Recently I’ve been reading a series of posts on ACOUP titled the Fremen Mirage. Honestly, it’s a fascinating series and Bret does an excellent job breaking down the myth into what it is, and why it’s total bull. I was thinking about his arguments and examples and it reminded me of an old SSC posts I can tolerate anything except the out group. Which is another fascinating post about tribalism and how humans act (especially in America, but the principles apply much more universally). I found myself thinking to contemporary examples of things which aren’t, not exactly, the Fremen Mirage, but are pretty similar.
My hope is to give you a meta-narrative (someone tell me if I’m using this wrong) used in today’s media, which might illuminate a common method of shaming those in an outgroup. It is important to note that this isn’t a partisan or unique technique to any group, and that one of the things that makes it effective is that it’s usually too good to check. Frequently, if you dig even a little, the story unravels and the outgroup isn’t nearly as bad as it’s being presented (which isn’t to say it’s good, just not as bad as claimed).
The Background
So, to back up to what the heck am I talking about, the Fremen Mirage is something termed by Bret Devereaux. It is describing a nomadic, hard people as more virtuous and better warriors than the decadent civilized people who are farmers. In his series of posts he demonstrates this myth being used by various historical figures (Herodotus, Julies Caesar) to describe various people. The thing is, those authors are not writing about the other people, they’re writing about their own people, but using foreigners as a contrast by which to shame some group of their own people. (This is my interpretation, not explicitly stated by Bret).
This technique of taking traits of a foreign group and using them as a contrast to your own people might be ok, if they were being honest. But that’s just the problem: the foreign group is not being accurately portrayed at all. The whole story is a fabrication, possibly with some seed of truth in it, but a fabrication nonetheless. Back in 400BCE, it was awfully difficult for anyone to call Herodotus on his bullshit because travel was difficult, and honestly, who wanted to expend the effort, or even could? It was successful propaganda because there was nobody to call them on it, and there wasn’t a lot of incentive to (or in the cases there was, it would have been difficult or impossible to do so (it’s not like Caesar left any Germans around to tell a Roman adversary of Caesar that Caesar was full of it)).
The Framework
Looking into this from the framework I learned from Scott Alexander, I could describe this as someone writing to their ingroup about their outgroup using a (fictionalized) far group as their method for attacking their outgroup. Let me back up a minute and explain what each of these means.
Ingroup: People who are of my tribe, share my culture, share my values.
Outgroup: People who are not of my tribe, but share in my locale, my government. They are close to me in a proximal way but we exist in different bubbles.
Far group: People are distant, not of my tribe, have no influence on me, and are generally alien (in any number of ways).
Pulling back on topic: Caesar could lie about German (far group) people to the Romans (ingroup and outgroup) in order to convince people who liked him (ingroup) that people who opposed him (outgroup) were lazy, decadent, and weak. (nevermind that Caesar’s own ingroup likely were just as decadent, that’s unimportant). What is important about this is that it’s propaganda. Were the German people valiant warriors? Maybe? Probably? Did that stop Caesar from stomping their faces in and exterminating them? No. Did Caesar use them as a political lever to gain more influence? Yes. Did he lie about them in order to make a point? That is what Bret convincingly argues in his posts. One of the things that could make this effective is that there wasn’t any way to check, even if you wanted to.
The Present
Now, Wo’ah, clearly we’re living in an age of unprecedented information access, so obviously nobody could pull that off today. Wrong. It might be harder to convince your outgroup of such propaganda today (since they will go look into any claims you make about a far group in order to shame them), but your ingroup? Well such claims are too good to check. Why would you, upon seeing a cohesive and convincing argument telling you that everything you believe is clearly vindicated and correct, go looking for sources which might tell you that it’s wrong? Aside from a handful of people I know who are deeply skeptical of everything and everyone, being told you’re right is a thought terminator. Yes, yes, Fear is the mind killer, but so is blind acceptance.
If you tend to align with democrats, did you ever look closely at the British NIH system you envy so much? Free healthcare in exchange for somewhat higher taxes, great deal right? Were you aware of the blanket DNRs given to disabled people last year? (source: 1, 2) Even if you are aware of these shortcomings, do you ever address them when arguing for a single payer system?
If you tend to align with republicans, are you well versed in the causes for distrust of police in urban areas? Do you understand why there is an antagonistic relationship here? Or do you just assume that because it was a cop, the person shot deserved it?
Now this is not an argument about either of these things. I’m intentionally avoiding my own positions on these matters. Because it isn’t about what I think. I’m one guy with a keyboard. My vote matters very little, and there is rarely anyone who is deserving of my vote at any level of government. But what does matter is narratives. If what you read shapes your perception, being aware that your perception also shapes what you read is a valuable thing.
The Crisis
I say all of this not because I expect talking heads to stop, for Buzzfeed to suddenly become credible, nor for Fox news to suddenly start aligning with what I consider to be reality. I say this because people read articles without checking them, frequently because they believe them to be true. It’s a kind of Gellman Amnesia which makes it so that you treat news that strikes you as exactly how you perceive your outgroup to be is considered inherently credible. The sad thing is, it’s not. It almost never is.
But the worst part about this is not that you believe a lie. No, if it were merely people of one tribe believe a lie about the other tribe and vise versa, that would be understandable. No, the real problem is that you are lying/lied to about a far group. Those who are more skeptical of those claims will look into it, find you a liar, and align against you, even if you are more right than wrong. We are in a crisis of credibility, where institutions have gotten bold in their claims, often peddling views too good to check to invigorate clicks to their readers.
Sadly, “too good to check” only lasts until someone is motivated enough to check, which is lots of people, all the time, in today’s world. This is the kind of thing that opens the door for cranks and conspiracy theorists to gain an audience: the “experts” are pursuing an agenda instead of the truth, undermining their credibility. When everyone is pursuing an agenda instead of truth, there becomes little to separate one view from another, and the most loud and extreme voices win.
The Challenge
So what is Wo’ah asking of you? Well, I’m asking you to consider your sources more critically. I’m asking you to be aware that credibility is currency, and that once spent, it is costly to get it back. I’m asking you to acknowledge the hard truths of what you want in policy, and to do so in a way that is honest. Finally, I’m asking you to not use the far group as a tool to shame others. (Ideally, not shaming people would be better, but I’ll take a small victory if I can)
On the positive, acknowledge why people don’t trust you intentions. People can smell an agenda that doesn’t line up with their values. Acknowledge the agenda you have, it’s much more honest and it can build credibility. A race to the bottom leaves us all poorer for it.
Be Conscientious and Intentional
-Wo’ah the Wise