Get to know your monkeysphere.

February 25, 2005 4:44 PM

Inside the Monkeysphere. Knowing about it could help the world make sense. Or maybe not. At least it's an entertaining read!
posted by Vulpyne (37 comments total)

superb. if this is monkey right, i don't ever want to be monkey wrong.
posted by gnutron at 5:00 PM on February 25, 2005

This teeters between obnoxious and hilarious/profound... Without the monkey humor, the author suggests that the human brain can only comprehend a society of roughly 150 people. Therefore, the ideal government is a small direct democracy or commune and it is not natural to empathize with those outside our immediate group of friends without relating it to ourselves (not a bad idea).

I like how the idea encapsulates psychology, politics, and sociology pretty consistently, but honestly... too much monkey. Still, I laughed out loud at the intentional misquote: "One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic." -50 Cent
posted by themadjuggler at 5:00 PM on February 25, 2005

I think they're on to something. Nifty post man.

Lots of Miligram experiments bear this out.
Strangely, I seem to hold people more accountable in my personal relationships. I would not yell at the person who cut me off (because these things happen) but I would yell (well, no, not yell, smirk though) at the person who pressed the wrong button on the elevator.

Perhaps it's a matter of empathy.
posted by Smedleyman at 5:17 PM on February 25, 2005

I thought I was going to give this a quick once-over and smirk condescendingly. Instead I found myself reading the whole thing and laughing wildly many times. And it's funny 'cause it's true!

That really annoying person you know, the one who's always spouting bullshit, the person who always thinks they're right? Well, the odds are that for somebody else, you're that person.

So take the amount you think you know, reduce it by 99.999%, and then you'll have an idea of how much you actually know regarding things outside your Monkeysphere. Once you accept this you can no longer smirk over other people just because you think they're morons.

I give this post ten bananas.
posted by languagehat at 5:25 PM on February 25, 2005

The primary difference is that monkeys are happy to stay in small groups and rarely interact with others outside their monkey gang. This is why they rarely go to war, though when they do it is widely thought to be hilarious.

This is awesome.
posted by twiggy at 5:49 PM on February 25, 2005

Hey, look a the big brain on me! I always carefully box up broken glass to save the trash guy's fingers.

Seriously — great article, and foot-stomping-funny, but it actually depresses me, because if this overview of the limits of personal empathy is at all accurate, then I've routinely been giving humans credit for a lot more compassion than they really have, and it never seemed like that much to begin with. (Which, now that I think about it, begins to cast everything is a much more logical light. Damn.)
posted by taz at 6:01 PM on February 25, 2005

The most depressing thing as a newbie on Mefi is to sit around thinking, "Do I have any good internet finds to use as my first FPP?" and then being unable to think of anything, and then seeing someone post a great thing which you knew of but slipped your mind.

PWOT is an awesome site, and when David Wong writes something semi-seriously, it's even better. I urge y'all to look through the archives (but keep in mind, it's 99% non-serious stuff).
posted by Bugbread at 6:26 PM on February 25, 2005

i have a new filter:

s/(community|village|society|whatever)/monkeysphere/g

I think my life works best and I feel best when I have lots of extra monkey slots, 'cause if my monkey sphere is full then EVERYBODY i meet is outsde it and I get REALLY ANTISOCIAL and have to move, thus shedding a crapload of monkeys. Certainly explains the thirteen apartments in ten years.
posted by hob at 6:54 PM on February 25, 2005

I have heard ideas like this expressed before, but never with monkeys!
posted by moss at 6:57 PM on February 25, 2005

{smirks condesendingly at the author outside her monkeysphere}

He illustrated the whole article with apes. APES!
posted by carmen at 7:34 PM on February 25, 2005

This is dense, funny, altogether fabu stuff:

But think of Osama Bin Laden. Did you just picture a camouflaged man hiding in a cave, drawing up suicide missions? Or are you thinking of a man who gets hungry and has a favorite food and who had a childhood crush on a girl and who has athelete's foot and chronic headaches and laughs when a friend farts, a man who wakes up in the morning with a boner and loves volleyball and fusses over his spoiled children and haggles over the price of a car and who goes on Seinfeld-esque rants about too much ice in his drinks?

Something in you, just now, probably was offended by that. You think I'm trying to build sympathy for the murderous bastard. Do you see the equation? Simply knowing random human facts about him immediately tugs at our sympathy strings. He comes closer to our Monkeysphere, he takes on dimension.

Now, the cold truth is my Bin Laden is just as desperately in need of a bullet to the skull as the raving four-color caricature on some redneck's T-shirt. The key to understanding people like him, though, is realizing that we are the caricature on his T-shirt.

If this is the kind of stuff you find, Vulpyne, here's one request that you post more often.
posted by mediareport at 7:42 PM on February 25, 2005

The 150-monkey thing is warmed-over Malcolm Gladwell -- he has a discussion in The Tipping Point about how the Gore-Tex Corporation is organized into units of no more than 150 people for just this reason -- but some of the insights arising from the premise are novel and interesting. And Gladwell tends not to be quite as funny.
posted by kindall at 7:52 PM on February 25, 2005

Does anyone else have a problem with 50 cent receiving credit for the quote at the top of the article?
posted by ReggieNoble2 at 9:56 PM on February 25, 2005

Stalin's not in the author's monkeysphere.
posted by Gyan at 9:57 PM on February 25, 2005

My favorite quote in the whole thing has always been: "This is perhaps how Ayn Rand would have put it, had she not been such a hateful bitch."

