Warning: this is probably restating obvious ideas that everyone already knows
One view of reputation is that it’s like a line of credit. Take the example of a reputation for honesty. If you consistently demonstrate it in small ways, people will trust you more, and at some point you will be able to make a larger “withdrawal” by doing something that requires their trust. If you are able to repay that large withdrawal, then you are rewarded with the ability to make even larger withdrawals.
I have noticed a fundamental tension in my own thoughts, and in the thoughts of others. Here is the problem: I recognize the interdependence of people, and the limitations of extreme individualism, and want to encourage greater collective action. But in practice, I think that collective action in our society would lead to worse outcomes. For example - I think if our society was more collective, we would have less questioning of governmental and media narratives around foreign wars.
There are many websites (that I will not link to) where you can watch almost any movie or TV show absolutely free, and completely legally. But while these sites are legal to use, it is surprising if they were legal to run. So what’s happening? How can these sites continue to exist? Do they make money? Why don’t they get shut down? We will try to answer these questions by looking at the different players in the online streaming game.
I sometimes think I’m right and everyone else is wrong. I need to develop humility - unless I am right.
Often, I don’t think I’m right, but I think everyone else is overconfident. Do I need to develop humility in this case as well?
Perhaps the distinction is between humility before the complexity of the truth, and humilty as a tool to make interacting with other people easier.
Still, I think, both these versions of humility can be forces of passivity - “I should be humble and not make ambitious goals, or act differently than the people around me”, or fuel for arrogance - “since I am actually right, I just need to act humble”.
It is a well-known failure mode to apply concepts from everyday life to questions of governance - from treating the government budget like a household budget to expecting contrition from guilty countries, like we would from individuals.
Part of this is not thinking enough about the problem. But I think it can also arise from a desire for a consistent moral philosophy. And I think this cuts both ways - useful tools for governing collective life become harmful when applied to personal life.
While the Baroque rules of Chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe they almost certainly play Go.
– Edward Lasker (international chess master)
I have a tinge of skepticism when I read about Go. There are 19x19 = 361 squares, and yet the first few moves can lose you the game?
(MAJOR spoilers for Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders, the first two books of the *Terra Ignota series. This post assumes you have read the books - if you haven’t, I highly encourage you NOT to read the post. I have only read those two, so maybe some of these ideas won’t make sense.) OK, after that break I assume you’ve read the books.
Terra Ignota is a hard science fiction story, except it’s about sociology and not physics.
Moral Mazes is an enjoyable book to read. It’s full of amusing anecdotes that hint at fundamental truths, passages that give you a sense of “peering behind the veil” of world of corporate managers, and an overall tone that reassures us that we made the right choice not to strive for continual advancement - the the people who succeed aren’t happy, or good. That we’re better off as we are now.
After spending half a billion dollars on ads in just a few months, Michael Bloomberg has admitted defeat and dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primary. His only victory - to the amusement of many - was in American Samoa - a US territory with 4 primary delegates and no votes in the electoral college. As the saying goes - Michael Bloomberg has never lost an election... on an island. Perhaps he should run for president of North America.
There are two reasons people typically give to justify using intution over careful reasoning:
Intution allows you to draw on your experience and make decisions quickly and correctly. Intution lets you reach an answer that you wouldn’t discover using logical reasoning. If you ignore the intuition, you’ll get the wrong answer. In practice, I don’t think the choice is between logical reasoning and intuition - it’s between using “accepted” justifications and “forbidden” justifications, which depends on the social context.