Biofoundationalism III: Verbal Intelligence and Factual Sediment
It's not fake news, it's fake narrative
This is Part III of the Biofoundationalism series and can be read on a standalone basis. The biological assertions in this essay will need more substantiating than what I’m providing here if you’re unfamiliar with them, and you can find that defense in Biofoundationalism II: The Moral Genotype. Both Part I and II are linked at the end.
I listened to this while writing this essay.
Preamble
Facts don’t care about your feelings, but more importantly feelings don’t care about your facts.
The causal arrow runs primarily in one direction: our instinctive feelings generate beliefs, which we then use to craft narratives, selectively curating facts to reinforce what we viscerally perceive to be true, which is to say what we consider moral. That the same sets of facts produce different conclusions is a feature of our political biology, not a bug.
Competing moral blueprints are not coincidences of culture, but critical components of a naturally occurring, equilibrium-sustaining dyad. The masculine and feminine, the conservative and liberal: these are dyads. Not merely oppositions but symbiotic polarities, like inhale and exhale for civilizational breathing. This cultivates a moral ecosystem where contrasting beliefs lead to a more-resilient whole. Our orientations, priorities, principles, and motivations are designed to be varied and supposed to be in productive conflict.
Consider if the opposite were true, we’re all architected to absorb information identically: this would necessarily mean all values and moral doctrines can be encapsulated in one person. You can be morally everything everywhere all at once if you read the right books and grow up in the right place.
Imagine if we assumed this about sexual/morphological characteristics, that they can all be embodied within one person; ascribing this premise to the temperamental/cognitive/political is comparably ridiculous. Even the most based among us clings to this part of Blank Slate Theory.
You cannot uphold all values equally, because that is to functionally value nothing. The very essence of moral conviction is unavoidably hierarchal in that you must extol certain virtues over others in order to have them at all.
We are encoded to emphasize diametric moral claims. Just as a symphony requires distinct notes in counterpoint to achieve harmony, so too does a society require genetically disparate moral dispositions to stay balanced. All things are poison, and nothing is without poison.
Not recognizing these inborn neural disparities are intrinsic is tantamount to believing everyone can be an athlete or intellectual, masculine or feminine, if they just… put their minds to it. A blank-slate presupposition, an unsubstantiated religious pretext based on myth and wish.
Morality and temperament are genetic just as any other traits we accept as innate. This is a good thing, as it imposes structurally countervailing forces within a populace. Productive antagonism. Nature’s way of fostering moral homeostasis: one that evolves as our environment requires.
The natural dyads of masculine/feminine and conservative/liberal yield complementary moral frameworks, gestated over centuries by Darwinian pressure cooker to advance human survival and prosperity. One is not “bad” and the other “good”; they are mutualistic elements that further human coordination.
We are animals built for group cooperation; we are genetically fashioned to supplement each other’s strengths and compensate for weaknesses. A species that has evolved not as isolated individuals but as a collective, which necessarily means our traits have been engineered for diversity, not uniformity. A mosaic rather than a monolith. Developed to exist within societies, we are genetically tailored… to be different.
Internalizing the reality of these hardcoded disparities and how/why they manifest is the intention of Biofoundationalism. You are going up against a neurally programmed instruction set, not “politics and facts”, when you engage with the moral principles of The Other.
It’s Not “Fake News”, It’s “Fake Narrative”
Depending on your takeaways from a set of facts, one narrative will be true and the other false. Identical facts frequently result in completely opposing narratives, depending on the audience. This indicates you are not engaging in a facts-based debate when discussing conflicting political philosophies; it’s more appropriate to understand it as a promotion of one set of virtues over another. Two moral languages clashing.
The narratives we form are expressions of our values, values are predicated on your morality, your morality is derived from your temperament, and your temperament is biologically imposed. There are moral genotypes and political phenotypes; political biology is a real thing. Your temperament informs how you interpret and respond to facts and reflexively sort them into stories.
This is why the overwhelming majority are indifferent to facts that contradict their narrative, because facts don’t refute values.
Facts cannot change someone’s morality, because you can’t reprogram biological temperament with words.
A person’s “educated position” is almost always post-hoc justifications for natural programming. The adage “People don't have ideas, ideas have people” is right, however I think it’s better understood as: you don't have morals, your morals have you, because your temperament has you. Neurological predispositions exert a gravitational pull on ethical intuitions that few, if any, can truly escape.
The moral foundations that are ascendent in a society (resulting in which narratives become widely accepted and which policies follow suit) shift with the utility of those values within the environment. Moral foundations that are useful in poverty are not equally useful in prosperity. Ideals that help you win a war don’t carry the same utility when determining social safety nets. Biofoundationalism Part IV will focus on how the environment dictates the expression of societal values.
Fact Check < Narrative Check
We see the facts we want. An illustration:
Here is a list of twenty facts in random order. I bet some stick out to you as more correct than others.
