Anti-tribalism and positive mental health as high-value cause areas

I wonder if there are good ways to transform a tribalism of "us versus them" into an "us versus it," aligning joint interest in overcoming the constraints of amoral causes of suffering. This is framing is somewhat commonplace when we talk about combatting malaria on a global scale and fighting cancer in individual care. There are countless examples in the medical world of this personification of amoral disease "agents." It seems like it may be a way to repurpose our tribalistic cognitive mechanisms for good.

I've written a bit about this for a course with Josh Greene a few years back, and I'd be happy to share if anyone is interested.

QRI is very interested and working hard on the mental health cause area; notable documents are Quantifying Bliss and Wireheading Done Right - more to come soon. There are also other good things in this space from e.g. Michael D. Plant, Spencer Greenberg, and perhaps Enthea.

On the tribalism point, I agree tribalism causes a lot of problems; I'd also agree with what I take you to be saying that in some senses it may be a load-bearing part of an Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS) which may prove troublesome to tinker with. Finally, I agree that mental health is a potentially upstream factor in some of the negative-sum presentations of tribalism.

I would say it's unclear at this point whether the EA movement has the plasticity required to make mental health an Official Cause Area -- I believe the leadership is interested but "revealed constraints" seem to tell a mixed story. I'm certainly hoping it'll happen if enough people get together to 'start the party'.

(Personal opinions; not necessarily shared by others at QRI)

Feelings of safety or threat seem to play a lot into feelings of tribalism: if you perceive (correctly or incorrectly) that a group Y is out to get you and that they are a real threat to you, then you will react much more aggressively to any claims that might be read as supporting Y.

This sounds roughly supported by Karen Stenner's work in The Authoritarian Dynamic which argues that "political intolerance, moral intolerance and punitiveness" are increased by perceived levels of threat.

Your comments about increasing happiness and comfort are particularly striking in light of this opinionated description (from a review) of the different groups (based on interviews):

Authoritarians tended to be closed-minded, unintelligent, lacking in self-confidence, unhappy, unfriendly, unsophisticated, inarticulate, and generally unappealing. Libertarians tended toward the opposite; they seemed happy, gregarious, relaxed, warm, open, thoughtful, eloquent, and humble.

That said I am sceptical prime facie that any positive psychology interventions would be powerful enough at producing these effects to be warranted on these grounds.

In a lot of cases today, certain populations are “forced” into a tribalist state in order to survive and prevent s-risks. This usually occurs when a larger tribe subjugates, brutalizes, and terrorizes a smaller and less tribally organized tribe, which forces the smaller tribe to have to act in tribal ways to defend itself from ethnic cleansing or genocide. One can call this effect induced tribalism. It is also something I should make a larger post about.

Examples of this induced Tribal effect includes but is not limited to:

Kurdish & Yezedi people Armenians and Assyrians Tibetan people Native Americans Tutsis (though Rwanda is a special case due to its non-ethnic, slightly non-Tribal identity policy today. The ‘we are all Rwandans’ position/policy of the current Rwandan gov) Some would also include post-Holocaust Zionism (among European Jews) in this category.

From an analysis of the histories of these groups, nationalism and tribalism largely grew in response to an active threat against their lives, rather than prior to it (as would be the case if they were the aggressors). EA is largely unaware of the tribal dynamics that occur in the world and would benefit from research that makes sure helping out one ‘tribe’ doesn’t come at the destruction and devastation of another. Tribalism can and should end and Kaj puts forward a strong argument, though efforts should also take into consideration complex situations where tribalism has been or still is necessary to prevent s-risks.

Thanks for the post Kaj. I agree that this is a high priority area.

"By tribalism, I basically mean the phenomenon where arguments and actions are primarily evaluated based on who makes them and which group they seem to support, not anything else. "

I think tribalism could be described as a class of (largely biased) decision and judgement heuristics. It might be helpful to investigate why a person chooses to use such heuristics.

At least, as a heuristic it is much less cognitively taxing than the alternative of trying to figure things out by oneself, or looking for expert opinions. Also, it is uncomfortable for many people to challenge one's beliefs or belonginess to a group. These underlying factors suggest possible avenues for interventions and preventions.

Thanks for posting this. I agree this is a hugely neglected issue. It would be good to see a more coherent and sustained movement towards reducing this problem.

Anyone wanting to learn more should read Dan Kahan.

I don't see any high-value interventions here. Simply pointing out a problem people have been aware of for millenia will not help anyone.

Interesting post.

The first thought that came to my mind is related to the other post on this forum about psychedelics.

My interpretation is therapeutic psilocybin experiences can create a feeling of all being part of the same team / global interconnectedness. I wonder if this would lead to less tribalism. It seems like it very well may.

"In 6-month follow-up interviews, participants were asked: ‘Did this treatment work for you, and if so how?’ and responses were analysed for consistent themes (Watts et al. 2017). Of the 17 patients who endorsed the treatment’s effectiveness, all made reference to one particular mediating factor: a renewed sense of connection or connectedness. This factor was found to have three distinguishable aspects: connection to (1) self, (2) others and (3) the world in general (Watts et al. 2017)."

References

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28795211 via a friend.