Really? Is this really how empires end? How many examples of this can you point to? If this really does happen, I suspect it is rare. Show me.
I am beginning to understand that all of this is inevitable. We are improved and then degraded by the cycles in which we find ourselves. Age of Decadence is surely what we are within right now as we write.
First, thank you for engaging with my essay(s). Second, the conscientiousness point was over-stated and has been corrected.
I agree, modern elites are status insecure. That’s why they cling to various markers of status so fiercely. The point that ibn Khaldun and I are making is not that competition for status and resources goes away, but that it becomes inwardly focused (so corrosive) rather than outwardly focused (so cohesive).
The notion of efficient self-deception is not an explanation on its own. Efficient self-deception is a persistent feature of human existence. The question is what are the patterns and levels of efficient self-deception in a society. If the levels of efficient self-deception are rising, and are particularly high among elites, that will have consequences.
But I agree, lots of other things are going on. For instance, if one wants to identify a period most analogous to our own, then it is the Christianisation of the Roman Empire in the C4th and C5th. We see very similar factors: collapse of a religious order, massive increase in bureaucratisation, flipping of the gender-orientation of sexual mores.
Christianisation feminised sexuality (no sex outside marriage for anyone: sex-as-commitment being the dominant female orientation, given our remarkably biologically expensive children, for obvious evolutionary reasons). The Sexual Revolution masculinised sexuality (sex as cathartic pleasure). A pattern dating apps have ramped up.
So, the patterns and levels of efficient self-deception in our society is only part of the pattern.
"analysis of group cohesion as intensifying in harsh or threatening environments, but degrading from peace and sedentary living, fits with this."
Isn't it somewhat more complex than this because of all the niche and fractured micro cultural identity groups and the internet. In Turchin's "War and Peace and War" he references Khaldun to talk about high asabiyya required to form an empire and the meta-ethnic frontier that brings this about for a society. Don't people on the left and the right currently have high in group asabiyya because the meta-ethnic frontier is now digital? You can go online and join any group and with social media you will see trolls and detractors of your in group everywhere even if they are very small in number. Noah Smith made a comment that he has never experienced much if any anti-semitism in real life, and yet he can see people espousing it online regularly to no end. Martin Gurri made a similar point with regard to the fascism/anti-fascism discourse to say the number of actual Nazis living in America might number somewhere around 3000, in a nation of over 300 million.
Neither I nor ibn Khaldun think folk stop being groupish. The question is whether competition for status and resources is inwardly focused (so corrosive) or outwardly focused (so cohesive). Obviously, there is always some level of both. The question is how strongly the balance is in one direction or the other.
The use of migration as an elite weapon against the local working class in the US, UK and France, but way less so in Australia or Canada, is one factor in how that balance is operating in various societies.
https://lorenzofromoz.substack.com/p/the-migration-scam
The bit about conscientiousness in the academy is a little odd to me. I recall Caplan pointing out that being good at school (good grades, don't get in trouble, keep at it through degrees) is a signal of high conscientiousness. So while high conscientiousness might make you more likely to be conservative, it also makes you more likely to be an academic. Considering only something like 1-2% of Americans have PhDs, it doesn't seem like a stretch to say that the university system selections for conscientiousness by accident but also filters out conservatives.
I am the last person to laud the virtues of academics, but a certain willingness to jump through hoops set forth by others and grind through long term projects tends to be one. Of course, vices like dishonestly, cowardice etc. are also endemic.
Lorenzo's essay also highlights for me why he is not my favorite writer: fuzzy thinking. Consider this sentence:
Instead, [hyper-norms] come from coordinating status, social leverage and cognitive identity in prosperity-and-technology-cocooned societies flooded with information.
What, exactly, does that mean? What does "coordinating status" entail? Are we changing the status of the people? How does that work outside of the group doing the coordinating? Are we coordinating people with the same status? If so, isn't that just a version of the notion of class identity? How does the notion of hyper-norms differ?
