
Is Tribalism a Natural Malfunction? What computers teach us about getting along - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/52/the-hive/is-tribalism-a-natural-malfunction
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Pica_soO
Natural Malfunction. Has humanity finally grown up so much, we can talk about
the bugs the process called evolution produces?

Can we actually talk about loop-deformations, and the danger that self-
optimizing systems optimize try to optimize the social environment to the
configuration that allows for a maximum self-reproduction performance?

Will there be a open discussion on how only a constant economic bribe via
surplus prevents civilization from sliding back into cyclic behavior?

Or will it be just findings, a cultural look up on academic behavior from the
resulting emotions and then dismissal of ones own findings as something of the
past to overcome by praying and wishing/ strict social controls? Even though
strict social controllism may also be a strategy that evolved as part of the
loop?

Who watches for bugs in the bug report mechanism? Who patches our social meta-
organims against the found bugs? Who sets up laws to punnish exploits?

One needs to stop having any influences of feeling towards humanitys bugs
whatsoever.

Feelings do not solve problems- at best they allow to avoid operations that
crash the "cultural & biological software"\- but the error persists. Just
avoiding tribalism means, that it will rear its face, whenever there is stress
on the system and it will do damage then, because by nature of not-
understanding it will be uncontrollable.

And why not use it for good? If tribalism is used to proof holes in the
theorys of the neigbouring academia clans science - with the quasi-religious
fervor of soccer fans, where is that not a positive, as long as a idea is not
simply dismissed because of otherness?

Imagine if you where allowed to wear shawls with dots for non-repeatable
experiments in the colors of a "enemy" university?

~~~
raverbashing
Oh you can talk about it a lot, but do you fix it "Gattaca style"
(troublesome)

> Can we actually talk about loop-deformations, and the danger that self-
> optimizing systems optimize try to optimize the social environment to the
> configuration that allows for a maximum self-reproduction performance?

That's what worked for millions of years. It's been tens of thousands of years
since agriculture took over and while I don't subscribe to the Paleo ideas,
our bodies evolved for lifespans long enough to reproduce, and for a low ratio
of (calories obtained)/(calories spend obtaining food)

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golemotron
Tribalism is seen all across nature. It is an important mechanism for
adaptability and humanity wouldn't have made it as far as it has without it.
The article equates it with its worst manifestations (war and genocide), but
fails to appreciate its ecological importance. A world with only one large
society is fragile and subject to large catastrophic failure.

This is just like the issue of monoculture in software security. If there are
many societies (tribes) there are more chances for survival. There are also
more chances for independent discoveries of better ways of living that would
otherwise be lost to groupthink.

Tribalism is a diversified portfolio. It's not a bug, it's a feature. Our
challenge is not to get rid of tribalism but rather how to get the best parts
of it without the worst.

~~~
gt_
I agree with your conclusive point. On the others, I'm not sure we need to
worry about losing tribalism any time soon so I hope you're not losing sleep
over it.

~~~
golemotron
I'm not. I'm just stunned by the ignorance of people who aim for that goal.

~~~
gt_
Of course, those people are all the while often reiterating it.

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jswizzy
Anyone who has watched a nature documentary knows that tribalism is essential
for an organism longterm survival. Humans are just imaginative enough to want
to transcend nature and reality.

To quote Cormac McCarthy, "There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I
think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone
could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted
with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom.
Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous."

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raverbashing
In the history of mankind (one of) the usual ways of having your tribe
exterminated was meeting another tribe.

Idealist ideas of the whole humanity singing kumbaya in a circule by the
fireplace are naive at best.

Doesn't mean "our tribe" (which exists in a lots of levels, it could be a
sports team, it could be a national identity, or something more vague) needs
to be hostile to others (or shoot first)

~~~
kiliantics
At the same time, many tribes benefitted from exchange and alliances.
Tribalism does not necessarily imply brutal conflict.

~~~
Nomentatus
True. There is at least one apparent exception, Australia, during hunter
gatherer times. But everywhere else...

