Chapter One of this review was an excellent start. I really wanted to find out what happened in Morzines!
This is the first time I've seen a book review that told me "I'm not going to summarize this book for you, just go read it yourself". I do not think this is what I want a book review to be.
I have been so flummoxed by the Book Review finalists last year and again this year. To me, at least 2/3 of them have been atrocious, failing to make a good case to read the reviewed book nor even being interesting pieces of writing in their own right.
I also found this one very disjointed, though thankfully not 20k words like some of the rambling treatises that this community inexplicably loves.
This wasn't a bad review per word (or at least, the writing quality was alright), but wasn't a review. I can just about understand doing this with something very short, but given one thing I got from this is that the book's either very or too long, I'd kind of like to know more before I start reading it.
I thought I had just finished the introduction, and I was getting excited to settle in for another 20k words... And then the review inexplicably just ended.
I have never voted in the book reviews before, content to let the rest of the community do so. This has worked out so far. This year's selections are suggesting to me that maybe I should start participating. If for no other reason than that I will therefore have leg to stand one if I want to complain about the selections.
(This raises an interesting thought: how many people voted this year? How does that compare to previous years? Quality may be subjective, but one can't disagree that this years selections are certainly _different_ than previous years. I'm very curious as to why that might be)
I agree. An ASX style book review should, I think, be in the style of Scott's reviews - actually tell me the book's thesis in plain language, inform me well enough that I know whether or not I will want to read the book myself (without relying on exhortations from the reviewer), and add at least one thought-provoking insight I'll be thinking about for the next week.
But this text does exactly that: it presents the thesis, gives a thought provoking insight ("the shift away from the belief in preposterous happened somewhat organically") and gives the flavour of the style and vibe, albeit in a somewhat unconventional form of discussing others' criticism. Having read the review I'm pretty much certain I don't want to read the book.
True, but I believe the affirmative action finalists were all supposed to be fiction, poetry, or other things that people don't usually review. This was a non-fiction review so I doubt it got that kind of boost.
It's possible that it was random luck and this particular review was only read and scored by people who really liked it.
Seems to be what happened. If I’m reading the table right, this review only got 9 votes. If just one person who detests it had voted it a 1, probably would have kept it out of the finals. Vote more, disparage less!
I agree. I don't read the "book reviews" because I might want to read the book, I read them in hopes of learning something interesting or thought provoking.
If you want to find out, there's an article about it from the 1997 "Journal of Modern History" which reveals a lot more going on than the rather simple "superstitious peasants get dragged into the 19th century by big city rationalist doctor" account as above. There was an entire cauldron (hah!) full of background causes, revolving around politics, poverty, gender roles, gender roles being reversed, religiosity, assumptions about how to deal with those, and the kind of socially approved ways in which to 'run amok'. Including interest in the practices of table turning and spirit rapping, which had originated in 1840s America, amongst the village women.
"Possession on the Borders: The "Mal de Morzine" in Nineteenth-Century France
Ruth Harris"
Unlike the somewhat glib "Standard protocol for treating these afflictions called for accusing someone of witchcraft, preferably a poor, socially isolated, old woman, (although, in a pinch, anyone of any sex, status, or age would do, and often did), torturing her until she confessed to creating the calamity by consorting with the Devil, and, after that, lighting her on fire, first strangling her to death, if, at this stage of the proceedings, one judged that a modicum of mercy was in order", this isn't what happened in Morzines. In fact, the village was very poor, very isolated, the men had to migrate for work only coming home at particular times of the year, it was hyper-religious, and the initial phase of what would become the wave of "possessions" started with young girls getting ready to make their First Communion and reporting Marian apparitions. And the equivalent of 'gentrification', that is, local officials and ambitious men getting a leg up over their neighbours and the villagers by insinuating themselves into positions under the new French government, including "the dissolution of their treasured Confraternity of St. Esprit in 1860 and the transfer of its assets to a secular bureau de bienfaisance in the last moment of Savoyard administration."
That quickly degenerated into convulsions, fits, and claims of being possessed, and the blame was put on some witch's curse. It spread to adult women, and the blame was later fixed on "witches" - but these witches were *men*, not old women. The remedies the women demanded were not "burn the witches" but asking for exorcism by the local priest, and travelling outside the village to find magnetisers (practitioners of an early form of mesmerism). Local authorities also called for physicians to provide their services, so their only response was not "help, demons!" in a letter to Paris.
Morzines only became officially part of France upon the annexation of Savoy in 1860, and the 'curse' had started in 1857. The French authorities put pressure on the local priest to stop the exorcisms (presumably under the same rationalist attitude about witchcraft and possession) and that only made matters *worse*, because now the traditional 'cure' was being withheld and there was nothing to hold back the 'curse'. When Dr. Constans finally showed up, he didn't rely merely on soothing medical advice, but on the forced secularisation programme of the French authorities, being accompanied by soldiers and using exile, as well as hospitalisation, of the afflicted in order to control the outbreak and prevent it spreading:
"The women believed themselves possessed as a result of a mal donné, a witch's curse, and they sought to counterattack through magic, magnetism, and pilgrimage, going far from their village world in search of relief.
…The degree of attention lavished on the girls and women – numbering around two hundred at the end of 1861 - is evidenced by the physicians whom the Savoyard authorities and later the French administration summoned to investigate the strange epidemic. A local medical man, who diagnosed the outbreak as demonopathy in 1857, was followed by Doctor Arthaud, a Lyonnese physician, who made the more up-to-date diagnosis of "hystéro-démonopathie" around the end of 1860. But the resistance of the mal to orderly control and treatment seemed to require a more interventionist policy, and in 1861 Adolphe Constans, a Parisian alienist with court connections and the inspecteur général des asiles des aliénés, arrived to repress the furious public displays. Unwilling merely to observe and analyze, Constans used all his considerable power to expel the afflicted from Morzine, to intern some in public hospitals, and to use both a small detachment of infantry and a new post of the gendarmerie to maintain order. By 1863, it appeared that his methods had worked, and most of the Morzinoises, seemingly cured, were allowed to return. However, when the bishop, Monseigneur Magnin, visited the village the following year, the mal reappeared in more violent form: some ninety women flew into mad convulsions, attacking and insulting him and pleading desperately for a collective exorcism.
The outbreak brought Constans and the infantry back to the village, causing many of the women to flee through the mountain passes into Switzerland, fearful of being deported like criminals to the New World. But the terrified response of the afflicted was misplaced. After this second outbreak, more subtle measures of "education morale" were introduced, with the foundation of a library and the institution of a regime of lectures and dances intended to provide some "enlightened" diversion and "soothing" distraction. Through a mixture of subsidy and coercion-which ended with billeted soldiers helping villagers with the harvest-as well as the continued hospitalization of the possessed, Constans and his successors forced the mal underground. By 1873, only a few lone sufferers remained, women who experienced their convulsions in private ignominy, eking out a meager and marginal existence either in Morzine itself or in neighboring Switzerland.
[The "Rapport du Docteur Broc," one of Constans's successors, gives a brighter picture on August 12, 1867, Arch.Dep., claiming that the majority had reverted to a simple hysterical state. Although some still went on secret pilgrimages and had crises at home, the seizures no longer occurred in public and never during religious services.]"
"At first glance, the witch accusations seemed to share all the characteristics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with animal death, illness, and misfortune followed by individual and collective efforts to forestall the witches' power. But such superficial similarities are deceptive. At Morzine, nineteenth-century tensions were revealed by the accusations, as powerful men - first a vengeful priest and later representatives of the state within the local community - became the targets of hatred. For in the early modern period, older women were most likely to be accused of blighting crops, killing livestock, and deforming babies with black magic. For a brief moment during the mal such a traditional figure almost appeared, when one of the girls at the communion lesson spoke of an old (unnamed) woman from the neighboring commune of Gest as the likely source of evil. She never appeared again in the narrative, however. Villagers instead transferred their anger against those who benefited from political change and were held responsible for upsetting the already delicate spiritual and economic balance of the community. This important shift shows how wrong it is to see witchcraft in Morzine as a throwback; the villagers built on a centuries-old tradition but invested witchcraft with new and different psychic and social anxieties."
So to reduce the Morzines affair to simplistic "silly old peasant backwardness and mediaeval superstition against shiny new big city belief in reason and logic" is to greatly underestimate the swirling morass of forces under the surface that were roiling village life.