Neural pathways allow pain sensation as early as 12 weeks
61% of Americans support legal abortion (Pew)
WHO estimates 23,000 annual deaths globally from unsafe abortions
There are long adoption waiting lists with many couples waiting years
90% of abortions occur before 13 weeks
Fetal cardiac activity detectable at ~6 weeks
Estimated 5,000 annual US deaths from unsafe abortions pre-Roe
96% of biologists surveyed say life begins at fertilization
Bans don't work: Latin America (abortion largely illegal) has higher abortion rate (44 per 1,000) than Europe (29 per 1,000) and US (17 per 1,000)
Critical exceptions needed for rape/incest/health
All major organs present by week 10 of development
75% of abortion patients are low-income
Premature infant survival possible at 21 weeks
Fetus shows brain activity in week 6, touch response at week 8
Legal abortion access linked to reduced maternal mortality
60% of abortion patients are already mothers
Only 1.3% of abortions occur after 21 weeks
38 states have fetal homicide laws (double homicide for killing pregnant woman)
95% of women don't regret their abortion after 5 years
63 million U.S. abortions performed since 1973
Lots of facts here, how do we sort them? With our moral instincts.
Is your response to several of these to feel sympathy/empathy? Perhaps a twinge of disgust? Your insula is probably doing most of the heavy lifting creating the narrative that’s taking shape in your head right now. If you made an “ick face” or scoffed while reading any of them, your insula sends its regards; it’s responsible for sympathy responses in liberals, and disgust reactions in conservatives.
Here’s how you would organize the above facts into narratives, depending on what you already instinctively (genetically) felt was morally true. Just the facts, man.
Both form compelling narratives and are replete with facts. You could even swap some around, depending on how you frame the fact. For example: the 1.3% fact (#10 in pro-life column) could augment a pro-choice stance if you present it such that there’s no need to limit abortion access at 21 weeks since women naturally self-regulate around that time. Thus, if it happens beyond then it must be an edge case and requires special consideration, and the woman knows best.
Here are the moral foundations we draw from when assessing which facts we like and dislike:
Pro-Choice fact curation is led by the Care/Harm moral foundation as it relates to the mother, as well as the Liberty/Oppression foundation regarding female choice by depicting it as oppressive to women.
Pro-Life facts are compiled almost exclusively by the Sanctity/Degradation moral foundation, applied to the fetus and sanctity of life. You could also interpret it to be Care/Harm in relation to the fetus, however conservative temperaments tend to be primarily concerned with violations of what’s considered sacrosanct (life in this case) rather than motivated by protection of the weak.
Verbal Intelligence and Factual Sediment
It’s morally governed feelings, not facts, that drive narratives; these narratives then shape political policy. Facts matter insofar as the implementation of policies; they are not persuasive instruments in respect to viewpoints that carry strong ethical certainty. Facts are tools in service of moral stances.
Do you support the new congestion tax? Public transportation investment? For tepid topics like this, facts can work. Not every political disagreement is a forceful moral output (though I’m sure a couple temperamental libertarians are seething at the notion of public investment and taxes of any kind).
As a simple heuristic, the more morally polarizing it is, the more impervious it is to facts. High-conviction assertions are not a product of logical deliberation, but outputs of your amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, and insula architecture.
We know with a brain scan what you believe without you saying a word. The mind's silent confession precedes the tongue's testimony.
Facts are relevant to the execution of ideas, they do not alter the advocacy of the ideas themselves, nor do they convince people their narratives are wrong.
“What do you mean my narrative is bad? Have you considered these other facts over here??” - 98% of political debates
Intelligent people with high verbal IQs are more adept at obfuscating their moral imperatives with carefully arranged facts that concoct their narratives. This creates an illusion their conclusion is more correct or “informed” to the uninitiated.
Politically “educated” typically means a masterful recall of factoids that elevates an interpretation and advocacy of a narrative. The verbally skilled dominate political domains because they’re the most compelling proponents of their moral foundations, and rally those with similar ethical constitutions.
The verbally gifted begins at the political-policy level to promote his morality and give it a veneer of objectivity (Looks like: “You’re uneducated”). The lower-IQ moral lobbyist bluntly espouses his values on cruder terms (Looks like: “You’re evil and dumb”). Both are making arguments in favor of their moral foundations all the same. One has factual sediment to get there, one does not.
A simple person cuts to the chase and unabashedly makes the virtuous declarations he’s hardwired to champion, accompanied with less informational pageantry to rationalize it. The academic, pundit, politician, etc. has layers of data gravel to wade through to get to his biologically rooted instruction set: collating a collage of objective-seeming factual tidbits to advance his morality.
As you’re aware, there are many facts… which ones do you adhere to? Only the right and true ones? Ah, don’t we all. When we find facts that endorse our views, we are fact adherents. When we encounter facts that undermine our views, we pivot to nuance and elide over the bad facts and only uphold the good ones. This is how a coherent narrative is born.
