#incentive structures

I keep hearing people say that personal strength is an outmoded virtue, something that helped us in the bad old days, but which only gets in the way now that we’re living in an age of abundance.  Like, personal strength used to be necessary to survive, but now that it isn’t, valuing personal strength just perpetuates ableism and conflicts with the care/harm foundation.  Or maybe personal strength is still useful now, but it won’t be in the Glorious Transhumanist Future, and so it’s a mistake to hold it as a terminal value.

Here is why I disagree:

Some degree of personal strength will always be necessary.  As long as there are humans interacting with other humans, there will be some degree of adversity.  The girl you want to date isn’t interested.  Someone else beat you in a programming competition.  There will always be things that make you sad, and so it’s useful to develop a thick skin so you can withstand adversity.

The Glorious Transhumanist Future would not be glorious, because, in the absence of constraints from the environment, people tend to develop status-competitions that conflict with people’s personal well-being.  Like, Tumblr has the oppression olympics, the competition to see who can suffer the most, and (for allies) the competition to see who is best at self-abasement.  Whereas, if technology does not provide everything, and you actually need to develop some talents and ability to work hard, just in order to survive, then the status competitions will need to align themselves with that, and will incentivize people to become mentally and physically healthy, in order to contribute to the community.

In general, even forgetting status competitions, I think people tend to be happier when the environment places some constraints.  The kid who was raised to work hard tends to be happier than the spoiled brat who always got everything he asked for.  I think there’s just a pleasure in working hard, in accomplishing something, in providing for yourself, that cannot be attained if everything you need is handed to you on a silver platter.  And in order to accomplish things and take pride in your achievements, you need to develop skills and talents, which seems to require personal strength.

i really think, a lot of the time, it would be better if people would just say "i dont want to do that". i mean, the spoons bit is useful if you really would like to, but really cant, or might be able and willing to *later* but cant *right now*.  but in internet discussions a lot of the time its, like, “i dont have the spoons to answer this question” or w/e. but…well, no one has to answer any questions they dont want to answer, and no one has to participate  in an online conversation that they find upsetting! doesnt/shouldnt matter if its “now i’ll be grumpy all day” upsetting or “now i want to kill myself” upsetting. thats not useful to anybody, so they shouldnt, and no one else should get up in their business about it. framing participation in unpleasant/upsetting conversations online as, like, this *obligation* that people have to be seriously impaired or emotional unstable to legitimately “get out of” is fucked in a lot of ways. i think it leads to a lot of meanness, and a lot of…people maybe perpetuating some of their own problems, yeah. in part bc theres no option in the subculture where you can avoid discussions that bug you unless you deem it really important– it has to be a trigger thats beyond your control. which i suspect leads to kind of amping up feelings of fear or disgust in response to things, for some people.

Oh man, I agree with this completely, and I’ve actually been meaning to write a post about this for a really long time.  But you pretty much summed up everything I was going to say.

Like, when we express a desire/preference, we need to choose between expressing it as a want and expressing it as a need.  And Tumblr culture seems to incentivize people to express their wants as needs.

I mean, there are lots of ordinary situations where we express wants as needs, just based on the norms of polite conversation.  If someone says “Hey, want to get dinner tonight?”, one might respond with “Sorry, I need to get work done” instead of “No, sorry, I don’t feel like hanging out with you today”.  And that’s just because rejection is unpleasant, and we tend to avoid doing it overtly.  So it’s much more polite to say “I can’t hang out” than “I don’t want to”.

But, like you say, Tumblr definitely has this norm where needs always trump wants, and people have a moral obligation to deal with each other’s needs.  Like, I remember some posts that were going around after Ferguson (or some similar event), and their goal was to raise awareness of racial injustice.  They had messages like “reblog this post if you believe that black lives matter” and “if you are not outraged right now, then you don’t care about black people”.  Basically, they were trying to rally people to sadness and anger over police brutality.

And my response was, “Nope, sorry, I’m too busy to get involved with this right now.  I have a job, and other causes that I care even more about.  We all have limited time in life, and so we have to choose our battles, and devote ourselves to the things we care about instead of being pulled off-course by every new tragedy.”  Or, more simplistically, I could say, “I don’t want to read about this stuff, because it will just make me really sad without helping anyone, and it’s not a good use of my time.”

But any time someone said this, Tumblr culture would respond, “You don’t want to read about this stuff because it will make you sad?  Well, check your privilege, because the people who are experiencing racial violence can’t just walk away from it the way you’re doing.  Why should you enjoy yourself and be happy when other people are suffering?  They could use your help.  If you are a good and moral person, then you will stop what you are doing and focus on this cause.”

Basically, it seems like on Tumblr, the needs of the more marginalized always trump the needs of the less marginalized.  And the only way to get out of the exorbitant moral obligations is to invent some kind of marginalization for yourself, to invent some need that gives you an excuse to stop engaging with this stuff.  Needs like “I’m triggered by these posts and it’s unsafe for me to read them”.