PWOT's archives are great. I recommend The Coming Civil War as another serious-but-not-really-OR-IS-IT?? piece.

And their review of NBA Live 2003 is one of the best pieces of gaming journalism I've ever seen, and that includes Old Man Murray.
posted by Drastic at 2:50 AM on February 26, 2005

Does anyone else have a problem with 50 cent receiving credit for the quote at the top of the article?

Not any more than any of the other jokes on the page, so no.

It would help to realize that PWOT is normally a completely non-serious comedy page, this post being one of the exceptions.
posted by Bugbread at 3:51 AM on February 26, 2005

This is rather reductivist. We're, as human beings, essentially simian? Isn't there something to be said for the fact that people actually are capable of forming societies larger than 150 individuals? Isn't there anything to be said for the human endeavors and capabilities which distinguish us, quite apparently, from primates? Monkeys don't invent alphabets, or pencils, or paper, or books, or computers, or integrated circuits, or calculus, and they certainly don't compare themselves to lemurs for amusement and edification.

"Yes, the Monkeysphere. That's the group of people who each of us, using our monkeyish brains, are able to conceptualize as people.

This is completely incoherent. He's arguing for the diametric opposite of conceptualization: the claim goes that someone must exist within a certain proximity to be felt as another human being, not conceptualized as one. It's not remotely challenging to inscribe a person into the rarefied and undefined state of humanity on an abstract level. Also, he can't seem to decide if his subject is the human being or some vaguely described ape-creature who has the capacity to operate a computer and read the article but cannot so much as make fire otherwise.

Most of us do not have room in our Monkeysphere for our friendly neighborhood Sanitation Worker. So, we don't think of him as a person. We think of him The Thing That Makes The Trash Go Away.

His tendency to use "we" instead of "me, and people like me, who I assume comprise all of humanity" is pretty irritating.

I've known many people who don't seem even to think of anyone close to them as more than an incarnated function. I'm not at all persuaded that the capacity people have to think of others as humans hovers invariably at 150 in terms of possible objects; some people don't really think of anyone else as a human being, and I have no reason to believe that it's impossible to think of everyone alive as such.

The article is basically a rehashing of the idea of social in-groups which uses the word "monkey" incessantly. He doesn't reach any new conclusions or provide even meager insight, but reiterates the sort of drably conceived notes about human nature that pass for acute perception in weed-stained dormitories and apartments everywhere, and which people either would like to believe because the confirmed truths are comfortingly devoid of human responsibility in their certitude of the mean limits of compassion, or already do believe, because the people who can't be bothered to think carefully about such things cannot either be bothered to change their own mental diapers.

Drastic: And their review of NBA Live 2003 is one of the best pieces of gaming journalism I've ever seen, and that includes Old Man Murray.

Jesus, come on. Gaming journalism? How insignificant must the subject of report be for its treatment to be considered journalism?

"This is perhaps how Ayn Rand would have put it, had she not been such a hateful bitch."

This sort of attitude itself seems pretty hateful, and while it (and the article in general, perhaps to a lesser extent) has mind-numbing pretention in common with Objectivism, it shares none of Rand's talent for interesting writing.
posted by clockzero at 6:41 AM on February 26, 2005

Monkeys don't invent alphabets, or pencils, or paper, or books, or computers, or integrated circuits, or calculus, and they certainly don't compare themselves to lemurs for amusement and edification.

Or, more accurately, those monkeys that do invent alphabets, pencils, calculus and cladistics suddenly get a bee in their bonnet about how they're not monkeys any more, oh no no no.
posted by flashboy at 7:21 AM on February 26, 2005

This is Metafilter, FB. There's a proper place for these things, as you well know.

Recapitulating phylogeny is a pretty lazy and lame way to explain human behavior.
posted by clockzero at 3:57 PM on February 26, 2005

We're, as human beings, essentially simian?

Pretty much.

Isn't there something to be said for the fact that people actually are capable of forming societies larger than 150 individuals?

Yes: that we can do it, but we aren't very good at it.

Isn't there anything to be said for the human endeavors and capabilities which distinguish us, quite apparently, from primates?

Yes, but it's a different article. If I read an article about Michael Jackson being arrested, there's something to be said about his excellent singing in the Jackson Five, but not in that article, because that's not what it's about.

This is completely incoherent. He's arguing for the diametric opposite of conceptualization: the claim goes that someone must exist within a certain proximity to be felt as another human being, not conceptualized as one.

I disagree that it's incoherent, but I do agree that "conceptualize" is the wrong word. On the other hand, I also agree that 50 cent is not the source of "One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic." It's a comedy site, with a few seriousish articles. If you understand what's being said, they've said the right thing. Picking nits merely shows that they communicated, but you can either not tell the difference between a flaw in their reasoning and a flaw in their English, or that your style of debate is to treat substance and style as equally important.

Also, he can't seem to decide if his subject is the human being or some vaguely described ape-creature who has the capacity to operate a computer and read the article but cannot so much as make fire otherwise.

It seems clear to me that he's decided...Perhaps you should give it another read?

His tendency to use "we" instead of "me, and people like me, who I assume comprise all of humanity" is pretty irritating.

Perhaps you overlooked the "most of us" part?

Most of us on Mefi enjoy discussion. Most of us view the internet more than once per week. Most of us know what "html" is. Do you find any of the previous statements irritating?

