Malice, Stupidity, or Egalité Irréfléchie?

Anyone have ideas about how to easily and convincingly falsify pjeby's and/or lionhearted's hypotheses about psychology?

Humans just seem to function better when they can realistically believe they are behaving in ways that are admired by others in their social circle.

(Tangential:) I'm not sure, but I think a big perk of the existence of the LW community is that to some extent it is such a social circle.

Good analysis.

Changing your peer group/reference group is generally helpful for making changes. Also, most people report having a difficult time changing others' minds around them in their current peer group.

I do wonder if there's other solutions besides changing your peer/reference group. I guess, keeping your ambitious changes quiet/lowkey for a while while starting... other thoughts?

To me, the simpler explanation is loyalty signaling. A change in behavior represents a change in alliances, so your friends/family are trying to make sure you're not unintentionally signaling your desire to break alliance with them, to join another group. They don't want to lose an ally, or for your nonconforming behavior to negatively affect their status with others within your common social circle.

Isn't this simply another hypothesis? It sounds nice, sure, but I think it would take more evidence than you've given to promote this from plausible to probable.

Btw, in at least some self-help and entrepreneurial circles this phenomenon is well-known, and persons involved in efforts to change or improve themselves are urged to seek out peer groups in which their desired/target behaviors are normal, desirable, and praiseworthy... as well as to expect/be prepared for negative reactions from current peer groups.

This certainly differs from my mom's advice, which is essentially to be a member of at least one "average" peer group, in order to remain grounded in reality. Her idea is that if you abandon your current groups and join some other one, you'll begin to think like them whether their ideas are right or not. Thus, it would be a bad idea to, say, flee Grand Rapids and run off to Santa Clara, where everyone wants to live forever in robot bodies. I might become one of those crazy people.

So, fearing that A is signalling a desire to leave the group, B discourage A's new behaviour; to counteract this, A seeks out a new peer group, increasing the odds that A does end up leaving the group. So B is engaging in classic self-defeating behaviour ... unless, of course, the peer pressure succeeds.

Unfortunately, B's response to A may well be rational, if B expects other Bs to react the same way, leading A to leave the group unless B can make the peer pressure on A to conform strong enough. The various Bs are in something like the prisoner's dilemma with each other; (if I knew my catalogue of game theory better, I'd be able to say just what they're in).

(How did "malice" ever seem like a good explanation in the first place?)

Why not? Are you saying humans are never systematically glad at another's misfortune or loss under certain conditions? I would say humans often are. LWers probably come from societies and situations where this kind of behaviour is less prevalent than the human norm.

In fairness, you did some raise some good points as well, and I'll address those -

The OP describes a phenomenon that everyone knows about.

Indeed. And yet, one many people can't explain. Which is why it's worth thinking about.

The OP then suggests that "stupidity" (a word left undefined) and "malice" aren't good explanations.

I defined stupidity in the post as "impl[ying] poor judgment," meaning going through a conscious faulty thought process. I could have been more explicit about this definition at the expense of pace and brevity, by making the post more heavy and harder for casual readers to digest, without adding significantly more clarity. I suppose it could have been defined explicitly, but I don't think the piece becomes stronger if I do. Rather, I think it becomes weaker for the vast majority of potential readers.

(How did "malice" ever seem like a good explanation in the first place?)

Some of this behavior certainly seems mean-spirited and malicious to people. Many examples available if you honestly can't think of any.

A single word is never a good explanation for an aspect of human psychology.

True, yes, but you must consider audience. There's a reason, unfortunately, why popular magazines are more popular than science journals. Style does matter, which always must be a consideration if you're tackling a complex theme and want your piece to be accessible to a wide variety of people.

The OP then suggests that the "egalitarian instinct" is an explanation. The OP gives little explanation for this explanation,

It has been written about extensively. Again, this wasn't a PhD thesis. In fact, it's been written about extensively here on LessWrong before, notably "Tsuyoku vs. the Egalitarian Instinct" by Eliezer. I suppose I did assume some familiarity with the material that other readers might not have, and could have cited that as relevant prerequisite reading.

no mention of other possible explanations (no acknowledgment of the existence of other possible explanations),

Again, because I was formulating a hypothesis, not writing a thesis.

I appreciate you taking the time to reply and elaborate on your thoughts, but there might be a difference in goals and expectations here. I've attempted to write a series of observations, reason through them, and come up for one explanation for a not-fully-understood phenomenon.

It's already stimulated some good discussion. I'm happy with that result and it has, thus far, done what I intended. I think a longer, weightier, more formal post would have been less effective at the intended goal of putting out observations, a hypothesis, and stimulating some discussion.