Indeed, the article even makes a case for the successful cure not being the introduction of rationality as such, but rather social improvements, economic stimulus, and the introduction of 'new blood' to the village. The village was poor, isolated, and the villagers were women without men; by building roads, bringing in resources for social activity, and literally having outside men show up for the local women to interact with, as well as participate in the work and spend money, the atmosphere changed and the impetus for the possession mania was dissipated:
"Moreover, Constans's "solutions" could be dramatically punitive. He was almost a caricature of the nineteenth-century secularizing physician, representing that tradition in its coercive rather than its tolerant guise. Indeed, his therapeutic rationale was perhaps harsher in its implications than that proposed by the local clergy. Had it worked, exorcism would have provided a means of expelling the "devils" both from the physical bodies of the women and from the contaminated territory of the parish. In contrast, Constans demanded the suppression of the "demons" and insisted that they were an integral aspect of the malady rather than a discrete foreign agent that could be spewed forth and thus ejected. I am hardly suggesting that exorcism had no physical or psychological costs, but it might have brought the relief of blaming the "devils." In contrast, Constans's analysis of demonopathy and hysteria focused on the illness's pervasive, inescapable quality and the individual's (and local society's) responsibility for it.
Above all, Constans generated more fear, as women fled across the mountains to escape the infantry or were forcibly detained in nearby hospitals until they were "cured." Even he ultimately recognized the need for a more subtle policy. He redrew Morzine's boundaries and had an important imperial road built that channeled movement in new directions, literally transforming the territory of the mal. With these physical changes came a shift in social welfare; he provided pensions for the needy and even subsidized the families whose womenfolk were hospitalized. New clergymen, whom Constans hoped would oppose the demonic and magical beliefs of the parishioners in the confessional, arrived in the village to unite administrative and religious authority. Bals, music societies, and a library were introduced to soothe and enlighten, while the soldiers billetted in the village ultimately transformed the village economy by paying for their room and board and helping with the harvest."
These comments (well, quotes from another work) are far more interesting and informative than the actual book cover blurb. I was left with a nagging doubt of "this sounds like such a Just-So Story, is that really how it all went down? where are the links to evidence?", so it's nice but depressing to see such suspicions confirmed. Rationalism: balderdashing mundane socioeconomic development since 1861...
Being of backwards superstitious Catholic peasant stock myself, my first instinctive reaction to such a neat juxtaposition of "and then the problem was solved by the smart, rational, STEM professional from the big city" is "oh yeah? what *really* happened?"
I lucked out in finding that article because it is really interesting and wants to tackle the event from more than just a feminist angle (a majority female, due to economic circumstances, village where those who were simultaneously victims and accusers turned against male authority figures and accused men of being the mysterious witches cursing, spell-casting, and possessing them), and goes into reasonable depth about what really happened.
So I can at least thank the reviewer for introducing me to a little nugget of history that I had not previously known.
I had ChatGPT tell me what happened, it's quite great.
The events in Morzine, a village in the French Alps, in the mid-19th century involved a case of mass hysteria or collective delusion, often described as a form of "mass demonic possession." This phenomenon affected many villagers, particularly young women, who exhibited symptoms such as convulsions, trance states, and claims of possession by devils. The situation drew significant attention from both religious and medical authorities, leading to interventions by the Catholic Church and the French government.
### Dr. Augustin Constans and His Investigation
Dr. Augustin Constans, the Inspector General of the Insane Department in France, was dispatched to Morzine in 1861 to investigate the widespread hysteria and possession claims. Upon his arrival, he observed the entire village in a state of severe depression and fear, believing they were afflicted by demons. Dr. Constans approached the situation from a medical and rational standpoint, differing from the religious view that had previously dominated the village's response.
### Dr. Constans' Solution to the Problem
Dr. Constans attributed the events in Morzine to psychological factors rather than supernatural ones. He believed that the hysteria was a result of social, environmental, and psychological conditions, exacerbated by the religious fervor and local superstition.
Here are the key steps Dr. Constans took to address the issue:
1. **Rational Explanations**: Dr. Constans provided a rational explanation for the events, emphasizing that the symptoms exhibited by the villagers were not due to demonic possession but rather a form of hysteria. He argued that these were psychological manifestations that could be treated with medical intervention rather than exorcisms or other religious practices.
2. **Separation of Affected Individuals**: He recommended separating the most affected individuals from the rest of the village to prevent the spread of hysteria. This separation would reduce the influence of mass suggestion and allow for more controlled medical observation and treatment.
3. **Medical Treatment**: Dr. Constans implemented a treatment regimen that included rest, proper nutrition, and isolation from the factors that were believed to be contributing to the hysteria. He also discouraged religious rituals that might reinforce the villagers' fears and delusions.
4. **Reducing Superstition and Fear**: By addressing the villagers' fears through education and rational explanations, Dr. Constans sought to reduce the community's susceptibility to superstition and collective delusion.
5. **Collaboration with Local Authorities**: He worked with local civil and religious authorities to implement these measures and ensure that the villagers were receiving proper care and support.
### Outcome
Dr. Constans' intervention, focusing on medical treatment and reducing the spread of panic, eventually led to a decline in the cases of hysteria and possession in Morzine. His approach demonstrated the effectiveness of a scientific and rational response to what was perceived as a supernatural phenomenon. The case in Morzine became an important example in the study of mass hysteria and collective psychological phenomena.
For further details on Dr. Constans' investigation and the events in Morzine, you may refer to historical medical journals and accounts of the period, as well as studies on mass hysteria in historical contexts.
"Most people think just like they eat, i.e., with whatever utensils they grew up with."
This is a very pithy statement. My grandfather, not a stupid person at all, grew up in rural Slovakia before WWII. Belief in witches was pretty widespread back then, and it took him several decades of life in urban secular settings to somewhat, but not completely, abandon it.
Makes you wonder what our modern-day equivalents of belief in witches could be. I recently heard Robert Sapolsky say that about our belief in free will and most (perhaps all) moral responsibility:
"So, the challenge is to just imagine what things people a century from now will be saying about our time period and things we still thought were volitional and things that we punished people for and things that we rewarded people for, where there was absolutely no basis for it."
It does get a little spooky when you dive into free will. We think there are no limits, but really there are societal limits (blinders) to our actions, and these limits change as you change societies.
My mom told me, we live in a prison of our parent's making. But we alone hold the keys to the gate. We don't use the keys, we sit in the prison, building another just like it for our children. That prison is our societal expectations. Maybe your society expects you to go to university, that's what you do, because that's your prison. Maybe your society expects you to be a tradesman, that's someone else's prison. I see young hoodlums in jail, and I realize that's their prison—in the metaphorical sense. We don't have free will, we live within the expectations (prisons) of our respective societies.
It's a tricky topic for sure. Your mom is right, though there's also a bright side to it - society used to expect everyone to be a farmer, or do whatever your father did, but we have a lot more choice today (or if not choice, then at least there are more complex influencing factors and potential outcomes).
I actually don't agree with Sapolsky that we don't have free will - I don't disagree with any of his scientific claims, or the claim that our behavior is determined by culture and biology. But I think that it's a matter of looking at the right level of emergence. Just as temperature as a concept doesn't exists in particle physics, free will doesn't exist as a biological concept. But looking at the level of cognition, how do you describe an agent that formulates its own goals, imagines different futures, and acts such that the desired imagined future comes about? Sure, ultimately the goals we pursue were determined by causes and conditions - that holds for a human as much as for a bacterium. But a human has these layers upon layers of meta-cognition, impulse control and self-organization. In lieu of a better term, we might call that free will.
The similar take I've heard is that what thoughts, emotions, or impulses come into your head is largely outside of your control, but you do have the "free will" to choose NOT to do something or NOT to engage with a thought / emotion.
Free will in that schema being more of a veto than the ability to positively manifest or do whatever you want.
That sounds like an important piece of the puzzle. Maybe the main way we control ourselves is through unconscious processes generating a bunch of options, and a conscious process picking one. Still, the conscious process ultimately makes its choice due to some internal state which was produced by external factors (and now we're back at a lower level of emergence again).
You have to look across the fence—as it were—to see that there is a fence. Cannibalism for instance. That's a hard fence for us in the west. If you're in Papua New Guinea, not so much, where the people engage in cannibalism as a funerary practice.
People who have left Islam feel the same way about pork as we do about long-pig.
So there is a fence you're unwilling to cross. It's probably not really a hard thin line as much as its a force field.
Probably why we despise the homeless the way we do. We can't imagine being homeless, they're living 'across the fence' as it were.
>Makes you wonder what our modern-day equivalents of belief in witches could be.
<mildSnark>
Virtue signaling luxury beliefs on the left and a belief in the omniscient wisdom of the free market (even in situations where it is known to fail) on the right? :-)
Many Thanks! Hmm, do you have any possibilities in mind? I'm writing from the USA, which is rather polarized these days, so the set of beliefs which are
>almost universally accepted as obvious
is rather depleted these days...
Maybe some of the patterns of daily life sort-of kind-of fit? 69% of Americans commute solo to work (as I did myself before retirement) ( https://www.autoinsurance.com/research/us-commuting-statistics/ ). Maybe regarding this as the natural pattern of daily life will be considered "wrong" in the future - after all, it was different in the past, and may change again someday.