I have no reason to believe that it's impossible to think of everyone alive as [a human being]

I have no reason to think it's possible.

people either would like to believe because the confirmed truths are comfortingly devoid of human responsibility in their certitude of the mean limits of compassion, or already do believe, because the people who can't be bothered to think carefully about such things cannot either be bothered to change their own mental diapers.

Well, then, touche. I find this statement irritating. A description of what people are like is "comfortingly devoid of human responsibility"? So people like psychology because it doesn't include responsibility? Is this also why they like math, or art? Geometry, for example, is quite devoid of human responsibility. And, if so, what's wrong with something with being "devoid of human responsibility", and what makes it "comfortable"?

As far as the "mental diapers" section, allow me to counter in your own vein, then: criticism of this kind of article appeals to hypocritical holier-than-thous with a need to show off to the community their high sense of virtue and responsibility.

See, that kind of argument doesn't really get you anywhere, does it? Best to be avoided.

Gaming journalism? How insignificant must the subject of report be for its treatment to be considered journalism?

What the hell does that statement mean? You're implying that the more important a subject, the less likely for it to be called journalism? That is clearly insane. And if you're implying something else, keep in mind that, unlike Wong's confusion of "conceptualize" and "feel", which you correctly pointed out above, here you have completely failed to communicate. A subject has a maximum threshold after which writing about it is not considered journalism?

On the assumption that the words you used were just random and wrong, and your statement was just meant to be "there is no writing about gaming that is worthy of the word 'journalism'", though, I would remind you that Christopher Reeves died from horseback riding, so you might be advised to step down from your high horse.

it shares none of Rand's talent for interesting writing.

I can't believe you just said Ayn Rand is more interesting than David Wong.

No, I take that back. I can believe it. Perhaps you'd be interested in debating with Wong in his forums?
posted by Bugbread at 7:41 PM on February 26, 2005

bugbread: I believe that monkeys and humans share fundamental similarities. I also believe that socializing constraints do exist in humans. That said, the article is a bit sloppy, as presented.

From the article:
-----
They cut up so many monkey brains, in fact, that they found they could actually take a brain they had never seen before and with a simple dissection, analysis and a quick taste, they could accurately predict what size tribes that species of creature formed.
-----
So, there's a good correlation between certain (anatomical) characteristics and social behaviour among non-human primates.

Can this model be extended to humans? From the cited article in the PWOT article:
-----
Humans are primates, too – so do they fit into the pattern established for monkeys and apes? This is the key question which Robin Dunbar sought to answer by using the same equations to predict human social group and clique size from neocortex volume. The results were… ~150 for social group size, and ~12 for the more intimate clique size. He subsequently discovered that modern humans operate on a hierarchy of group sizes. "Interestingly", he says, "the literature suggests that 150 is roughly to the number of people you could ask for a favour and expect to have it granted. Functionally, that’s quite similar to apes’ core social groups."
-----

Now that doesn't seem a very solid basis to validate the extension. Maybe, and probably, the study author knows more than he says, but that cited article doesn't instill much confidence.

The above objection is based on disparity between what the study says, what its author says, and what Wong derives out of the article. Now onto the broader objection. What a certain characteristic means, depends on the context in which it occurs. We know that the monkey DNA, despite 95% similarity, doesn't export a creature capable of speech or inventing calculus. Yet no folk theory would hold monkeys to be "5% different" than humans. Similarly, the correlation between brain size and group size, does not automatically extend within the context of a human brain. It may be true, it just isn't necessarily even roughly true.
posted by Gyan at 9:42 PM on February 26, 2005

Gyan: Good point (I suspect we both have a whole lotta issue with the phrase "the literature suggests". So Robin and Dunbar tried to determine if human brain size correlated, and they determined that it did based on "the literature", which is not actually identified).

Just to be fair, I don't necessarily agree with Wong 100% here. I just found clockzero's approach to the article to be grating. It's a semiserious philosophical piece by an avowed non-scientist on a humour site. It may be wrong, and pointing out possible flaws the way you do (factually and evenly) is a fine thing.
posted by Bugbread at 10:20 PM on February 26, 2005

bugbread:

I disagree that it's incoherent, but I do agree that "conceptualize" is the wrong word. On the other hand, I also agree that 50 cent is not the source of "One death is a tragedy.

Yeah, it's an intentional misattribution. I don't know why it's on the other hand.

If you understand what's being said, they've said the right thing. Picking nits merely shows that they communicated, but you can either not tell the difference between a flaw in their reasoning and a flaw in their English, or that your style of debate is to treat substance and style as equally important.

I only know of their ideas what they say about them. Therefore I have no way of knowing if something I take issue with is a consequence of a mistake in word choice or if it is indicative of a more basic flaw.

Well, then, touche. I find this statement irritating. A description of what people are like is "comfortingly devoid of human responsibility"? So people like psychology because it doesn't include responsibility? Is this also why they like math, or art? Geometry, for example, is quite devoid of human responsibility. And, if so, what's wrong with something with being "devoid of human responsibility", and what makes it "comfortable"?

I don't think it's what people "are like". That's sort of the point. Psychology does not necessitate an abrogation of moral responsibility, but I think the argument in the article strongly implies that such is inevitable, that it's a result of how people really are. I think that's reprehensible, but I think people who treat others inhumanely would like to be told that whatever guilty modes of inhumanity they favor are natural.

As far as the "mental diapers" section, allow me to counter in your own vein, then: criticism of this kind of article appeals to hypocritical holier-than-thous with a need to show off to the community their high sense of virtue and responsibility.

