Tag: Institutions

Empathy is Not Enough

Empathy is Not Enough

Posted on by jabittan
In our world today we are dealing with a lot of tragedies and negativity. Our political parties are polarized and don’t seem to be willing to cooperate. This last weekend there was a mass shooting at 4th of July parade. Women face incredibly awful sexist comments online. As a response to the negativity, many people are calling for increased empathy in the world. The idea is that we need to work together to be more empathetic, more aligned and aware of each other, and to care for each other’s emotions to a greater level than we currently do.
 
 
However, as always for me, I would argue that trying to develop more empathy is not enough. I think we need to develop better institutions that bring about the kinds of changes that we want to see in a more empathetic world. Steven Pinker, based on what he wrote in The Better Angels of Our Nature would likely agree:
 
 
“The overall picture that has emerged from the study of the compassionate brain is that there is no empathy center with empathy neurons, but complex patterns of activation and modulation that depend on perceivers interpretation of the traits of another person and the nature of their relationship with the person.”
 
 
Pinker explains that singular people going out and trying to be good people, trying to display empathy, and trying to make the world a better place by being empathetic is not likely to change the state of empathy in the world and bring about the subsequent changes we would like to see. Trying to be empathetic with a woman who has been criticized online could backfire if you are not seen as part of the right group, a major challenge in our politically polarized society. Gun violence may not be reduced, and may not be reduced quick enough, if we try to build empathy at an individual level. What needs to change are incentive structures and relationships between people.
 
 
Similarly to how Pinker writes about empathy, he writes the following about sympathy, “sympathy is endogenous, and an effect rather than a cause of how people relate to one another. Depending on how beholders conceive of a relationship, their response to another person’s pain may be empathic, neutral, or even counter productive.”
 
 
At this point, I believe we need new institutions that will reduce access to guns and create new taboos around guns. I would support a constitutional amendment banning guns or even a program that tried to purchase guns from people (especially for people with suicidal backgrounds – however these programs are often not effective). I would also push for reduced anonymity for online social media companies, hopefully bringing more visibility to awful sexist comments. Other institutions, like changes to our voting system could help address the political polarization and possibly have other positive effects down the road. Institutions can shape behavior much stronger and much more quickly than individual kindness and acts of empathy. To get beyond our current world of tragedies and negativity, I think it is time we start experimenting with new institutions.
Five Causes of Violence

Five Causes of Violence

Posted on by jabittan
In his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker lays out five root causes of violence. Four of which I believe we can directly address through better institutions. The remaining form we have dealt with using institutions, but not in a very effective way. Ultimately, my takeaway is that institutions are crucial for reducing violence by addressing root causes, but that poorly designed and poorly functioning institutions can play into these same root causes of violence.
 
 
To introduce the causes of violence Pinker writes, “the first category of violence may be called practical, instrumental, exploitative, or predatory. It is the simplest kind of violence: the use of force as a means to an end. The violence is deployed in pursuit of a goal.” Violence can be a tool to force people to do something or to obtain something we want. We can use violence to force people to act in a certain way, to prevent people from taking something we have, and to try to achieve a specific outcome. Violence in this way is unfair and unequal. It favors the physically dominant and the socially connected who can employ others to do harm for them or prevent them from facing consequences. Institutions to address this kind of violence include the rule of law, state monopolies on violence, and the extension of law enforcement to all citizens, even the most powerful people in a society. When institutions exist that prevent violence from being employed as a means to an end, then the temptation to use violence to get what we want diminishes.
 
 
“The second root cause of violence is dominance – the drive for supremacy over one’s rivals.” This form of violence is connected to the first, because through dominance we are achieving a certain outcome that we want. Again, when violence is employed the outcome is unfair and unequal. Worse, it is not limited to individuals, “groups compete for dominance too.” We use violence in this way to maintain a status quo or ensure that the status quo will favor people like us over others who could take something from us. Institutions are harder to develop to address the dominance use of violence, but meaningful elections and representation has helped. Modern institutions may downplay the role of violence, but modern political systems have not downplayed the importance of dominance.
 
 
“The third root of violence is revenge – the drive to pay back a harm in kind.” What comes to mind when I think of this form of violence is the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. I will admit I am not 100% sure of the details of what happened, but what appears to have happened is that Arbery was going for a jog in a neighborhood that had recently experienced some theft. Arbery was poking around a constructions site, a place he probably shouldn’t have been, when two white men saw him and chased him. The chase ended with Arbery being shot and killed. The killing was in a sense a revenge killing. The white men used violence to correct what they perceived as a wrong – perceiving Arbery as being a criminal who had stolen from a construction site. In the end, the revenge killing of Arbery was ruled a murder, our justice system’s institutions holding that such a use of violence was not acceptable. The rule of law is a powerful institution in deterring the revenge root cause of violence.
 
