At Overcoming Bias, Michael Vassar looks at that age-old mystery of nice guys who are unable to get laid. Part of his proposal is that “nice guys” are people who failed to get the nuances of rules for social interaction. But what’s really interesting is that he works in a mention of atheism, but rather than examining it closely treats it as a casual example whose nature is taken for granted:
The situation with ‘nice guys’ seems to parallel that with ‘atheists’ perhaps half a century ago, when almost everyone in polite society acknowledged God, but didn’t live like they believed in God. Today, almost everyone claims that certain behaviors are proper in men, but most don’t live like they believe this. It was primarily emotionally inept nerds who found it necessary to vocally advocate atheism in the past; and today it is mostly emotionally inept nerds who find it necessary to vocally advocate realistic methods for attracting women.
People who are general outliers in the relationship of anticipation to verbalized belief, that is, people who actually believe in things that other people only believe in believing, may critically need a more sympathetic (and less arrogant) view of the relationship between verbal symbols and real behavior…
I love this idea, about atheists. First, for those not in the know, “belief in belief” is a phrase coined by Daniel Dennett, to tag the problem of religious people seeming not to believe the things they claim to. David Hume had some great lines on this, which I will resist the temptation quote here merely because I have them memorized. I will cite Dennett’s most striking example: some people theoretically believe that God watches them masturbate, and disapproves. But, Dennett asks, “Would you masturbate with your mother watching?” This suggests a picture of religion as a consensual lie, likely accepted for its social function. That’s not a suggestion which should be taken too literally, but it explains a lot.
Next step: the general nature of such practices. Minor acts of dishonesty are integral to human life, ranging from how we deal with casual acquaintances to writing formal agreements between nation states. Steven Pinker has an excellent chapter on this in /The Stuff of Thought/, a version of which can be found at TIME magazine’s website. What didn’t make it into the TIME version is Pinker’s proposal that, while there are several reasons we do this, the most important reason is to avoid mutual knowledge: “She probably knows I just blew a pass at her, but does she know I know she knows? Does she know I know she knows I know she knows?” Etc. Mutual knowledge is that nightmare where, for all intents and purposes, the known-knows can be extended out to infinity. The ultimate example of this has to be the joke “No, it wasn’t awkward until you said, ‘well, this is awkward.’” A situation might be a little awkward, but what’s really awkward is mutual knowledge, created when someone blurts out what’s going on for all to hear (Surprisingly, the ever astute Pinker missed that example.) This is so much a part of the fabric of human life that I can understand the suggestion, recently quoted by Amba, that learning hypocrisy is part of becoming a fully human adult.
The story of the Emperor’s New Clothes is another example of the power of mutual knowledge. This has, incidentally, been a favorite way for critics of religion to think of themselves, from The Courtier’s Reply to the FFRF’s “The Emperor Has No Clothes” award. One model of what’s going on is that everyone knows religion is nonsense, and suspects the nature of the situation, but there isn’t full mutual knowledge. Vocal atheists create this. This would explain why so many of Dawkins’ critics seem enraged by the mere fact that he writes clearly about religion, using words according to their official definitions and ignoring the attempts of liberal academic theology who play Humpty Dumpty with them.
So, in a sense publicly noting that there is no God is a little like saying “this is awkward” in conversation with an acquaintance. I persist in engaging in even worse /faux pas/, like suggesting that current church-state doctrine is incoherent. Still, there’s an important difference: the little twistings of the truth used in social interactions are pretty trivial. But screwing around with something as big as religion, with all the important questions it purports to answer, is screwing around with our ability to have a decent grasp on reality.
If we want more than unreflective pleasure, we need that grasp on reality. Whatever its superficial appeal, plugging in to a machine that will make us happy by pumping illusions into our brain would be a horrible mistake. And in some ways, here, the less serious religions are the worst offenders: rather than asking you to believe straightforward falsehoods like “the world is only 6,000 years old,” you may be asked to give up the idea of truth and give up clear thinking about morality. Being able to think clearly about such things really is worth it, no matter how much spouting gibberish about them may be a useful form of social glue.
UPDATE: I made Eliezer Yudkowsky “sit upright and say ‘Aha!’” I taught Eliezer Yudkowsky something!
Thanks for the link, man. And welcome to all Overcoming Bias readers reading this. Hope you stay awhile.
If you’re going to have a bare typewriter-font webpage, at least reduce the left margin!
Thanks for thinking. I generally agree with your post, but I’m not convinced that minor acts of dishonesty are integral to all human ways of living. Some groups engage in them, it seems to me, MUCH less than others, and while they may not do optimally, they can do reasonably well.