I don't see any hypocrisy here, but I'd like to hear where you see it. I don't think I'm holier than you or anyone else. I just deplore people who basically excuse the sort of behavior the article's author does. I wonder why you think that an attempt to answer a challenge to moral behavior is "showing off".

What the hell does that statement mean? You're implying that the more important a subject, the less likely for it to be called journalism? That is clearly insane. And if you're implying something else, keep in mind that, unlike Wong's confusion of "conceptualize" and "feel", which you correctly pointed out above, here you have completely failed to communicate. A subject has a maximum threshold after which writing about it is not considered journalism?

I was astonished that someone could refer to some goofy thing written about a video game as "gaming journalism". It just seemed like a comical dignification, and I made that remark ironically. I guess it was a bit obscure in retrospect. Also, you say he confused "feel" with "conceptualize," but perhaps he actually meant what he said.

though, I would remind you that Christopher Reeves died from horseback riding, so you might be advised to step down from your high horse.

Or what, I'm going to receive a terrible and paralytic injury? Is that supposed to be a threat or a warning or something?

I play video games sometimes and I think they're fun, but I don't think any writing about them deserves the term "journalism" because they are meant to be experienced first-hand; journalism is a practice which communicates experiences in which not everyone interested can be involved. I think "criticism" is probably a more accurate term, but I don't think there's any way to make the idea seem dignified.

I can't believe you just said Ayn Rand is more interesting than David Wong.

No, I take that back. I can believe it. Perhaps you'd be interested in debating with Wong in his forums?

Well, I think she's much more talented as a writer, and she probably cared far more deeply about people and the complexities of their lives than he seems to. His style is sort of the textual equivalent of an actor who relies on mugging for laughs.

I don't think there's anything to debate. I find his views distasteful and simplistic.
posted by clockzero at 10:48 PM on February 26, 2005

clockzero: I only know of their ideas what they say about them. Therefore I have no way of knowing if something I take issue with is a consequence of a mistake in word choice or if it is indicative of a more basic flaw.

True, but by the same coin, how can you know if something someone says that you agree with is not actually a misstatement, and in reality you disagree?

What I was getting at is that you clearly understood what he was saying, as did I, although he phrased it incorrectly.

clockzero: Psychology does not necessitate an abrogation of moral responsibility, but I think the argument in the article strongly implies that such is inevitable, that it's a result of how people really are.

First, I'm not sure how psychology ("this is how people behave, and possible causes"), clinical psychology ("this is how people behave, and chemical causes") and the arguments of this article differ in relation to personal responsibility.

But to take it a step further, this style of counterargument (and note that I'm not putting words in your mouth, because what I'm about to say is an aside) reminds me of people who think an atheistic worldview removes personal responsibility, because it states that what is just is, without an inherent underlying morality. In my opinion, it is precisely because there is no underlying morality that responsibility is necessary.

Coming back from that aside, the argument here is basically "your brain isn't made to handle giant groups, and to treat people you don't know as people, so you'll have to make an effort, whether by using other parts of your brain, or by making laws that prevent you or your friends from having the ability to dick other people over, or other creative means in order to counter this handicap."

Because that's what it is. A handicap. Describing the cause of a handicap does not ipso facto imply that people need make no effort to overcome it.

bugbread: hypocritical holier-than-thous with a need to show off to the community their high sense of virtue and responsibility.

clockzero: I don't see any hypocrisy here, but I'd like to hear where you see it. I don't think I'm holier than you or anyone else. I just deplore people who basically excuse the sort of behavior the article's author does. I wonder why you think that an attempt to answer a challenge to moral behavior is "showing off".

Well, in the same vein I don't see where the causes for agreeing with the article are that "people either would like to believe because the confirmed truths are comfortingly devoid of human responsibility in their certitude of the mean limits of compassion, or already do believe, because the people who can't be bothered to think carefully about such things cannot either be bothered to change their own mental diapers" either, but since you decided to make a random ad hominem attack on people just because you dislike the article, I tried to take your tack. I was accusing you of having little virtue or moral responsibility, and hypocritically hyping yourself for the moral values that you lack.

And, if you read my following comment, you'll see that I don't actually believe that you're a hypocrite, liar, or morally bankrupt. I just wanted to show what kind of debate style you were using, and that it isn't good. So I certainly can't defend my statement that you're a hypocrite, because it's not my argument.

Clockzero: I was astonished that someone could refer to some goofy thing written about a video game as "gaming journalism".

Request for clarification: are you astonished that anything about a video game could be described as "gaming journalism", or this particular gaming article?

Clockzero: Also, you say he confused "feel" with "conceptualize," but perhaps he actually meant what he said.

Either you're just intentionally trying to get my goat, now, or you're an incompetent reader. It's extraordinarily clear from context that he mixed "feel" and "conceptualize". You identified it for yourself. Sure, perhaps he actually meant what he said. Or perhaps the whole article was a typo, and he was writing about the need for moral responsibility. Or perhaps it was an article about Garfield and his spellchecker mangled it into an article about the monkeysphere. I mean, it is possible. Maybe.

Or maybe common sense and years of reading experience on both our parts should be enough to recognize a slip of the tongue from context. Maybe.

Bugbread: though, I would remind you that Christopher Reeves died from horseback riding, so you might be advised to step down from your high horse.

Clockzero: Or what, I'm going to receive a terrible and paralytic injury? Is that supposed to be a threat or a warning or something?