To me, inventing hyper-norms seems like reinventing group membership signals. "All good people believe these 5 non-obvious and probably wrong things. If those people don't believe them, they are not good people, and we can attack them." Usually the impracticality of the notion is the point; everyone wants to believe useful things, and has to at some level, but only the truly ascended can afford to believe madness. That's how the group differentiates insiders from outsiders.
The conscientiousness point was over-stated and has been corrected.
The previous essays developed the points about status, social leverage and cognitive identity.
Prestige opinions provide a common status game. Such status games are then used for coordinated social leverage: that right thinking people should get the social goodies and those not invested in the same status-through-prestige-opinions should not. We see this continually. (That Kevin Williamson was an unacceptable person, because wrongthinker, to have the status of writing for The Atlantic was a case in point.)
Prosperity-and-technology-cocooned means folk are insulated from consequences. Modern societies are multiplying such social niches.
That modern societies are flooded with information is fairly obvious. If you see yourself as “one of those who knows”, if that is your cognitive identity, that makes the need for marker-of-smartness-and-virtue opinions much stronger.
Hyper-norms are, as stated, norms that are asserted against the constraints of structure, to the extent of attempt to de-legitimise serious considerations of trade-offs. (E.g. defund the police, chosen identity trumps biology.) That is very different from just having a shared opinion.
That's the thing though, "just having a shared opinion" isn't what group membership signals are about. What matters is that the signal is costly. The cost, and the willingness and ability to accept it, is what separates the true believer from the mere poser. Signaling dedication and "seriousness" is what gets you your status within the group.
Once you identify the group members, and importantly the outsiders, you can channel resources towards members of the group while limiting free riders and other leakage. That is why you need such high cost signals, to keep people from pretending to be part of the group for their own benefit. (Funny how you can identify as male/female and it is true, but not identify as black. The signal for that group is more costly.)
The status game has been the same for as long as humans have existed. The beliefs might be more damaging now than in most times, but signaling via costly beliefs has always been a human activity.
Rather, Lorenzo is reinventing group membership signals, an idea that has been around for a while. Robin Hanson did a lot of writing on the topic 10-15 years ago, and Iannaconne wrote about how religions are basically clubs providing club goods to the benefit of members, while costly beliefs and rituals and requirements served keep out free riders, in the late 90's. "Hyper-norms" seems to me to be a restatement of the idea.
I am not reinventing the idea of group membership, I am examining specific dynamics and developments thereof. The analogy with religion, including the use of specific doctrines as markers of belief, so membership, has been, and will continuing to be a theme of the essays.
One of the problems the “woke” have is prestige opinions are, in themselves, low-cost signals. Hence the push to up the cost to make them better signals. Such as David Henderson’s “luxury beliefs”. When I get to Trans, I point out that falsity can be an excellent signal.
The point about hyper-norms is the resistance to trade-offs. It is a secular way to sacralise discourse. The intense moralisation but contempt for facts about reality is really quite striking.
You're doing great work, Lorenzo, and "Hyper-norm" is a good general phrase for what you're describing.
But it's Rob, not (Libertarianish) David, that is the Henderson who is most associated with the also good phrase "luxury beliefs", like your prestige opinions.
Brink Lindsay's "hyper-individualism" is another good phrase.
Because we don't have an agreement on what phrases to use for a trans woman (a male who wants to pass for a female), we have difficulty being clear about the issues and the reality. [I'd like q'he & q'her & q'woman & q'man, but don't expect them.]
"Resistance to trade-offs" *** (Ding Ding Ding) is the huge problem with the magical thinking of so many secular moralists.
Lorenzo replied to your [7} questions earlier, about what it means. {1}
But he doesn't mention the difference between group membership signals, and delusions of reality. Most group membership signals are implicitly, and many explicitly, about us and "our group", not a universalist truth about reality.
