Schneier on Security

RadioStar • January 29, 2016 12:46 PM

We find that, depending on the level of reciprocity and assortment, selection favors one of two strategies: intuitive defectors who never deliberate, or dual-process agents who intuitively cooperate but sometimes use deliberation to defect in one-shot games. Critically, selection never favors agents who use deliberation to override selfish impulses: Deliberation only serves to undermine cooperation with strangers.

There have been many studies along these lines, but this is a very good one, as it does focused – attempts to focus – on rationality engaged in empathy, versus operating by pure “instinct”, or “intuition”…

I see a few problems with the study, however, some of which are relatively common to many such studies:

The common factors

1. human beings are incredibly complex, so attempting to create some truly meaningful data set for comparison in such studies is very difficult to realistically do

I obviously here am specifically implying the complexity of human psychological and emotional makeups, which directly pin into their capacity to operate by conscious reasoning as opposed to pure intuition, or instinct.

1. These are deeply subjective areas of testing, far moreso then I believe is typically taken into account — or even understood by anyone today. That subjectivity absolutely and deeply impacts the results of such studies.
2. The terminology and processes involved in the study are themselves very poorly understood, partly because of the immense difficulty of subjectivity, which certainly includes expectations effecting outcomes and many other key factors… but also these are liquid and debateable and poorly defined terms as are our understanding of the underlining processes. That said, this study did largely attempt to keep those factors relatively confined.

Specific problems & comments with the study:

[NOT that this is a poor study, nor a study which has produced no meaningful data, at all.]

1. I would hazard a guess here 🙂 that ordinarily people are not very conscious, and by that I specifically mean that they do not ordinarily consciously deliberate. How dare I present such a guess. However, consider, is it really true that someone who deeply and regularly consciously “deliberates” (reasons) would come to the conclusion that they should only do so for entirely selfish purposes?

…

Recall Edward Nash, aka “A Beautiful Mind”. And his coming to an understanding of the “selfish” benefit of cooperation in economic models. For a more entertaining consideration.

More realistically, if you are a person who genuinely is devoted to consciously deliberating your words and actions at a very deep level, then you are inevitably are going to eventually come to the conclusions that reasoning and empathy necessarily do go hand in hand. Because rarely are purely selfish aims brought to productive ends.

And, by “productive”, I certainly do mean there “selfishly productive”.

In dumb ass terms, if you are only using your skills of conscious reasoning for the purposes of temporary selfish gain, then you are not really very deep in conscious reasoning at all. Because almost invariably, the long term, wider picture, means that cooperation is usually the best path for selfish gain in any economic model.

…

So, you are effectively talking about people who do utilize conscious deliberation, but only on a very shallow level here. That this is enough of a common element to be found in a sample group, is not at all surprising — nor should it be to any reader here.

These are obviously casual assertions. I do not cite studies, nor do I cite the reams of ancedotal evidence, but present them as a consideration.

1. It is extremely rare, I would posit, that people come to the mindset of conscious deliberation – of deep conscious deliberation – of their everyday words and actions. This is simply not what we see going on. No small part of this is because of the subjectivity issue which certainly comes to play here, and engages enormous bias in such logic. No small part of this is because of the fact that this is so rarely a requirement for anyone to actually have, being as typically people simply need to obtain very simple goal models that provide extremely dubious quality of product … sex, roof, food, drugs, personal security, and so on. Praise is a major factor here, but involves merely these other factors. I put “personal security” here, because of anxieties people deal with being so core to their everyday motivating processes.

The subjectivity angle brings into camera all of the known biases discovered and well proven over the past twenty years.

This does not mean I would suggest such reasoning never takes place, it certainly does. But, such reasoning typically takes place in extremely isolated scenarios which engage the requirement of longer term deliberation, of longer term goal satisfaction.

So, for instance, it is routine for architects of all sorts of fields to engage regularly in longer term models which rely on long term benefits. But, on an everyday selfish level, such long term planning is transparent and largely engaged by unconscious processes and physical desires. This even includes the selfish desires to, for instance, satisfy personal anxieties about stability to obtain meaningful peer praise by producing some long term engaged “product”.

1. The unconscious processes here and conscious processes are extremely poorly understood, and rarely is it necessary for people to make conscious of those unconscious processes. This “obviously” is deeply tied to points 1 and 2. 🙂

Why do you do what you do? What did you do what you did? Do you really know why? Do you generally even know what you did and what you said, from a truly objective as opposed to subjective angle? Usually, no. People think they say and do what they say and do for one reason – even over the years – and they really do and say it all for another entirely. If it ever comes under conscious light at all, it is a fraud. It is simply for justification for their own selves, and not for meaningful, accurate understanding.

Accuracy in self-understanding is not required for daily life.

Right now. In the vast majority of circumstances.

1. Empathy and conscious deliberation are not the same thing. They can be related. Ultimately, they would be tied. The reason for this is because “conscious deliberation” engages many processes, it is not simply doing math or performing a calculation on paper. We put ourselves in scenarios and live them. That engages deep psychological and emotional processes.

But such engagement is not what you will find with shallow reasoning which obtains short term goals. It is unnecessary for that.

Further, that method human beings use of putting themselves in scenarios engages deep unconscious processes.

(Which is one reason why I can state this, and while this is extremely common behavior, it is not behavior which is commonly conscious.)

On a more mechanical level: take the act of practicing tennis. You conscious commit to practice. But, you are learning unconsciously well. Eventually, you are engaging immediate reactive impulses, emotional impulses one could certainly call them.

It at least appears as if the conscious trains the unconscious. (Though where does the conscious truly begin, and is it not ultimately like reading a book in the dark with a penlight?)

In activities which engage other human beings, this is far, far more deep then mere mechanical motions such as tennis require. It does require true empathic emotion. But, getting there are training those responses are something else altogether.