Or, might it possibly be a (not too funny) joke about how being on a high horse is bad? You know, "Get off your high horse, those things are dangerous, look at Christopher Reeves", or "Hey, wanna borrow a ladder? You'll need one to get down from that horse", or "Dude, stop giving your horse so much pot".

Yeah, sure, it was an unfunny joke. But unless you're Jim Davis or late era Charles Shultz, bad jokes tend to be easily detectable. I can understand not finding it funny, but not realizing it was a joke just seems...surreal. Kinda explains why you have a hard time with Wong's article. Not finding it funny is one thing, but if you can't even recognize jokes existing, it must have been a truly bizarre article.

I don't think any writing about them deserves the term "journalism" because they are meant to be experienced first-hand

Truly we are on a different planet. Life is meant to be experienced first hand. Does that invalidate all journalism related to living things?

So an article about the creator of Final Fantasy joining Microsoft is not a journalism article, because games should be experienced first hand? An article about EA getting sued by employees for immoral (and possibly illegal) labor practices is not journalism, because EA games should be experienced first hand?

Bugbread: No, I take that back. I can believe it. Perhaps you'd be interested in debating with Wong in his forums?

Clockzero: Well, I think she's much more talented as a writer, and she probably cared far more deeply about people and the complexities of their lives than he seems to. His style is sort of the textual equivalent of an actor who relies on mugging for laughs.

I don't think there's anything to debate. I find his views distasteful and simplistic.

I'm sure Rand has cared more deeply about people and the complexities of their lives than David Wong. And I'm sure David Wong has written more humorous articles and brought more happiness into people's lives than Ayn Rand ever has. Let's see: creation of bile, anger, argument, divisiveness, spite, versus laughing, occasional tears of laughter, and chuckling. Which shall I pick?

And I do have to apologize for one thing: the invitation to debate Wong was actually kind of a trap. The thing is, PWOT, long ago, released an article of "Complaints Against The Matrix Movie Series", which was totally tongue in cheek and full of obvious jokes. Nonetheless, some staggering amount of people managed to not notice every single joke and post point by point counterarguments against the (joke) complaints. That kind of became a tradition: not so much trolling (saying something inflammatory in order to get argument going), but saying something silly, and then fielding counterarguments against jokes without letting on that they were jokes.

This article is different, of course (look back through the Lord of the Rings stuff and Matrix stuff on PWOT to see what I'm talking about), but the end result is that Wong (and, moreso, the rest of the PWOT forum) are pretty used to people getting all steamed up and nerded out about articles on this little comedy site.

So, sorry about that little trap attempt.

And, for the record, I find (what I can tell of) your position on his article to be distasteful and grandiose.
posted by Bugbread at 11:48 PM on February 26, 2005

bugbread: Describing the cause of a handicap does not ipso facto imply that people need make no effort to overcome it.

Not ipso facto. There's always an implied worldview underlying moral systems. The concept of moral responsibility is held to rest on the premise that there are two classes of actions. Those driven by volition and those which are not. One doesn't hold a bacteria in contempt for one doesn't hold itto be capable of volitional acts. When psychology attempts to describe the etiology and mechanism of heretofore volitional behaviour, it undermines the base worldview. Of course, the need for moral responsibility does not vanish. Moral responsibility is primarily a requisite utilitarian concept for a functioning society, not a metaphysical derivation. However, acknowledging it as such, risks individuals-at-large adopting an utilitarian, almost certainly hedonistic, approach to life. Can a stable society be held in such circumstances?
posted by Gyan at 12:34 AM on February 27, 2005

Gyan - agreed completely. It's one of the things that people find terrifying about research on the brain: the more we understand that people's actions are a result of chemical interactions, the more society's underpinnings of moral responsibility seem to be weakened. And I will freely admit that I find the concept just as scary. However, I'd rather be reality based than faith based.
posted by Bugbread at 8:49 AM on February 27, 2005

This is why I keep coming back to Mefi - great post, great discussion. Thx.
posted by jkaczor at 10:21 AM on February 27, 2005

Recapitulating phylogeny is a pretty lazy and lame way to explain human behavior.

Perhaps. But denying it is a fairly solid guarantee that you'll never explain anything about human behaviour. Regardless of the accuracy or otherwise of this piece, you seem uncomfortable with any attempt to place human behaviour in the context of our being an evolved species; I'm not quite sure where you're objecting to something as an hypothesis, or where you're objecting to it as as (supposed) moral framework.

I actually find the idea that we have in-built difficulties in achieving certain moral standards (difficulties that we can become aware of and work around) less scary than the thought that we have complete freedom of volition - and still act as we do. But I suspect how sanguine one feels about this depends on one's initial set of assumptions, if you're approaching the question from an initially pessimistic or optimistic worldview. In comparison to an idealised form of moral behaviour, it's terrifying. Viewed from a more Hobbesian perspective on natural human behaviour, it's most likely greeted with a wry sigh of acknowledgment and an amused tutting sound.
posted by flashboy at 11:23 AM on February 27, 2005

bugbread:

True, but by the same coin, how can you know if something someone says that you agree with is not actually a misstatement, and in reality you disagree?

That's a ridiculous hypothetical. My point was that there is nothing except what people say to determine for others what they think.

What I was getting at is that you clearly understood what he was saying, as did I, although he phrased it incorrectly.

I understood what he said, and it was logically inconsistent to me. That's all.

First, I'm not sure how psychology...clinical psychology...and the arguments of this article differ in relation to personal responsibility.

