CapitalistImperialistPig

R: Obama is the most extreme leftist to ever be President of the US. D: You are one ignorant, stupid, racist MoFo* The above sample dialog is probably not the best way to start a mutually enlightening political dialog - unless you consider fist fights to meet that criterion. Haidt, I think, might suggest a reply more like: Why would you say that? * MoFo - believed to be an abbreviation for Mo ss covered Fo ssil.

A special thread for those reading the book, seeing other versions of Haidt's work, or just wanting to make comments on general principles.

One repeated Haidt theme is that our morality makes us team players. Our opinions on a whole range of questions that might seem to be independent are largely determined by what team we see ourselves playing for. Thus opinions on Keynes and Krugman today are largely determined by whether one sees oneself as liberal or conservative. Ditto gay marriage, welfare, civil rights and global warming. Discuss.

Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion is a highly readable yet still scholarly look at the foundations of human morality. His point of view is essentially that of evolutionary psychology: that our moral systems evolved in order for us to live in highly cooperative communities not composed solely of close kin – the only animals who can do that. Haidt describes his starting point as that of essentially a conventional liberal, scornful of conservatives and persuaded that their success was based on fraudulent appeals. His story of scientific discovery, then, is not just a scientific one but of a change of personal perspective, to that of a self-described “centrist” with a lot of admiration for conservative thinkers but not much for the modern Republican Party. He is a story teller, and he weaves together themes from familiar and unfamiliar philosophers – his original major in college was philosophy – to ethnography and especially ex...

Major social revolutions on questions of morality are rare, and we appear to have lived through one quite recently - the transition to widespread acceptance of gay marriage. As such, it provides a natural laboratory for the ideas Jonathan Haidt has described in his book, The Righteous Mind . Gay marriage presents a fundamental collision between the two pillars of liberal morality - care and fairness - and a third fundamental moral module which is much more important to conservatives - the purity/sanctity module. Purity/sanctity can be considered to be concerned mostly with societal "rules of the road," regulations which have an element of arbitrariness to them, like the rule for driving on the right side of the road (in most countries) but are necessary for the smooth functioning of society. Such rules are given moral weight by embedding them in a moral/religious matrix. One effect of having read The Righteous Mind is that I can now articulate the conservative arguments a...

Morality is herd instinct in the individual............. F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! ........F. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra Nietzsche's penetrating insights go exactly to the heart of the matter. He didn't approve of conventional morality. He probably didn't realize it, since such things weren't known in his time, but he wanted people to be more like Chimpanzees or perhaps Lions. That instinct to punish is one of the key elements of human morality - in particular the instinct to punish free riders and others who would prevent group selection from doing its work. Of course human "groupishness" is far more elaborate than simple herd instincts, and requires multiple adaptations that herding animals lack. Haidt tends to call it our "hive" mind, since our social powers go far beyond herds and packs, and only bees and a few others can be considered equally groupish. If Nietzsche had been...

It's easy to conflate the concept of morality with our own personal moral beliefs. That's a mistake, from the standpoint of descriptive moral psychology. If morality was designed by evolutionary processes to permit groups to compete more efficiently with other groups, it's well to remember that our innate morality gives rise to religious and racial prejudice, war, and genocide as well as altruism and other qualities we may regard as more admirable.

“It is inconceivable that you would ever see two chimpanzees carrying a log together.” -- Michael Tomasello, expert in Chimp cognition. Haidt, Jonathan (2012-03-13). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (p. 204). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition. Collective phenomena in micro physics are a property mainly of bosons, which can share the same quantum state. On a larger scale, collective phenomena like galaxies and ocean waves depend on longer range forces like gravity or viscosity which unify the motions of components otherwise disposed to go every which way. The sociological equivalent of bosonization is shared intentionality, the ability of different people to share a common purpose and communicate it to each other. This ability is not shared by any other primate. Shared intentionality is key to any kind of cooperative work, and it plays the fundamental role in Haidt's theory of morality. There is persuasive evidence that there are trigg...

