I remember talking to a developer from Belarus a few years ago, asking him
about life under an authoritarian regime. This was before the protests in
Belarus from 2020 to 2021 and the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine
shortly after in 2022. He said under an authoritarian regime you are basically
allowed to do anything *unless* you start to criticize the president. Criticism
of the president and/or his family would lead to heavy punishment.In bigger
companies or corporations nobody of the employees would dare to criticize the
CEO in public either. Only the shareholders are allowed to do it. The person at
the top makes the big decisions which the people below have to execute. -J.
-------- Original message --------From: steve smith <sasm...@swcp.com> Date:
10/21/24 5:44 PM (GMT+01:00) To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On
Evolutionary Atavism ...
I can't imagine any organization of humans being truly
effectively hierarchical (authoritarian?) in the extreme.
...
On 10/20/24 3:31 AM, Jochen Fromm
wrote:
I agree that the
hype in conservative news sources about great CEOs is an
example of the Great Man theory. The hype about AI godfathers
is an example too. Nevertheless I still believe that
authoritarian organization is the rule in social systems. In
almost all companies and corporations the CEO has the last
word, in armies the general at the top, in families
traditionally the father.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
In hierarchies
there are two ends of a spectrum: at the one end we have an
authoritarian system and a top-down hierarchy where people at
the bottom are doing what the leader at the top wants. At the
other end we have a democratic system and a bottom-up
hierarchy where elected people at the top are doing what the
people at the bottom want. In between are authoritarian
systems that pretend to democratic, and democratic system that
have authoritarian tendencies.
An example of the
spectrum would be a Navy vessel vs a pirate ship in the 18th
century. Mutiny is one form of transition between the two
types.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance_in_18th-century_piracy
Another example is
the Catholic church vs protestantism. In the Catholic church
officials are appointed from the top, in protestant culture
they are elected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestantism
The question why
people are shifting from one form of organization to another
is intriguing. I am not sure if we have clear answers to this
interesting question. Nick argued that "groups capable of
shifting to an authoritarian organization in response to a
perceived existential threat survived in greater numbers than
those that didn't" but this argument alone is not fully
convincing, or is it?
-J.
-------- Original message --------
From: glen <geprope...@gmail.com>
Date: 10/18/24 9:47 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On Evolutionary Atavism
I can't help but feel that the sentiment that authoritarian
organization is the rule is an example of (or sibling to) the
Great Man theory. Ultimately, it's something akin to a
psychological investment in teleology - which I'm using to mean
when the appearance of purposeful behavior is often treated as an
indicator that processes do have purpose (as opposed to teleonomy
- where processes merely seem to have purpose, behave as if they
have purpose, or perhaps purpose is emergent). But it's not merely
the attribution of purpose, but also the attribution of unity or
fusion into a bounded whole.
I'd challenge anyone to present an organized system that is
*actually* unified in this way. Even political systems we name and
accept as authoritarian, are not completely fused, atomic,
centralized. The extent to which the nominal leader is actually
the leader is a graded extent, never perfect. Each particular
authoritarian system will be more or less authoritarian than
another. And, worse, each particular system will be more
authoritarian in some dimensions and less in others.
So if I read this generously, what I hear is that we're very used
to ... comfortable with ... the attribution of leader-controlled
organization, as in corporations with chief executives, etc. And
we're less used to ... facile with ... comfortable with ...
distributed organization and quantifying the extent to which
organization is centralized or distributed.
If I read it less generously, it sounds like reification -
pretending like some illusory property is actual.