Well, this is just my opinion, but I'd say that the various branches of psychology present a very intricate picture of the complex of factors which comprise moral responsibility. This article, on the other hand, presents a very simplistic one which seems capable of excusing bad behavior by an appeal to nature.

But to take it a step further, this style of counterargument (and note that I'm not putting words in your mouth, because what I'm about to say is an aside) reminds me of people who think an atheistic worldview removes personal responsibility, because it states that what is just is, without an inherent underlying morality. In my opinion, it is precisely because there is no underlying morality that responsibility is necessary.

If your moral system is predicated on the existence of a law-giving and punitive God, an atheistic world would be an amoral one. I don't know what you mean by "underlying morality", but I also think that personal responsibility for moral behavior is important.

Coming back from that aside, the argument here is basically "your brain isn't made to handle giant groups, and to treat people you don't know as people, so you'll have to make an effort, whether by using other parts of your brain, or by making laws that prevent you or your friends from having the ability to dick other people over, or other creative means in order to counter this handicap."

I think anyone who says this about the brain does not appreciate its capacity.

Because that's what it is. A handicap. Describing the cause of a handicap does not ipso facto imply that people need make no effort to overcome it.

First of all, describing all of humanity in terms of a common disability is incorrect. That term cannot be meaningful if it applies to everyone, so what you're talking about must not be a disability. It's a condition of being human which he describes. I happen to think that he's in error in his assertion, and I also find his argument morally suspect.

but since you decided to make a random ad hominem attack on people just because you dislike the article,

An ad hominem is usually (first of all, it's mostly used in formal, one-on-one debate) when you attack an opponent on a personal level rather than dealing with their argument. The term really doesn't apply here.

Request for clarification: are you astonished that anything about a video game could be described as "gaming journalism", or this particular gaming article?

I was astonished that someone would use such high-brow language to describe such an article on such a website.

Either you're just intentionally trying to get my goat, now, or you're an incompetent reader. It's extraordinarily clear from context that he mixed "feel" and "conceptualize". You identified it for yourself. Sure, perhaps he actually meant what he said. Or perhaps the whole article was a typo, and he was writing about the need for moral responsibility. Or perhaps it was an article about Garfield and his spellchecker mangled it into an article about the monkeysphere. I mean, it is possible. Maybe. Or maybe common sense and years of reading experience on both our parts should be enough to recognize a slip of the tongue from context. Maybe.

I'm not trying to get your goat, nor am I an incompetent reader. I think taking writers at their word is a relatively reliable way to determine what they mean, but perhaps you disagree. The point I was making originally was that his argumentation was poor simply because this question came up. The point, also, is that it's not merely a slip of the tongue. I will take him at his word. You can believe whatever you want.

Yeah, sure, it was an unfunny joke. But unless you're Jim Davis or late era Charles Shultz, bad jokes tend to be easily detectable. I can understand not finding it funny, but not realizing it was a joke just seems...surreal. Kinda explains why you have a hard time with Wong's article. Not finding it funny is one thing, but if you can't even recognize jokes existing, it must have been a truly bizarre article.

It didn't seem like a joke because it wasn't funny. I thought the Reeves reference was in poor taste.

Life is meant to be experienced first hand. Does that invalidate all journalism related to living things?

So an article about the creator of Final Fantasy joining Microsoft is not a journalism article, because games should be experienced first hand? An article about EA getting sued by employees for immoral (and possibly illegal) labor practices is not journalism, because EA games should be experienced first hand?

I don't think you understood what I said. Journalists report on events. Anything else is either criticism or an advertisement.

So, sorry about that little trap attempt.

And, for the record, I find (what I can tell of) your position on his article to be distasteful and grandiose.

Whatever.

on preview: Flashboy-

I think in recent years people have begun to trust more and more strictly phylogenic-recapitulatory methods of explaining nearly every urge and quirk of the psyche and mind; for one thing, this is not strictly scientific since in many situations it's untestable, and I'm not sure it's a path to true understanding anyway since it tends towards tautological explanations.

What I object to is the way people will look for justifications for particularly modern human behavior in other animals or in our distant past. I don't think it's an explanation for people's behavior because I haven't observed it happen very much, myself, except in people who seem inhumane and mean-spirited. In many cultures, kindness to strangers is a fundamental value in human interaction, one which is probably more important now than ever. It seems regrettable to me that anyone would want to give a lazy and defective moral attitude a naturalistic justification.

I actually find the idea that we have in-built difficulties ...it's most likely greeted with a wry sigh of acknowledgment and an amused tutting sound.

I think even what would be considered optimistic or pessimistic depends on your initial set of assumptions. People can do or not do what they desire, but they cannot choose their desires. Finding something less scary than an alternative would not, in itself, be a good reason to believe it, in my opinion.

Sorry for the length of this post.
posted by clockzero at 4:49 PM on February 27, 2005

Well said, flashboy.

My point was that there is nothing except what people say to determine for others what they think.

And I disagree. I think there is also context.

This article, on the other hand, presents a very simplistic one which seems capable of excusing bad behavior by an appeal to nature.

And, to me, it does not seem to be excusing bad behavior, just explaining it.

"Coming back from that aside, the argument here is basically "your brain isn't made to handle giant groups, and to treat people you don't know as people, so you'll have to make an effort, whether by using other parts of your brain, or by making laws that prevent you or your friends from having the ability to dick other people over, or other creative means in order to counter this handicap."

I think anyone who says this about the brain does not appreciate its capacity.

