[GCSAQCMIYI]

He suggests keeping your identity small. There is only so much you can do on that front. Some potential government policies are beneficial for people with certain characteristics, including immutable ones or ones that are difficult to change, and harmful for other people. Why would it not be rational for people to align politically along the lines of those characteristics to push for policies that benefit them on that basis, especially if they believe people who don't have those characteristics are aligning to push against them?

[kerkeslager]

No, I don't think that's rational at all.

Part of what you're saying is right: it's rational to cooperate to achieve goals.

However, you're wrong in 2 ways:

1. Group identification is not a necessary component of cooperation. I can vote to support gay rights without being gay. I can vote to support gun freedom without owning a gun. You're using the vague word "align" to mean both identifying as part of a group and cooperating, but these are not the same thing.

2. Your post is only looking at cooperating toward goals that arise from shared identification as part of a group. This is a myopic view: there are lots of people who despite identifying as part of the same groups, have different, incompatible goals. This is exactly why not identifying as part of a group is rational: if you identify as part of a group, then you will have the human impulse to take actions that achieve the goals of the group, even if those goals are incompatible with your own goals.

For example: I find myself cooperating with a certain political party more often than not--I've fairly consistently voted for them, and even worked for some of their political campaigns. But I don't identify as part of that party. This means that when someone criticizes that political party, I'm not offended: they're not criticizing me, because I don't identify as part of that party. I don't take it personally. And it also means that when I disagree with that political party, I don't fall prey to the Granfalloon technique. If I disagree with them (and I do) I don't feel any pressure to conform my views to the political party. I can rationally support my own goals, not theirs.

[GCSAQCMIYI]

>Group identification is not a necessary component of cooperation.

I didn't say or suggest it was.

>if you identify as part of a group, then you will have the human impulse to take actions that achieve the goals of the group, even if those goals are incompatible with your own goals.

Sure, but the goals that you have in common with your group are more likely to be achieved if members of your group strongly identify as members of that group.

Of course, it's certainly possible for groups that aren't really in the interest of the members of the group to form.

[kerkeslager]

> Sure, but the goals that you have in common with your group are more likely to be achieved if members of your group strongly identify as members of that group.

That might be true, but so what? Keep your identity small. That doesn't say you shouldn't cooperate with people who don't keep their identities small. You can cooperate with people who strongly identify as members of a group without identifying as a member of that group yourself.

> Of course, it's certainly possible for groups that aren't really in the interest of the members of the group to form.

It's a property of groups that if they believe the group is beneficial, they'll make compromises to maintain the existence of the group. Each compromise takes them farther from their ideals, until they're no longer really serving their original goals. As a result, I would argue that all groups tend toward not really being in the interest of the members, unless careful measures are taken to prevent that.

[GCSAQCMIYI]

>That might be true, but so what? Keep your identity small. That doesn't say you shouldn't cooperate with people who don't keep their identities small. You can cooperate with people who strongly identify as members of a group without identifying as a member of that group yourself.

You're suggesting acting parasitically toward the group, in that you are gaining the benefits of others sacrificing their own goals for group goals, while not sacrificing your own goals for group goals. That sort of behavior is quite destructive to the group, and groups have (of course imperfect) mechanisms to punish people that behave that way. If you can get away with behaving that way, so be it, but the group has a strong incentive to stop you from doing so.

>It's a property of groups that if they believe the group is beneficial, they'll make compromises to maintain the existence of the group. Each compromise takes them farther from their ideals, until they're no longer really serving their original goals. As a result, I would argue that all groups tend toward not really being in the interest of the members, unless careful measures are taken to prevent that.

In the long term, sure I could buy that. But the short term benefits could easily make it worth it overall to form the group. By the time the group degenerates as you describe, the members could be vastly ahead of where they would have been otherwise.

[kerkeslager]

> You're suggesting acting parasitically toward the group, in that you are gaining the benefits of others sacrificing their own goals for group goals, while not sacrificing your own goals for group goals.

No, I'm not. I'm saying that not identifying as a member of the group allows you to make a conscious decision on whether to continue to cooperate with a group when the goals of the group no longer are compatible with your goals. Maybe that means ending or redefining your relationship with the group, maybe it means trying to change the group.

This is a particularly rich accusation coming from someone who thinks it's normal to behave out of rational self-interest. ;)

> In the long term, sure I could buy that. But the short term benefits could easily make it worth it overall to form the group. By the time the group degenerates as you describe, the members could be vastly ahead of where they would have been otherwise.

That's true, which is why you'd want to cooperate with groups and then exit them when they cease to be beneficial.

To be clear, a lot of your negativity on my position seems to be from your assuming that my goals are necessarily selfish. If you believe everyone acts only in rational self-interest, then all cooperation lasts only as long as you have the same goals anyway, so your position is self-contradictory. That is, unfortunately, how a lot of the capitalist economy works, but that's not how relationships and cooperation really work in a lot of cases. The reality is that when I cooperate with people, even if they have different goals than me, I often learn things from them that change my goals, or form a new goal of maintaining a relationship with that person. Goals can be prosocial.

[crispinb]

There's nothing inherently 'rational' about self-interest (which is entirely orthogonal to the justification or lack thereof for the latter). It has literally never occurred to me to consider whether party policies are good for me personally when assessing who to vote for. This is not irrational behaviour on my part (I'm well aware of my values and the relationship, as far as I'm able to calculate it, between those values and proposed policies).

The conflation of self-interest and rationality is just ideology (often forcefully conveyed by evangelists for the most salient superstition of our age, ie. economics).

[GCSAQCMIYI]

I certainly agree that everyone's values are ultimately arbitrary, but that's pretty far outside of this discussion. Most people are self-interested, and the person I originally replied to was talking about normal people. "This phenomenon is root of all evil in modern day America. People identify with political parties as though they are sports teams."

[crispinb]

That's fair enough, but I think the conflation of self-interest with rationality is so ubiquitous (and like most official ideologies, dangerously mistaken) that it's worth challenging when it arises. Or at least to the extent permitted by one's energies and everyone's good humour.

(I don't btw agree that values are entirely arbitrary, but that's a discussion for another day).

[GCSAQCMIYI]

I'm curious why you see it as "dangerously mistaken". What is the danger in making that mistake?

[crispinb]

It's a longer discussion than I have time for now, but in short: it creates ethically worse people (unnaturally selfish) without them being any more 'rational' (just as subject to biases as ever). And it creates worse societies, eg. the US. The two feed back and forward to each other, making for a downward spiral very hard to arrest.