High-decoupling vs low-decoupling or decoupling vs contextualizing refers to two different cultural norms, cognitive skills, or personal dispositions that change the way people approach ideas.
Probably not. The fact that legal changes can cause cultural changes is strong evidence of the fact that society works more like Low-decouplers think.
The example of High decoupling being correct in the article is of free speech. It is indeed true that people being allowed to express X opinion does not mean that X opinion will be more popular, we have countless examples of people advocating for X while X becomes less popular, because opponents of X succeed in making their opinion more popular. All that said, while the freedom to advocate for X opinion does not mean that X opinion will become more popular, a prerequisite for X opinion becoming more popular is that there are people advocating for it.
Assisted suicide is a grayer area, because as others have said, legal assisted suicide already has majority support in some countries, so one might argue that legalizing the procedure will not lead to cultural change, although opponents would disagree.
I think I basically agree. And these were largely the points my question was getting at. Humans are rational actors in many ways, but when considering death and despair, we seem less well suited.
Because people are stupid and often make choices they regret later, or would regret if they could.
Moreover, it started to change from just people with terminal conditions in a lot of pain. To other conditions like mental illness. That seems a lot less justifiable
Speak for yourself mate. People need to take personal responsibility for their actions. It's undesirable for a bunch of weak willed fucks to pass on their genes.
Again, EVEYRONE acts stupid at times. It's part of the human condition. And I'm 100% positive that includes you.
Moreover, we underestimate how much biology plays a role in how we think and feel.
I never had any mental or physical problems. Then about 10 years ago, I got really sick. horrible brain fog, anxiety and depression basically came out of nowhere. I saw all types of specialists for years. Then FINALLY after about 5 years, someone tested my testosterone level. I went on T, and that fixed 90%+ of the problem.
Until you experience something like that you don't realize just how much your mental state really depends on your body functioning properly. Nor how many medical professionals can get shit wrong for years, or how easy it can sometimes be to fix something when somebody gets it right.
This may be unnecessary semantics but suicide is technically legal in most countries. I bring it up because I've seen some people believe this not to be the case, that suicide is actually illegal. Most governments only cares about how people end their life in the sense that they try to use public health to prevent it (which they should, suicides are usually unnecessary tragedies). The government taking or not taking an active role in helping people end their lives is a whole different thing, in my opinion.
Right, but 'culture' is wishy-washy, hard to talk about, hard to pin down, and easy to make claims about that are not obviously paying rent in anticipated experiences. Sticking with MAiD / assisted suicide / assisted dying, I don't know if things are different in the US (a very different nation), but in the UK the issue has been regularly polled since the late 1980s, and there have been consistent supermajority levels of support for legalising assisted dying. Latest polls have public opinion at 75% in favour and 14% against, every single 'constituency' (~congressional district) had at least majority support, and the median constituency had support at 77%. (Press release from pro-assisted dying campaign group here: https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/news/every-parliamentary-constituency-in-great-britain-backs-assisted-dying-law-new-polling-confirms/.)
Given this polling background, it really is not clear to me that there is any risk that legalising assisted dying changing the law would cause some massive cultural seismic shift. Even assuming that some uniform Christian heritage meant that British society would always have abhorred suicide in past ages (which is not obviously true to me as a claim about history - opinion was always more nuanced, at least in the last 300 years or so), the polls suggest that the 'seismic' shift away from that view has *already happened*, decades ago at least: three-quarters of the population are entirely comfortable with the state helping the terminally ill end their own lives.
When you claim that '[c]ampaigning to legalize MAID in a democracy inevitably means changing cultural attitudes towards it, even if the change is just from ignorance', then, this doesn't ring true to me. Given the number of 'don't knows' in polling are only around 10%, and the level of support really is crazy unanimous, there doesn't seem to be any reason to expect cultural change.
But because it's such a vague notion, campaigners against assisted dying still use the vague cultural argument. And when you present them with these polls, they retreat into a different kind of culture: 'it would change the relationship between doctor and patient', maybe, or 'people would start to devalue the lives of the disabled'. It's slippery and unfalsifiable precisely because they're relying on contextual judgments that aren't made explicit. One virtue of what you call high-decoupler attitudes is that they don't necessarily preclude the bringing in of cultural context, but they do demand that the assumptions being made about culture are made clear, so that an if / if-not decoupling can take place.
Nice to see someone else pointing out the failure modes of high-decoupling. I've somewhat recently written about how I think the connection that has been drawn between high-decoupling and rationality is overstated and partially based on a game of telephone that distorted the meaning of the term. I think this is a good example of how thinking good actually comes down to having a sense of when to decouple and when to contextualize. There are mistakes in thinking that are caused by isolating things to much, and there are other mistakes in thinking caused by bringing in additional context in a way that blurs the contours of the problem. One can argue about which way the default bias should go, but to me it's more important to empathize the need for an adaptive flexibility.
I feel like the argument that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” has had at least some success in democratic politics and it is of the exact same form you might want in the case of assisted suicide.
