Biofoundationalism and Moral Foundations Utility Theory: Cthulhu Swims Left, Because He Has Nowhere Else To Go
This is a 6-part series of essays on why I believe the well-known political cycles of nations occur.
Part 1: Moral Foundations and Hypermoralization
ABSTRACT
There are moral genotypes and political phenotypes. Your moral foundations are rooted in your temperament, and your temperament is biologically derived. Biological traits that inform temperaments are evenly distributed across society, but rarely evenly expressed. Whether they can be fully expressed depends on the prosperity of the nation.
Societies begin at conservative moral foundations out of necessity, then drift inexorably to liberal ones as resources and luxuries accrue. This drift is initially rooted in utility and is healthy. This produces the well-known leftward collective shift in a nationās values over time. This eventually degrades into entropic collective behavior and then resets.
MORAL FOUNDATIONS AND TOXIC OVEREMPHASIS: HYPERMORALIZATION
There is objective truth in STEM, and competing moral foundations talking past each other for most else. These are the moral foundations and their conservatives vs liberal emphasis, taken from Jon Haidtās The Righteous Mind, a book I highly recommend.
All of these moral foundations are important; there is embedded evolutionary wisdom as to why humans and society advocate them. Ideally, a healthy society will have an equal expression of them. When certain ones are militantly emphasized over others, an unhealthy one takes shape.
Toxic moral overemphasis, what Iām calling āhypermoralizationā, entails holding one or two moral foundations above all else and injecting them into apolitical things. Everything is about equality and fairness, everything about sanctity and loyalty, etc.. Obvious signs include Disney, corporations, and the like politicizing their movies and marketing with the same obnoxious moralizing messaging.
This is toxic moral-foundations overemphasis: hypermoralization.
During toxic hypermoralization periods, government institutions, corporations, and media have an obsession with just one or two moral foundations, and disregard the others. This marks the onset of a political environment where you wonāt convince anyone of anything if they donāt fundamentally value the same things as you.
Hypermoralization only occurs during economic extremes: hard times elicit conservative hypermoralization, and decadent times foster liberal hypermoralization. We are currently in the decadent times.
The spectrum of wealth in between these two poles informs the evenness of moral emphasis across a society.
There becomes decreasing political solutions to hypermoralization. Opposing political factions begin to essentially speak different languages: two different moral codes talking past each other. Both accusing the other of being heartless, radical, imbecilic, etc..
Radicalness on one end begets radicalness on the other. When you view the world through only one moral lens, political communication breaks down. I canāt convince you of anything, you canāt convince me of anything.
This goes on until it canāt.
This is a 6-part series of essays on why I believe the well-known political cycles of nations occur.
Part 1: Moral Foundations and Hypermoralization
ABSTRACT
There are moral genotypes and political phenotypes. Your moral foundations are rooted in your temperament, and your temperament is biologically derived. Biological traits that inform temperaments are evenly distributed across society, but rarely evenly expressed. Whether they can be fully expressed depends on the prosperity of the nation.
Societies begin at conservative moral foundations out of necessity, then drift inexorably to liberal ones as resources and luxuries accrue. This drift is initially rooted in utility and is healthy. This produces the well-known leftward collective shift in a nationās values over time. This eventually degrades into entropic collective behavior and then resets.
MORAL FOUNDATIONS AND TOXIC OVEREMPHASIS: HYPERMORALIZATION
There is objective truth in STEM, and competing moral foundations talking past each other for most else. These are the moral foundations and their conservatives vs liberal emphasis, taken from Jon Haidtās The Righteous Mind, a book I highly recommend.
All of these moral foundations are important; there is embedded evolutionary wisdom as to why humans and society advocate them. Ideally, a healthy society will have an equal expression of them. When certain ones are militantly emphasized over others, an unhealthy one takes shape.
Toxic moral overemphasis, what Iām calling āhypermoralizationā, entails holding one or two moral foundations above all else and injecting them into apolitical things. Everything is about equality and fairness, everything about sanctity and loyalty, etc.. Obvious signs include Disney, corporations, and the like politicizing their movies and marketing with the same obnoxious moralizing messaging.
This is toxic moral-foundations overemphasis: hypermoralization.
During toxic hypermoralization periods, government institutions, corporations, and media have an obsession with just one or two moral foundations, and disregard the others. This marks the onset of a political environment where you wonāt convince anyone of anything if they donāt fundamentally value the same things as you.
Hypermoralization only occurs during economic extremes: hard times elicit conservative hypermoralization, and decadent times foster liberal hypermoralization. We are currently in the decadent times.
The spectrum of wealth in between these two poles informs the evenness of moral emphasis across a society.
There becomes decreasing political solutions to hypermoralization. Opposing political factions begin to essentially speak different languages: two different moral codes talking past each other. Both accusing the other of being heartless, radical, imbecilic, etc..
Radicalness on one end begets radicalness on the other. When you view the world through only one moral lens, political communication breaks down. I canāt convince you of anything, you canāt convince me of anything.
This goes on until it canāt.
Part 2 of 6: Biofoundationalism
Your political views are directly derived from, and an expression of, your moral foundations. This is why political and social ātruthsā are inherently subjective, because theyāre fundamentally moral value expressions. And we all donāt value the same things. Because we all donāt have the same temperaments. Because we all donāt have the same biology.
