The Nonlinear Library LW - For Civilization and Against Niceness by Gabriel Alfour
Nov 21, 2023
14:16
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: For Civilization and Against Niceness, published by Gabriel Alfour on November 21, 2023 on LessWrong.
Scott Alexander wrote a great essay, called "
In Favor of Niceness, Community and Civilization". Scott is a great writer, and conveys what I love about civilization in a beautiful way.
Unfortunately, the essay conflates two behaviors. Though to be fair, those two behaviors often go hand in hand:
Being uncivil, as in: breaking the norms of civilization.
Being mean, as in: being not-nice, unpleasant to be around.
The following paragraph embodies this conflation quite well:
Liberalism does not conquer by fire and sword. Liberalism conquers by communities of people who agree to play by the rules, slowly growing until eventually an equilibrium is disturbed. Its battle cry is not "Death to the unbelievers!" but "If you're nice, you can join our cuddle pile!"
I love civilization! Democracies let me politically coordinate with people internationally, socially liberal systems grant me freedom to be as weird as I want in private, and economically liberal systems let me try many exotic kinds of positive-sum trades with people! None of this would be possible without civilization.
I agree, Civilization is great. But I don't want to join your cuddle pile!
Civilization is often about being not nice
As Scott Alexander says, civilization is about "agreeing to play by the rules." But this is not about niceness. On the contrary, playing by the rules often requires being not nice. [1]
While we want companies to abide by strong regulations, and not cause negative externalities (like pollution), we also do not want them to be nice to each other. This is the core of
antitrust law, that aims to minimize
anti-competitive practices.
More concretely, the goal of companies is to
capture value (make profits), while the goal of free-markets is for companies to create value for consumers. The way those two incentives are aligned is through competition. By getting companies to compete, they need to keep improving compared to other companies to keep their profits, increasing the share of the value enjoyed by consumers
In other words: We want companies to compete as fiercely as possible, thereby driving quality up and pushing prices down.
As Adam Smith wrote:
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
This is a feature of economic liberalism.
Similarly, in a court of law, while we want all lawyers present to strictly adhere to their local equivalent of the
Model Rules of Professional Conduct, we don't want the defense attorney and the prosecutor to be nice to each other.
When younger, I could not understand attorneys that defended people who they knew were criminals. Weren't these attorneys making society strictly worse? My confusion went deeper when I learnt that they had an ethical obligation to defend people who they knew were criminals.
But it makes sense: the attorney doesn't issue the final sentence, the judge does. And the judge doesn't know if the person is innocent or not, or when they're guilty, how guilty they are. To solve this, judiciary systems go through something close to an
Adversarial Collaboration. Both sides need to bring forward as much evidence for their case as possible. Only then can the judge make the best decision with as much information as possible.
When the defense attorney makes their case, they are not changing the sentence, they are giving more information to the judge, who then decides on the sentence.
If you think about it, it is obvious: it is better for the judge to have more information. And to get there, you need people to optimize for both sides of the story, not focus on the one we already believe to be correct.
This is why prosecutors and defense attorneys sh...
Scott Alexander wrote a great essay, called "
In Favor of Niceness, Community and Civilization". Scott is a great writer, and conveys what I love about civilization in a beautiful way.
Unfortunately, the essay conflates two behaviors. Though to be fair, those two behaviors often go hand in hand:
Being uncivil, as in: breaking the norms of civilization.
Being mean, as in: being not-nice, unpleasant to be around.
The following paragraph embodies this conflation quite well:
Liberalism does not conquer by fire and sword. Liberalism conquers by communities of people who agree to play by the rules, slowly growing until eventually an equilibrium is disturbed. Its battle cry is not "Death to the unbelievers!" but "If you're nice, you can join our cuddle pile!"
I love civilization! Democracies let me politically coordinate with people internationally, socially liberal systems grant me freedom to be as weird as I want in private, and economically liberal systems let me try many exotic kinds of positive-sum trades with people! None of this would be possible without civilization.
I agree, Civilization is great. But I don't want to join your cuddle pile!
Civilization is often about being not nice
As Scott Alexander says, civilization is about "agreeing to play by the rules." But this is not about niceness. On the contrary, playing by the rules often requires being not nice. [1]
While we want companies to abide by strong regulations, and not cause negative externalities (like pollution), we also do not want them to be nice to each other. This is the core of
antitrust law, that aims to minimize
anti-competitive practices.
More concretely, the goal of companies is to
capture value (make profits), while the goal of free-markets is for companies to create value for consumers. The way those two incentives are aligned is through competition. By getting companies to compete, they need to keep improving compared to other companies to keep their profits, increasing the share of the value enjoyed by consumers
In other words: We want companies to compete as fiercely as possible, thereby driving quality up and pushing prices down.
As Adam Smith wrote:
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
This is a feature of economic liberalism.
Similarly, in a court of law, while we want all lawyers present to strictly adhere to their local equivalent of the
Model Rules of Professional Conduct, we don't want the defense attorney and the prosecutor to be nice to each other.
When younger, I could not understand attorneys that defended people who they knew were criminals. Weren't these attorneys making society strictly worse? My confusion went deeper when I learnt that they had an ethical obligation to defend people who they knew were criminals.
But it makes sense: the attorney doesn't issue the final sentence, the judge does. And the judge doesn't know if the person is innocent or not, or when they're guilty, how guilty they are. To solve this, judiciary systems go through something close to an
Adversarial Collaboration. Both sides need to bring forward as much evidence for their case as possible. Only then can the judge make the best decision with as much information as possible.
When the defense attorney makes their case, they are not changing the sentence, they are giving more information to the judge, who then decides on the sentence.
If you think about it, it is obvious: it is better for the judge to have more information. And to get there, you need people to optimize for both sides of the story, not focus on the one we already believe to be correct.
This is why prosecutors and defense attorneys sh...