 
“The fourth root is sadism, the joy of hurting.” This root cause of violence is part of why America has more people in prison than any other nation. We respond to violence as if people are evil and need to be locked away from society. We act as if the other causes don’t exist, and as if people do bad things because they are all sadists. The only problem is that we cannot predict who is a sadist and who isn’t. Just as we can’t predict who is going to be a great employee, who is going to be the best NBA draft prospect, and who is going to steal everyone’s retirement savings in a Ponzi Scheme, we cannot predict who is going to employ violence for sadistic motives. I am not sure we are at a point where we can effectively control this motivation with institutions. Our fear of this motive has lead to our costly incarceration problem, which may not be effective.
 
 
“The fifth and most consequential cause of violence is ideology, in which true believers weave a collection of motives into a creed and recruit other people to carry out its destructive goals.” In the United States we are terrified of Arabic terrorists, however, the most dangerous ideology, in terms of people killed in the United States each year, is white nationalism. We see the danger of this form of violence repeatedly – from grocery store shootings to school shootings, the danger has been clear. But we have failed to fully address the beliefs and ideologies which drive people to commit white nationalist violence. Throughout human history, ideology has been protected and institutions have enabled and supported ideological violence. The Crusades, Jim Crow laws and the KKK, and modern failure to use institutions to control firearms are examples of ideological violence being protected or at the very least not being deterred through institutions.
 
 
My argument is that these causes of violence, with the exception of sadistic violence, can be controlled and shaped by institutions. We can develop institutions which reduce violence, but sometimes we fail to do so. It is our responsibility to think about our institutions, how they function, and to take steps to improve them to continue to reduce human violence.
Calculating Justifiable Violence

Calculating Justifiable Violence

Posted on by jabittan
Not all violence is created equal. This is easy for us to see and understand even if we have not thought about it deeply. The idea that some violence is justifiable, excusable, and even a necessity is played out in sports, movies, and books all the time.
 
 
Hunting is a clear act of violence, but it can be a necessity for some people and even a public good (as is the case with hunting wild hogs in parts of Texas today). Violence in the form of sports is often celebrated and replayed on nationally broadcast television shows. Violence in self-defense is excusable (and sometimes explicitly protected under the law), and sometimes small displays of violence can prevent larger violence in the future.
 
 
According to Steven Pinker in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, our brains have evolved specific skills around calculating whether violence is permissible or not. He writes,
 
 
“The temporoparietal junction and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which grew tremendously over the course of evolution, gives us the wherewithal to perform cool calculations that deem certain kinds of violence justifiable. Our ambivalence about the outputs of those calculations … shows that quintessentially cerebral parts of the cerebrum are neither inner demons nor better angles. They are cognitive tools that can both foster violence and inhibit it.”
 
 
Our mental ability to excuse violence that takes place in sports, violence that shows that we will defend ourselves and prevents larger future violence, and violence that kills wild pigs for the good of society can be both a good and a negative part of our thinking processes. We can dismiss violence in the case of a single mother using a weapon to defend herself against an intruding violent criminal in her house. However, we have also seen humans justify state sanctioned capital punishment, deliberately killing criminals in a form of retributive justice that may not be as fair as humans have long thought. As Pinker’s quote notes, the same brain processes can be better angels and inner demons when it comes to the ways violence plays out and is accepted or dismissed within our society. This is important to think about because it means at an individual level violence and our perception of it will fluctuate and vary. To reduce and control violence, we need larger institutions which function to reduce violence across the board, without as much individual variation and dismissal of some forms of violence.
Aggression, Brain Circuits, & Civilizing Processes

