Free Will and How We Exercise It

To follow on from my previous post, we have free will. 

So how should we use it?

I'm going to bring together a number of topics I've talked about over the years, so some of this is definitely repetitive.

Like how we choose our responses. If someone tries to punch you, most people think in simple terms - dodge. Block. Punch back.

But as martial artists know, there are other options. Slip a little to the inside, get your hip under and lift, guide them off their feet and/or off balance and throw. 

You have options in how hard or soft to respond: whether you're going for a killing blow, or a joint lock where you can control them, or simply trying to avoid their attacks without getting hurt. 

You can't always control what other people do, but you can almost always control how you respond to it. 

Exercising free will thus involves consciously choosing those responses, with the awareness of how your response will interact with the world around you, so that you can choose an action that will lead to the kind of world you want to live in.

Okay, that's a mouthful. Let me break it down.

Have you ever shared something or seen something shared on social media with the simple phrase 'signal boost'? 

People are choosing to amplify whatever they're sharing. They're not creating the message, they're just trying to make sure it spreads a little further and has a wider impact. 

Conversely, I am where chain letters go to die. All of that "share this with ten other people?" stuff? Yeah, no. Not spreading that, not amplifying it, not boosting it. (Obviously, numerous other people do not share my view here, or we wouldn't still be seeing them.)

This goes back to an idea that I know for sure is part of Christian and Confucian traditions, and wouldn't surprise me to find in others.

The Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12) - 

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

The Silver Rule - 

What I do not wish others to do to me, I do not wish to do to others

(I found a post discussing the Silver Rule in more depth here.)

Both touch on something I've pointed out before - that whatever we choose to do, other people tend to copy and mimic it. And we will see other people doing the exact same thing.

That, for example, lying about election results when it means supporting Trump also means that some people will claim Mitch McConnell only won because of election fraud. That's a bit simplified, but I think you see my point.

It's a bit like the physics 'transfer of force' example (which I just learned is called a Newton's cradle) - 

Both of these traditions are pointing out the same thing, and pointing out that we can deliberately choose which types of behaviors we want spreading (or not.)

As a lot of people paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi - 'Be the change you want to see'.

This brings up something else. Most of what I'm saying is not actually new, so much as showing how I've come to internalize and agree with quite a bit of our collective wisdom. 

It's more like Jesus said "Love your neighbor as thyself" and I'm saying "Yes. Really."

This is perhaps better captured in some out-of-character Jesus memes-

Yes. He really meant it. No. Whatever excuse you've come up with to justify not loving your neighbor is not okay.

I know quite a few people are down on religion these days (understandable given some of the ways people of faith abuse the name of God), but I do believe religions have something important and useful to say about us. About human nature, and how we can better build the societies we live in.

That's not to try and say all religions are ultimately the same, or to minimize their very real differences. Nor am I saying people without religion are lost, since many of them have internalized their own moral codes. I mostly draw on the Bible and Christianity because that's what I'm most familiar with. 

Here's another example of what I'm talking about.

Most people have heard of 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.'  It's from the Old Testament, and to modern ears it sounds kind of... vengeful.

But as I understand it, this was a way of limiting violence. As science has shown, we all have a tendency to feel the harm done to us is greater than the harm we do to others. That is, if someone cuts off your arm you might feel justice is served after you've killed them. After killing them, his family may feel justice is served by killing you and two other members of your family. 

The harm done keeps getting escalated until you're in a blood feud, and each side feels like they're just trying to get justice.

So the Bible limited it...  they said if you lose an eye, justice would be taking the other guy's eye. NOT killing him. 

Keep it proportional, don't go justifying an even worse response as retaliation. (I found it interesting that The Untamed had almost the exact same issue, without the religious elements. A villain in the story lost a finger, and in retaliation murdered the family of the guy who hurt him. When someone pointed out that a pinkie was not worth the lives of all the people he killed, he insisted it was. After all, it was his finger.)

The New Testament even goes further, though there's enough debate about what Jesus meant by 'turn the other cheek' that I don't want to dwell on it too much. 

There have been some interesting experiments in game theory, regarding tit-for-tat (a strategy in experiments where two players play against each other multiple times, so that they get to know each other and build strategies accordingly. Tit-for-tat is a strategy where you cooperate on the first round, and then basically mimic the other person's behavior from the previous round. If they cooperated, you cooperate again. If they didn't, you don't. There's a lot more to it than that, of course, but you can read up on that yourself.)

What's interesting is that in at least some scenarios, a strategy of 'forgiving' a lack of cooperation works. Iirc, it worked best in scenarios where players accidentally defect, or might have misunderstood and defected. 

More importantly though, I think 'turn the other cheek' relates more to standing up for yourself while making it clear you're not attacking the other side. (Again, like I've discussed in previous posts).

It allows you to help provide criticism and negative feedback without making it personal, or sending the signal that you hate and want to harm the other side. (This is where I really think al Qaeda and other extreme jihadists get it wrong. Suicide bombing where you murder a bunch of people is never holy, because you have mixed up the holiness with attack. The hatred and anger and willingness to do harm overwhelms any other message they are trying to send.)

I could go on and on, but this is the sort of thing anyone with interest can dig into for themselves. What's more interesting is applying it in the world today.

Choose what you want to amplify, choose when you want to act as a breakwater. Think about your full range of options, and choose the one that is most proportional and most likely to build the world you want to live in.

Don't murder people. (Think about it. If you murdered someone for money, what's to stop someone else from murdering you for the same reason? If you let that go unchecked, soon we're all living in constant paranoia that someone is going to try and kill us. Let's just... not do that.)

Don't lie. (Same reasoning.)