This is thought provoking – feels like there's another question hidden underneath. As an example, an American who supports abortion is probably also worried about climate change. You could talk about how low-decouplers might take these issues as a bundle, noting that because positions on the two are so heavily correlated, you might as well take someone's support for one as a good indication of support for the other. A high-decoupler might acknowledge the correlation but bristle, from a classically liberal sensibility, at the overreliance on that presumption.
But the weird part to me is, how come the correlation is so heavy in the first place? Like, a strong correlation between those policies getting enacted makes sense – people have to roughly arrange themselves into parties. And yet the degree to which people's actual, uncompromised views cluster feels surprising; it's a stretch to argue that abortion and climate change have anything to do with each other. I think when people talk about political polarization, they're usually talking about people having more extreme views on a given issue (eg no contraception ever on the right versus unlimited late term abortions on the left), or about people being more mad at the other side, not so much about people's views on many different issues clustering more tightly. Preferences for actually doing more or less coupling aside, why is it so *easy* to couple on the hot-button issues?
(side note: as an incorrigible low-decoupler, I'd also argue that "holding preferences constant, offering people an additional choice cannot make them worse off" isn't strictly true: for instance, if you've thrown your steering wheel out the window in a game of chicken, you wouldn't be happy to see a second steering wheel appear! Then the issue becomes "to what extent are political questions typically bargaining problems, as opposed to pure problems of individual liberty or zero-sum conflict?")
There are three primary reasons for the cluster of beliefs.
First is the need for heuristics, it's just really difficult and time-consuming to think about each topic carefully. This is true for an elite mathematician/physicist, and perhaps even a moral philosopher whose job is to think about society, so it's best to just adopt the beliefs of people who you know have a similar morality/politics as you. That's a completely rational shortcut.
The second is just ideological tribalism. If you get into politics, you'll probably take one side, the side you instinctively feel most aligned with, and once you've done that, it'll be easier to just follow the tribe's ideas. Why create a fuss and disagree with the rest of the tribe anyway? Not much gain in this, but you will risk sanctions or alienation from the tribe.
The third is that different issues can have a common moral base. You cite abortion and climate change. How are they related? Well, one obvious way is harm avoidance. Harm avoidance is extremely important to the left, and both abortion and climate change can be sold in that frame. Furthermore, equality or emancipation for perceived disadvantaged populations is also important to the left, and abortion being about freedom for women, and climate change being potentially more harmful to poor populations around the world, also have a common core here.
Given that most people are low-decoupling, is high-decoupling an effective way to model social systems (culture, politics)?
Probably not. The fact that legal changes can cause cultural changes is strong evidence of the fact that society works more like Low-decouplers think.
The example of High decoupling being correct in the article is of free speech. It is indeed true that people being allowed to express X opinion does not mean that X opinion will be more popular, we have countless examples of people advocating for X while X becomes less popular, because opponents of X succeed in making their opinion more popular. All that said, while the freedom to advocate for X opinion does not mean that X opinion will become more popular, a prerequisite for X opinion becoming more popular is that there are people advocating for it.
Assisted suicide is a grayer area, because as others have said, legal assisted suicide already has majority support in some countries, so one might argue that legalizing the procedure will not lead to cultural change, although opponents would disagree.
I think I basically agree. And these were largely the points my question was getting at. Humans are rational actors in many ways, but when considering death and despair, we seem less well suited.
Never understood why there should be any regulation at all against assisted suicide. Why is the government's business how I choose to end my life?
Because people are stupid and often make choices they regret later, or would regret if they could.
Moreover, it started to change from just people with terminal conditions in a lot of pain. To other conditions like mental illness. That seems a lot less justifiable
So what if stupid people kill themselves? How is that a problem? Society would be better off with fewer stupid people in it.
ALL people are stupid at times.
We don't want that stupidity to be fatal
Speak for yourself mate. People need to take personal responsibility for their actions. It's undesirable for a bunch of weak willed fucks to pass on their genes.
Again, EVEYRONE acts stupid at times. It's part of the human condition. And I'm 100% positive that includes you.
Moreover, we underestimate how much biology plays a role in how we think and feel.
I never had any mental or physical problems. Then about 10 years ago, I got really sick. horrible brain fog, anxiety and depression basically came out of nowhere. I saw all types of specialists for years. Then FINALLY after about 5 years, someone tested my testosterone level. I went on T, and that fixed 90%+ of the problem.
Until you experience something like that you don't realize just how much your mental state really depends on your body functioning properly. Nor how many medical professionals can get shit wrong for years, or how easy it can sometimes be to fix something when somebody gets it right.
Again, the goal is to not let stupidity be fatal.
Yes, I agree with you. Campaigning to legalize suicide would probably cause some suicides, though, so some are suspicious.
You mean MORE suicides
This may be unnecessary semantics but suicide is technically legal in most countries. I bring it up because I've seen some people believe this not to be the case, that suicide is actually illegal. Most governments only cares about how people end their life in the sense that they try to use public health to prevent it (which they should, suicides are usually unnecessary tragedies). The government taking or not taking an active role in helping people end their lives is a whole different thing, in my opinion.
