Changing the Calculation of Genetic Self-Interest

Philosophies and ideologies are nothing more than post hoc rationalizations of genetic self-interest, as I pointed out in a recent post. I believe this is what Eli is saying when he writes “progressives are always lying, even when they’re telling the truth” or “progressives are always wrong, even when they’re right”. I have Eli’s full post reprinted at the bottom.

It is in the genetic self-interest of some of us to lie. It is in the genetic self-interest of others to tell the truth. Westerners depend on truth, because Western Civilization itself it built on truth. Western Civilization cannot withstand these lies, we have all the evidence we need of this. Humans will serve their genetic self-interest, even when they believe they are telling the truth, but are simply trapped in their own biases and wishful thinking. But not all of us are unintentionally lying. As Eli points out in the post below, some of us use lies as a strategy, where the strategy is to saturate the informational commons with lies, to simply make it too difficult to discern the truth.

On Eli’s post, someone asked the question “What, if changed, would cause a leftist to rethink what they thought they knew to be true?”

The answer to this is that there is no idea or argument that will cause the liars to rethink their strategy. Why? Because truth does not serve their genetic self-interest, that’s why they lie. Lying is profitable for them. However, just because the liars cannot be persuaded via argument to examine their positions honestly, it does not mean that they cannot be persuaded not to lie.

How do we persuade the liars not to lie? By raising the cost of lying. As we incrementally raise the cost of the strategy of proliferating lies, it will alter the calculation of genetic self-interest. Raise the costs of lying high enough, then truth will become more profitable than lies. At this point, the liars will have been persuaded not to lie. There is no other mechanism to achieve this result, because it takes an order of magnitude more energy to refute bullshit than to create bullshit.

How do we raise the cost of lying? Use your imagination. Suffice it to say that this task will be carried out by Dreamy bad boys doing dreamy bad boy things.

Know this dear reader: this is the cost of Western Civilization. The restoration of the Patriarchy and of Western Civilization will be acquired at a price, it cannot be purchased at a discount through clever manipulation of ideas and language.

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Here is Eli’s full post on lying as a strategy to saturate the informational commons:

Leftists don’t engage with serious questions or criticism because the left is dishonest, often deliberately so. They rely on frequency and volume to overwhelm the intellectual commons and saturate it with their ideas, making it hard for normal people to wade through all the bullshit to find the truth.

Even for smart people, it’s too cognitively demanding and too time consuming to dispel *all* the bullshit, or find *all* the truth (such as is available anyway.) So it effects even us. That’s why I paint with an extremely broad brush and say things like “progressives are always lying, even when they’re telling the truth” or “progressives are always wrong, even when they’re right” because it’s the only way to immunize myself against their lies (though even that is not foolproof.)

Leftists don’t benefit from serious debate, argument, scrutiny or criticism, because invariably, sooner or latter, it shows them to be not just bankrupt, but duplicitous.

They’re better off looking for some fresh suckers to lie at, than answering tough questions or debating anyone with a clue.

The thought leaders are surely willful in their dishonesty. The rapidity and predictability with which they dishonesty frame issues suggests they know what they are doing.

Most of the rank and file are just dupes and useful idiots. But they are immunized against truth by fractal wrongness. They are so wrong, about so many things, on so many scales and levels of resolution, that to convince them of any particular truth you’d have to start all the way from the beginning. Generally, ain’t nobody got time for that shit.

And it becomes a cascade of self-reinforcing social signaling. They don’t adopt those platitudes and bromides out of logical or emprical rigor, but because those are the kind of things sophisticated and enlightened people think, and say. And that’s what they are, or wish to be, and so that’s what they think and say. To question those platitudes and bromides would be quite unthinkable, because it amounts to much more than questioning a fact, or a theory, but to questioning their very identity, and their loyalty to the group that shares that identity.

Now, much of this is true also of the right. And you will find a lot of stupid, kneejerk, conservatives as well. They have to be. Not everyone is smart enough to have their own opinions. But they follow the cues of their tribe.

The difference, and the tell, is the higher up you go on the intellectual scale, the more serious and sincere you will find conservatives and right wingers, and the less so you will find leftists and progressives.