Catalonia and the Overton Window
post by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2017-10-02T20:23:37.937Z · LW · GW · 20 commentsContents
20 comments
The thing with Catalonia strikes me as a case of "Arguments sure get weird when the truth is not inside the Overton Window of either side."
Historically, populations have usually been the subjects of governments, owned by them and farmed by them. The Catalan population is the property of the government of Spain. To let subgroups defy this system of property and take possession of themselves and the land on which they reside would greatly destabilize the current world system. I'm not sure it would be a good thing for anyone if states and counties seceded into ever-smaller units and elected the usual run of even more nitwit governments, especially if it was only the democracies that started doing that.
But you can't say that Catalans are the property of the people of Spain, subject to the command of Spain's bureaucracy and control system including its votes of the larger population of Spain in which Catalans will never be a majority, and that Spain has enough force to keep them as that property and we'll pragmatically respect that. We can't just admit we think it's better for the international system if we do things that way in general, so that we have fewer, larger national governments which we think is a public good. That goes against the mythology of democratic self-determination, and governments deriving their power from the consent of the governed.
So instead of appealing to it being best for everyone if the international order stays stable instead of fragmenting into ten thousand pieces, and this making it wiser not to disturb the current tacit policy that governments are allowed to keep whatever population-properties they currently own whether those people consent to it or not...
...people be like, "But the secession referendum is ILLEGAL! According to the CONSTITUTION OF SPAIN!"
I don't think I really understand this, in the sense that I don't think I could pass the Ideological Turing Test of somebody who can think that while keeping a straight face. One government passes a law saying that a population is not allowed to have their own government--and people are capable of getting worked up and indignant about that population trying to get it anyway, because that means for Catalonia to have an independence referendum is ILLEGAL?
I mean, really? This might make sense if they were voting to independently legalize marijuana or something. But the whole point of this vote is exactly to withdraw their "consent of the governed" from the Spanish Constitution and be governed by a different constitution instead. How on Earth are we supposed to be morally indignant about the illegality of that according to the Spanish Constitution? Where on Earth do people suppose a higher legitimacy could come from, to say what constitution is illegal for someone to consent to be governed by? There's superior military force, sure, but to be indignant about the illegality of somebody defying that?
There's more people in the USA than in Spain. Can we, like, amend our Constitution to say that Spain is part of the US and doesn't get to hold separate independence referendums unless the whole population of the US-plus-Spain can participate? Should one then be terribly indignant if Spain tries to hold a separate independence vote when that is ILLEGAL under the CONSTITUTION OF THE US-PLUS-SPAIN which has, DEMOCRATICALLY by a MAJORITY vote of that whole population, determined that the US+S includes Spain?
My best guess as to what people could possibly be thinking is this:
For them, the Law is a reified thing.
The Law in Spain isn't, like, a thing that a bunch of politicians, elected by a Spanish majority of Spain-plus-Catalonia, got together and wrote to govern a bunch of Catalan people. It's not the word and opinion of one government, that thinks it owns a populace, which declares that populace is not allowed to vote to form a different government, backed up by superior military force. It's the Law, and the Law is above everything, even governments.
Also, the Law is whatever currently has police and a military backing it up. That's how we can tell what the Law is, the Law has police. It's not that the police make the Law, it's just a sign by which one's brain detects the Law.
And then that Law is this reified thing floating in the air above everyone, and it can make a Catalan independence vote every bit as wrong-because-it-is-ILLEGAL as jaywalking.
Whereas the USA doesn't have police in Spain right now, so obviously the US Constitution is not the Law in Spain, so it just feels silly to imagine the US claiming that it had some law or other that gave it ownership of Spain. That would just be one bunch of people saying that they're a majority of themselves plus a smaller bunch of people, and declaring they held a democratic majority vote determining that the smaller bunch of people aren't allowed to have their own government. The two cases are obviously completely different! The US+S isn't even an ontologically basic unit that incorporates Spain in an ontologically basic way!
I'm guessing that's what those people are thinking on that wordless level?
But I don't think I could write the internal dialogue of a character who thinks like that, and have them be a convincing human being.
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comment by john-lawrence-aspden · 2017-10-03T00:47:19.743Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
To let subgroups defy this system of property and take possession of themselves and the land on which they reside would greatly destabilize the current world system.
Even speaking historically, this is not clear. The pre-twentieth century transition of the various territories of the British Empire to Dominion status stabilised the system greatly.
Essentially peaceful transitions from centrally controlled colony -> self-government for Canada, Australia, South Africa, Rhodesia and New Zealand, and the resulting states remained tightly allied.
The two places where dominion status wasn't given freely by the Empire, America and Ireland, were the two where there was "destabilization". If those two had been given their own governments peacefully when they demanded it, we might today be part of one vast friendly Commonwealth, and a large amount of unpleasantness might have been avoided.