Right, but 'culture' is wishy-washy, hard to talk about, hard to pin down, and easy to make claims about that are not obviously paying rent in anticipated experiences. Sticking with MAiD / assisted suicide / assisted dying, I don't know if things are different in the US (a very different nation), but in the UK the issue has been regularly polled since the late 1980s, and there have been consistent supermajority levels of support for legalising assisted dying. Latest polls have public opinion at 75% in favour and 14% against, every single 'constituency' (~congressional district) had at least majority support, and the median constituency had support at 77%. (Press release from pro-assisted dying campaign group here: https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/news/every-parliamentary-constituency-in-great-britain-backs-assisted-dying-law-new-polling-confirms/.)
Given this polling background, it really is not clear to me that there is any risk that legalising assisted dying changing the law would cause some massive cultural seismic shift. Even assuming that some uniform Christian heritage meant that British society would always have abhorred suicide in past ages (which is not obviously true to me as a claim about history - opinion was always more nuanced, at least in the last 300 years or so), the polls suggest that the 'seismic' shift away from that view has *already happened*, decades ago at least: three-quarters of the population are entirely comfortable with the state helping the terminally ill end their own lives.
When you claim that '[c]ampaigning to legalize MAID in a democracy inevitably means changing cultural attitudes towards it, even if the change is just from ignorance', then, this doesn't ring true to me. Given the number of 'don't knows' in polling are only around 10%, and the level of support really is crazy unanimous, there doesn't seem to be any reason to expect cultural change.
But because it's such a vague notion, campaigners against assisted dying still use the vague cultural argument. And when you present them with these polls, they retreat into a different kind of culture: 'it would change the relationship between doctor and patient', maybe, or 'people would start to devalue the lives of the disabled'. It's slippery and unfalsifiable precisely because they're relying on contextual judgments that aren't made explicit. One virtue of what you call high-decoupler attitudes is that they don't necessarily preclude the bringing in of cultural context, but they do demand that the assumptions being made about culture are made clear, so that an if / if-not decoupling can take place.
Nice to see someone else pointing out the failure modes of high-decoupling. I've somewhat recently written about how I think the connection that has been drawn between high-decoupling and rationality is overstated and partially based on a game of telephone that distorted the meaning of the term. I think this is a good example of how thinking good actually comes down to having a sense of when to decouple and when to contextualize. There are mistakes in thinking that are caused by isolating things to much, and there are other mistakes in thinking caused by bringing in additional context in a way that blurs the contours of the problem. One can argue about which way the default bias should go, but to me it's more important to empathize the need for an adaptive flexibility.
I feel like the argument that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” has had at least some success in democratic politics and it is of the exact same form you might want in the case of assisted suicide.
This is thought provoking – feels like there's another question hidden underneath. As an example, an American who supports abortion is probably also worried about climate change. You could talk about how low-decouplers might take these issues as a bundle, noting that because positions on the two are so heavily correlated, you might as well take someone's support for one as a good indication of support for the other. A high-decoupler might acknowledge the correlation but bristle, from a classically liberal sensibility, at the overreliance on that presumption.
But the weird part to me is, how come the correlation is so heavy in the first place? Like, a strong correlation between those policies getting enacted makes sense – people have to roughly arrange themselves into parties. And yet the degree to which people's actual, uncompromised views cluster feels surprising; it's a stretch to argue that abortion and climate change have anything to do with each other. I think when people talk about political polarization, they're usually talking about people having more extreme views on a given issue (eg no contraception ever on the right versus unlimited late term abortions on the left), or about people being more mad at the other side, not so much about people's views on many different issues clustering more tightly. Preferences for actually doing more or less coupling aside, why is it so *easy* to couple on the hot-button issues?
(side note: as an incorrigible low-decoupler, I'd also argue that "holding preferences constant, offering people an additional choice cannot make them worse off" isn't strictly true: for instance, if you've thrown your steering wheel out the window in a game of chicken, you wouldn't be happy to see a second steering wheel appear! Then the issue becomes "to what extent are political questions typically bargaining problems, as opposed to pure problems of individual liberty or zero-sum conflict?")
There are three primary reasons for the cluster of beliefs.
First is the need for heuristics, it's just really difficult and time-consuming to think about each topic carefully. This is true for an elite mathematician/physicist, and perhaps even a moral philosopher whose job is to think about society, so it's best to just adopt the beliefs of people who you know have a similar morality/politics as you. That's a completely rational shortcut.
The second is just ideological tribalism. If you get into politics, you'll probably take one side, the side you instinctively feel most aligned with, and once you've done that, it'll be easier to just follow the tribe's ideas. Why create a fuss and disagree with the rest of the tribe anyway? Not much gain in this, but you will risk sanctions or alienation from the tribe.
The third is that different issues can have a common moral base. You cite abortion and climate change. How are they related? Well, one obvious way is harm avoidance. Harm avoidance is extremely important to the left, and both abortion and climate change can be sold in that frame. Furthermore, equality or emancipation for perceived disadvantaged populations is also important to the left, and abortion being about freedom for women, and climate change being potentially more harmful to poor populations around the world, also have a common core here.