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Just wanted to give '71 another reason to complain about the Honor Code

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  • Originally posted by ScoopJahoop View Post
    Why did you bring it up?
    I get the feeling you aren’t interested in an honest discussion. Have a nice day.
    "There is no creature more arrogant than a self-righteous libertarian on the web, am I right? Those folks are just intolerable."
    "It's no secret that the great American pastime is no longer baseball. Now it's sanctimony." -- Guy Periwinkle, The Nix.
    "Juilliardk N I ibuprofen Hyu I U unhurt u" - creekster

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    • Originally posted by Jeff Lebowski View Post
      I get the feeling you aren’t interested in an honest discussion. Have a nice day.
      Cheers

      Comment


      • Wrote this up in response to a facebook thread, the first quote was the catalyst that someone else contributed.

        "Culture also tends to be invisible to those within it."

        Something we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand. The thing we cannot see is culture, in its intrapsychic or internal manifestation. The thing we do not understand is the chaos that gave rise to culture. If the structure of culture is disrupted, unwittingly, chaos returns. We will do anything — anything — to defend ourselves against that return. --Jordan B. Peterson

        I probably don't have time to do this justice, but I have a few thoughts prompted by that statement you made. To understand the nature of the honor code and the office which enforces it, we must have a better understanding of individual versus community dynamics.

        Individuals are prestige and status seeking beings. To deny this is simple and willful ignorance. It's as real as anything that can be observed. There is no escaping it, but it can be somewhat mitigated. Place a human into a community circled around values and they will immediately begin adopting those values to the degree that their adoption increases their status within the community. They will be subconsciously aware of their status within community--and subconsciously adjust their thoughts, beliefs, and activities accordingly. Immerse a human in a different culture and they will unknowingly begin to adopt the beliefs of that culture.

        One way to increase status is to call out those not fully adopting the communal values. The more homogeneous the community--where the differences between members is minimized--the greater the magnification that is applied. Small indiscretions are interpreted as major character failings. These offenses must be uncovered and the perpetrators punished.

        What is failed to be understood in most of these circumstances is this is not a group dynamic failure, it's individual failure. The community doesn't have to promote a call-out culture, it will naturally arise. If left unchecked, the community will evolve to the point where the action of calling out perceived misbehavior itself becomes a primary value of the community. In communities where the act of calling out is celebrated and reporting on your peers is encouraged, the community has been corrupted by status seeking, maybe irreparably.

        This is only half the story, one side of the coin. Communities which do circle around certain values can have significant advantages. Such a community engenders enormous levels of trust and cooperation. Inside a community with such dynamics, the amount of resource (human capital) expended for protection is minimized. Looked at from the opposite direction, the amount of resource available for productive, cooperative activity is maximized.

        Some religious communities do this better than any others. Internal and external altruism is measurably greater within such communities. This does not mean such communities are immune to status seeking individuals.

        This leaves a dilemma. Preservation of the values is important, it the values corrupt, the trust and cooperation built on those values dissipate and the community falls. If enough communities and their cultures collapse, what awaits is chaos. the end result is tribal conflict where very small groups often dominated by tyrants and thugs compete with one another. It is dangerous to forget that this is the default state and that the vast majority of human existence has been dominated by this mode. Culture invisibility works both ways, a tendency to not see its failings, and a failure to see its successes.

        Humans are built to see failure before success, we are all too happy to identify the motes while failing to understand the chaotic devastation that is being held at bay.

        For the long term survival of communities, all failure modes must be mitigated. There are many modes of failure, which makes the stability of a community very complex. Two modes have been identified at this point, loss of values and the rise of call-out culture. These are in opposition to one another, preserve the values, but not to the degree that the values are used to prosecute non-compliance too aggressively. Justice versus mercy.

        There is a third failure mode which also warrants some discussion. A trusting community is subject to the free rider problem. An individual (or multiple individuals) will seek to gain advantage from the environment (for profit or power) without committing to the ideals that allow the community to thrive. Where a community has managed to promote trust to the default interaction among strangers, there exists the ability to exploit. This is especially likely within a community whose core values are altruism, forgiveness, mercy, and compassion.

        This danger is mitigated by artificially raising the cost of participation. Community members signal to one another that they are committed to the values by engaging in activities that are too burdensome for free riders to emulate. Rituals, sacraments, even non-nonsensical belief systems are all employed to minimized the risk of exploitation by bad actors. Once in place, it's natural for expertise to develop within the community to recognize and identify those not participating fully. At which point we've come full circle.