I agree, but that seems more like a value than a belief (the line can be blurry sometimes, but I meant more like a belief about what the world is, not how it should be).
One possibility is maybe how we view agency. Michael Levin says some interesting things about it. Most people intuitively think of humans being very agentic, and animals having agency to various degree. But it looks like organs, tissues and other subsystems of the body, even down to single cells have agency, in the sense of being able to achieve goals through various means, in the presence of obstacles. Perhaps companies or other collections of people have agency in a non-metaphorical sense.
>But it looks like organs, tissues and other subsystems of the body, even down to single cells have agency, in the sense of being able to achieve goals through various means, in the presence of obstacles.
In that sense, I, personally, think that this is a perfectly reasonable view, and it extends down to feedback loops like thermostats or energy minimization in a (cold) physical system.
I would make a distinction between "able to achieve goals through various means, in the presence of obstacles" and this _plus_ "able to respond to incentives separate from the immediate goal" (and possibly plus "able to negotiate goals with other agents"). To the extent that people blur these distinctions, and take the inability to respond to incentives separate from the immediate goal as _implying_ an inability to achieve a goal in the presence of obstacles, an absence of agency in even the limited sense, then I would agree that the popular conception may be both pervasive and wrong.
As a possible contestant in Western cultures (and this is necessarily a post that will get a bunch of pushback): Individualism (as a good thing). I feel like the polarisation we're observing in the US may fundamentally stem from that philosophic position and I'm concerned there are no ways to patch that up. To be clear, I don't have a better model, nor a solution, I'm still at the beginning of thinking about this, myself, and at least so far I think individualism is better than the alternatives, but I do suspect that culturally we've bought into individualism to a degree that's gotten detrimental. So maybe that's a blind spot similar to a belief in witches.
(I really should explore this space some more and sort my thoughts and findings. But it's a project that's only going to happen once various other projects are done, on the order of a few years. So, apologies for the half-assed response, but maybe someone finds it useful anyway.)
I think we underestimate how important a community is, both for mental health but also just enjoyment of life. I'm not sure how much of that is because we overestimate individualism, and how much is due to people moving around for careers, partners etc. Is that some of what you had in mind?
If you don't mind unpolished thoughts and bad examples, I'll try responding to this:
Some of that, certainly! But I'm more thinking of that if you champion individual worth and opinions, there is a fundamental way in which that philosophy supports people defending said worth and opinions. That means value of not expressing oneself and not other-ing oneself in the interest of social harmony goes down. For example, I think a reason we're talking so much about people getting offended these days is because being offended is a pretty low-cost way to establish yourself as an individual, drawing your personal lines in the sand. I don't think we're collectively reflecting very much on whether the lines really needed drawing. "Your [feeling/trait] is valid" is something I often nod along with when I see it, and have said often, myself, but I'm actually not sure it scales if it's fully internalised.
To stress, I have no better solution, and I'm still on team individualism. These are very squishy proto-theses. (I'm very eccentric, myself, so I've definitely other-ed a lot, and boy do I have opinions. But I do look at myself and wonder if it scales - and that's even though I personally go out of my way to not make my eccentricities a problem to anyone else. I do have a dual-cultural background, which I think helps - but not so much that I've got solid intuitions that would let me unpack this whole topic yet.)
Idea of progress. “people used to die all the fucking time. plus they were very prejudiced, and put people in little boxes based on trivial characteristics like skin color, sexual preference, gender, wealth, and national origin. And they were all sad
and angry all the time, and had no self-awareness and their jokes were so old timey they weren’t even really jokes and couldn’t even have made people of their own era them laugh. Now we die a lot less lots and lots of us don’t put people in boxes any more and we’re gonna hassle the people who still put other people in boxes til they stop doing that shit, and we are all very self aware and have awesome standup comics right there on Netflix.”
I believe in progress, at least that it occurred, and could potentially keep going. I don't think people were more sad and angry than now, and might have been less. I think that's because while progress fixed many problems, we've created others.
if we’ve fixed some problems but created some new ones, and you don’t think we’re
less sad and angry than people in the past, and we might even be more sad and angry — then are the grounds for saying that overall we have made Progress with a capital P? Obviously there are areas where we have made
progress. But have we made progress in some deep, central way?
How about the notion that there's a universally correct morality? Or at least as far as humans are concerned, for slightly more sophisticated audiences.
I'm a big believer in markets. But I don't think that they're omniscient, nor do I know anyone who thinks they are (and I know plenty of big believers in markets). But here's the rub - for most things, markets happen to be the best mechanism we have. Market failures exist, but it is not clear that government intervention is superior on average
>But here's the rub - for most things, markets happen to be the best mechanism we have. Market failures exist, but it is not clear that government intervention is superior on average
Agreed. Many Thanks! There are a very few cases where the economics of the industry creates natural monopolies (notably local electricity and water supply), and I think that government intervention is a net positive there, but these are special corner cases.
I think they may be even more special than you appreciate. The interventions are net positive provided that you have decent state capacity and a 'good' political settlement. These are much rarer commodities than economists in developed countries have typically acknowledged in their premises when reasoning about market failure.
Except our belief in free will is more incoherent than wrong. Most people don't even understand what they are believing in well enough to explain how it relates to views like compatibalism.
Tbh, I don't blame them. I struggle to formulate a fully coherent theory myself. The crucial piece seems to be that a deterministic and acausal description of the world without free will, and an uncertain (in the Knightian sense) and causal description with free will, both can describe the same world, if they describe it at different levels of emergence. But it's unclear how to relate these levels of emergence. If we designate the fundamental level as more real than the emergent level, does that also mean thermodynamics is not real? It's also unclear exactly what property free will is - is it some way of describing self-organizing dynamics of agents that can self-reflect? How would one describe in rigorous terms?
I just don't see a problem that requires solving. Do I have free will? Well my will isn't being dictated by someone outside myself. What else do you even want to know?
Maybe it's only the remnants of a homunculus style conception of the self that identifies it with a soul that differs from the mere meatsack that we feel a pressure here. But ultimately it's not the burden of the person answering to dispell the feeling that something is weird -- the person claiming there is something that hasn't been explained or is incomplete who needs to make the showing.
You don't need a solution to a purely apparent problem. The right answer to Zeno's paradox wasn't calculus it was to shrug and go "ok so there is a time at which it reaches the point 1/2^n of it's starting distance from the target. If you think that's a problem it's your burden to explain why"
“… my will isn't being dictated by someone outside myself. What else do you even want to know?”
Yep, I like this minimalist approach a lot. I’ve been working on defining meaning using a similar set of arguments.
There are some problems, like extended cognition, and the outside world affecting the inside of you through actions like drugs… but overall I think this works. You just divide the world physically into the inside me vs outside me parts, and all the difficulties of homunculi and magical free will just melt away.
I feel like you made a good argument for the opposite position :) Zeno didn't understand that you can divide a finite interval into infinite terms.
We have an illusion of free will, which makes us feel like our decisions are made by us, independently of any outside factors.
The hard science position is that none of our decisions are independent of outside factors, any more than the 557th domino brick falling is independent of the 1st.
Both explanations are bad, even if the latter is true. The first one is bad because it's false. Obviously our decisions are influenced by outside factors, and who we are is a result of outside factors too.
The problem with the hard science position is that it equally well describes everything else in the universe, when there's clearly something different going on with humans. So it explains nothing.
To me, the problem that requires solving is both defining what free will is, so rigorously that you can determine for any algorithm whether it has free will, and then to explain how it works. For example, it might turn out that free will is a property of agents that learn their own utility functions, have a self-model and self-control. This combination makes it computationally intractable to predict what the utility function or behavior of the agent is, without simulating the agent.
So it's really a problem in (some point in the future) in the field of AI. Same as Zeno's paradox really is a basic calculus question, imo.
Why should we expect that we should be able to define free will to do that? And why would it matter anyway. Definitions are just abbreviations we use to shorten descriptions. If you insisted on having necessary and sufficient conditions to distinguish an enhancement of a person from a cure of a disease I’d reject the distinction as unimportant, unprincipled and ultimately confused. Until you make a case for there being some principled distinction here why should I think this is any different (if it doesn't have to be principled it's trivial )
Plenty of concepts that seem intuitive to us at first turn out to be subtly incoherent or just aren’t actually principled. Very few of the concepts we find useful in non-technical contexts ever extend to a principled definition. It's an infamously difficult problem to define “table” or “game” with explicit necessary and sufficient conditions.
But what do you mean by choose? And why are you assuming that somehow in tension with determinism?
For instance, the fact that it might flow from who you are that you would never hand your loved ones into the secret police for a bit more spending money doesn't seem in tension with the idea that you choose that freely. Indeed, finding out that — at the level of fundamental physics — there was some element of chance in whether or not you did that wouldn't seem like it was more of a choice. It would feel like it is less of one.