We all do this. Assuming good faith, it’s not intentionally deceptive or deceitful (most of the time), as it’s largely unconscious. Simply part of the human condition. Our amygdala and insula are the conductors, we are the vessel. We are moral genotypes presenting as political phenotypes, guided by temperamental directives we do not control. Nature intended it this way. A dyad is healthiest when its components act as complements, not enemies.
A “fact check” would be more appropriately understood as a narrative check, and even more accurately framed as a morality check.
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Other essays in the series:
Biofoundationalism I: Moral Foundations Utility Theory & Hypermoralization
One year ago to the month, I published the first essay of my Biofoundationalism series on Twitter. The series has since gotten traction (currently eleven essays), and I get messages on it often. I’ve discussed these concepts in recent podcasts, and it’s time for them to come to Substack. I’m not going to link to the original essays, because I don’t want…
Biofoundationalism II: The Moral Genotype
This essay can be read on a standalone basis. It builds on Part 1, Biofoundationalism I: Moral Foundations Utility Theory & Hypermoralization. I’ll link it at the end. Enjoy.
a comment made on this essay elsewhere:
"I appreciate this framing greatly, as it provides a much needed counter-weight to what would otherwise start to resemble a determinism which precludes even the possibility of dialogue or discussion."
my response:
something to keep in mind regarding Biofoundationalism: it is largely deterministic, because it is a genetic, environment-driven explanation and deconstruction of how and why we act the way we do politically, economically, and societally. a moral genotype and political phenotype is a temperamental, biological manifestation. a story of how nature dominates nurture.
however, it’s critical to remember that these encoded differences are not something that precludes positive-sum interactions or productive coordination.
it’s a good thing we have structurally countervailing forces that have genetically evolved to not see eye to eye.
to not think this is a positive is to necessarily think a society of all conservatives or all liberals is optimum. or a civilization of all men or all women would be a better one. nature disagrees, and so do I.
reframe it away from the political dyad and see it from the lens of the sexual dyad: male and female.
man and woman are genetically, intractably at odds in many ways. constitutionally different priorities, beliefs, motivations, values, etc.
does this preclude even the possibility of dialogue between them? does it doom the species to have two sexes that are biologically diametrically opposed?
are they diametric adversaries though? or are they complementary symbiotic elements? is a yin yang comprised of two foes or two puzzle pieces that need each other?
the encoded genetic disparities of the sexual dyad should be understood the same as the conservative and liberal dyad. yes, the differences are hardwired. yes they will never agree on many things because the moral hierarchies are entirely different. such is the nature of moral genotypes.
yes it being neurological does mean it’s mostly deterministic. just like we have many deterministic predispositions by being male or female.
this is only toxic and corrosive when the environment is so extreme that they view one another as enemies to fight, rather than complements to work with. when the dynamic has degraded so thoroughly that tribalism is all they know, then you get the preclusion of productive dialogue. this is a dislocation, a result of imbalance. the environment dictates this expression.
the natural state of man and woman is as mutualistic elements that further human coordination, the same as the cognitive conservative and liberal. the prior that I want to recalibrate here is to not see this as a negative, nihilistic thing, but a synergistic, constructive one.
love this series. as someone hard-coded for the care/harm foundation, i’ve always been mystified by the priorities of my political opponents. this goes for traditional conservatives as well as the woke left, ever obsessed with the sanctity of its orthodoxy and with crushing dissenters.
Haidt’s framework helped me understand the dynamics at play, but if anything i’m now more convinced than ever that care/harm (more specifically its maximalist position of utilitarianism) is the only moral foundation with any coherence. as per your argument this is exactly what someone like me would say, but hear me out.
care/harm is the only foundation that can account for all the others. this is vital because it can prevent apples to oranges comparisons between different facets of a situation/policy. for example, high levels of immigration might erode a country’s cultural homogeneity, but also allow immigrants to live in a freer society than they otherwise would. without the care/harm filter, i don’t see how this clash between sanctity and liberty could be reconciled.
i also don’t see how you could develop a theory of maximization for any of the other foundations. degrees of pleasure and pain are more or less objective, but a quality like loyalty is inherently relational and therefore impossible to quantify.
finally, and this point is kind of out there, i feel like care/harm maximization is reinforced through encounters with the divine. psychedelic states always seem to transmit love as the transcendent value, and the same can be said of the teachings of prophets (the direct teachings, not ecclesiastic bullshit) and spiritual masters.
i did actually read the post, so i know i’m doing the exact thing that everyone does in defense of their bio-emotionally-derived view. but i seriously have no idea how, say, an authority/subversion guy could counter these points! it’s all very interesting.
also, i’d be very curious to find out if the brain architecture correlated with autism is predictive of valuing care/harm. spergs like myself certainly seem drawn to utilitarian thinking