Really. It doesn't matter that the other side is doing it. It doesn't matter that you think they're awful and terrible people who need to be defeated. Find another way to respond to them. (You're adults, aren't you? Surely you know by now that 'he started it' is a child's way of thinking.)

Stop this disproportional escalating political nonsense where everything you do is justified by the horrible _____, and everything they do is proof of their utter depravity. 

This doesn't exactly tell you want to do instead, of course... but there is a full range of choices and responding in kind (but harder) is only one of them.

Politics Today, Part II

So I've got a calculus test today, and I'm typing this in between reviewing formulas for taking the derivative of logarithms, calculating elasticity, and evaluating interest rates (whether continuous interest or compound interest).

I'm trying to figure out what to say that won't turn into basic Clinton bashing (I am definitely not a fan, you see). 

And that's kind of the problem.  Or rather, the fact that we can't have an honest discussion about Clinton without sounding like it's Clinton-bashing is a problem.  The true believers have all their counter-arguments and defenses already lined up.  Don't like her? 

You must be a Republican.

Or too credulous, and willing to believe Republican lies.

Or sexist.

Or it was all Comey, and Russia, and you are letting them 'win' if you talk about Hillary's mistakes.

It kind of bothers me that we are almost a year past the election, and Hillary Clinton's name is still coming up all too often.  Some of that is on the Republican side - they seem to like using her as a distraction - but some of that is Clinton herself.  Who just refuses to go away.

And her true supporters laud her for that, even as the 2/3rds of the population who don't support her are sick of it.

I find myself wondering, why is she so desperate to hang on?  Like - I know that you have to believe in yourself to run for office.  That you have to convince yourself that you need to be the candidate, that nobody else can do it better.  (After all, if they could do it better you'd drop out and vote for them...right?)

But at some point you have to understand the distinction between what's best for you and what's best for the party.  And I really don't think Hillary hanging on is best for the party.  She lost to one of the most unpopular presidential candidates ever.  Some of that may be because of Russian meddling, or Comey, or any of the other excuses...but the race wouldn't have been close enough for those things to matter if she had been a better candidate in the first place. 

The true believers act as though her years of experience were a good thing, since it proved nothing the Republicans did could stick.  They were so focused on defeating the Republicans (and calling them out for all the 'lies' against their own candidates) that they didn't care at all about what the casual voter thought. 

Or how it looked, that the entire Democratic party supported a candidate who was under an FBI investigation.  After all, they all 'knew' the investigation was just Republican shenanigans, and not anything anyone should take seriously.

And now that the election is over, why, we've got better things to worry about.  Like Trump.  Or Russia.  No need to look at how and why the entire Democratic party supported such a flawed candidate.

So much of the commentary on that tweet is avoiding exactly that. 

Politics Today, Part I

This morning I saw this tweet, and decided to check out the comments.  I know, I know...people have stopped doing that.  It's ugly, negative, and you can't really tell who are bots, or paid responders, or just trolls trying to get people wound up.

Still, I like doing it for certain articles because it feels like I'm taking a pulse on an issue.  That is, the media may decide what to write about and may even slant the article a certain way, but the comments is where you get readers responses.  A sense of how they are interpreting the article.  And it's not always in the way the author expected or intended.  Plus, if there are bots or paid responders it's kind of worth knowing what sort of narrative is being pushed. 

Let me rephrase that - comments may not accurately reflect the viewpoints of the population, but it can and does reflect the strength of certain narratives (whether genuine or paid) and it's worth knowing what those narratives are and how many responders take the time to share it.

I have to admit, I was disappointed/disturbed by the narrative thus displayed, and what it says about America today.

This post is pretty much an attempt to sort through why it bothered me.

When I was a kid, I argued with one of my younger brothers a LOT.  I remember one particular argument - not the details, of course.  I remember Mom got involved, and it didn't go the way I wanted it to.  I wanted her to clearly back me up, see my brother's misdeeds and punish him.

What I do remember, however, is when she asked me "Do you think your brother thinks he won?"

Now, as a child I really didn't want to hear that, of course.  I was right, he was wrong, and it was very black and white to me.  But that question did kind of stick in my mind, because (now that I'm older) it brings up a very good point.  Namely, that just because we think someone 'got away with it', or wasn't punished appropriately doesn't mean that they feel the same way. 

I could go into a speech on human nature, on our tendency to exaggerate the hurts done us and minimize the hurt we do to others (thus making our evaluation of 'just punishment' flawed, as instead of "an eye for an eye" we feel that taking both eyes is just punishment for their taking one of ours) but I think that would take too long, so I'll skip it for now.

The point was that in a dispute we tend to focus on defeating the other, and in doing so we lose sight of the bigger picture.  So, for example, in a counterinsurgency we start focusing on killing insurgents rather than the bigger picture (i.e. killing insurgents as well as reducing their ability to recruit new insurgents through a combination of policies.  Like addressing the grievances that motivate new recruits, making it clear that there is a way out if they give up the fight (so they don't feel like they have to fight to the death), and remembering to create a safe place for neutrals and people caught in the middle.  That way there clearly IS an alternative.  You basically want to make it clear that supporting you is better than supporting the bad guys, not just morally...but also in terms of safety and your ability to protect those who support you.

On a less violent, less visceral level the same thing happens in politics.  That is, true believers (on the left and the right) focus on their opponents.  On wanting to clearly win, and make the other side clearly lose.  They get tunnel vision, and lose sight of the bigger picture.  They pander to their base, and stop caring about persuading those who aren't already true believers (like them.) 

And they want to make the other side lose.  Badly. 

So they consider any attack on their own to be lies...while any attack against their opponent is God's honest truth.  And anyone who doesn't see it their way is too stupid to know better, or misled by the lies of their opponents.  Either way, it's not worth considering.  And definitely not worth changing course - after all, that would mean their opponent won.