But once you accept that it can still be a completely free choice even if it is completely predictable from your nature or character then what's the issue? Sure, maybe you can in theory predict how you’ll act using the laws of physics based on the current state of the universe but part of that state is a description of you. It's not denying that you have the choice, indeed if it wasn't predicted by a complete description of your character and dispositions that would actually be denying you agency and leaving it up to some external (none you) process to make the choice.
At some level what's really doing the work here is the reluctance we feel to identify ourselves with the physical crap in our brain. If you imagined it was fundamental laws of how souls work rather than laws of physics that predicted your future choices would that make u feel better?
Are you saying assuming materialism is just as much an assumption as assuming the existence of supernatural phenomena? To me, the problem with that is that people have been studying supernatural phenomena scientifically, and never found anything. If they exist despite that, it must be either because we're so biased that we can't see them despite using our best method for finding out the truth, or there's a conspiracy to suppress results.
If materialism isn't true, then science isn't the tool we think it is. I.e., if the experienced universe is a projection of the mind and not substantial in itself, then the scientific method may be part of our dream and not something outside it which can interrogate the world objectively.
Alternatively, maybe witches had some yet-to-be discovered special abilities which were not supernatural but appeared to be because we haven't yet uncovered all the laws of nature. Maybe the genes for witchcraft disappeared because we burned them all. Being mostly facetious here.
If there are non-material things, does it matter? Either they affect something material in a repeatable way, and can in principle be measured and controlled in experiments. Or they don't affect anything material, and so they don't matter in any way.
I suppose you could have things that affect something material in a non-repeatable way, like "glitches in the matrix"? But then we'd never know whether they really happened, or were just measurement errors.
Maybe our modern-day equivalent of belief in witches will be disbelief in witches.
"Lol, just look at those superstitious materialists, inventing BS about 'mass hysteria' and 'mental illness' to cover what was so obviously demonic possession! Luckily we've grown beyond such primitive foolishness."
> Makes you wonder what our modern-day equivalents of belief in witches could be
The WEF - A witch's coven led by Satan himself, Klaus Schwab :-P
Seriously, perhaps this question is best approached by considering the characteristics people believed witches possessed: They were thought to secretly cast spells which would cause damage to others or to their property such as livestock, ascribing a deliberate malign intent to what were rarely more than chance misfortunes.
The modern equivalent of that would appear to be conspiracy theories concerning groups claimed to be secretly undermining nation states and threatening prosperity, with evil intent. One often sees the WEF accused of this, even though they seem to me a fairly well-meaning organisation, and Schwab no more than a glorified secretary and events organiser.
Whether or not free will exists, it is still important to act as though it does, so that you can create incentive structures that shape peoples actions in socially beneficial ways.
She was not. She was accused of murder and one of the prosecution lawyer referred to her as a diabolical and "a which" when describing her character. Notably in Italian it's more common to use which as a derogatory term, and I don't think anybody in the court thought he meant to accuse her of actually consorting with supernatural forces.
That whole process was a shitshow in any case, no need to exxagerate the facts.
A. Because of the sand which is (sandwiches) there!
Now, if we're talking about a witch who goes into sandwich-making as a job, then we've got Which 'Wich Witch as the shop name! (Or if we prefer, Which Witch 'Wich! Or Witch Which 'Wich!) 😁
Which 'Wich Witch - the witch who works for Which 'Wich
Which Witch 'Wich - what sandwich made by the witch do you want?
Witch Which 'Wich - this store caters to witches (only)
>Dr. Constans’ next action was highly unorthodox. Standard protocol for treating these afflictions called for accusing someone of witchcraft, preferably a poor, socially isolated, old woman, (although, in a pinch, anyone of any sex, status, or age would do, and often did), torturing her [etc.]
Ironically, witchcraft wasn't illegal in most of the dark ages, because most important people regarded magic as an ignorant country superstition. Belief in witchcraft was more of a Renaissance phenomenon.
That's my understanding as well. And in England, at least, there was a strong political dimension as well. The Tudors and Stuarts were paranoid about plots from any direction, including the supernatural, and so passed a lot of laws that encouraged people to be on the lookout for witches. No surprise, witches started being spotted. The witch-hunt craze petered out pretty soon after the government lost interest.
Elizabeth I got her court astrologer to choose a propitious day for her coronation (previous coronations had been arranged for major feast days), and James I wrote a book on demonology. They were certainly a supernaturally-inclined bunch of monarchs.
Hear me out. A lot of people are trashing the review but I liked it.
The starting was strong, leaving me on edge to explore for myself. The rest of the review was on par as well. Readers need to realise that if something is not conventional, doesn't mean it is not what claims to be. This is a book review as well. A pretty excellent one even. Encourages us to pick it up and have a go by carefully picking up key events that we may come to like.
I felt it was just getting started and then it stopped suddenly with "read the book yourself!" Okay, but why should I? Why is Lecky so sound on the topic? He was a 19th century writer with the prejudices and unconscious biases of his time, did he get around those or is the book full of "everyone know 19th century English gentleman peak of creation" style assumptions?
I was worried by the start - it was a long time before any mention of the book, so I didn’t know if it was a book from the 2010s or one from the 1970s, or if the person was doing some abstract “review” of actual history rather than a book. We eventually got the mention of the book, but it was after a distracting story. And then the review ended.
I admit that I read these reviews because I want to know the contents of the book without having to read it myself. Few non-fiction books are worth reading from start to finish. Much better for someone to helpfully hack them and tell us about the twenty pages that were worthwhile.
"Few non-fiction books are worth reading from start to finish. "
That might be more of an effect of the modern-day book market. It seems like today, the main reason to publish a non-fiction book it to establish yourself as an "expert" with big, serious, hardcover *book*, and then you can go rake it in from lectures and tv appearances. The core ideas come from scientific articles that are much shorter, and could probably be summarized in an essay or even a tweet.
But it doesn't have to be like that. These older books are more like a textbook, where every single chapter is jam-packed with info and it's just hard to sum it up without losing a lot. I mean, it's pretty much summarized by its own title: "Your Book Review: The History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe."
"So, why listen to me when the book is just a click away. Don’t even scroll up. Here’s Chapter 1, on the decline of the belief in witchcraft. I think you’ll realize pretty quickly whether this book is your cup of tea or not. Thanks for reading."
Why do we need a review if the conclusion is just "here's a link to the book, go read it"? The review didn't explain why Lecky's book is better than similar works. It didn't tell us if there are similar works. Why pick Lecky and not Gibbon or a slew of modern writers?
Plus. it didn't help its case with the Morzine anecdote, as several of us have picked that apart as not being what it is claimed to be. So, leaving that out or just giving it in a couple of sentences would have been a better idea.
As others have said, the review just seemed to be starting (all the above is introductory material, now the reviewer will go into the book) but it stopped dead with "read the book".
Chapter One of this review was an excellent start. I really wanted to find out what happened in Morzines!
This is the first time I've seen a book review that told me "I'm not going to summarize this book for you, just go read it yourself". I do not think this is what I want a book review to be.
I have been so flummoxed by the Book Review finalists last year and again this year. To me, at least 2/3 of them have been atrocious, failing to make a good case to read the reviewed book nor even being interesting pieces of writing in their own right.
I also found this one very disjointed, though thankfully not 20k words like some of the rambling treatises that this community inexplicably loves.
This wasn't a bad review per word (or at least, the writing quality was alright), but wasn't a review. I can just about understand doing this with something very short, but given one thing I got from this is that the book's either very or too long, I'd kind of like to know more before I start reading it.
I thought I had just finished the introduction, and I was getting excited to settle in for another 20k words... And then the review inexplicably just ended.
It's not fair to tease us like that! 😀
At least the final sentence of the review wasn't "And then I woke up." :-)
...before ever quite becoming a review.
I have never voted in the book reviews before, content to let the rest of the community do so. This has worked out so far. This year's selections are suggesting to me that maybe I should start participating. If for no other reason than that I will therefore have leg to stand one if I want to complain about the selections.
(This raises an interesting thought: how many people voted this year? How does that compare to previous years? Quality may be subjective, but one can't disagree that this years selections are certainly _different_ than previous years. I'm very curious as to why that might be)
At the contest start, Scott mentioned that unorthodox reviews would be given a bonus. I am pretty happy with the results so far.
Shame the Old Testament one didn't make it in there then.
I agree. An ASX style book review should, I think, be in the style of Scott's reviews - actually tell me the book's thesis in plain language, inform me well enough that I know whether or not I will want to read the book myself (without relying on exhortations from the reviewer), and add at least one thought-provoking insight I'll be thinking about for the next week.
As an extra bonus, an ACX style book review should omit the name of the book’s author, and preferably also the title.
But this text does exactly that: it presents the thesis, gives a thought provoking insight ("the shift away from the belief in preposterous happened somewhat organically") and gives the flavour of the style and vibe, albeit in a somewhat unconventional form of discussing others' criticism. Having read the review I'm pretty much certain I don't want to read the book.