If anything, I think the opposite is true. My paragraph above is based on using parts of the brain to supplement / make up for deficiencies in other parts of the brain, a complex and pretty fascinating possibility based precisely on its capacity.

I also find his argument morally suspect.

You keep mentioning this. However, I don't see where morality is involved. Your statements come off to me as if someone read an article about how MDMA releases seratonin in the brain, and found it "morally suspect".

An ad hominem is usually (first of all, it's mostly used in formal, one-on-one debate) when you attack an opponent on a personal level rather than dealing with their argument. The term really doesn't apply here.

While ad hominem is usually used in formal debate, that is merely a result of people not using the correct terminology in informal debate. An ad hominem is a baseless attack on the opposing participant themselves, instead of their arguments. To wit:

people either would like to believe because the confirmed truths are comfortingly devoid of human responsibility in their certitude of the mean limits of compassion, or already do believe, because the people who can't be bothered to think carefully about such things cannot either be bothered to change their own mental diapers

So you've accused me of either not finding issue with the report due to the fact that it is "comfortingly" devoid of human responsibility, or because I can't be bothered to think carefully or to change my own mental diapers.

If ad hominem is not the correct term, then substitute what you will. My point was that your counterargument was offensive because it attacked the character of people who disagreed with you (without foundation), not their opinions. As such, I did the same to you to show that it was not a useful discussion technique.

I think taking writers at their word is a relatively reliable way to determine what they mean, but perhaps you disagree. The point I was making originally was that his argumentation was poor simply because this question came up. The point, also, is that it's not merely a slip of the tongue. I will take him at his word. You can believe whatever you want.

Well, I do think taking writers at their word is relatively reliable. So we do agree. However, I think context is important. For example, if someone like troutfishing or Michael Moore wrote a 2 page screed against the government that included, somewhere in it, "Oh, yeah, sure, George Bush is a great president", I would use context to determine that it was sarcasm. Or if I was reading instructions on assembling something, and it said "Put the bolt into the nut", I would use context to determine that it should have read "put the nut into the bolt".

Speaking of which, what is your evidence that it's not merely a slip of the tongue?

It didn't seem like a joke because it wasn't funny. I thought the Reeves reference was in poor taste.

I agree it was in poor taste. And I agree it wasn't funny. However, there are lots of things that appear to me like jokes, even though they aren't funny. I can watch sitcoms and identify half an hour worth of jokes, even if I don't crack a smile. So, while I agree it was unfunny and in bad taste, I can't understand how you didn't identify it as an unfunny joke in poor taste, as opposed to a warning or threat, which are much further offbase.

I don't think you understood what I said. Journalists report on events. Anything else is either criticism or an advertisement.

Ok, that makes sense. I consider us officially reconciled regarding the gaming journalism part.

What I object to is the way people will look for justifications for particularly modern human behavior in other animals or in our distant past.

What I object to is that people interpret the search for causes as the search for justifications.

Our whole disagreement is based on this. You regard the article as a justification. I regard it as an (editorial) explanation.

This kind of thinking (considering any investigation of "why" as a de facto justification of results) chaps my hide, whether it be that a discussion of why terrorists perform terrorist acts is "justifying" the actions of terrorists, or that a discussion of Hitler's beliefs "justifies" anti-semitism.
posted by Bugbread at 7:38 PM on February 27, 2005

And I disagree. I think there is also context.

Context cannot help you determine what people think, it can only help explain something vague or obviously wrong, like in your put-bolt-in-nut example. The thing that was said in the article was not vague and not obviously incorrect, so I assume he meant exactly what he said. Really, this was a minor point.

And, to me, it does not seem to be excusing bad behavior, just explaining it.

I think it is very much an excuse to say that when one treats others as something less than human it is simply because of how people are made, rather than a result of choices people make. I don't see any reason to abandon the idea that people treat others in an inhumane fashion because of selfishness and immaturity, if not blatant malevolence, and I think to do so is to duck responsibility. Worse yet, it's an explanation which is patently false: people often treat those closest to them with great cruelty, a fact so obvious that it's become a cliche. The argument in the article is complete nonsense.

If anything, I think the opposite is true. My paragraph above is based on using parts of the brain to supplement / make up for deficiencies in other parts of the brain, a complex and pretty fascinating possibility based precisely on its capacity.

I was saying that whatever part of the brain deals with other people is capable of dealing with the idea that more than 150 others in the world could also be human beings, whatever one does with this information. I think anyone who has a problem doing this must have a serious neurological condition.

You keep mentioning this. However, I don't see where morality is involved. Your statements come off to me as if someone read an article about how MDMA releases seratonin in the brain, and found it "morally suspect".

This is an irrelevant analogy. Do you really not see how morality is involved? I don't think I can explain it to you if you cannot tell.

So you've accused me of either not finding issue with the report due to the fact that it is "comfortingly" devoid of human responsibility, or because I can't be bothered to think carefully or to change my own mental diapers.

If ad hominem is not the correct term, then substitute what you will. My point was that your counterargument was offensive because it attacked the character of people who disagreed with you (without foundation), not their opinions. As such, I did the same to you to show that it was not a useful discussion technique.

I don't give a damn if it was offensive. I was criticizing people who would prefer to excuse their own bad behavior by an appeal to some specious scientific principle than take responsibility for their interactions with others; I saw this group as one to whom the article would appeal, and I did not know or care if you were in it. If you want to defend that sort of person, be my guest.

Speaking of which, what is your evidence that it's not merely a slip of the tongue?