And that in a world where everyone quite reasonably expected their neighbours to attack at any time, and splitting a state was seen as a disaster from a defensive point of view.
comment by Unnamed · 2017-10-02T22:56:17.546Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A sketch of an argument towards ITT-passing:
It's sometimes useful for agents to be able to make agreements which place some restrictions on their ability to later opt out of the agreement. And it's sometimes useful for a collection of agents to be able to act as if it was a single agent.
So, depending on how you apply those sometimeses, it might make sense for Catalonia to act as a single agent (even though it is a collection of 7.5 million agents) and for "Catalonia" to pay attention to the procedures within its existing agreements with the other parts of Spain (the Constitution of Spain) when deciding whether to opt out of those agreements.
And if, like most people, you implement many decision theoretic and game theoretic considerations by getting upset about rule violations, then you can throw in some all caps and exclamation points and be like, "But the secession referendum is ILLEGAL! According to the CONSTITUTION OF SPAIN!"
That leaves the question: how is Catalonia's position within Spain different from Spain's position within the hypothetical US+SPAIN?
Spain / the people of Spain never agreed to any US+SPAIN deal. But Catalonia / the people of Catalonia at least arguably did make an agreement with the rest of Spain - 95% of Catalan voters approved the referendum in favor of the 1978 Spanish Constitution, and Catalonia has acted as part of Spain for many years.
↑ comment by Raemon · 2017-10-02T23:07:27.331Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This is a reasonable argument that might be close to what some people are thinking (and as a "sketch" seems fine), but I think when you're trying to pass an ITT with the sort of person literally saying "But the secession referendum is ILLEGAL!", phrasings like this:
"It's sometimes useful for agents to be able to make agreements which place some restrictions on their ability to later opt out of the agreement."
Feel like they're fundamentally missing the mindset of the person. (i.e. they might be implementing the game theory as you describe, but are almost certainly doing so so subconsciously, and I doubt that describing their position in terms of game theory probably wouldn't lead them nodding and saying "yes, this guy gets it!"
(This is part of a general concern I have about steelmanning and ITTs that focus on translating the argument into "something that makes sense to you" instead of on actually presenting the argument the way the speaker really intended)
↑ comment by Unnamed · 2017-10-03T20:23:06.445Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There is a broad set of practices involving is something like "understanding other people's reasons". We currently don't have good terminology for carving up that space. The two terms that have caught on, ITT and steelmanning, refer to pretty specific activities within that space and the thing-to-do often isn't either of those.
In this case, I read OP as saying that he didn't see any overlap between a) the set of relevant considerations for deciding whether to support or oppose Catalan secession and b) the set of things that might cause a person to emphasize that the referendum was illegal according to the Constitution of Spain. My comment was an attempt to gesture at something that seemed like it might be in the intersection of those two sets. It was intentionally left relatively vague - the point is to see if there's something there, not to flesh out precisely what it is or to capture what exactly is going on in the person's head.
This seemed like a useful move to make within "understanding other people's reasons" space, in this context. It is not an attempt at the ITT, and as far as I know doesn't have a concise label. The OP framed his post in the context of the ITT (saying something like: I don't even see how I could get started with constructing an ITT entry), so I did too (saying something like: well here's a sketch of an argument which you can use to get started on constructing an ITT entry).
comment by Chris_Leong · 2017-10-02T22:15:14.621Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Welcome back!
I've heard that one of the reasons why states don't have an option to leave the US is that if they did, every time there was a policy that a particular state really did not like, they could just threaten to leave. A lot of the time they wouldn't legitimately gain from leaving or actually want to leave, so this would arguably be a kind of blackmail. It would greatly complicate the legislative process and allow policy decisions to become even more distorted than politics.
comment by EniScien · 2022-05-12T17:47:06.422Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Um, have you ever heard of unauthorized rallies? When people go out peacefully and without weapons, in particular, specifically against the government / president, maybe the governor or even the mayor, but at the same time they must obtain permission from the city hall to hold a rally, and if you go against the government they will not give you permission, then you will be beaten with clubs, then put in a paddy wagon, fined and given 15 days of arrest, but if you receive this administrative article several times, it will turn into a criminal one and you will be sent to prison. And all because by going to a peaceful rally against the government without the consent of the government, you violate the Law, become a criminal (like Martin Luthor King). I heard the arguments of real supporters of this position, and they sound something like this, that you are destabilizing the situation, and everything should be done within the framework of the law, for example, if you really have supporters, then you need to secretly elect the majority of your deputies and do everything legally. And if you don't like the way the government works, then you should move. Although actually now, when I needed to specifically describe these arguments, I understand that in fact I also have problems with the ideological Turing test ...
comment by michael_vassar2 · 2017-10-08T16:55:22.251Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Just a reminder that police haven't always been a part of 'government', and that 'law' has a history of existence independent of 'government'. During historic times, most of the population of the world has usually been owned and farmed, but most of the people who have ever lived have not lived that way. Also, most of the actual history of the world, as measured by what gets recorded, has not been the history of owned and farmed populations, but rather, the history of free populations, in frontier territories like the US, in city states and 'free cities', and of course, among aristocratic or international elites. In America and Europe, the modern state is fairly new. Passports arose during WWI. So did large amounts of the economy passing through federal bureaucracies. I think that one can plausibly argue that in America, proper law Ended at that time and was replaced by 'the interpretation of the Common Law' as articulated by Pragmatist philosopher Oliver Wendal Holmes.
comment by john-lawrence-aspden · 2017-10-03T00:17:48.972Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I have missed your clarity of mind Eliezer, it is very good to hear your voice again.