Thanks. If you now have one less book to read, that’s a service.
But you have to admit, it's pretty funny the extent to which this book review is the 'draw the rest of the f---king owl' of book reviews.
These were the top book reviews as voted on by the people, no? Even though I didn't hate it, I'm surprised this one made it in here!
Apparently the selection wasn't purely by popular vote - Scott gave a bonus to "unorthodox" reviews in order to up the variety this time
True, but I believe the affirmative action finalists were all supposed to be fiction, poetry, or other things that people don't usually review. This was a non-fiction review so I doubt it got that kind of boost.
It's possible that it was random luck and this particular review was only read and scored by people who really liked it.
Seems to be what happened. If I’m reading the table right, this review only got 9 votes. If just one person who detests it had voted it a 1, probably would have kept it out of the finals. Vote more, disparage less!
Motion to rename the "Your Book Review" contest to "Your Book Report", since that is clearly what it is, and what people are looking for.
Non fiction reviews usually do that kind of thing, though? Unlike fiction ones?
I agree. I don't read the "book reviews" because I might want to read the book, I read them in hopes of learning something interesting or thought provoking.
If you want to find out, there's an article about it from the 1997 "Journal of Modern History" which reveals a lot more going on than the rather simple "superstitious peasants get dragged into the 19th century by big city rationalist doctor" account as above. There was an entire cauldron (hah!) full of background causes, revolving around politics, poverty, gender roles, gender roles being reversed, religiosity, assumptions about how to deal with those, and the kind of socially approved ways in which to 'run amok'. Including interest in the practices of table turning and spirit rapping, which had originated in 1840s America, amongst the village women.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2953593?read-now=1&oauth_data=eyJlbWFpbCI6InR1aXJzZWFjaDI3OUBnbWFpbC5jb20iLCJpbnN0aXR1dGlvbklkcyI6W10sInByb3ZpZGVyIjoiZ29vZ2xlIn0#page_scan_tab_contents
"Possession on the Borders: The "Mal de Morzine" in Nineteenth-Century France
Ruth Harris"
Unlike the somewhat glib "Standard protocol for treating these afflictions called for accusing someone of witchcraft, preferably a poor, socially isolated, old woman, (although, in a pinch, anyone of any sex, status, or age would do, and often did), torturing her until she confessed to creating the calamity by consorting with the Devil, and, after that, lighting her on fire, first strangling her to death, if, at this stage of the proceedings, one judged that a modicum of mercy was in order", this isn't what happened in Morzines. In fact, the village was very poor, very isolated, the men had to migrate for work only coming home at particular times of the year, it was hyper-religious, and the initial phase of what would become the wave of "possessions" started with young girls getting ready to make their First Communion and reporting Marian apparitions. And the equivalent of 'gentrification', that is, local officials and ambitious men getting a leg up over their neighbours and the villagers by insinuating themselves into positions under the new French government, including "the dissolution of their treasured Confraternity of St. Esprit in 1860 and the transfer of its assets to a secular bureau de bienfaisance in the last moment of Savoyard administration."
That quickly degenerated into convulsions, fits, and claims of being possessed, and the blame was put on some witch's curse. It spread to adult women, and the blame was later fixed on "witches" - but these witches were *men*, not old women. The remedies the women demanded were not "burn the witches" but asking for exorcism by the local priest, and travelling outside the village to find magnetisers (practitioners of an early form of mesmerism). Local authorities also called for physicians to provide their services, so their only response was not "help, demons!" in a letter to Paris.
Morzines only became officially part of France upon the annexation of Savoy in 1860, and the 'curse' had started in 1857. The French authorities put pressure on the local priest to stop the exorcisms (presumably under the same rationalist attitude about witchcraft and possession) and that only made matters *worse*, because now the traditional 'cure' was being withheld and there was nothing to hold back the 'curse'. When Dr. Constans finally showed up, he didn't rely merely on soothing medical advice, but on the forced secularisation programme of the French authorities, being accompanied by soldiers and using exile, as well as hospitalisation, of the afflicted in order to control the outbreak and prevent it spreading:
"The women believed themselves possessed as a result of a mal donné, a witch's curse, and they sought to counterattack through magic, magnetism, and pilgrimage, going far from their village world in search of relief.
…The degree of attention lavished on the girls and women – numbering around two hundred at the end of 1861 - is evidenced by the physicians whom the Savoyard authorities and later the French administration summoned to investigate the strange epidemic. A local medical man, who diagnosed the outbreak as demonopathy in 1857, was followed by Doctor Arthaud, a Lyonnese physician, who made the more up-to-date diagnosis of "hystéro-démonopathie" around the end of 1860. But the resistance of the mal to orderly control and treatment seemed to require a more interventionist policy, and in 1861 Adolphe Constans, a Parisian alienist with court connections and the inspecteur général des asiles des aliénés, arrived to repress the furious public displays. Unwilling merely to observe and analyze, Constans used all his considerable power to expel the afflicted from Morzine, to intern some in public hospitals, and to use both a small detachment of infantry and a new post of the gendarmerie to maintain order. By 1863, it appeared that his methods had worked, and most of the Morzinoises, seemingly cured, were allowed to return. However, when the bishop, Monseigneur Magnin, visited the village the following year, the mal reappeared in more violent form: some ninety women flew into mad convulsions, attacking and insulting him and pleading desperately for a collective exorcism.
The outbreak brought Constans and the infantry back to the village, causing many of the women to flee through the mountain passes into Switzerland, fearful of being deported like criminals to the New World. But the terrified response of the afflicted was misplaced. After this second outbreak, more subtle measures of "education morale" were introduced, with the foundation of a library and the institution of a regime of lectures and dances intended to provide some "enlightened" diversion and "soothing" distraction. Through a mixture of subsidy and coercion-which ended with billeted soldiers helping villagers with the harvest-as well as the continued hospitalization of the possessed, Constans and his successors forced the mal underground. By 1873, only a few lone sufferers remained, women who experienced their convulsions in private ignominy, eking out a meager and marginal existence either in Morzine itself or in neighboring Switzerland.
[The "Rapport du Docteur Broc," one of Constans's successors, gives a brighter picture on August 12, 1867, Arch.Dep., claiming that the majority had reverted to a simple hysterical state. Although some still went on secret pilgrimages and had crises at home, the seizures no longer occurred in public and never during religious services.]"
Thanks for the summary!
The article even deals with the witchcraft angle:
"At first glance, the witch accusations seemed to share all the characteristics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with animal death, illness, and misfortune followed by individual and collective efforts to forestall the witches' power. But such superficial similarities are deceptive. At Morzine, nineteenth-century tensions were revealed by the accusations, as powerful men - first a vengeful priest and later representatives of the state within the local community - became the targets of hatred. For in the early modern period, older women were most likely to be accused of blighting crops, killing livestock, and deforming babies with black magic. For a brief moment during the mal such a traditional figure almost appeared, when one of the girls at the communion lesson spoke of an old (unnamed) woman from the neighboring commune of Gest as the likely source of evil. She never appeared again in the narrative, however. Villagers instead transferred their anger against those who benefited from political change and were held responsible for upsetting the already delicate spiritual and economic balance of the community. This important shift shows how wrong it is to see witchcraft in Morzine as a throwback; the villagers built on a centuries-old tradition but invested witchcraft with new and different psychic and social anxieties."
So to reduce the Morzines affair to simplistic "silly old peasant backwardness and mediaeval superstition against shiny new big city belief in reason and logic" is to greatly underestimate the swirling morass of forces under the surface that were roiling village life.
Indeed, the article even makes a case for the successful cure not being the introduction of rationality as such, but rather social improvements, economic stimulus, and the introduction of 'new blood' to the village. The village was poor, isolated, and the villagers were women without men; by building roads, bringing in resources for social activity, and literally having outside men show up for the local women to interact with, as well as participate in the work and spend money, the atmosphere changed and the impetus for the possession mania was dissipated:
"Moreover, Constans's "solutions" could be dramatically punitive. He was almost a caricature of the nineteenth-century secularizing physician, representing that tradition in its coercive rather than its tolerant guise. Indeed, his therapeutic rationale was perhaps harsher in its implications than that proposed by the local clergy. Had it worked, exorcism would have provided a means of expelling the "devils" both from the physical bodies of the women and from the contaminated territory of the parish. In contrast, Constans demanded the suppression of the "demons" and insisted that they were an integral aspect of the malady rather than a discrete foreign agent that could be spewed forth and thus ejected. I am hardly suggesting that exorcism had no physical or psychological costs, but it might have brought the relief of blaming the "devils." In contrast, Constans's analysis of demonopathy and hysteria focused on the illness's pervasive, inescapable quality and the individual's (and local society's) responsibility for it.