This is ridiculous in much the same way the hypothetical you mentioned earlier was.

So, while I agree it was unfunny and in bad taste, I can't understand how you didn't identify it as an unfunny joke in poor taste, as opposed to a warning or threat, which are much further offbase.

No offense, but it was so ill-conceived and poorly executed that it was unrecognizable as a joke.

What I object to is that people interpret the search for causes as the search for justifications.

The article's contention wouldn't even explain the phenomenon, though, it would only make it natural: a difficulty in recognizing others as human beings wouldn't cause the same, it would just dispose people to do so.

Our whole disagreement is based on this. You regard the article as a justification. I regard it as an (editorial) explanation. This kind of thinking (considering any investigation of "why" as a de facto justification of results) chaps my hide, whether it be that a discussion of why terrorists perform terrorist acts is "justifying" the actions of terrorists, or that a discussion of Hitler's beliefs "justifies" anti-semitism.

If someone wrote an article in which they claimed that terrorism or anti-Semitism were the direct consequence of some hard-wired feature of the brain, I would consider them a terrible person and their argument worthless.
posted by clockzero at 10:27 PM on February 27, 2005

clockzero: Context cannot help you determine what people think

It has to. Any isolated piece of communication doesn't have enough bandwidth to be an absolute indicator. You read & understand these words only because you were taught to read English. There are various levels of context referencing required. Tone, style of prose, vocabulary, rigor..etc are all context providers. They need not explicitly stand out or be noticed, in order to impact the receiver's judgement.

I was criticizing people who would prefer to excuse their own bad behavior by an appeal to some specious scientific principle than take responsibility for their interactions with others

Which is fine. Except that the author is positing an explanation for why that doesn't happen. So is it the result of a fundamental constraint, or a product of attitudes & social environment? That is a valid question for psychology, and if research genuinely indicates the former, it should be accepted, and any corrective measures must not pretend that it isn't so.
posted by Gyan at 4:33 AM on February 28, 2005

Gyan;

Regarding context: it probably wasn't necessary for me to make such a broad statement. It came out of the discussion I had with bugbread, in which I thought he was arguing that a certain remark ought to be interpreted to mean its ideal opposite for some obscure reason relating to context. I disagreed.

Which is fine. Except that the author is positing an explanation for why that doesn't happen. So is it the result of a fundamental constraint, or a product of attitudes & social environment? That is a valid question for psychology, and if research genuinely indicates the former, it should be accepted, and any corrective measures must not pretend that it isn't so.

There is a bit of (something like) petitio principii going on here; it has not been established that the phenomenon he's describing is an accurate representation of actual human behavior, and I think any discussion of what the root of this "problem" is begs the question.
posted by clockzero at 4:51 PM on February 28, 2005

clockzero: it has not been established that the phenomenon he's describing is an accurate representation of actual human behavior

True. But it seems that your point is that psychological explanations should not be used as a fatalistic device to excuse lack of moral responsibility of an individual. So the matter of whether the specific behaviour suspected here actually occurs or not, does not hold much importance.
posted by Gyan at 5:52 PM on February 28, 2005

Those are hardly mutually exclusive, and yes, I do think that. And it does hold great importance, in this situation anyway, because the article is apparently what we're discussing.
posted by clockzero at 11:21 PM on February 28, 2005

I don't give a damn if it was offensive. I was criticizing people who would prefer to excuse their own bad behavior by an appeal to some specious scientific principle than take responsibility for their interactions with others; I saw this group as one to whom the article would appeal, and I did not know or care if you were in it. If you want to defend that sort of person, be my guest.

Again, I can only judge what you think based on what you wrote, and in this case you didn't criticize people who excused bad behaviour by appeal to etc. etc. etc., you criticized people who agreed with the article by saying they were people who prefered to excuse their bad behaviour. In the same vein, then, if I say "People who disagree with this article are petty, hypocritical religious zealots", have I criticized petty, hypocritical religious zealots, or have I criticized you?

It came out of the discussion I had with bugbread, in which I thought he was arguing that a certain remark ought to be interpreted to mean its ideal opposite for some obscure reason relating to context. I disagreed.

I can't understand why you think the reason "obscure". The entire article is about a certain relationship between individuals and others: that folks can identify with small groups, but not large ones. In one place, a term which indicates the opposite is used. I don't know what makes it obscure.

If an entire article revolves around the contention "A equals B", and one line in the middle says "A and B are opposites", it is clear to me that the word "not" is missing. True, if it were a one sentence or two sentence post, that kind of contextual judgement would be unsupported. However, the entire article is about people's relationships with groups. I don't see how the determination of the intended meaning from context is obscure.
posted by Bugbread at 6:44 AM on March 1, 2005

Again, I can only judge what you think based on what you wrote, and in this case you didn't criticize people who excused bad behaviour by appeal to etc. etc. etc., you criticized people who agreed with the article by saying they were people who prefered to excuse their bad behaviour. In the same vein, then, if I say "People who disagree with this article are petty, hypocritical religious zealots", have I criticized petty, hypocritical religious zealots, or have I criticized you?

I was criticizing anyone who appreciated the article for those reasons. You could not be criticizing me with those terms since they don't apply to me.

I can't understand why you think the reason "obscure". The entire article is about a certain relationship between individuals and others: that folks can identify with small groups, but not large ones. In one place, a term which indicates the opposite is used. I don't know what makes it obscure.

My point was that his argument was presented in a sloppy manner.
posted by clockzero at 9:02 PM on March 1, 2005