Aggression, Brain Circuits, & Civilizing Processes

Posted on by jabittan
Throughout The Better Angels of our Nature, Steven Pinker writes about the process of humans becoming less violent by describing humans as engaging in civilizing processes. Over time humans have developed social norms, institutions, and processes that have made us more civilized and less violent. We organize our social worlds in ways that reward patience, consideration of others, and restraint from violent and aggressive outbursts. Our civilizing processes have pushed back against many instinctive responses that are common across mammals.
“Biologists have long noted that the mammalian brain has distinct circuits that underlie very different kinds of aggression,” writes Pinker. In many situations mammals (which we are as humans of course) will act out aggressively. There are multiple brain systems and pathways that will drive aggression – fear, self defense, preservation of resources. Pinker stresses that there is not just one violent, aggressive, or animalistic circuit or pathway in our brains, there are multiple which can be activated by different factors.
Pinker continues, “one of the oldest discoveries in the biology of violence is the link between pain or frustration and aggression. When an animal is shocked, or access to food is taken away, it will attack the nearest fellow animal, or bite an inanimate object if no living target is available.” Brain circuits related to aggression are fast and non-discriminating. They will activate and direct aggression to anything that is close by – as many of us who have kicked a printer or thrown a TV remote know first hand.
So how have humans been able to become more peaceful over time when we have a variety of fast acting brain circuits which will trigger violent outbursts in response to a host of different factors? Pinker writes, “the neuroanatomy suggests that in Homo sapiens primitive impulses of rage, fear, and craving must contend with the cerebral restraints of prudence, moralization, and self-control.” In other words, humans have pursued civilizing processes that make aggression more costly, create institutions which reduce some factors that prime violence, and reward humans for practicing self-control rather than impulsive behaviors. As Pinker describes civilizing processes throughout the book, some processes are individual, requiring the individual to behave in more peaceful and sanitary ways. Some processes are institutional, creating rewards for civil behavior and punishments for less civil behavior. We actively shape a world that addresses the multiple pathways for aggression in the brain and works against those pathways so that they activate less frequently and are punished when they do activate. This is the heart of the civilizing processes which have driven down violence in human society throughout human history.
The Ordinariness of Evil

The Ordinariness of Evil

Posted on by jabittan
I think we generally underrate certain brain systems and processes that lead us to make sub-optimal decisions. There are a lot of things that we do which are perfectly logical and reasonable, but have very negative consequences. Examples include the use of single-use plastics, failing to help those who are in the greatest need, or driving polluting vehicles. We all know these things are not great, but various institutions and structures make it hard to change our behaviors, and our brain systems reinforce the decision-making processes that allow us to dismiss the harm we do or rationalize our decision not to make a change. We generally understand and accept this, but what we fail to realize is that this ordinary negativity isn’t that much different from great evil. The ordinariness of evil is something we don’t acknowledge, so consequently we fail to see how ordinary negativity is in line with the ordinariness of evil.
 
 
“Certain brain systems can cause both the best and worst in human behavior,” writes Steven Pinker in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature. Humans are naturally tribal and we are generally altruistic toward members of our own tribe. People who we think of as being on our team, as similar to us, and as our allies are likely to be the recipients of our benevolence and generosity. But our tribal nature can also make us xenophobic, racist, and oppressive to those who are different or who compete against us. We can be actively cruel to people who are different from us (even while pretending we are not – as in providing economic arguments for racist policies like redlining in real estate) or absentmindedly cruel (as in supporting NIMBY-ism in much of the United States today). What is important to recognize is that common thinking systems, bounded rationality, and either active or passive self-interest can perpetuate evil.
 
 
“Evil … is perpetrated by people who are mostly ordinary, and who respond to their circumstances, including provocations by the victim, in ways they feel are reasonable and just,” writes Pinker.
 
 
Most of the people who commit evil in this world are not like the movie villains we think about when we picture true evil. Most people are more or less average and have the capacity to be nice, generous, and kind as well as evil. This goes for those who actively commit atrocious evil and those who passively perpetuate evil. Quite often we are reacting to the world around us in understandable ways. This doesn’t mean we are always reacting in justifiable, healthy, or good ways, but we are reacting in human ways. There are some people who are pure evil, but most people who commit great atrocities are doing so in response to a range of factors. If we want to address the evil in the world today, we have to recognize the ordinariness of evil and change our approach. We have to continue to improve and adapt the institutions and structures which incentivize evil or passively allow evil to take place. We have to recognize that those who commit evil are not pure monsters, but were influenced by sometimes ordinary and banal factors. We have to accept that the way our brains work can make us great, but can also make us terrible.
Non-Violence Requires Mental Fortitude

Non-Violence Requires Mental Fortitude

Posted on by jabittan
Being non-violent is not naturally easy for human beings. Non-violence requires a measure of self-discipline, self-control, and mental fortitude. It requires that we see beyond ourselves, shifting our perspective outside our own self-interest and point of view.
 
 
Steven Pinker writes about this in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature. Pinker writes, “insofar as violence is immoral, the Rights Revolutions show that a moral way of life often requires a decisive rejection of instinct, culture, religion, and standard practice. In their place is an ethics that is inspire by empathy and reason and stated in the language of rights.”
 