Above all, Constans generated more fear, as women fled across the mountains to escape the infantry or were forcibly detained in nearby hospitals until they were "cured." Even he ultimately recognized the need for a more subtle policy. He redrew Morzine's boundaries and had an important imperial road built that channeled movement in new directions, literally transforming the territory of the mal. With these physical changes came a shift in social welfare; he provided pensions for the needy and even subsidized the families whose womenfolk were hospitalized. New clergymen, whom Constans hoped would oppose the demonic and magical beliefs of the parishioners in the confessional, arrived in the village to unite administrative and religious authority. Bals, music societies, and a library were introduced to soothe and enlighten, while the soldiers billetted in the village ultimately transformed the village economy by paying for their room and board and helping with the harvest."
These comments (well, quotes from another work) are far more interesting and informative than the actual book cover blurb. I was left with a nagging doubt of "this sounds like such a Just-So Story, is that really how it all went down? where are the links to evidence?", so it's nice but depressing to see such suspicions confirmed. Rationalism: balderdashing mundane socioeconomic development since 1861...
Being of backwards superstitious Catholic peasant stock myself, my first instinctive reaction to such a neat juxtaposition of "and then the problem was solved by the smart, rational, STEM professional from the big city" is "oh yeah? what *really* happened?"
I lucked out in finding that article because it is really interesting and wants to tackle the event from more than just a feminist angle (a majority female, due to economic circumstances, village where those who were simultaneously victims and accusers turned against male authority figures and accused men of being the mysterious witches cursing, spell-casting, and possessing them), and goes into reasonable depth about what really happened.
So I can at least thank the reviewer for introducing me to a little nugget of history that I had not previously known.
Thanks for this impressive reply. Of course what they really needed was IFS.
Thank you very much for this.
... yeah, I have to admit, this one was a disappointment. I was hoping to get an actual book summary.
Turns out it was a book revue.
I had ChatGPT tell me what happened, it's quite great.
The events in Morzine, a village in the French Alps, in the mid-19th century involved a case of mass hysteria or collective delusion, often described as a form of "mass demonic possession." This phenomenon affected many villagers, particularly young women, who exhibited symptoms such as convulsions, trance states, and claims of possession by devils. The situation drew significant attention from both religious and medical authorities, leading to interventions by the Catholic Church and the French government.
### Dr. Augustin Constans and His Investigation
Dr. Augustin Constans, the Inspector General of the Insane Department in France, was dispatched to Morzine in 1861 to investigate the widespread hysteria and possession claims. Upon his arrival, he observed the entire village in a state of severe depression and fear, believing they were afflicted by demons. Dr. Constans approached the situation from a medical and rational standpoint, differing from the religious view that had previously dominated the village's response.
### Dr. Constans' Solution to the Problem
Dr. Constans attributed the events in Morzine to psychological factors rather than supernatural ones. He believed that the hysteria was a result of social, environmental, and psychological conditions, exacerbated by the religious fervor and local superstition.
Here are the key steps Dr. Constans took to address the issue:
1. **Rational Explanations**: Dr. Constans provided a rational explanation for the events, emphasizing that the symptoms exhibited by the villagers were not due to demonic possession but rather a form of hysteria. He argued that these were psychological manifestations that could be treated with medical intervention rather than exorcisms or other religious practices.
2. **Separation of Affected Individuals**: He recommended separating the most affected individuals from the rest of the village to prevent the spread of hysteria. This separation would reduce the influence of mass suggestion and allow for more controlled medical observation and treatment.
3. **Medical Treatment**: Dr. Constans implemented a treatment regimen that included rest, proper nutrition, and isolation from the factors that were believed to be contributing to the hysteria. He also discouraged religious rituals that might reinforce the villagers' fears and delusions.
4. **Reducing Superstition and Fear**: By addressing the villagers' fears through education and rational explanations, Dr. Constans sought to reduce the community's susceptibility to superstition and collective delusion.
5. **Collaboration with Local Authorities**: He worked with local civil and religious authorities to implement these measures and ensure that the villagers were receiving proper care and support.
### Outcome
Dr. Constans' intervention, focusing on medical treatment and reducing the spread of panic, eventually led to a decline in the cases of hysteria and possession in Morzine. His approach demonstrated the effectiveness of a scientific and rational response to what was perceived as a supernatural phenomenon. The case in Morzine became an important example in the study of mass hysteria and collective psychological phenomena.
For further details on Dr. Constans' investigation and the events in Morzine, you may refer to historical medical journals and accounts of the period, as well as studies on mass hysteria in historical contexts.
a book review? in my acx book reviews?
I was like ok now it begins and u said to read it myself 😭
GPT, please expand this review to 20,000 words. Ctrl+v.
"Now let me explain how this is relevant to AI safety..."
"Most people think just like they eat, i.e., with whatever utensils they grew up with."
This is a very pithy statement. My grandfather, not a stupid person at all, grew up in rural Slovakia before WWII. Belief in witches was pretty widespread back then, and it took him several decades of life in urban secular settings to somewhat, but not completely, abandon it.
Makes you wonder what our modern-day equivalents of belief in witches could be. I recently heard Robert Sapolsky say that about our belief in free will and most (perhaps all) moral responsibility:
"So, the challenge is to just imagine what things people a century from now will be saying about our time period and things we still thought were volitional and things that we punished people for and things that we rewarded people for, where there was absolutely no basis for it."
It does get a little spooky when you dive into free will. We think there are no limits, but really there are societal limits (blinders) to our actions, and these limits change as you change societies.
My mom told me, we live in a prison of our parent's making. But we alone hold the keys to the gate. We don't use the keys, we sit in the prison, building another just like it for our children. That prison is our societal expectations. Maybe your society expects you to go to university, that's what you do, because that's your prison. Maybe your society expects you to be a tradesman, that's someone else's prison. I see young hoodlums in jail, and I realize that's their prison—in the metaphorical sense. We don't have free will, we live within the expectations (prisons) of our respective societies.
It's a tricky topic for sure. Your mom is right, though there's also a bright side to it - society used to expect everyone to be a farmer, or do whatever your father did, but we have a lot more choice today (or if not choice, then at least there are more complex influencing factors and potential outcomes).
I actually don't agree with Sapolsky that we don't have free will - I don't disagree with any of his scientific claims, or the claim that our behavior is determined by culture and biology. But I think that it's a matter of looking at the right level of emergence. Just as temperature as a concept doesn't exists in particle physics, free will doesn't exist as a biological concept. But looking at the level of cognition, how do you describe an agent that formulates its own goals, imagines different futures, and acts such that the desired imagined future comes about? Sure, ultimately the goals we pursue were determined by causes and conditions - that holds for a human as much as for a bacterium. But a human has these layers upon layers of meta-cognition, impulse control and self-organization. In lieu of a better term, we might call that free will.
The similar take I've heard is that what thoughts, emotions, or impulses come into your head is largely outside of your control, but you do have the "free will" to choose NOT to do something or NOT to engage with a thought / emotion.
Free will in that schema being more of a veto than the ability to positively manifest or do whatever you want.
That sounds like an important piece of the puzzle. Maybe the main way we control ourselves is through unconscious processes generating a bunch of options, and a conscious process picking one. Still, the conscious process ultimately makes its choice due to some internal state which was produced by external factors (and now we're back at a lower level of emergence again).
What are the hard limits to your society.
You have to look across the fence—as it were—to see that there is a fence. Cannibalism for instance. That's a hard fence for us in the west. If you're in Papua New Guinea, not so much, where the people engage in cannibalism as a funerary practice.
People who have left Islam feel the same way about pork as we do about long-pig.
So there is a fence you're unwilling to cross. It's probably not really a hard thin line as much as its a force field.
Probably why we despise the homeless the way we do. We can't imagine being homeless, they're living 'across the fence' as it were.
>Makes you wonder what our modern-day equivalents of belief in witches could be.
<mildSnark>
Virtue signaling luxury beliefs on the left and a belief in the omniscient wisdom of the free market (even in situations where it is known to fail) on the right? :-)
</mildSnark>
Hmm, these don't seem fundamental enough. I feel like it has to be something both wrong and also almost universally accepted as obvious.
Many Thanks! Hmm, do you have any possibilities in mind? I'm writing from the USA, which is rather polarized these days, so the set of beliefs which are
>almost universally accepted as obvious
is rather depleted these days...
Maybe some of the patterns of daily life sort-of kind-of fit? 69% of Americans commute solo to work (as I did myself before retirement) ( https://www.autoinsurance.com/research/us-commuting-statistics/ ). Maybe regarding this as the natural pattern of daily life will be considered "wrong" in the future - after all, it was different in the past, and may change again someday.
I agree, but that seems more like a value than a belief (the line can be blurry sometimes, but I meant more like a belief about what the world is, not how it should be).