The hyper-norm claims are group signals, as you say, but also claims about reality. False claims; a man can get pregnant, for instance. Those elites who make this claim implicitly coordinate to raise the status of others making that claim, and lower the status of those who oppose it - and especially lower the status of those who question it. {2} The elites, not the normals, ARE changing people's status (like Larry Summers getting fired as Harvard President for speaking the truth). {3}
Because the elites now control media, academia, and gov't bureaucracy, they are willing and able to punish the out groups {4}, and among those with similar status, those more willing to punish others have been rewarded with more status. {5}
Previous versions of class identity {6} did NOT include righteous morality outside of a religion. There was contempt at inferiority against "those people", but morality was constrained to the Christian religion among the Christianized WEIRD elites who dominate the world.
The hyper-norm difference {7} is that the Woke are claiming the sacredness and unquestionability of a (pseudo-) religion without God, nor sacred texts, nor even acknowledged norm-creating leaders. Had Lorenzo used "sacred-norms" instead, that might have made it clearer, yet perhaps less general or more objectionable.
The cost issue {8, not quite a question} of a signal is also an important difference, because there is little to no cost in accepting a norm, only in rejecting one norm in favor of another. Part of a hyper-norm is that most, or all the costs are against those who oppose it, not those who propound it and support it.
These are my current answers and they're related to Lindsay's loss of faith and Hanson's recently rekindled thinking about what is "sacred".
Plus your back & forth with Lorenzo was excellent. Hope you make the Mar 3 discussion at 12:00 noon CET.
Thanks for your lengthy reply.
To your point 1: Religious claims are explicitly universalist truths about reality. I mean... that's the whole point. Even if the claims are delusions and false, that is at best besides the point, and often actually the point of the belief. It is easy to believe things that are true and beneficial to you (not always the same thing!) so if a norm or belief is going to confer status and signal your dedication to the group and all that, it needs to be costly to you or so blatantly wrong that outsiders are not likely to share the belief by accident.
To your point 2: Yes, the elites are changing status but within the group of elites. Changing status within the group is the whole game. The trouble for us normal people is that too many want to be in the elite club, and so take the tenants of their religion as things to follow.
(I would note that I am not thrilled with using "elites" to define the group here. That is a little too general, when the phenomenon is more limited to leftists who see the far left so called Church of No Redemption ideology. That is the ideology that has been taking over academia, media and government, not to mention many businesses. Many elites are members, but not all elites, and not all members are elites.)
Now, you are correct that the followers of the Church of No Redemption have taken over many secular organizations and are pushing out non-believers and punishing those who do not conform. That is perfectly normal behavior for dominant religious groups, or even other non-religious clubs/cabals.
To point 6 and maybe 7 (I think) Wokeism or whatever is a religion I think. There are many religions other than Christianity (and Christianity itself is many religions) and a fair few don't require gods, sacred texts (although Wokeism seems to have some), or religious service proper. However, the religion as club good model doesn't necessarily require religion, but rather it uses the understanding of clubs that provide services and goods to members but want to keep out freeloading nonmembers to understand religion. It is the exact description of what is going on with the Woke even if you don't want to call them a religion.
To 8: Accepting norms absolutely carries a cost, even if you want to just limit it to the opportunity cost of rejecting another. Part of the cost of accepting the so called "hyper-norm" of say believing men can get pregnant is the fact you don't actually believe it. You have to ACT as though it were true, whether or not you BELIEVE it is true. This is why so many otherwise good leftists get caught out and burned at the proverbial stake: they mouth the "truths" their religion requires, but they don't believe them fully, and sooner or later that cognitive dissonance makes them say something they come to regret. Or are made to regret, at least.
Thanks again for your long reply and engagement :)
Question for you: What's the Mar 3 discussion? Is there somewhere to get more info?
"The final age is an Age of Decadence.
…The causes of decadence, of mental and moral deterioration? Too long a period of wealth and power, selfishness, love of money, and the loss of a sense of duty."
Really? Is this really how empires end? How many examples of this can you point to? If this really does happen, I suspect it is rare. Show me.
I am beginning to understand that all of this is inevitable. We are improved and then degraded by the cycles in which we find ourselves. Age of Decadence is surely what we are within right now as we write.