 
When we are not measured, when we do not exercise self-control, and when we lack mental fortitude, we can become violent. Just as we can become addicted to substances, indulgent in too many desserts, and unwilling to go to the gym, we can lash out physically against others when we do not think through our actions with reason and discipline. We are social creatures, so having mental fortitude and thinking about our actions within the context of the society we are a part of is natural for us, but that doesn’t mean it is always the easy, default way of being.
 
 
Violence has been a long standing element of our social arrangements and behaviors behaviors. Whether through instinct, which said that we must kill a neighbor to protect what is ours, through cultural practices which failed to put taboos on violence between spouses, religions which encouraged eternal rewards for violent deaths defending religious principals, or eye-for-an-eye criminal justice policies, violence has been an accepted part of many of our institutions. But a language of rights and empathy toward other people have reduced the role and acceptance of violence in our institutions. Rational thought, combined with mental fortitude is making our species a less violent species over time. Non-violence is not easy, but it is something we can rationally program into our institutions in continually better ways.
Anti-War Sentiments & Institutions

Anti-War Sentiments & Institutions

Posted on by jabittan
Over time human beings have become more peaceful. In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker explains that much of the reduction of violence between humans has been influenced by the institutions we create to govern, organize, and structure our societies, relationships, and human to human interactions. Without institutions to help pacify humans, violence would be an easy and convenient solution to many of our problems.
 
 
Pinker uses anti-war sentiment to show how important institutions are in making people less violent. He writes, “to gain traction, antiwar sentiments have to infect many constituencies at the same time. And they have to be grounded in economic and political institutions, so that the war-averse outlook doesn’t depend on everyone’s deciding to become and stay virtuous.” We can praise virtuous monks, we can admire peaceful protestors, and we can hold conscientious war objectors in high regard, but if political and economic institutions do not align with peace, then anti-war sentiment won’t grow beyond these few groups. It is easy to say that humans should all be kind, peaceful, and considerate of others, but without the right institutions, virtues don’t matter much.
 
 
People don’t like admitting that their behaviors are driven by large structural and institutional factors. We like to imagine that we are good individuals and that our conscious choices and decisions are what drive our behaviors. We see ourselves as deserving of good things and criminals and deviants as deserving of bad things because of individual choices in life. When we think about the world becoming a less violent place (if we think about that at all) we imagine it is because we are part of a new breed of humans who are more civilized, smarter, less impulsive, and more valuing of human life. Some of that may be true, but if so, it is not something special about humans today but likely something about the institutions we have built which have changed us and our social worlds.
 
 
Pinker’s anti-war sentiment quote shows how that is true. It is hard for a population to become overwhelmingly peaceful and anti-war when their neighbor has invaded their country (as we see in Ukraine now). It is hard to favor peace when your own economy is a train wreck and invading your neighbor will give your economy a boost through natural resources (perhaps as we see with Russia). If violence is a quick and easy way to boost your economy and the institutions surrounding you don’t punish you for violence, then you have fewer incentives to be peaceful and anti-war. Institutions, incentives, and larger political and economic structural factors matter – often more than individual virtuosity.
An End to Institutionalized Superstitious Killings & A Bumper Sticker

An End to Institutionalized Superstitious Killings & A Bumper Sticker

Posted on by jabittan
Very few peoples and cultures today participate in some form of ritual killing of other people or hold any beliefs that human sacrifices are necessary to appease a deity and ensure good fortunes for the future. Very few people have to worry about being killed for possessing magical powers or for having somehow been in contact with an evil mystical being. However, throughout much of human history, these were legitimate concerns and fears for many human beings.
 
 
In his book The Better Angel of Our Nature, Steven Pinker writes, “in most of the world, institutionalized superstitious killing, whether in human sacrifice, blood libel, or witch persecution has succumbed to two pressures. One is intellectual: the realization that some events, even those with profound personal significance, must be attributed to impersonal physical forces and raw chance rather than the designs of other conscious beings.”
 
 
This is a major step for humans and the societies we build and live within. At least within WEIRD countries, we have moved to a place where the institutionalized killing of a human being can only be carried out if there is empirical evidence to demonstrate that the human being committed a crime. This trend is constantly being advanced, as we now require stronger evidence, such as clear DNA evidence, in order to convict an individual. We are increasingly uncomfortable with state police forces using deadly force when apprehending dangerous criminals. Further, we accept institutionalized killings in fewer circumstances. Even murder isn’t always a guarantee that some form of state endorsed violence or killing will be used as a valid punishment. 
 