One possibility is maybe how we view agency. Michael Levin says some interesting things about it. Most people intuitively think of humans being very agentic, and animals having agency to various degree. But it looks like organs, tissues and other subsystems of the body, even down to single cells have agency, in the sense of being able to achieve goals through various means, in the presence of obstacles. Perhaps companies or other collections of people have agency in a non-metaphorical sense.
Many Thanks!
>One possibility is maybe how we view agency.
>But it looks like organs, tissues and other subsystems of the body, even down to single cells have agency, in the sense of being able to achieve goals through various means, in the presence of obstacles.
In that sense, I, personally, think that this is a perfectly reasonable view, and it extends down to feedback loops like thermostats or energy minimization in a (cold) physical system.
I would make a distinction between "able to achieve goals through various means, in the presence of obstacles" and this _plus_ "able to respond to incentives separate from the immediate goal" (and possibly plus "able to negotiate goals with other agents"). To the extent that people blur these distinctions, and take the inability to respond to incentives separate from the immediate goal as _implying_ an inability to achieve a goal in the presence of obstacles, an absence of agency in even the limited sense, then I would agree that the popular conception may be both pervasive and wrong.
As a possible contestant in Western cultures (and this is necessarily a post that will get a bunch of pushback): Individualism (as a good thing). I feel like the polarisation we're observing in the US may fundamentally stem from that philosophic position and I'm concerned there are no ways to patch that up. To be clear, I don't have a better model, nor a solution, I'm still at the beginning of thinking about this, myself, and at least so far I think individualism is better than the alternatives, but I do suspect that culturally we've bought into individualism to a degree that's gotten detrimental. So maybe that's a blind spot similar to a belief in witches.
(I really should explore this space some more and sort my thoughts and findings. But it's a project that's only going to happen once various other projects are done, on the order of a few years. So, apologies for the half-assed response, but maybe someone finds it useful anyway.)
I think we underestimate how important a community is, both for mental health but also just enjoyment of life. I'm not sure how much of that is because we overestimate individualism, and how much is due to people moving around for careers, partners etc. Is that some of what you had in mind?
If you don't mind unpolished thoughts and bad examples, I'll try responding to this:
Some of that, certainly! But I'm more thinking of that if you champion individual worth and opinions, there is a fundamental way in which that philosophy supports people defending said worth and opinions. That means value of not expressing oneself and not other-ing oneself in the interest of social harmony goes down. For example, I think a reason we're talking so much about people getting offended these days is because being offended is a pretty low-cost way to establish yourself as an individual, drawing your personal lines in the sand. I don't think we're collectively reflecting very much on whether the lines really needed drawing. "Your [feeling/trait] is valid" is something I often nod along with when I see it, and have said often, myself, but I'm actually not sure it scales if it's fully internalised.
To stress, I have no better solution, and I'm still on team individualism. These are very squishy proto-theses. (I'm very eccentric, myself, so I've definitely other-ed a lot, and boy do I have opinions. But I do look at myself and wonder if it scales - and that's even though I personally go out of my way to not make my eccentricities a problem to anyone else. I do have a dual-cultural background, which I think helps - but not so much that I've got solid intuitions that would let me unpack this whole topic yet.)
Idea of progress. “people used to die all the fucking time. plus they were very prejudiced, and put people in little boxes based on trivial characteristics like skin color, sexual preference, gender, wealth, and national origin. And they were all sad
and angry all the time, and had no self-awareness and their jokes were so old timey they weren’t even really jokes and couldn’t even have made people of their own era them laugh. Now we die a lot less lots and lots of us don’t put people in boxes any more and we’re gonna hassle the people who still put other people in boxes til they stop doing that shit, and we are all very self aware and have awesome standup comics right there on Netflix.”
I believe in progress, at least that it occurred, and could potentially keep going. I don't think people were more sad and angry than now, and might have been less. I think that's because while progress fixed many problems, we've created others.
if we’ve fixed some problems but created some new ones, and you don’t think we’re
less sad and angry than people in the past, and we might even be more sad and angry — then are the grounds for saying that overall we have made Progress with a capital P? Obviously there are areas where we have made
progress. But have we made progress in some deep, central way?
How about the notion that there's a universally correct morality? Or at least as far as humans are concerned, for slightly more sophisticated audiences.
I'm a big believer in markets. But I don't think that they're omniscient, nor do I know anyone who thinks they are (and I know plenty of big believers in markets). But here's the rub - for most things, markets happen to be the best mechanism we have. Market failures exist, but it is not clear that government intervention is superior on average
>But here's the rub - for most things, markets happen to be the best mechanism we have. Market failures exist, but it is not clear that government intervention is superior on average
Agreed. Many Thanks! There are a very few cases where the economics of the industry creates natural monopolies (notably local electricity and water supply), and I think that government intervention is a net positive there, but these are special corner cases.
I think they may be even more special than you appreciate. The interventions are net positive provided that you have decent state capacity and a 'good' political settlement. These are much rarer commodities than economists in developed countries have typically acknowledged in their premises when reasoning about market failure.
That's a reasonable point of view. Many Thanks!
Except our belief in free will is more incoherent than wrong. Most people don't even understand what they are believing in well enough to explain how it relates to views like compatibalism.
Tbh, I don't blame them. I struggle to formulate a fully coherent theory myself. The crucial piece seems to be that a deterministic and acausal description of the world without free will, and an uncertain (in the Knightian sense) and causal description with free will, both can describe the same world, if they describe it at different levels of emergence. But it's unclear how to relate these levels of emergence. If we designate the fundamental level as more real than the emergent level, does that also mean thermodynamics is not real? It's also unclear exactly what property free will is - is it some way of describing self-organizing dynamics of agents that can self-reflect? How would one describe in rigorous terms?
I just don't see a problem that requires solving. Do I have free will? Well my will isn't being dictated by someone outside myself. What else do you even want to know?
Maybe it's only the remnants of a homunculus style conception of the self that identifies it with a soul that differs from the mere meatsack that we feel a pressure here. But ultimately it's not the burden of the person answering to dispell the feeling that something is weird -- the person claiming there is something that hasn't been explained or is incomplete who needs to make the showing.
You don't need a solution to a purely apparent problem. The right answer to Zeno's paradox wasn't calculus it was to shrug and go "ok so there is a time at which it reaches the point 1/2^n of it's starting distance from the target. If you think that's a problem it's your burden to explain why"
“… my will isn't being dictated by someone outside myself. What else do you even want to know?”
Yep, I like this minimalist approach a lot. I’ve been working on defining meaning using a similar set of arguments.
There are some problems, like extended cognition, and the outside world affecting the inside of you through actions like drugs… but overall I think this works. You just divide the world physically into the inside me vs outside me parts, and all the difficulties of homunculi and magical free will just melt away.
I feel like you made a good argument for the opposite position :) Zeno didn't understand that you can divide a finite interval into infinite terms.
We have an illusion of free will, which makes us feel like our decisions are made by us, independently of any outside factors.
The hard science position is that none of our decisions are independent of outside factors, any more than the 557th domino brick falling is independent of the 1st.
Both explanations are bad, even if the latter is true. The first one is bad because it's false. Obviously our decisions are influenced by outside factors, and who we are is a result of outside factors too.
The problem with the hard science position is that it equally well describes everything else in the universe, when there's clearly something different going on with humans. So it explains nothing.
To me, the problem that requires solving is both defining what free will is, so rigorously that you can determine for any algorithm whether it has free will, and then to explain how it works. For example, it might turn out that free will is a property of agents that learn their own utility functions, have a self-model and self-control. This combination makes it computationally intractable to predict what the utility function or behavior of the agent is, without simulating the agent.
So it's really a problem in (some point in the future) in the field of AI. Same as Zeno's paradox really is a basic calculus question, imo.
Why should we expect that we should be able to define free will to do that? And why would it matter anyway. Definitions are just abbreviations we use to shorten descriptions. If you insisted on having necessary and sufficient conditions to distinguish an enhancement of a person from a cure of a disease I’d reject the distinction as unimportant, unprincipled and ultimately confused. Until you make a case for there being some principled distinction here why should I think this is any different (if it doesn't have to be principled it's trivial )
Plenty of concepts that seem intuitive to us at first turn out to be subtly incoherent or just aren’t actually principled. Very few of the concepts we find useful in non-technical contexts ever extend to a principled definition. It's an infamously difficult problem to define “table” or “game” with explicit necessary and sufficient conditions.
>What else do you even want to know?
Whether the future is open, so that humans can choose a future of their liking.
But what do you mean by choose? And why are you assuming that somehow in tension with determinism?
For instance, the fact that it might flow from who you are that you would never hand your loved ones into the secret police for a bit more spending money doesn't seem in tension with the idea that you choose that freely. Indeed, finding out that — at the level of fundamental physics — there was some element of chance in whether or not you did that wouldn't seem like it was more of a choice. It would feel like it is less of one.
