I'm a bit sceptical about this claim. I don't think he has actually been presenting much evidence in favor of the adaptation hypothesis. Yes, he's done a great job of presenting a variety of behavior and demonstrated that there are more plausible explanations for those behaviors than the commonly acknowledged ones. So he has demonstrated that humans are hypocrites. This is different from presenting evidence in favor of hypocrisy being an evolved adaptation.
I haven't seen a lot of this, either. This account is moderately persuasive, however.
The more detailed and sophisticated seem our capacities for subtle self-benefiting hypocrisy, the less plausible becomes the view that hypocrisy is mostly accidental, or the result of a few small hypocrisy modules.
Compare:
"The more detailed and sophisticated seem our capacities for using computers in various and subtle ways, the less plausible becomes the view that our computer-using skills are mostly accidental, or the result of a few small computer use modules."
Not sure I understand your point here. I think the difference is that Hanson doesn't consider human hypocrisy to be a conscious act in the way that computer use is. Do you dispute that?
What you said before
Of course, "which of these hypotheses is the correct one" may be a somewhat confused question. It could very well be that near/far started out as separate systems simply because coherence is hard, and then hypocrisy being useful worked to counteract selective pressure that would've integrated them in a more complete manner. There may also have been other functions.
is probably right.
I'm not sure how to evaluate the complexity penalties associated with these hypotheses.
I haven't seen a lot of this, either. This account is moderately persuasive, however.
Thanks - I had either missed that or forgotten it. You're right, it does seem somewhat persuasive, though still rather speculative.
Not sure I understand your point here. I think the difference is that Hanson doesn't consider human hypocrisy to be a conscious act in the way that computer use is. Do you dispute that?
I don't dispute that.
My point is that we have a variety of complex, subtle behaviors driven by modules that were originally evolved for completely differe...
The terms Near and Far are to be taken in the context of Robin Hanson's Near/Far articles.
I was reading a fairly convincing article linked from a comment here about how theistic beliefs are so scantly supported, when not outright contradictory, that it's a doubtful whether anyone truly holds them at all. Of course there is a whole battery of explanations around the self-deception, signalling and belief-in-belief cluster, but the question that got in my head was about the kinds of people that can or cannot profess to hold these beliefs.
A common thread in many a 'deconversion' story is that some inconsistency in a person's worldview comes to their attention, and they can't let go until they have undone the whole fabric of their belief system. But given that most people are happy living productive lives while simultaneously nominally carrying around massively conflicted worldviews, what is it that makes certain individuals not capable of this fairly common human feat?
So the hypothesis that I'm considering is that the people who came to atheism this way, are those who demand detailed consistency of their Far ideals. Alternatively, they could be those for who what is normally considered Far is actually Near, in other words those with an unusually high Buxton Index. Combining the two, perhaps for people with a high Buxton Index, Far simply evaporates, as it comes under the scope of things that are relevant to a person's planning. (Edsger W. Djikstra, when introducing the Buxton Index, says that "true christians" have a Buxton Index of infinity. I think that couldn't be more wrong. Perhaps it is the case for singularitarians though.)
The obvious reason to be suspicious of this idea is that it's very flattering for those that fall in this category, which includes myself. Rather than dithering about it, I'd rather expose it to the community and see if it seems to have legs in the eyes of others.