Institutions for angels
Adverse selection in social movements
May 1, 2021 — August 14, 2023
Much can be understood about the modern world if we recall that in every group we are in, we will be represented to the outside world by the shrillest and most unreasonable among us. More can be explained by the idea that when you have nothing of your own, you can at least rally the group around you.
A notebook for an idea that is not exactly rocket science, but which I will write down because it is empirically hard to notice when I am caught up in it myself.
Something that bitcoiners and social justice activists have in common: These are large movements, with some powerful and possibly good ideas, who are perpetually judged by the worst of their members. Moreover, they have many problematic adherents, because they are movements with few gatekeepers, and their are not structured to exclude people who adopt the trappings of the movement but in fact undermine or dilute core features of the movement.
Such problems, movements that are very open by design are institutions for angels, which is to say, they work great if everyone is an angel, but they are not robust against the presence of devils.
There are pluses to this idea — an institution that welcomes absolutely anyone who fits in its membership catchment can provide community, support and care to people who are otherwise marginalised. OTOH, it is vulnerable to elite capture and free riding.
Let me reason about this for a moment, because contemporary manifestations of this phenomenon are interesting.
1 Why we like them
There is a role for radically inclusive movements, but I think we insufficiently risk manage them. Why?
One flavour of Dunning-Kruger thinking: Our tendency to imagine that people like us are good people so we should design institutions appropriate for angels. Twin to institutions for devils.
Experience teaches us that this goes off the rails in various ways; Even if we all mean well, we need institutions robust against making mistakes. Even if we are all are all good people and we are perfectly competent, an institution which has few checks and balances will encourage us to start behaving badly without feedback (absolute power corrupts absolutely even if the absolute power is over a very limited domain). Even if we all mean well, and cannot be corrupted or misled by a system which does not steer us back on course when we wander off it, we are still not safe, because systems which are designed for angels attract devils who can exploit them.
Connection to spirals of silence etc.
A classic early essay in this area is Jo Freeman, The Tyranny of Stuctureless
… to strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as deceptive, as to aim at an “objective” news story, “value-free” social science, or a “free” economy. A “laissez faire” group is about as realistic as a “laissez faire” society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of “structurelessness” does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones.
I would refine the critique there a little in the light of the last few decades research, but yeah, anyone who has every tried to organise to make the world better recognises this feeling, I suspect.
Here are some more recent case studies:
2 Invasive arguments recruit members to movements
Invasive arguments are effective at getting people to join your movement, if it is dominated by growth/recruiting. In fact, even if you do not wish to have a rage-based recruiting strategy as a movement founder, these arguments may yet come to dominate if incidental rage-based recruiting comes to outgrow other means. We can also manage that rage-based recruiting might even lead to a departure of non-rage-based recruits from the movement, since peacable sorts may find it unpleasant to hang about with militant hardliners on their weekends off. This might be one of the factors leading to the tendency of revolutions to devour their children. Possibly related, purity cascades.
TODO: muse about this. If I need to recruit on the internet, suppose that means I need prominence and the cheapest way to get air time is to have a movement where the most visible proponents will specialise in public denunciations and outrage. Even if I do not want to recruit that way, my movement may gain members that way unless I can tightly control how my members recruit. Even if I don’t want to recruit that way and I can onboard members with strong social norms about rage-based recruiting, my opponents could just as easily rage-recruit for me — there is certainly evidence that this has been attempted, if not reliable quantification of how effective this is.
What does that mean about what I should expect to see in social movements generally? Constant weed-like-growth in the most toxic wing of any movement?
Let me restate that another way.
3 The membership you attract on the internet is terrible
All else being equal, the internet is disproportionately likely to recruit the least useful and even counterproductive membership. On that recruiting ground, virtue signalling amongst members is favoured over effortful action. You need both, of course, but the balance is wayyyyy off online. Within the category of virtue signalling, the types of signal that will get most traction are likely to be the most infuriating ones (shaming, policing without consent, trolling), alienating the opposition or creating new oppositions.
I suspect this tendency is at most weakly correlated to the notional political orientation of the movement in question, because I have met humans.
4 Munchausen syndrome, modern variants
5 Purity cascades
Which norms are stable? Which are at the start of slippery slopes? I used to think no marginal change to group norms could lead to runaway extremism (all slippery slopes are bullshit), but I think I was demonstrably wrong about that. The question is about what are the exact dynamics that encourage and discourage extremes. I have witnessed too many people I know tumbling down the conspiracy radicalisation pathway and seen social norms shift in ways that were not intended at the start. Name drop: Euphemism treadmill. Maybe move this to red queen signalling?
Jo Freeman, Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood describes a manifestation, perhaps?
We have famous examples of escalation in purity tests in movement before. People like citing the French Reign of Terror; things can go off the rails. No one is killing anyone over microaggressions, though.
Regina Rini relates this to control systems in a different metaphor‚ air conditioner settings.
In both cases we are left to think about slack and moloch.
Interesting case study, The OwnVoices Movement and policing who is allowed to present which identities in their characters. Who gets to define authenticity, and appropriation?
6 Incoming
- If I wanted to make sure the common folk never united in common cause, I would encourage people to argue long and hard about whose hurt was the morally superior hurt.