But once you accept that it can still be a completely free choice even if it is completely predictable from your nature or character then what's the issue? Sure, maybe you can in theory predict how you’ll act using the laws of physics based on the current state of the universe but part of that state is a description of you. It's not denying that you have the choice, indeed if it wasn't predicted by a complete description of your character and dispositions that would actually be denying you agency and leaving it up to some external (none you) process to make the choice.
At some level what's really doing the work here is the reluctance we feel to identify ourselves with the physical crap in our brain. If you imagined it was fundamental laws of how souls work rather than laws of physics that predicted your future choices would that make u feel better?
How about performance enhancing or happiness producing drugs or genetic modification are bad. Eating meet is ok. Probably all sorts of health shit.
Except for the last vague category, none of those are statements of fact one could be wrong about.
Perhaps not believing in witches is our modern-day equivalent of belief in witches.
Are you saying assuming materialism is just as much an assumption as assuming the existence of supernatural phenomena? To me, the problem with that is that people have been studying supernatural phenomena scientifically, and never found anything. If they exist despite that, it must be either because we're so biased that we can't see them despite using our best method for finding out the truth, or there's a conspiracy to suppress results.
If materialism isn't true, then science isn't the tool we think it is. I.e., if the experienced universe is a projection of the mind and not substantial in itself, then the scientific method may be part of our dream and not something outside it which can interrogate the world objectively.
Alternatively, maybe witches had some yet-to-be discovered special abilities which were not supernatural but appeared to be because we haven't yet uncovered all the laws of nature. Maybe the genes for witchcraft disappeared because we burned them all. Being mostly facetious here.
If there are non-material things, does it matter? Either they affect something material in a repeatable way, and can in principle be measured and controlled in experiments. Or they don't affect anything material, and so they don't matter in any way.
I suppose you could have things that affect something material in a non-repeatable way, like "glitches in the matrix"? But then we'd never know whether they really happened, or were just measurement errors.
Or am I thinking about this the wrong way?
If nothing is truly material and everything is a projection of mind, a dream, so-to-speak, then we have no objective measurement tools.
We know materialism is false, because of the existence of qualia and forms. Belief in supernatural phenomena is far more intellectually respectable.
Also the existence of ghosts. And angels.
Maybe our modern-day equivalent of belief in witches will be disbelief in witches.
"Lol, just look at those superstitious materialists, inventing BS about 'mass hysteria' and 'mental illness' to cover what was so obviously demonic possession! Luckily we've grown beyond such primitive foolishness."
Darn, I see Hank Wilbon beat me to it.
> Makes you wonder what our modern-day equivalents of belief in witches could be
The WEF - A witch's coven led by Satan himself, Klaus Schwab :-P
Seriously, perhaps this question is best approached by considering the characteristics people believed witches possessed: They were thought to secretly cast spells which would cause damage to others or to their property such as livestock, ascribing a deliberate malign intent to what were rarely more than chance misfortunes.
The modern equivalent of that would appear to be conspiracy theories concerning groups claimed to be secretly undermining nation states and threatening prosperity, with evil intent. One often sees the WEF accused of this, even though they seem to me a fairly well-meaning organisation, and Schwab no more than a glorified secretary and events organiser.
Whether or not free will exists, it is still important to act as though it does, so that you can create incentive structures that shape peoples actions in socially beneficial ways.
In 2007 Amanda Knox was charged with Witchcraft and Murder in Italy. It made me consider whether or not I wanted to visit Italy in 2010.
Having trouble finding evidence she was arrested for witchcraft, do you have a link?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/27/amanda-knox-witch-hunts-italian-court
She was not. She was accused of murder and one of the prosecution lawyer referred to her as a diabolical and "a which" when describing her character. Notably in Italian it's more common to use which as a derogatory term, and I don't think anybody in the court thought he meant to accuse her of actually consorting with supernatural forces.
That whole process was a shitshow in any case, no need to exxagerate the facts.
Kind of like how Lucy Letby was described in the press as an "angel of death". I don't think anyone was suggesting that she was a celestial being.
*Witch, and I despise English spelling
Which witch? 😁
“Which ‘Wich” is the name of an American sandwich chain. Sadly, it doesn’t have a witch on its logo - a missed opportunity if ever there was one.
Like the joke!
Q. Why are you never hungry at the seaside?
A. Because of the sand which is (sandwiches) there!
Now, if we're talking about a witch who goes into sandwich-making as a job, then we've got Which 'Wich Witch as the shop name! (Or if we prefer, Which Witch 'Wich! Or Witch Which 'Wich!) 😁
Which 'Wich Witch - the witch who works for Which 'Wich
Which Witch 'Wich - what sandwich made by the witch do you want?
Witch Which 'Wich - this store caters to witches (only)
>Dr. Constans’ next action was highly unorthodox. Standard protocol for treating these afflictions called for accusing someone of witchcraft, preferably a poor, socially isolated, old woman, (although, in a pinch, anyone of any sex, status, or age would do, and often did), torturing her [etc.]
No. Witch trials had been out of fashion for more than a century by 1861. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_early_modern_period#Decline_of_the_trials:_1630%E2%80%931750 The last witch-burning in France was in 1678: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_France#End_of_witch_trials
It's hard to want to read the rest of the review when it starts with such a glaring mistake.
Was going to point this out. I didn't know the exact date ranges, but this smelled like a strawman of the "dark ages".
(Also, just read the rest of the review, it's very short lol)
Ironically, witchcraft wasn't illegal in most of the dark ages, because most important people regarded magic as an ignorant country superstition. Belief in witchcraft was more of a Renaissance phenomenon.
That's my understanding as well. And in England, at least, there was a strong political dimension as well. The Tudors and Stuarts were paranoid about plots from any direction, including the supernatural, and so passed a lot of laws that encouraged people to be on the lookout for witches. No surprise, witches started being spotted. The witch-hunt craze petered out pretty soon after the government lost interest.
Elizabeth I got her court astrologer to choose a propitious day for her coronation (previous coronations had been arranged for major feast days), and James I wrote a book on demonology. They were certainly a supernaturally-inclined bunch of monarchs.
> It's hard to want to read the rest of the review when it starts with such a glaring mistake.
Fortunately for you, they forgot to upload the rest of the review anyway.
To be fair, the reviewer acknowledges it as "the final holdout of the old beliefs... one of the final skirmishes".
Thanks for pointing this out.
Hear me out. A lot of people are trashing the review but I liked it.
The starting was strong, leaving me on edge to explore for myself. The rest of the review was on par as well. Readers need to realise that if something is not conventional, doesn't mean it is not what claims to be. This is a book review as well. A pretty excellent one even. Encourages us to pick it up and have a go by carefully picking up key events that we may come to like.
Well done. 👏🏽
I felt it was just getting started and then it stopped suddenly with "read the book yourself!" Okay, but why should I? Why is Lecky so sound on the topic? He was a 19th century writer with the prejudices and unconscious biases of his time, did he get around those or is the book full of "everyone know 19th century English gentleman peak of creation" style assumptions?
I was worried by the start - it was a long time before any mention of the book, so I didn’t know if it was a book from the 2010s or one from the 1970s, or if the person was doing some abstract “review” of actual history rather than a book. We eventually got the mention of the book, but it was after a distracting story. And then the review ended.
I admit that I read these reviews because I want to know the contents of the book without having to read it myself. Few non-fiction books are worth reading from start to finish. Much better for someone to helpfully hack them and tell us about the twenty pages that were worthwhile.
Seconded! And I enjoy the related discussions in the comments.
"Few non-fiction books are worth reading from start to finish. "
That might be more of an effect of the modern-day book market. It seems like today, the main reason to publish a non-fiction book it to establish yourself as an "expert" with big, serious, hardcover *book*, and then you can go rake it in from lectures and tv appearances. The core ideas come from scientific articles that are much shorter, and could probably be summarized in an essay or even a tweet.
But it doesn't have to be like that. These older books are more like a textbook, where every single chapter is jam-packed with info and it's just hard to sum it up without losing a lot. I mean, it's pretty much summarized by its own title: "Your Book Review: The History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe."
The end rather undercuts what goes before it:
"So, why listen to me when the book is just a click away. Don’t even scroll up. Here’s Chapter 1, on the decline of the belief in witchcraft. I think you’ll realize pretty quickly whether this book is your cup of tea or not. Thanks for reading."
Why do we need a review if the conclusion is just "here's a link to the book, go read it"? The review didn't explain why Lecky's book is better than similar works. It didn't tell us if there are similar works. Why pick Lecky and not Gibbon or a slew of modern writers?
Plus. it didn't help its case with the Morzine anecdote, as several of us have picked that apart as not being what it is claimed to be. So, leaving that out or just giving it in a couple of sentences would have been a better idea.
As others have said, the review just seemed to be starting (all the above is introductory material, now the reviewer will go into the book) but it stopped dead with "read the book".
Thanks so much for your kind words.