 
Pinker continues, “a great principal of moral advancement, on par with love thy neighbor and all men are created equal is the one on the bumper sticker: shit happens.” Humans today recognize that physical forces are beyond the control of an individual. We also don’t accept (in legal settings at least) that terrible natural phenomena like floods and landslides, are not retributive acts of a deity angry at people for their sins. We can accept that good things may happen to bad people, and that bad things may happen to good people without another human or advanced deity interfering through some form of mysticism or divine punishment/reward.
 
 
The bumper sticker view of life has combined with a greater increase in the value of human life and happiness in recent human history. We don’t punish people with violence for crimes that humans could not possibly have committed, and we resort to less violence when punishing humans for crimes that we have strong evidence that they did commit. We resort to incarceration, fines, and community service for most forms of punishment today, not scarring, whipping, or burning at the stake. Even in the rare instances where we do still support institutionalized killings, we do so in the most peaceful and nonviolent manner possible (at least in countries where lethal injection is the method used for capital punishment). These are just two high level explanations that Pinker offers for a global decline in violence in his book. We are less mystical and less likely to support institutionalized violence. 
Violence and Convenient Mysticism

Violence and Convenient Mysticism

Posted on by jabittan
Mysticism in the United States doesn’t really feel like it lends itself to violence. When we think of mystics, we probably think of someone close to a shaman, or maybe a modern mystic whose aesthetic is very homeopathic. Mystics don’t seem like they would be the most violent people today, but in the past, mysticism was a convenient motivating factor for violence.
 
 
In his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker describes the way that mysticism lends itself to violence by writing, “the brain has evolved to ferret out hidden powers in nature, including those that no one can see. Once you start rummaging around in the realm of the unverifiable there is considerable room for creativity, and accusations of sorcery are often blended with self-serving motives.”
 
 
There are two important factors to recognize in this quote from Pinker, and both are often overlooked and misunderstood. First, our brains look for causal links between events. They are very good and very natural at thinking causally and pinpointing causation, however, as Daniel Kahneman wrote in Thinking Fast and Slow, the brain can often fall into cognitive fallacies and misattribute causation. Mystical thinking is a result of misplaced causal reasoning. It is important that we recognize that our brains can see causation that doesn’t truly exist and lead us to wrong conclusions.
 
 
The second important factor that we often manage to overlook is our own self-interest. As Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson explain in The Elephant in the Brain, our self-interest plays a much larger role in much of our decision-making and behavior than we like to admit. When combined with mysticism, self-interest can be dangerous.
 
 
If you have an enemy who boasts that they are special and offers mystical explanations for their special powers, then it suddenly becomes convenient to justify violence against your enemy. You don’t need actual proof of any wrong doing, you don’t need actual proof of their danger to society, you just need to convince others that their mystical powers could be dangerous, and you now have a convenient excuse for disposing of those who you dislike. You can promote your own self-interest without regard to reality if you can harness the power of mystical thinking.
 
 
Pinker explains that the world is becoming a more peaceful place in part because mystical thinking is moving to smaller and smaller corners of the world. Legal systems don’t recognize mystical explanations and justifications for behaviors and crimes. Empirical facts and verifiable evidence has superseded mysticism in our evaluations and judgments of crime and the use of violence. By moving beyond mysticism we have created systems, structures, and institutions that foster more peace and less violence among groups of people.
An Offense Against the State

An Offense Against The State

Posted on by jabittan
Who is harmed by a homicide? Certainly the individual who loses their life is harmed, but who else? Any family that is connected to the individual or depends on them is harmed, but beyond that, one can argue that the entire society to which the individual lived is harmed. If you take this broader view, then it makes sense that the crime of homicide could be an offense against the state, and not just an offense against a single individual or their close family.
 
 
In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker thinks about what this shift in perspective regarding the crime of homicide means for violence between and amongst human beings. He writes, “for centuries the legal system had treated homicide as a tort: in lieu of vengeance, the victim’s family would demand a payment from the killer’s family… . King Henry I redefined homicide as an offense against the state and its metonym, the crown.” When murder shifted from an offense against an individual or their family to an offense against the state, the potential rewards from murder dissipated. A single family could only do so much to seek retribution from a murder. And if the killer was big enough, strong enough, and influential enough in the local community, there was no chance that the family could ever seek justice. Murder was a path to riches, to status, and to power when it was only a crime against a single family or person.
 
 
The state, however, had more power, resources, and authority than any local individual. There may have been some individuals with extreme power and the ability to get away with murder, but shifting homicide to an offense against the state reduced the number of individuals who could kill without regard for consequences. Murder, for most, no longer existed as a good pathway toward greater riches. Shifting the offense shifted incentives and encouraged greater civility, reducing violence. The state, and its justice system, created an institution to reduce violence where previous institutions encouraged violence.