Temperament: an animalās innate predisposition, inherent behavioral, and emotional patterns. It's an individual's natural and enduring personality traits and tendencies. Temperament encompasses various aspects of emotional, social, and behavioral responses to stimuli and situations.
Your personality and beliefs have biological basis: influenced by genetic, neurobiological, and physiological factors.
You do not control these, they control you. You do not create these, they create you.
This is not a postmodern ātruth is relativeā thing. A manās interpretation of truth is downstream of his moral foundations, and his morals are downstream of his temperament, and his temperament is biologically imposed.
I view a cultural breakdown of political communication as unwitting biotribalism, manifesting as militant political views. You have more in common with your political allies than you thinkā¦.
To conclude this, I take Jon Haidt's moral foundations work and view them in context with other hard biological realities. It paints a harsh, but accurate, depiction of political decision making and how itās a byproduct of how your brain processes information. I believe it compellingly illustrates these moral differences are innate, for example:
- The amygdala is larger in conservatives
- The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is bigger in liberals
- Conservatives have higher threat sensitivity
- By disabling the posterior medial frontal cortex, you can change views towards immigration, religion, etc..
- Disgust sensitivity tells you a whole lot about other things
- There are others
Even how you react to my theory will inform much about your temperament. To suggest immutable biological differences and innate political thinking is to suggest inherent human biovariation. Which is to imply a whole gamut of other things.
Your temperament will in large part inform if you'll even entertain my theory, or runaway from it on sight. Which is to say your reaction to this thesis on political thinking and biology will probably inform on your biology.
I bet based on your receptiveness to what I just said, in a couple years AI could extrapolate biotraits like amygdala size, disgust sensitivities, ACC, etc..
And thus logically, with just information on your ACC, amygdala, and other biotraitsā¦ AI could infer your political compass, which is to say your moral foundations.
Moral genotypes and political phenotypes = Biofoundationalism.
THE PATTERN GOD KNOWS
I think AI will validate this, someday. It can already tell peopleās races from pixelated x-rays, reconstruct faces from just voices(!). Brain scans will be low-hanging fruit, so long as the safety brigade doesnāt lobotomize it because some science is scary. AI will find other unsettling things too, in patterns.
Patterns and biology canāt be hidden from AI, because intelligence is fundamentally pattern matching, and AI is a pattern god.
I believe a holistic assessment of a person with AI that includes brain scans, synapse count/quality, and other biological/physiological traits will almost certainly be able to determine what your political views are before youāre even aware you have them (among other things).
Your political views are directly derived from, and an expression of, your moral foundations. This is why political and social ātruthsā are inherently subjective, because theyāre fundamentally moral value expressions. And we all donāt value the same things. Because we all donāt have the same temperaments. Because we all donāt have the same biology.
Temperament: an animalās innate predisposition, inherent behavioral, and emotional patterns. It's an individual's natural and enduring personality traits and tendencies. Temperament encompasses various aspects of emotional, social, and behavioral responses to stimuli and situations.
Your personality and beliefs have biological basis: influenced by genetic, neurobiological, and physiological factors.
You do not control these, they control you. You do not create these, they create you.
This is not a postmodern ātruth is relativeā thing. A manās interpretation of truth is downstream of his moral foundations, and his morals are downstream of his temperament, and his temperament is biologically imposed.
I view a cultural breakdown of political communication as unwitting biotribalism, manifesting as militant political views. You have more in common with your political allies than you thinkā¦.
To conclude this, I take Jon Haidt's moral foundations work and view them in context with other hard biological realities. It paints a harsh, but accurate, depiction of political decision making and how itās a byproduct of how your brain processes information. I believe it compellingly illustrates these moral differences are innate, for example:
- The amygdala is larger in conservatives
- The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is bigger in liberals
- Conservatives have higher threat sensitivity
- By disabling the posterior medial frontal cortex, you can change views towards immigration, religion, etc..
- Disgust sensitivity tells you a whole lot about other things
- There are others
Even how you react to my theory will inform much about your temperament. To suggest immutable biological differences and innate political thinking is to suggest inherent human biovariation. Which is to imply a whole gamut of other things.
Your temperament will in large part inform if you'll even entertain my theory, or runaway from it on sight. Which is to say your reaction to this thesis on political thinking and biology will probably inform on your biology.
I bet based on your receptiveness to what I just said, in a couple years AI could extrapolate biotraits like amygdala size, disgust sensitivities, ACC, etc..
And thus logically, with just information on your ACC, amygdala, and other biotraitsā¦ AI could infer your political compass, which is to say your moral foundations.
Moral genotypes and political phenotypes = Biofoundationalism.
THE PATTERN GOD KNOWS
I think AI will validate this, someday. It can already tell peopleās races from pixelated x-rays, reconstruct faces from just voices(!). Brain scans will be low-hanging fruit, so long as the safety brigade doesnāt lobotomize it because some science is scary. AI will find other unsettling things too, in patterns.
Patterns and biology canāt be hidden from AI, because intelligence is fundamentally pattern matching, and AI is a pattern god.
I believe a holistic assessment of a person with AI that includes brain scans, synapse count/quality, and other biological/physiological traits will almost certainly be able to determine what your political views are before youāre even aware you have them (among other things).
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