I also think that the supposed “important difference” is largely one of degree and is highly debatable. It is plausible that many sorts of social interactions would run MUCH more smoothly if the prisoner’s dilemma of minor deception could be solved, and is also plausible that theism has large social benefits in at least some contexts, especially among people who have no interest in having a grip on reality in any event, e.g. most people.
Some modes of extremely profitable interaction have historically depended on unusual levels of truthfulness/honesty. Modern capitalism and science come to mind. A major motivation for overcoming bias is the strong suspicion, largely inspired by Bayesianism and the Aumann Agreement Theorem, that equally powerful new institutional possibilities will become available for people who pass further benchmarks of both internal and external honesty. If this is the case, the little twistings of truth that characterize normal social interaction may not be trivial at all.
I would be happy to continue this exchange, please e-mail me if you wish to do so. michaelaruna at yahoo dot com
The idea that there’s some relationship between little and big acts of casual dishonest is an interesting one. The thing for me is, while I dislike the little acts of dishonest in theory, the more I become aware of them the less I see how they can be avoided. There’s a possibility that with the internet, it will be easier to disseminate the tropes of everyday dishonesty faster once they’re noticed, and this could undermine, the practice a great deal. But that’s just a thought, I really have no idea.
I should add that this job, if it happens at all, may end up being a task for comedians rather than intellectuals. There’s some research on humor a friend of mine told me about, but which I have not in fact read, that proposes humor is mainly a matter of pattern recognition. If you think about a lot of comedy routines, a big topic is social interaction, and the little dishonesties that go along with it. It may be in a sense that this is one of the most important roles of comedians, pointing these things out, and if so humanity has been working at that for a long time. It’s just that the internet could accelerate the matter.
I think you have comedians exactly backwards: their purpose is to assimilate people into the culture of lies. Perhaps merely knowing this could allow nerds to use comedians the way that (I suspect) everyone else is using them.
Doug, what makes you think that? Off the top of my head, George Carlin had some great material on euphamisms, and Chris Rock once did a bit on men doing nice things for women mainly in hopes of sleeping with them, but not of course admitting to this. That’s the sort of thing I had in mind with my last comment.
I can’t claim to have a great understanding of how the world works. Mainly I’m trying to present an alternative hypothesis that the evidence also supports. Comedians are common and have always talked about taboos, so it seems extremely unlikely that their activities are about to bring down the current system and more likely that they are supporting it.
People do talk about Carlin differently than other comedians. His discussion of taboos has leaked out of the protected sphere of comedy into the rest of the world and may have damaged them, but I think he’s exceptional. Maybe he who controls the comedians controls the world, but I don’t, and I doubt you do, either. Comedians are (fairly) normal people and probably don’t want to change the world. I’m also skeptical that they know how to. I imagine that they are potentially very powerful in that their audiences are in a different mental state, but I doubt comedians know how to exploit it much. Instead they use their power the way they see other comedians using it, which, I imagine, supports the current system.
So, yes, this is a job for comedians, but I doubt that they either want to do it or know how and I think that the typical act that mentions social lies strengthens them.
Chris, great post. I thought you’d want to know it’s included in Humanist Symposium 22 on my blog, and I declared this post my favorite in the symposium.
Thanks!
This post & discussion is pure awesome. Got here via the Humanist Symposium.
The discussion of comedians is especially interesting. The first one I thought of was Jerry Seinfeld. His whole shtick is pointing out these little social lies. Indeed, that’s frequently what his eponymous sitcom dealt with as well (along with generous helpings of surrealism and farce). I’m reminded of the episode where the main characters bet on who could last the longest without masturbating. That episode completely did away with any of society’s standard pretensions toward self-abstinence (if that’s a word), and took it as fact that all four characters regularly partook in self-pleasure.
But, I don’t think that humor serves as a way of breaking down those mores. My hypothesis is that it’s more an outlet for people to acknowledge those social lies and get a good cathartic laugh in; then, having dealt with them somewhat, leave the comedy club and continue to live those lies. I’m thinking it’s a temporary reprieve from the tension of cognitive dissonance, which the allows it to continue unabated. Laughing at our foibles allows us to avoid repairing them.
Here’s the thing: these social lies get stale after awhile, no? At the very least, the euphamism treadmill and fashion cycles are well-documented, though cycles in this kind of stuff might be harder to quantify. I suspect comedians may play a role in bringing these things to their expiration date.
Some lies have no expiration date. For instance, I doubt if there will ever be a day where when asked by the wife if she looks fat in what she’s wearing, we could honestly say, “yes”, or be able to tell your boss his joke wasn’t very funny.
This is a fascinating post though.