Abstract thoughts on Group Selection and the Nation of Values

Epistemic Status: Somewhat speculative.

A functional society requires some degree of consensus on certain moral norms based in certain fundamental sentiments. It also requires a certain degree of immunity for those lacking in these sentiments, or hostile to these norms. Now we can talk about this immunity in terms of ‘freedom-good!’ (and this is my own default sentiment), but The pragmatic reason for not imposing too heavy a duty to emulate your values is simple. You absolutely do not want to be forcing people who lack your basic moral sentiments; into a social signaling competition based on a reading slogans generated by them. No slogan is comprehensive enough to capture what goes unsaid for a person who it resonates with authentically as opposed to for signaling reasons. “Murder is bad.” You may think a murder is bad for - ‘Killing of the undeserving reasons.’ - Some however genuinely ask with no degree of unseriousness “If we execute child-murder-rapist X, how are we any better than he is?” It’s actually a good thing for this kind of person to signal their existence, and not be socially pressured into your side. You cannot transfer instincts, only slogans, through traditional social pressure. Forced to become a fake believer, not only will the fake believer pervert whatever you believe in… he’ll outcompete you in signaling devotion to it by the mere fact of having that absolute consistency unencumbered by the occasional conflicts between the slogan and the sentiments that did, or are commonly believed to have generated it.

Furthermore people who agree with you will often have relatives, form friendships, etc with outsiders, people that they like (and have every right to like without having to justify themselves)… that lack these sentiments. To demand they feel otherwise, or betray these feelings, is to demand they lose a piece of their humanity.

So what to do if you want to live in a society with certain values and are starting one from scratch? Simply put, you select for a category of people in which those values are represented well enough, and you don’t treat dissent too harshly within it. The freedom of dissent is preserved precisely by the knowledge that the dissent will only succeed by persuasion within the existing category and not by replacement. The sentiments are preserved by the dissenters remaining dissenters instead of perverting the norms themselves. All is well, if your initial category was selective enough.

The problem of course, is that this is in some clear way unfair. Yes, a lot of terrible people get to be treated as near-equals, while a lot of ok people who are in some objective sense individually better are excluded. It’s also the only way to have a free society, and you must have some degree of freedom if you want the norms governing it to actually reflect your instincts.