I'm not sure it would be a good thing for anyone if states and counties seceded into ever-smaller units and elected the usual run of even more nitwit governments, especially if it was only the democracies that started doing that.
I'm not sure of this either, but democracies don't seem to fight much, or even want to, and it's not clear that small countries are more prone to electing nitwits, so what are we worried about?
I'd be just as worried by the thought of the world's democracies unifying.
It seems to me that democracy is even more appalling than usual as a form of government for states that have two distinct tribes. The majority tribe ends up imposing a one-party state on the minority, with all the injustice and corruption that that implies.
Consider e.g. Zimbabwe. But also England and Ireland. Unity was very bad for the Irish, and separation has been unambiguously good for both countries.
comment by john-lawrence-aspden · 2017-10-03T01:00:49.024Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Suppose that in the recent referendum, Scotland had voted to leave the UK. Does anyone think that the situation would have been more stable if England had attempted to keep Scotland by force?
comment by slightlyfunny · 2017-10-09T16:25:23.180Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Surprised to find this post in the DemocracyPost.
comment by DragonGod · 2017-10-04T03:54:14.348Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Well this is surprising... I never expected to see you here.
OTOH, I get the sense that not only did you seemingly fail to understand your opponents, it seems like you didn't even try. There is a reason why the ITT is recommended. If you can't pass the ITT, the least you could do is steel man their position; as it is, you've presented a laughable strawman. Or as the black belt Bayesian says:
If you’re interested in being on the right side of disputes, you will refute your opponents' arguments. But if you're interested in producing truth, you will fix your opponents' arguments for them. To win, you must fight not only the creature you encounter; you [also] must fight the most horrible thing that can be constructed from its corpse.
I think that's the minimum standard of epistemic rigour you should hold yourself to--least of all because you preached it yourself.
↑ comment by gjm · 2017-10-04T11:23:50.380Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It is very rarely helpful to say just "You have misunderstood and strawmanned the opposing position". Either the person you're addressing is trying to understand correctly (in which case you could have helped by saying something about what you think is wrong with their presentation of the position) or they aren't (in which case you are wasting your time engaging at all).
comment by Elo · 2017-10-03T01:04:45.107Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Boo politics. I don't care who you are - People go funny in the head when talking about politics.
I am on the other side of the world from some government-reorganising event in some country that I had to google just to figure out what the first sentence of this post was about.
First up: This should not be on Lesswrong.
Second up: more context needed if you want to teach me something useful here.
Third up: This writer on lesswrong once suggested that if you want to talk about politics, don't use current affairs examples...
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2017-10-03T09:38:55.163Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The fact that you had to google Catalonia to see what the episode is about suggests that the political pressure of being Blue or Red isn't strong in this example.
↑ comment by Conor Moreton · 2017-10-04T07:41:46.999Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This was an insight I found keen.
↑ comment by Chris_Leong · 2017-10-03T01:48:25.181Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Adding to what @lahwran said. One of the reasons why behind the Great Less Wrong Collapse was that everyone moved to their own blogs and areas. Part of the reason was that some people wanted to write about politics or write more casual posts where they relax their epistemic standards, ect. So the blog feature was created to bring them back onto the website, but for this to work people had to be able to post the things that they would have normally posted on their own site. I think though that there needs to be a better way to visually distinguish between blog posts and the frontpage.
If you look at the Frontpage Posting and Commenting Guidelines, you'll see that: "Note that this guide doesn't apply to your personal LW blog - you can do whatever you like there. This post talks about the norms and epistemic standards encouraged on the frontpage of LessWrong".
↑ comment by the gears to ascension (lahwran) · 2017-10-03T01:28:34.098Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This isn't on the main board, it's just in his personal blog section. People saw it in their new post notifications (that's where I saw it) or possibly other places, but it isn't in Frontpage Posts.
I predict the moderation team will be fine with it because it discusses the reasoning behind the points. I'm not sure, though, and I agree that this is less of a LessWrong Thing(tm) and more of just a blog post, like he has been posting on facebook lately. I think it's good that he posted one of these somewhere besides facebook.
↑ comment by Ben Pace (Benito) · 2017-10-03T06:01:18.456Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I affirm Chris_Leong’s and lahwren’s replies.
To explain a little further: I think of the frontpage more like a physics journal than hacker news; the ideas should build, and be able to be built upon, rather than relevant for just a few weeks.
In particular, this post was an edge case, and almost a fit for the front, as it used recent events to discuss some general points about how people respond to the news. However, to read this post you totally need a bunch of recent knowledge, and so it won’t be readable in two weeks.
But yup, totally fine and dandy for someone’s personal LW blog.