Darwin postulated that their might be both individual natural selection and group selection. With his customary penetration he saw precisely why the notion was problematic and clearly identified the conditions for it to take place. Less careful thinkers ran wild with the idea until the 1966, when George C. Williams wrote Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought . In it, he used a gene centered approach to demolish almost all ideas of group selection, sending them into a long limbo. He was as clear as Darwin on the exceptional circumstances needed for group selection to actually occur, but apparently didn't think they occurred in nature. Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene helped publicize these ideas. Jonathan Haidt argues that precisely the exceptional circumstances Darwin and Williams foresaw occurred in human evolution, and makes a very strong case. Essentially the mechanism needed is one to punish those who aren't team playe...

Nietzsche had a special hatred of the "slave morality" which valued compassion for the poor and oppressed. He attributed it to a sort of conspiracy against the strong, perhaps due to the Jews. He saw the mob rising against the mighty hunter or conqueror. It's a fact that our closest relatives, the Chimpanzees, tend to be very hierarchical, with the Alpha male being not so much a leader as the biggest bully on the block. Human hunter-gatherer societies aren't like that. Instead they are highly egalitarian, without chiefs or subordinates. How did this transition happen? Nobody knows, but there are some clues, including the fact that given the right circumstances humans do form hierarchies rather easily. The biggest clue, though is the way hunter-gatherers deal with those who overstep and bully and dominate. Gossip and shunning is step one. Sometimes the offenders are driven out. Egregious offenders are killed. Haidt discusses the case of a Bushman who was exec...

... in the political wars, at least recently. Haidt plots importance of five "morality modules" against position on the political spectrum from very liberal to very conservative and finds a striking result. Only two of the modules (care, and fairness) are very important to the most liberal, and their importance declines with relative conservatism, while the other three (loyalty, authority, and purity/divinity) increase with increasing conservatism, until all are of essentially equal importance to mainstream conservatives. This fact says Haidt, gives conservatives a built in advantage in that they can appeal to all five of our these root moral modules.

...or anywhere else. Our brains and the brains of many other animals come pre-equipped with modules for recognizing and fearing snakes. and snake like objects. There are lots of other "modules" too, and Jonathan Haidt believes that he has found several that form the basis of our social morality. These modules are templates, not fully formed at birth, and their malleability, he believes, accounts for the variety of our moral systems. The templates themselves appear to be universal, except in pathological cases like psychopaths.

Another tidbit from Haidt: Most psychological studies are done on people who are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, or WEIRD for short. This has resulted in some profound selection biases, especially when you consider that an awful lot of subjects are students at elite universities, and hence the WEIRDest of all.

One of the more surprising findings about political opinions found in Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: ...political scientist Don Kinder summarizes the findings like this: “In matters of public opinion, citizens seem to be asking themselves not ‘What’s in it for me?’ but rather ‘What’s in it for my group?’ ”36 Haidt, Jonathan (2012-03-13). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (p. 86). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition. Perceived self interest seems to be less important than the interest of some group of which one is a member. This finding is a little less startling if you think of political opinions as badges of team membership - public postures, if you will.

Physics seems to be wandering off into domains where I can't follow, such as the pressing question of why there is something rather than nothing, while Lubos has become fascinated with fruit flies , so my interests have turned to morality and the question of how we come by our frequently conflicting moral views. This interest is prompted by Jonathan Haidt's new book: The Righteous Mind, Why Good People are divided by Politics and Religion . It's pretty easy to collect folk theories on the above topic. Liberals are immoral. Conservatives are unevolved, or maybe just dumb. These theories are not too enlightening. Haidt, however, takes a point of view that I find congenial: he studies the questions experimentally and systematically. In particular, he has looked in detail at moral views of peoples and cultures from all over, and experimentally probed how people make moral decisions. The methods are fascinating in themselves, as are the results. I am only about four chap...