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Clarity comments on Open thread, Aug. 03 - Aug. 09, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Recently I've been thinking of dealing with social problems in the physical world, vs the psychological world, and the victim's world vs the perpetrators world.
Is it more effective to deal with public anxiety over a certain danger, than to deal with the anxiety-provoking stimuli itself? For instance, if gun ownership spreads fear and anxiety among a populace, would it be more effective to address those concerns by education about the threat of increased gun ownership (irrespective of change in actual level of physical danger) or to remove the stimuli (e.g. banning or restricting gun ownership)?
Edit: In the treatment of psychological disorders, OCD and PTSD are treated by exposure, that is, interacting with the stimuli (physical), whereas depression is treated with CBT (psychological). Perhaps problems can be parsed into whether they are about avoidance coping, in which case psychological approaches are preferred, or 'cognitive distortions', in which case psychological approaches are indicated.
Of course, both are psychological, as much as physical. It's just that there isn't terminology to parse them in another differentiating way.
Operationalised: fight fear physically, fight persuasion psychologically.
Looks like a handy hereustic to decide between externalising and internalising.
I suppose prerequisite to this is Dagon's approach to issues. It sort of echoes Eleizer's 'check consequentialism'
Is "which is more effective" even a useful question to ask?
Suppose it was found that the most effective way to deal with people's fears of terrorism is to ban Islam. Should we then ban Islam?
(Also, if you will do X when doing X is most effective, that creates incentives for people who want X to respond unusually strongly to doing X. You end up creating utility monsters.)
It is definitely a necessary question to ask. You need to have a prediction of how effective your solutions will be. You also need predictions of how practical they are, and it may be that something very effective is not practical -- e.g. banning Islam. You could make a list of things you should ask: how efficient, effective, sustainable, scalable, etc. But effective certainly has a place on the list.
Banning religions in general is no effective move if you have a different goal than radicalising people. Christianity grew in the Roman empire at a time where being a Christian was punishable by death.
I don't see any Arians around.
Beware survivorship bias. If some religion was suppressed effectively, it's less likely that you'd have heard of it and even if you have, less likely that it would come to mind.
At any rate, my point wasn't just about effectiveness. It was that we have ideas about rights and we don't decide to suppress something just because it is effective, if doing the suppression violates someone's rights.
Neither Russia nor China moved to forbid Islam even through both have homegrown Muslim terrorists. I don't think their concern was mainly about rights.
That was a hypothetical. The hypothetical was chosen to be something that embodies the same principles but to which most people would find the answer fairly clear. The hypothetical was not chosen to actually be true.
In general the effectiveness of awareness raising programs intended to shift public perception of a risk is low.
I'm afraid that nobody knows, but you will have to dig into sociological studies to find out for sure.
I just want to offer you a different perspective, a parameter that might affect your investigation. It might be possible that cultural and economical influences affect the general level of anxiety in a population, so that even if you just ban a stimulus (say gun ownership) anxiety will just find another object of focus.