[FRIAM] Moral collapse and state failure

Tue Aug 10 13:11:44 EDT 2021

The Envy video looked like a lot of fun, but it was too long for me to sit
through it.

Regarding morality, my guess is that it's not predictability that leads
people to consider someone moral, it's acting according to a framework that
can be expressed independently of oneself. Society-wide utilitarianism
would be fine; "someone much like Trump [who] says they're an exploitative,
gaming, solipsist" and then behaves in a way consistent with that
description, would not be considered moral no matter how consistently their
behavior simply optimized short-term personal benefits. After all, to take
your own Trump example, I doubt that many people would characterize Trump
as moral.

-- Russ Abbott
Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles

On Tue, Aug 10, 2021 at 9:56 AM Pieter Steenekamp <
pieters at randcontrols.co.za> wrote:

> Interesting work that Jonathan Haidt et al have done and moral foundations
> of libertarians vs liberals and conservatives.
>
> I quote the abstract of the paper that can be referenced at  :
> https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0042366
>
> Abstract
>
> Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in U.S.
> politics, yet they have been largely unstudied. Across 16 measures in a
> large web-based sample that included 11,994 self-identified libertarians,
> we sought to understand the moral and psychological characteristics of
> self-described libertarians. Based on an intuitionist view of moral
> judgment, we focused on the underlying affective and cognitive dispositions
> that accompany this unique worldview. Compared to self-identified liberals
> and conservatives, libertarians showed 1) stronger endorsement of
> individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle, and weaker
> endorsement of all other moral principles; 2) a relatively cerebral as
> opposed to emotional cognitive style; and 3) lower interdependence and
> social relatedness. As predicted by intuitionist theories concerning the
> origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent
> relationships with libertarian emotional dispositions and social
> preferences. Our findings add to a growing recognition of the role of
> personality differences in the organization of political attitudes.
>
> On Tue, 10 Aug 2021 at 17:49, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
>
>> The great thing about ethics is that we have so many systems to choose
>> from.   I'll take my anarchist thinking except when I'm a stoic or a
>> nihilist and Glen can advocate postmodernism, except when important topics
>> like beer arise.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2021 7:45 AM
>> To: friam at redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Moral collapse and state failure
>>
>> It's always unclear to me by what people mean by "moral". But this paper
>> covers it fairly well, I think:
>>
>> The search for predictable moral partners: Predictability and moral
>> (character) preferences
>> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103121000998
>>
>> The idea being that predictability is beneficial when the foundations are
>> cooperative. But do we have to tie "moral" to cooperation? It seems
>> straightforward that we could develop a rule-based morality based on greed,
>> confidence games, and very tightly selfish heuristics. So, if someone much
>> like Trump says they're an exploitative, gaming, solipsist ... then they
>> steal money from their fellow taxpayers, they are *moral* ... they adhere
>> to that standard. (And if someone says they're one of those, but behaves
>> altruistically, then they're *immoral*.)
>>
>> As always, ContraPoints has an interesting take on a feeling that might
>> be considered universally bad:
>>
>> Envy
>> https://youtu.be/aPhrTOg1RUk
>>
>> In contrast to the other deadly sins, envy is more difficult to
>> "moralize", individually or collectively.
>>
>>
>> On 8/8/21 9:06 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> > Jochen -
>> >
>> > Thanks for the original article reference.   It lead me to seek out and
>> find another interesting /relevant introductory/survey article:
>> >
>> >     Stability of Democracies:  A Complex Systems Perspective
>> > <https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6404/aaeb4d>
>> >
>> > In regards to your original question, my own biased intuition is that
>> > it is a vicious (rather than virtuous) cycle.   Our various corrupt
>> leaders with notable presidents such as Harding (Teapot Dome), Nixon
>> (Watergate++) and DJT-45 (Tax, Emoluments, Election, Sexual Misconduct,
>> etc... many left to be exposed I suspect) definitely undermine the
>> confidence in and commitment to our imperfect Democracy, driving it further
>> away from any ideal it might aspire to.
>> >
>> > I personally wasted half of my voting life in reaction to Nixon and
>> > the next several cycles following.   Watching the shenanigans of 2000
>> and then 2016 and worse 2020, I expect there will be entire new generations
>> as disaffected as I was.  It is hard to maintain a legitimate participatory
>> Democracy with that level of disaffection and confusion.
>> >
>> > The Wrong (formerly Right) Wing in the US seems nearly dead-set on
>> leveraging this to the extreme.   In hindsight, the rhetoric of the Wrong
>> Wing has been playing at this for my entire adult life, but it is acutely
>> worse this past 1-5 years.   From Trump's embrace of nearly every right
>> wing dictator he could find to Tucker Carlson in Hungary this week, it
>> seems to be happening entirely in plain sight!
>> >
>> > - Steve
>> >
>> >
>> > On 8/8/21 2:09 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>> >> Good example. Like the USA South Africa was a former British colony.
>> >> And both countries had to struggle with racism in the past. But the
>> >> development of democracy was different. The rise and fall of
>> >> democracy is an interesting topic
>> >> https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177465/the-decline
>> >> -and-rise-of-democracy
>> >>
>> >> I wonder what the essential factor is: do immoral presidents cause
>> >> the collapse of democracy in a country by undermining democratic
>> institutions or is it the other way round: the economy (and therefore the
>> country) is already broken and institutions are weak, which enables immoral
>> authoritarian rulers to grab power? Or a combination of both?
>> >>
>> >> -J.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> -------- Original message --------
>> >> From: Pieter Steenekamp <pieters at randcontrols.co.za>
>> >> Date: 8/8/21 20:26 (GMT+01:00)
>> >> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> >> <friam at redfish.com>
>> >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Moral collapse and state failure
>> >>
>> >> Well, I'm from South Africa, and we have been close to moral collapse
>> and IMO that could have led to our state failing.
>> >>
>> >> If you ask ten South Africans you'll get maybe twenty opinions, below
>> is just my very brief view of what has been and what is happening in South
>> Africa.
>> >>
>> >> South Africa became democratic in 1994 with Nelson Mandela the
>> president. With him at the helm we had the moral high ground. His immediate
>> successor Thabo Mbeki also did well. But between 2009 and 2017 Jacob Zuma
>> was our president. He looted very seriously from the state and
>> unfortunately under him many people in all state organisations started to
>> also loot. The corruption became very deep. He is in jail now.
>> >>
>> >> We now have Cyril Ramaphosa as president and it's anybody's guess,
>> >> but at least I'm very confident that Cyril is leading us again towards
>> the moral high ground and away from state failure.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Sun, 8 Aug 2021 at 19:18, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net <mailto:
>> jofr at cas-group.net>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>     This paper from last year argues that moral collapse and state
>> failure are linked. Would you agree?
>> >>
>> >> https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2020.568704/full
>> >> <https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2020.568704/full>
>> >>
>> >>     -J.
>>
>>
>> --
>> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>>
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