        It should be straightforward at this point to identify what's happening. The honor code is the prescribed list of rituals, taboos, and beliefs that mitigate free riders exploiting the community. They will not make sense to the outsider, that's partly the point. The honor code office is the authority wielded to expel those not acting in good faith. Both the code and the office are prone to be corrupted by individual status seekers.

        This has to be constantly balanced and fine-tuned, which is why protest may occur. It signals to the community that perhaps the alignment of values is not optimal. Protests themselves are also subject to the same community problems, the protest movement itself can be (and often is) infiltrated by bad actors seeking power.

        Life is complicated.

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        • I have to disagree with the last third of your essay. I dont believe that your characterization of this as a free rider problem is accurate. Havent had time to think up a response though.

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          • Originally posted by Katy Lied View Post
            I have to disagree with the last third of your essay. I dont believe that your characterization of this as a free rider problem is accurate. Havent had time to think up a response though.
            I tend to agree that the free rider part is what I'm struggling with in sf's essay. As far as a response/rebuttal--and it's not a complete response--the thing that came immediately to mind was a tweaked version of Blackstone's Ratio: "It is better that ten free-riders escape than that one innocent suffer."
            Prepare to put mustard on those words, for you will soon be consuming them, along with this slice of humble pie that comes direct from the oven of shame set at gas mark “egg on your face”! -- Moss

            There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese. --Coach Finstock

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            • Originally posted by Katy Lied View Post
              I have to disagree with the last third of your essay. I dont believe that your characterization of this as a free rider problem is accurate. Havent had time to think up a response though.
              I can't find the exact paper I read this and summarized, but at least one is here.
              ...but Irons’s work moved beyond earlier research by focusing on the selective pressures that may have shaped human systems of belief and favored religion as a universal strategy to promote cooperation. Irons argued that in human history, the adaptive advantage of group living was the benefits that individuals attained through intragroup cooperation such as cooperative hunting, food sharing, defense, and warfare. However, despite the potential for individual gains through cooperation, these collective pursuits are often difficult to achieve. Intragroup cooperation is typically characterized by conditions in which individual group members can maximize their gains by refraining from cooperation when others invest in the cooperative activity. Thus, although everyone may gain if all group members invest in the cooperative goal, attaining such large-scale cooperation is often difficult to achieve without social mechanisms limiting the potential to free-ride on the efforts of others. Irons argued that religion is such a mechanism.

              He posited that religious rituals and taboos serve as reliable signals of commitment to in-group members, and thus religion can overcome free-rider problems and promote intragroup cooperation.
              Religious beliefs that require ritual obligations assuage collective action problems by promoting commitment and loyalty to others who share these beliefs. As a result of increased levels of trust among group members, religious groups minimize costly monitoring mechanisms that are otherwise necessary to overcome free-rider problems that typically plague communal pursuits.

              Comment


              • It was this one.

                First, communes generally share their productive output equally irrespective of individual labor investments. Communal societies, therefore, face significant free-rider problems (Taylor 1982). Second, communes are associated with diverse secular and religious ideologies, thus enabling comparisons between religious and secular groups. Third, there are good records for the growth and decline of individual communes over a fairly long historical period. Fourth, the investments required for participation in communal living can be accurately estimated from historical sources. Because the success of communes is strongly correlated with how well they solve the free-rider problem, it is possible to assess the extent to which religious ideologies and costly religious practices are associated with solutions to the free-rider problem. While there may be multiple determinants of success and failure in any given case (including unpredictable events, wars, famines, disease and others) the investigation of many communes over a long time period reduces the effects of randomness.
                They predicted that those communes that required a higher number of costly rituals and taboos would more effectively deter free-riders and promote cooperation, and therefore would survive longer than communes that had less demanding requirements. The authors found that religious communes imposed more than twice as many costly requirements on their members as secular communes. Overall, the number of costly requirements was positively correlated with commune longevity, after controlling for population size and revenue. However, further analyses showed that this effect only existed among religious communes; religious communes with more costly requirements survived longer than those that had fewer requirements, whereas there was no relationship between costly requirements and secular commune longevity.
                The results of the commune studies indicate that costliness is not the only feature of religious obligations that enable them to promote solidarity. The costly signaling model offered some predictive accuracy but it also failed to capture some critical elements of religious belief that distinguish it from belief in a secular ideology. Subsequent signaling models of religious behavior have revised the classical signaling model specifically to accommodate religious belief. These models demonstrate that supernatural convictions can alter the payoff dynamics of the signaling model by increasing perceived benefits or lowering perceived costs, suggesting why under certain conditions selection might favor such commitments over secular alternatives.

