Mr. Spock was kinda fiiiine tho...
The missing element of rationality
Listen, I know you don’t want to read another newsletter from me about Effective Altruism, so I’ll read it for ya. I know you’re all probably sick of hearing about Effective Altruism, but I just finished my intensive course, so with any luck, my brain will back off from it for a little while. I’m sick of it too, frankly, but for different reasons. I may or may not have drunk two glasses of wine during my final zoom session last night… but the session ran over by an hour and a half, so I think I proved my point about the requirement of fun to build community.
I just came across Julia Galef via Samstack, and found her article on debunking Straw Vulcan Rationality where she laments Mr. Spock being a caricature of rationality. She says that Hollywood uses poor Spock as a straw man/assist because everyone wants to see the “passion-driven, intuition-driven, spontaneous, flawed, yet endearing hero like Captain Kirk” save the day. She’s right, however, it’s not just Hollywood that is reinforcing these stereotypes. Also, I think these EA nerds are inherently jealous of the YesChad Shatners of the world. If Spock could feel he would probably feel slighted, but he knows damn well that Kirk is the best option - so he falls back, right?
I pressed play on the audio reading of Julia’s article on Big Think and smiled the biggest, gloatiest smile. As I had hoped, the article was read by an emotionless, out-of-context AI voice reader. I mean…come on.
This is a perfect example of a real-life representation of Vulcan rationality and I’d argue, the biggest issue with movements like Effective Altruism: they miss out on a huge opportunity to appeal to heuristics, making a grandly irrational assumption that the ever…green (-er black and white) aesthetic will reach people. Have you met people?
There’s a reason most businesses don’t use the utilitarian aesthetic. It doesn’t work. Now, maybe these movements are relying on a long-term investment strategy, but if we don’t reach people soon - there may be no reaching them at all at least according to Effective Altruists’ own logic. Black and white lettering is the perfect way not to be perceived as biased….except these organizations are biased… against bias - which is a human trait — so Big Think and similar rationality-promoting organizations end up with a huge bias against humans. Andddd, so we’re reinforcing the Vulcan stereotype.
Honestly, this logic is so obvious to me that the lamentation of a Straw Vulcan itself seems like a strawman set up by some kind of Roko’s Basilisk. Clearly, if utilitarian ideas are to take hold of society, they would need to be effective, and I’ve already talked in-depth about why Effective Altruism isn’t actually effective.
While agree that the idea of Mr. Spock is flawed, I think it’s us thinkers and creators that have been promoting the narrative of Spock’s emotionless front. If Spock followed rationality all the way through to maximize his effect, he would be mirroring the affect of his team.
In a heuristic-fueled drive for standard success, I almost pitched this essay to Big Think, but I really like writing here - just for me and you. So, If you like this shit, consider becoming a paid subscriber. It’s been a year since I started asking for money - so here’s a coupon to celebrate my panhandling anniversary.
There's a scene in Star Trek: the Next Generation (hey, you brought up Trek, don't get mad at me for taking to its logical conclusion!) where Spock meets Data, the android. Spock comments that Data is trying so hard to acquire emotions in order to be more fully human but in lacking them, he's already the perfect Vulcan. I think about that a lot. Usually when I'm trying too hard to heuristic myself into being something I'm not. Anyway. Don't trek on me.