#blogpost
I don’t remember where I read, ages ago, about how when faced with a choice, if you make a carefully thought out and well-reasoned rational decision, then logically, any other rational person confronted with the same choice will follow the same logic and come to the same decision.
Which in a weird way creates a moral, societal obligation to follow the logic and make the rational choice.
The problem of course, is that most people aren’t rational. Or to be more precise, reason isn’t the only or even the main driver when making choices (or forging an opinion, etc.).
To oversimplify things, this is how I think of the way things actually work:
I imagine a spectrum where at one end, you have the ultimate fashion-victims, people who just go with the flow, follow the crowd (often their particular crowd), no matter what, regardless of what’s right or wrong, ethical or not, and right off a cliff if necessary.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the people who tend to think things through for themselves, and follow the logic and their personal morals or ethics, no matter what, regardless of how unfashionable they might be, and the social cost to themselves.
And of course, most people fall somewhere in between. No-one is totally and entirely unable to think for themselves (if they have to, in a pinch), and no-one is totally and entirely immune to any kind of social pressure.
Incidentally, that’s how I picture neurotypical vs neurodivergent (ASD) people. Whether it’s because ND people are unable to think with other people’s brains or because they have been excluded from NT society, they are condemned to figure things out for themselves, whereas NT people are much more susceptible to peer pressure, because it doesn’t require any effort to go with the majority flow.
Where am I going with this?
Well, when I talk about making rational ethical choices with lefty people who feel a lot of social pressure, they’ll usually answer that they agree with me, but that sadly, people just don’t care and just follow the crowd (I tend to picture a school of fish or a murmuration of swallows), and therefore that doing the right thing ends up being a totally pointless endeavor, so why even try, especially when it happens to be a bit inconvenient?
I would wear a mask, but... I would leave Meta/Google/Spotify, but... I would stop eating meat, but... I would boycott Amazon, but... Yes, I know LLMs are evil, but... Yes, our current way of living has led to global warming, biodiversity collapse, the rise of fascism, but...
But that just begs the question. Why don’t these people who claim to agree with me, who say they want a better world, and who are somewhere in the middle on the above spectrum believe they can’t influence their neck of the school or murmuration by altering their own trajectory when they have the ability and the means to do so? Even for small things and narrow gains (and even if it means being slightly unpopular for a while?) And how many of these semi-autonomous fish or swallows would it take to meaningfully alter the trajectory of the school or murmuration towards survival instead of instant social gratification ? (Studies seem to indicate that it takes a fairly small percentage).
Meaningfully altering the trajectory wouldn’t even require those poor, poor clueless people to summon or rely on any particular kind of rationality!
So it seems to me onus is on you, dear caring and smart social butterflies, to lead the way towards a better world! And I’m sure you could rely on the social outcasts for help too, just as long as you don’t force them to answer the phone.
