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<h1 class="entry-title" style="text-align: center;">Non-Judgementalism and the Breakdown of Society</h1> <img src="https://media.istockphoto.com/id/1303424560/photo/righteousness-can-make-us-blind-pictured-as-word-righteousness-on-a-blindfold-to-symbolize.jpg?s=612x612&w=0&k=20&c=vB99YXkaOz2ahw7jNHNrrx8liB6bSYfIf7nuEsW8X7Y=" alt="" width="800" /> In his book, <a href="http:/www.amazon.com/War-Peace-Rise-Fall-Empires/dp/0452288193">War and Peace and War</a>, Peter Turchin describes an interesting sociological experiment. One kind of experiment, which has now been conducted by a number of investigative teams, is called "the public goods game." Subjects are divided up in groups of four and given an initial endowment of $10 each. The game is played in 10 rounds. Every round each participant can contribute any part, from 0 to 10 dollars, to the group project. The experimenters first double the total amount contributed to the common account, and then divide it up equally among all participants. Thus, for each dollar contributed to the common pot, a participant gains back only 50 cents. On the other hand, he or she also gains 50 cents for each dollar contributed by others. If all participants contribute the maximum amount ($10), they would end up with $20 each, doubling their initial endowment. Clearly a rational, self-interested player will contribute nothing to the common pot, keeping the initial stake plus whatever gains come from the cooperative behavior of the others. In the best case, when the other three all contribute the maximum, the "free-rider" would get $15 in addition to the initial stake, for a total of $25. However, others will make the same calculation and also contribute nothing, so everybody is left with $10, instead of the maximum cooperative payoff of $20. Thus, the rational choice theory predicts that there will be no cooperation. <h2>How Incentives Shape Cooperation</h2> Real people did not behave in the way predicted by the self-interest hypothesis. The average contribution to the common pot in the early rounds was about half the endowment. In other words, people started halfway between the fully cooperative and fully self-interested positions. In subsequent rounds, however, cooperation gradually unraveled, and on the last round three quarters did not contribute anything at all, while most of the rest contributed just a dollar or two. Did this happen because the participants were stupid, so that it took many rounds for them to figure out the rational strategy? No, because in the post-experiment interviews many subjects told the researchers that they grew increasingly angry at those who did not contribute and punished them the only way they could—by curtailing their contributions to the common pot. To test whether this was the real reason, the researchers added a modification to the basic game. Now, after each round, the participants were told how much other group members contributed, and they could punish free-riders at a cost to themselves. For every dollar forked out by the punisher, the punished was fined three. As discussed previously, punishment cannot force rational agents to cooperate, because it is the second-order collective good. In the context of the public goods game with punishment it is downright irrational to pay out punishment dollars for no personal gain. Therefore, the self-interest hypothesis predicts that the punishment option should not change the outcome of the game in any way. Yet adding punishment completely reversed the trend to declining cooperation. As before, participants started by contributing on average a half of their endowment. But this time there was a significant amount of punishing activity directed against the free-riders, and after a few rounds the average contribution to the common pot climbed up to nearly the maximum, and stayed there to the last round. 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Some of them—perhaps a quarter in experiments with American students—are self-interested, rational agents—"the knaves." These will never contribute to the common good and will choose free-riding, unless forced to do so by fines imposed on them. The opposite type, also about a quarter, are the unconditional cooperators, or "the saints." The saints continue to contribute to the common pool, <a href="https://blog.loveawake.com/2020/01/06/dating-all-or-nothing/">and lose money</a>, even when it is obvious to everybody that cooperation failed (although most of them reduce the amount of their contribution). <h2>Saints, Knaves And Moralists</h2> The largest group (40 to 60 percent in most experiments) is the conditional cooperators or "the moralists." The preference of moralists is to contribute to the pot so that everybody would be better off. However, in the absence of the mechanism to punish noncontributors, free-riding proliferates, the moralists become disgusted by this opportunistic behavior and withdraw their cooperation. On the other hand, when the punishment option is available, they use it to fine the knaves. To avoid the fines, the knaves grudgingly begin contributing. Once free-riding has been eliminated, the saints and the moralists can follow their prosocial preference of contributing the maximum. The group achieves the cooperative equilibrium at which, paradoxically, the moralists do almost as well as the knaves, because they now rarely (if ever) need to spend money on fining the free-riders. To put it simply, incentives drive human behavior. When the incentives promote selfish behavior, selfish behavior abounds and there is an eventual breakdown of social trust. Unfortunately, modern liberalism has promoted the philosophy of non-judgementalism in our society. In this philosophy, paradoxically, the saints rail against moralists while giving knaves a free pass. <h2>When Compassion Turns Into Enabling</h2> However, many strands of religious philosophy are not all that different in their attitude toward moral judgement. Originally a call for compassion and temperance of judgement, the term "love the sinner, hate the sin" has turned into a moral free pass for people to engage in selfish behavior and not be punished for it. Indeed, under the most common interpretation, the Parable of the Prodigal Son makes clear that hard work and living a virtuous life yields little reward. Instead, it is better to sin in life and repent afterwards. The lack of incentives for good behavior is all too evident in the area of sex and relationships. Men are pushed to accept that women make "mistakes" but past choices should not be held against them. Articles insisting that <a href="https://blog.loveawake.com/2022/05/16/white-lies-and-well-being/">you should not ask about a partner’s sexual past</a> and that withholding such information is a kind of \"self-care\" fit neatly into this non-judgemental ethos. The underlying message is that adults should not draw conclusions from patterns of behavior, even when those patterns obviously affect trust and risk. At the same time, social narratives around “no judgement” erase the difference between honest imperfection and outright recklessness. Instead of distinguishing between those two, the culture treats any attempt at moral evaluation as cruelty, and any boundary as a character flaw in the person who refuses to look the other way. <h2>Nice Guys, Jerks And Broken Incentives</h2> The lack of incentives for good behavior is all too evident in the area of sex and relationships. Men are pushed to accept that women make "mistakes" but past choices should not be held against them. At the same time, when nice guys observe that women prefer jerks over them, they're viewed as entitled and not truly nice guys. Apparently, the definition of "nice" is not only to act good towards others, but to uncomplainingly accept that one is getting the short end of the stick in spite of (or rather because of) one's good behavior. Dating advice culture doubles down on this by telling women to say they want a kind, sensitive man, while quietly rewarding the men who generate the strongest emotional spikes. Pieces like <a href="https://blog.loveawake.com/2019/01/18/7-things-guys-dont-get-about-women/">you want the jerk off</a> spell out bluntly that the “nice guy” line is often marketing, not reality. When the men who play by the rules get mocked as boring, while the ones who generate drama get the attention, the incentive structure is obvious. In the same way, men who show any standards or boundaries are shamed as judgmental, controlling, or insecure. The only acceptable posture is radical acceptance of whatever others decide to do, coupled with a smile and a promise not to let it affect your choices. A man can be generous, reliable and honest, but if he dares to act on the information in front of him, he gets labeled as the problem while the pattern of behavior itself is treated as untouchable. This is not a stable equilibrium. A culture that punishes moralists while protecting knaves is a culture that steadily erodes the incentive to cooperate. Over time, more people decide that if judgment is forbidden and standards are mocked, they may as well grab what they can, when they can, and let someone else worry about the consequences.