Authority

From metawiki
(Redirected from Hierarchy)
Obvious? Sure.

Respect for authority is built into our moral foundations as a key evolutionary mechanism for facilitating group dynamics, leadership, and sexual selection.

"No man has any natural authority over his fellow men." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Hierarchical social organization is closely related to authority. Some philosophers and authoritarians over-emphasize the importance of hierarchy, using the debunked [1][2] pseudoscientific concept of the alpha male to justify acting like an asshole. Social media has turned this into a phenomenon called the manosphere. Jordan Peterson is a psychologist and philosopher popular with these men because he reinforces the importance of dominance hierarchies on the premise that they are "natural" and therefore good.

Authority is Foundational

Jonathan Haidt points out that progressives generally fail to make appeals to our instinct for authority, preferring to focus on other foundations like justice, and see hierarchy as inherently oppressive. This puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to persuasion, since a large portion of the public still responds strongly to projection of authority. This has helped allow things like alt-right neo-fascism and the manosphere to proliferate.

"I've seen a human pyramid before. It was very unnecessary." -Mitch Hedberg, Strategic Grill Locations

How can we make progressive appeals to authority that fit with our equal justice ideals?

Authority of Expertise

This will take a lot of restoration of trust in institutions, but the authority of expertise is the only real authority we truly have in an age of extreme complexity and specialization. We must be able to trust experts, and their education and experience needs to command authority within their domain. However, there are so many new technologies that age is no longer a reliable indicator of expertise, which has undermined the the traditional structures of authority based on it.

This is why for many fields, up-to-date technical certifications are more important than university education or years on the job.

Society needs to have new standards for quickly recognizing expertise they can trust.

Authority of Experience

Age has often been used as an excuse to command unearned respect outside of one's domain of expertise. Many young people have been burned when they were told to "respect their elders" but found their elders' expertise lacking. This is especially true in an age of technology, where the young have a significant advantage over the old when it comes to learning and adopting new tech. It is no longer the case that old people are wiser about things generally, when so many relevant things arrived long after their critical periods had closed.

A new model is needed, where we can respect the wisdom of experience, but acknowledge that with age does not necessarily come expertise. What matters is how long you have been working in the domain in question.

While we should still respect our elders in terms of care and dignity, when it comes to advice we should respect experience. Reinforcing this notion through education and ritual the way that "respect your elders" used to be will help solve the kinds of problems we are seeing with younger generations joining the workforce and being perceived as difficult. [3][4]

A Higher Authority

Religious appeals to a "higher authority" are powerful. The figure of god has the ultimate authority when it comes to truth and morality. [5][6]

This authority enhances the placebo effect of belief, since the more faith you put in that authority the more impact its commandments have on your psychosomatic response. In medicine, the placebo effect is enhanced by the medical theater of the hospital, the doctors in their white coats, the marketing of the pharmaceutical industry, and a variety of other factors that convey the authority that they know what they're doing and their medicine will work. This is evidenced by the fact that if you keep all the theater but replace the medicine with sugar pills, it often still works. There is a remarkable demonstration of this in magician Derren Brown's "Overcoming Your Fears" special.

We view doctors as having the authority to heal us, and many times that authority is enough to do the job. If you can do all of that in your own head just by believing in the authority of god, why wouldn't you? This is why believers think they have embraced an obvious truth, while atheists think they have embraced a lie. Unfortunately, the kayfabe of religion prevents believers from actually framing the argument this way, so they portray god as self-evident reality rather than a very useful brain hack.

Moral authority is another important aspect of the god concept. It provides a paradigm for moral behavior, and a powerful reinforcement mechanism that can significantly help people be better people. It also imbues those people with that moral authority, causing them to annoy people with their self-righteousness. Or, if the moral authority is productively channeled, it allows leaders to charismatically inspire people to do the right thing, even when it isn't the easy thing. Moral authority is important, and there needs to be a shared vision of what that looks like so that it can be used to unite people instead of polarizing them.

This is the most important authority that progressives must find an analog for if they want to strongly appeal to this moral foundation. That is what the metaculture wiki is attempting to provide a model for.

Order Over Chaos

The instinct for hierarchy is often described as the need to create order from chaos. The natural state of humanity is chaos, disorder, and disharmony. Only by exercising authority and leadership can great people motivate others to impose order on that chaos. This requires someone to have a master plan, and loyal followers to execute their vision.

This represents a Euclidean, designer-based mindset where the only source of order is the rational design of a conscious mind. It neglects the possibilities of emergent order that self-organizing systems represent. This is ironic since the biggest proponents of natural hierarchy are also huge fans of capitalism, which is the best example of a decentralized, self-organizing system humanity has ever created.

The fractal model of order through emergence allows us to satisfy our need for imposing order over chaos without the need for authoritarian impositions on freedom.

Authoritarianism

See authoritarianism for discussions of autocratic governance through consolidated power and absolute authority.

Types of Authority

Sociology has mapped the types of authority and leadership styles. This article outlines them.

Hidden Brain - Rising to the Occasion discusses the psychology of leadership.

Authority of Screens

We tend to overestimate how much we can trust people who appear on a screen. In the past, this authority was earned. You didn't appear on a screen without a billion dollar corporation backing you, checking sources, and being held accountable for the information that was broadcast. We have since shifted to an environment where anyone can appear on your screen without any vetting whatsoever. But the old people haven't recalibrated their trust accordingly, and many have taken the contrarian position that the unvetted information is more trustworthy than the vetted. Young people have not been taught modern media literacy because who would teach it to them? You have to know it before you can teach it!

In any case, here are some videos.

Max Weber - Authority and Power


Power, Dominance, Authority - Max Weber


Respect My Authority!


John Mellencamp - Authority Song


Fela Kuti - Authority Stealing


The juxtaposition of the next two songs highlights the different approaches that progressive and conservative take when it comes to authority.

Pennywise - Fuck Authority


Elevation Worship - Authority