Mostly fair points, but you missed the scope of this post. It's a 550 word post that marks a series of observations and a hypothesis.

It has stimulated some good discussion about alternative reasons that this phenomenon exists.

This is not how you go about constructing a model of human psychology.

Your idea of the target scope is off. It was not an attempt to construct a model of human psychology, which would be more fit for a PhD thesis than a 550 word post. It is a series of observation, reasoning, and a hypothesis.

Another possibility, though I am not so sure how aware people would be of this: if you differ in lifestyle from other people, you might grow apart (less time spent together etc.). Keeping the same lifestyle could ensure that you remain friends.

Maybe, but the same kinds of reactions happen even when trying to, say, quit eating donuts.

Heck, there's stories of people from particularly poor backgrounds getting insulted for trying to get a college education. "Don't act weird" might explain radical behavioral shifts, but doesn't explain everything.

It doesn't seem to me that these are really exclusive hypotheses. If standing out incurs serious social costs, it would imply a general opposition to deviating from the norm.

I have to doubt any explanation that hinges upon preserving the status of members of one's social group though; I occasionally find myself pressured to conform by people who aren't friends or even associates, who I am likely never to meet again.

I'm a native speaker. "Égalité Irrefléchie" sounds ankward. I preffer "Égalitarisme irréfléchi" (back to male gender by the way). The first would be "thoughtless equality", while my version would be "thoughtless egalitarianism". But frankly, neither sound very good.

We have an approaching idiomatic term however: "Nivellement par le bas". Which quite literally means achieving equality by lowering upper bounds instead of raising the lower ones. It calls the image of cutting mountains off instead of filling the valleys. This expression is widely used as an applause light when talking about schools. (Generally, it goes like: "Let's help failing children in such and such way", then "But that method will slow everyone else down! That's a nivellement par le bas!")

(Oh, and please don't forget the diacritic in Égalitarisme or "Égalité". French typography requires it)

(Also the first E is really É, but one is allowed to omit diacritics on uppercase letters.)

This (allowance to omit) comes from the days of mechanical typewriters, many of which could put accents on lowercase letters but not on uppercase ones. There's really no reason for it now (or ever, in handwriting).

Thanks, amended title accordingly.

I posit that this would be a classic case of reasoned egalitarianism, and therefore does not fit the given profile outlined for "unthinking egalitarianism"

More generally, it may be that your unusual choices benefit you, but impose costs on your friends and family. Unusual choices are less "safe" - they can move you farther from ordinary outcomes, and the results are harder to predict. Compare the stereotyped conflicts between parents and their teenaged kids:

Teenager (as seen by parents): "Later, olds! I'm going out with my poorly socialised friends to get wasted and hook up (maybe someone will get pregnant). Woo!"

Parents (as seen by teenager): "Stop there! Ve have ways of preventing your fun! You are never allowed to do anything that you enjoy, ever!"

You do make a good point - especially re: failed businesses.

Though I have also observed the opposite far more frequently. A good example would be when I want to go to bed at a sensible hour and I have friends telling me "oh, you can just stay up just this once". The friends gain by my staying up (more people to party with), but don't have to suffer the consequences (eg the lack of my ability to work effectively the next morning). I think this disparity in expected outcomes means they are free to try and "tempt" me to break my new habit that is mildly inconvenient for them.... because they don't have to pay the heavy costs.

At a minimum, if one person in a household is on a significantly different sleeping schedule, it's going to be logistically more difficult-- everyone else is going to need to be careful about noise for extra hours, and people will have less time with each other.

This hypothesis is at least falsifiable- one can test whether the degree of a peer group's opposition to one of their members changing depends substantially on these sort of inconveniences.

To me, stupidity can apply to both types of thoughtlessness as well, but I feel, a moral difference between these two types of stupidity ("stupid" vs. "unreflective"):

If people were being stupid, but knew that their stupidity was causing problems you could condemn them for not being willing to learn more. When people accuse others of being racist, they frequently say "that's ignorant". In this case, ignorance is considered inexcusable. The offender hasn't done their due diligence.

On the other hand, if people aren't even aware that they have some shortcoming that they should be alleviating, i.e. by being unreflective, it's harder to hold them morally accountable. It seems to be normal and perfectly acceptable in modern society not to have ever considered the reasons for your values in the cases that lionhearted brings up (such as junk food, drinking and sleeping).

Can you distinguish thoughtless egalitarianism from stupidity a little more?

Good question. "Stupidity" can mean a variety of subtly different things in English. I was drawing to a distinction between "poor judgment" and "never having consciously thought about it at all."