On 10/17/24 10:21, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Interesting thoughts. The use of "atavism" in the context of
social systems is interesting, but it is not new. Joseph
Schumpeter has used the term atavism to explain the outbreak of
World War I
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atavism
>
>
> I believe authoritarian organization is not the exception, it
is the rule. A pecking order or "dominance hierarchy" is the most
common order in social groups and almost all organizations,
corporations and companies. Even among chickens in farms or apes
in zoos.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy
>
>
> The opposite of authoritarian organization is an egalitarian
society where everybody is equal. In his book "Warlike and
Peaceful Societies", Agner Fogar agues that people tend to prefer
one of these two types depending on the situation. His regality
theory says "people will show a psychological preference for a
strong leader and strict discipline if they live in a society full
of conflict and danger, while people in a peaceful and safe
environment will prefer an egalitarian and tolerant culture"
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regality_theory
>
>
> -J.
>
>
>
> Inters-------- Original message --------
> From: thompnicks...@gmail.com
> Date: 10/17/24 12:08 AM (GMT+01:00)
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
<friam@redfish.com>
> Subject: [FRIAM] On Evolutionary Atavism
>
> On Evolutionary Atavism
>
> My so-called mind is still churning from our conversation
about evolutionary atavism, the idea that current behavioral
systems may be ill-suited to contemporary circumstances. As an
evolutionary psychologist I should be for it; however, as a
survivor of the instinct wars of the 1950’s, I should be against
it. Where am I?
>
> The problem with evolutionary atavism arises when people
start attributing any necessity to it. Natural selection would
not be possible if organisms did not offer up structures and
behaviors that are maladapted. Evolution could not have occurred
if organisms did not respond to these maladaptations with adaptive
changes. Evolution is a dynamic between change and stability and
the interesting question is why some things change while others
don’t, and why some changes occur more rapidly than others.
Asserting that some things are the same as they were a million
years ago because they didn’t happen to change is just silly.
>
> Still, evolutionary atavism does play a role in my thinking.
Let’s work an example together and see what that role is and
whether it is justified. I listened with guilty pleasure to
Obama’s address ridiculing MAGA thinking. My pleasure was guilty
because I thought his speech would make Trump more likely to win
the election. This conclusion arose from an evolutionary
hypothesis about the origins of charisma. The logic, such as it
is, goes like this.
>
> 1. *The modern human species arose 160kyrs ago from a very
small number of small groups. *That the human species passed
through a severe bottleneck at it inception is probably true; that
it was composed of small group at that time is a plausible
surmise.**
> 2. *Those groups were engaged in intense competition at the
bottleneck. *This statement is reasonable but not supported by any
data I can think of. **
> 3. *Therefore, they survived or failed as groups. *Again,
merely plausible.**
> 4. *Those /groups/ survived that were capable of rapid
concerted action. *This is based on the idea that in emergencies
it is most important for every to do some thing, rather than for
them to wait and work out the best thing to do.**Barely plausible.
Not even clear how one would go about researching it. **
> 5. *Groups capable of shifting to an authoritarian
organization in response to a perceived existential threat
survived in greater numbers than those that didn’t.*
> 6. *Humans, therefore, are inclined to put their faith in a
single person when they perceive an existential threat. *Let’s
call this the “Charismer Response”**
> 7. *The person most likely to be selected for this role is
apparently single-minded and decisive. *This gives us the
characteristics of a *Charismer*, **
> 8. *Charismees relinquish their capacity for independent
rational thought in favor of the Charismer’s decision-making. *
> 9. *Charismees receive benefits from the group in proportion
to their demonstrations of surrender of rationality.*
> 10. *Charismees demostrate their surrender by the repetition
of o or more flagrantly irrational beliefs. (virgi birth, stole
election , etc.)*
> 11. *Challenges to these beliefs only increase charismees
allegiance to the group*
> 12. *Therefore, Obama should have kept his smarty-pants mouth
shut. *
>
> You all ca*n* evaluate the heuristic, rationality, a*n*d
probability of this argument. I am going to stop *n*ow because my
keyboard has stopped reliably producing “*n’s” * ad is drivig me
uts. At best, I think evolutionary atavism is a source of
plausible hypotheses about why organisms are not adapted to their
current circumstances. See some of you tomorrow.
>
> Sicerely,
>
--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
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