Exchange and alliance also happened; often in aid of success in brutal
conflicts.

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jameslk
I'd like to know how much culture affects cooperation/trust in society vs
other factors, such as genetics. I have a hypothesis that culture is much like
a protocol. When all members of society speak the same protocol around each
other, there is cooperation. The opposite is like your tragedy of the commons
effect. This isn't to say that multi-culturalism would be bad if this
hypothesis were true, only that all members of the society may need to at
least understand a common culture to have cooperation.

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notthemessiah
The author is as quick to describe it as a "natural malfunction" as he is to
his findings of his toy models to large complex societies. Can his analogy be
applied on a different order of organization? Cells have very limited means of
communicating with each other like this model, and in multi-cellular organism,
they have a tendency to cooperate with things that share their code. Could
this be said to be a malfunction?

~~~
raverbashing
I disagree with the term malfunction as well, it's more of an heuristic for
dealing with lack of perfect information about others

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tpallarino
Wow. So if I'm understanding the article correctly, it says that tribalism
occurs both naturally and in simulations. However, even though this is the
case, we should despise tribalism for some reason that is frankly not exactly
clear.

does the depth of cultural self-loathing know no bound?

~~~
gt_
> _So if I 'm understanding the article correctly, it says that tribalism
> occurs both naturally and in simulations._

My take was that the article does not quite make these claims, but uses the
simulations to model implications of them.

> _we should despise tribalism for some reason that is frankly not exactly
> clear_

We should move beyond tribalism because of it's inherence of prejudice.

~~~
duckingtest
What these simulations show is that tribalism is a winning strategy. Which
means not following it leads to death.

>We should move beyond tribalism because of it's inherence of prejudice.

Considering an inherent property of a winning strategy evil means your code is
non-optimal and is inevitably going to disappear.

~~~
gt_
It is a 'winning strategy' only for the winners. We can just as well call it a
'losing strategy'. As the players become more intelligent, they are able to
cooperate better and everyone wins, meaning cooperation is even 'more
winning'. That is, unless your intentions here are something like eugenics.

~~~
duckingtest
It's only possible for everyone to win if basic resources are infinite.
Tribalism is the only pareto optimal strategy for finite resources, especially
land on Earth.

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duckingtest
Allowing for coordinated protocol changes, the optimal length of pre-
cooperative identification code should depend on the probability of error
(defector). Which after a long enough time of winning (ie. close to zero
defectors) would lead to jumping into cooperation immediately. Which would
make defense against defectors impossible and lead to a total collapse as they
exploit the hapless cooperators.

Interesting parallels.

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pingou
Interesting. It seems like what they tested here was not that each agent
should get as much points as possible like in a usual prisoner dilemma, but
just that they should have more than the opponent (and thus get selected for
reproduction).

Not sure about the explanation in the article "This domination would last
until enough errors accumulated in the code handed down between generations
for dominant machines to stop recognizing each other.", shouldn't be the
agents that stop recognizing the code forced out? I guess it depends on
implementation details, if every agent can fight several opponents before
being or not reproduced.

~~~
arjie
I wonder if it also has an efficiency metric: a shorter agreeable program is
better than a longer agreeable program. Then, over time, you start failing to
detect bad programs after long periods of peace.

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xtiansimon
Tribalism in the fictional AMC show The Walking Dead is a survival response.
Haha. Love that show.

Cancer is largely understood as a failure of cell death mechanism--a negative
mutation within the organism. Whereas the flu virus is rationally seen as part
of the environment. It's effect in the body can be disastrous, but it also
exercises our immune system.

I think the conclusion is a grab bag of metaphors, and a poor conclusion to an
interesting discussion of model and simulation.

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zby
OK - by where is the code? This looks like something that would be great to
tweak the parameters and code and experiment on your own.

There was a similar work by Axelrode, it goes back to the 80s - but it also
has some results that stunningly resonate with human moral strategies. And
here is some Python code: [https://github.com/Axelrod-
Python/Axelrod](https://github.com/Axelrod-Python/Axelrod)