And like you say, this incentives people to become more and more upset by things, in order for their needs to be strong enough to matter.  Which is basically turning a lot of people into utility monsters.  I feel like this happened to me for a while -- I would only be worthy of sympathy and receiving help if I was suffering badly enough, so I subconsciously modified myself to suffer more, so that I could get the help and moral absolution that I sought.

Anyway, I agree with you that the solution to this problem is...  to respect people’s wants, even when they are not needs.

In America, if your neighbor has a nicer house than you, then you wish you had a house like that.  In Finland, if your neighbor has a nicer house than you, then you wish he didn’t have that house.

The American half of that stereotype might be true in general, but it’s not true on Tumblr.  On Tumblr, I see an overwhelming resentment for people who are better off.  I see people who want to create equality not by raising everyone up to the level of the highest in our society, but by dragging everyone down to the least common denominator.  I see a hatred of “privilege” and all of the people who have it.  I see an implicit moral framework where only the poor and downtrodden are good and deserving.

What do you get in such a framework?  What do you get when the low are risen high, and the high are beaten and stepped on until they are low?

You get a culture of people who aspire to be low, who aspire to be weak and powerless and pitiable, so that they can reap the moral bounty that comes with those traits.  You get a culture of people who are ashamed of their successes, who glorify their problems and incapacities but hide their accomplishments.

On Tumblr I see people write things like “How dare people talk about succeeding at <thing>.  I am disabled, and can never do <thing>, and reading about other people doing <thing> makes me feel bad.”

And I think to myself, “Oh shit, if I succeed at grad school, or I climb a mountain, or I do anything I can feel proud of... then I am going to make someone else, who couldn’t do all those things, feel bad.”

And I look at grad school, and I think to myself, “Grad school is a zero-sum game.  Only one person can be at the top.  And there are only so many faculty jobs available.  If I do well, and I get one of those faculty jobs... then I am crowding out someone else who might have wanted it.  And then that person would experience unbearable sadness, at having their hopes and dreams crushed.  So I better not try in grad school.  I better not even try to succeed.  Or else I will hurt people.  It’s better for me to make this sacrifice than to force it on them.”

This is wrong.  But I have this thought a lot, and it keeps me from trying at grad school.  It keeps me from trying because I feel inherently unworthy of success.  So let me see if I can argue against it.

Argument 1: this strategy is not universalizable.  If everyone followed it, there would be a competition to see who could be the worst at grad school.  Everyone would be continually abasing themselves for the sake of one another.  And then the same finite number of students would receive the faculty positions, so it’s not like it would actually reduce the number of people who got hurt.

Thus this strategy is clearly wrong if it’s universalized.  It’s much, much better for everyone to try as hard as they can, and let success go to the best students.

Argument 2: There are things that matter more than students being happy.  The point of grad school is not just to give us an ego-boost for success; it’s to create the next generation of scientists, who will then go out and do good science.  Thus, for the sake of science, it is best if everyone strives to succeed, instead of everyone striving to abase themselves as much as possible.  That way, it’s the people who are best at science who actually end up doing the science.

Outside of grad school, the same argument holds.  Why is it good for me to strive and succeed at life in general?  Why is it good for me to eat good food and live a happy life and generally embrace my privilege?  Because in many relevant senses, life is a Darwinian competition for strength (in a particular environmental context), and whoever wins gets to pass down his genes to the next generation.  For the good of the species, then, I should strive to succeed.

I want science to be high quality.  I want the species to get stronger.  So I should strive to succeed at grad school and at life.  And I should feel no guilt, because I am doing this for the collective good, and for some emergent structure greater than individual human lives.

But... it’s more than that.  These two arguments I gave, they refute the claim that people should try to fail, for each other’s sakes.  But they still adopt the faulty premise of the original claim: namely that success is a zero-sum game, and you succeeding will drag other people down.

Like, I feel bad bragging about my skills or accomplishments, for fear of dragging everyone down.  When I succeed at acts of self-discipline, or I do something I’m proud of, I don’t talk about it, because I don’t want to make other people feel bad.  But... when other people talk about their successes, I do not feel dragged down; I feel inspired!  When other people treat self-discipline as the norm, and talk about its importance, I don’t feel criticized and helpless... I feel inspired!  Talking to people who are succeeding is one of the most strengthening things I ever experience.

This suggests to me that... if we want individuals to be happy, what we need is not a contest to abase ourselves, but a new cultural framework where other people’s success is inspiring rather than intimidating.

I see people talk about “growth mindset” vs. “fixed mindset” a lot here, and that’s an important instance of what I’m talking about.  If you have the fixed mindset, other people’s success is just discouraging, because you feel like you’ll never be that good.  But if you have the growth mindset, other people’s success will be inspiring, because it shows you what humans can accomplish, and what you can maybe be if you keep trying.

So that’s one example, but there are many others.  Rejoicing in the journey but not the destination, learning to love the struggle more than the success itself, and so on.  Being proud of your rivals when they succeed, being proud of the larger collective entity for succeeding, etc.  All of these make success less zero-sum.

I want there to be joy in trying as hard as you possibly can, and then, if you win, you celebrate, and if you lose, you can at least be proud that you tried so hard and made it so far.