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On Ethics

stuff On conduct, ideal and otherwise

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Without more tasteful social behaviours to sample from, we’re liable to attach very strongly to the behaviours of our group. Add a hostile environment, normalised physical and emotional violence, and a lack of mental and physical resources, and you have the ingredients for atrocity.

When groups go bad

Article

There’s this cluster of classic social psychology experiments from the 50’s through the 70’s that you’ll be presented with in documentaries and whatnot whenever groups of people are behaving crazily. You’ve probably heard of some of them. Milgram’s ‘shock’ experiments, or Zimbardo’s prison experiment, or Asch’s conformity tests, and so on. These things gloss over just how hard it is to get people to do atrocities on a large-scale. Luckily, you have me to tell you how they really happen.
Without more tasteful social behaviours to sample from, we’re liable to attach very strongly to the behaviours of our group. Add a hostile environment, normalised physical and emotional violence, and a lack of mental and physical resources, and you have the ingredients for atrocity.
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betterment collective-architecture connection on-culture on-ethics on-friendship on-leadership somatic-architecture

article

The strength of our attraction to a group is a function of how different a group is from other groups in ways that we feel like we are, or like we want to be. Our participation in the group depends on how we see it benefitting us, and see us benefitting the group. The stronger both are, the stronger our biases to stay engaged.

Useful groups are biased groups

Article

There’s this cluster of classic social psychology experiments from the 50’s through the 70’s that you’ll be presented with in documentaries and whatnot whenever groups of people are behaving crazily. You’ve probably heard of some of them. Milgram’s ‘shock’ experiments, or Zimbardo’s prison experiment, or Asch’s conformity tests, and so on. This is the second in a third on group dynamics. Here we’ll talk about what makes our attraction to groups stronger, as well as what makes people participate in groups, and how all our group biases make sense in the context.
The strength of our attraction to a group is a function of how different a group is from other groups in ways that we feel like we are, or like we want to be. Our participation in the group depends on how we see it benefitting us, and see us benefitting the group. The stronger both are, the stronger our biases to stay engaged.
Read this article

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betterment collective-architecture connection on-culture on-ethics on-leadership

article

You could think of a collection of group dynamics like ‘groupthink’ or ‘deindividuation’ or whatever are bad. Or you could consider that our social identity is formed by making the distinctions between in- and out- groups clear. Then it all makes sense.

Mob mentality is fine

Article

There’s this cluster of classic social psychology experiments from the 50’s through the 70’s that you’ll be presented with in documentaries and whatnot whenever groups of people are behaving crazily. You’ve probably heard of some of them. Milgram’s ‘shock’ experiments, or Zimbardo’s prison experiment, or Asch’s conformity tests, and so on. This is the second in a series on group dynamics. Here we’ll talk about how the same group dynamics people like to worry about actually underpin all group dynamics.
You could think of a collection of group dynamics like ‘groupthink’ or ‘deindividuation’ or whatever are bad. Or you could consider that our social identity is formed by making the distinctions between in- and out- groups clear. Then it all makes sense.
Read this article

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collective-architecture connection gratification on-culture on-ethics on-friendship on-leadership

article

For group dynamics to produce really bad behaviour, you really need to work at it. You have to train your authority figures to be cruel, prevent dissent or disengagement, and intervene all the time to stop people fixing things. It’s <em>hard</em>.

Catastrophic leadership is actually really hard

Article

There’s this cluster of classic social psychology experiments from the 50’s through the 70’s that you’ll be presented with in documentaries and whatnot whenever groups of people are behaving crazily. You’ve probably heard of some of them. Milgram’s ‘shock’ experiments, or Zimbardo’s prison experiment, or Asch’s conformity tests, and so on. This is the first in a little series on group dynamics. Here we’ll talk about the classic experiments, and show that the kinds of catastrophic group dynamics people trot out to illustrate them are actually really difficult to achieve.
For group dynamics to produce really bad behaviour, you really need to work at it. You have to train your authority figures to be cruel, prevent dissent or disengagement, and intervene all the time to stop people fixing things. It’s hard.
Read this article

filed under:

betterment collective-architecture connection on-ethics on-leadership somatic-architecture on-culture on-friendship

article

The obsession over objectivity is a confusion of two things. There’s rationality, the desire to be less biased. Then there’s truth which is going to be necessarily biased toward whatever aspect of the world we’re trying to understand. In both cases objectivity is irrelevant.

The Trouble With Objectivity

Article

I reckon that in most cases we never really have access to the truth. We only have access to the stuff our bodies allow us to perceive. Instead, what we do is we map what we do know about the world based on what we need to achieve in the world. Facts are not really truths, but reflections of our worldly needs. Not everyone agrees with me though. In fact, there’s a lot of people who are rather obsessed with getting at the objective truth. I think that, for the most part, these people are confused about what they’re doing. Let me tell you why.
The obsession over objectivity is a confusion of two things. There’s rationality, the desire to be less biased. Then there’s truth which is going to be necessarily biased toward whatever aspect of the world we’re trying to understand. In both cases objectivity is irrelevant.
Read this article

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betterment collective-architecture connection gratification on-(un)happiness on-ethics on-the-nature-of-things on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture thought-architecture
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