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                • Originally posted by Jeff Lebowski View Post
                  Funk, serious question: why do you care? You have left the church, you trash everything BYU/LDS constantly. I can't imagine you would send a child to BYU given the option. So why does debating stuff like this consume so much of your energy?
                  I'm not Funk (or am I?) but I care because of its effect on BYU football.
                  If we disagree on something, it's because you're wrong.

                  "Somebody needs to kill my trial attorney." — Last words of George Harris, executed in Missouri on Sept. 13, 2000.

                  "Nothing is too good to be true, nothing is too good to last, nothing is too wonderful to happen." - Florence Scoville Shinn

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                  • Originally posted by swampfrog View Post
                    It was this one.
                    Interesting but it only makes sense, if at all, as applied to the HCO if the religion is BYU. That, of course, is incorrect and the difference between the standards and values of mormonism, which the HCO supposedly promotes, and those demanded by the HC and the HCO, is the source of the problem. Moreover, the HCO was never meant to (nor did it operate so as to) prevent free riders. It was meant, IMO, to enforce conduct among those at BYU to prevent deterioration of culture from the outside, not the inside. You can free-ride as much as you want within those strictures.
                    PLesa excuse the tpyos.

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                    • Originally posted by creekster View Post
                      Interesting but it only makes sense, if at all, as applied to the HCO if the religion is BYU. That, of course, is incorrect and the difference between the standards and values of mormonism, which the HCO supposedly promotes, and those demanded by the HC and the HCO, is the source of the problem. Moreover, the HCO was never meant to (nor did it operate so as to) prevent free riders. It was meant, IMO, to enforce conduct among those at BYU to prevent deterioration of culture from the outside, not the inside. You can free-ride as much as you want within those strictures.
                      We might have a different view of what BYU is that accounts for this. I don't believe it's just a university, I believe the LDS church views it as multi-faceted and an essential piece of the culture. Just as the temple requires elevated standards to "protect" the sanctity of its purpose (the redemption of the living and the dead), elevated standards sanitize BYU for one of its primary purposes. It's a Mormon courting institution. The free-rider problem isn't an economic one, its a reproductive one. I don't think this is only a conscious effort (but is in part), it's very likely an evolved characteristic of some religious communities. For a religion to endure over time it must replicate its culture. The honor code facilitates to some degree weeding out the non-committed from participating in or influencing the courting rituals abundantly on display. Students expect to meet members of the opposite sex that already "salute the flag" to a degree. Such an environment has high evolutionary selection value.

                      I'm working much of this out as I go, so obviously this might be completely in error, but some of the observable behavior seems to match what I've been reading. From the same author:

                      However, if it is the case that under particular external conditions, religious systems provide advantages for individual agents when their constituent parts, both internal and external to the individual, converge in a particular way, then the question of whether or not natural selection also “operates” at an emergent level is an important one. So, while genes are the foundational replicators of the evolutionary process, it may be that emergent properties of human social systems – when their components “lock into place” – may provide benefits for individuals which would otherwise be unobtainable. But the benefits are only reaped when this convergence of units consists of a particular logic and that logic must exist within a compatible socioecological context. In other words, selection may favor the expression of specific kinds of religious systems, a possibility that lies beyond the scope of strictly cognitive approaches to religion.

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by swampfrog View Post
                        We might have a different view of what BYU is that accounts for this. I don't believe it's just a university, I believe the LDS church views it as multi-faceted and an essential piece of the culture. Just as the temple requires elevated standards to "protect" the sanctity of its purpose (the redemption of the living and the dead), elevated standards sanitize BYU for one of its primary purposes. It's a Mormon courting institution. The free-rider problem isn't an economic one, its a reproductive one. I don't think this is only a conscious effort (but is in part), it's very likely an evolved characteristic of some religious communities. For a religion to endure over time it must replicate its culture. The honor code facilitates to some degree weeding out the non-committed from participating in or influencing the courting rituals abundantly on display. Students expect to meet members of the opposite sex that already "salute the flag" to a degree. Such an environment has high evolutionary selection value.

                        I'm working much of this out as I go, so obviously this might be completely in error, but some of the observable behavior seems to match what I've been reading. From the same author:
                        Not so sure about the honor code's role in preserving the sanctity of BYU for purposes of preserving high LDS standard in regards to marriage. I think that is why some (many?) use the RM distinction as a qualifier. For example, I've heard of some deciding not to pursue a relationship because someone is not a RM. A lot rarer for that to happen because someone is not a BYU student or alumni. In other words, I think having an Ivy League or Stanford education would not put someone at a disadvantage in courtship because they chose not to attend BYU. Also, its a lot easier to go through the motions with respect to LDS standards during 4-5 years attending BYU than it is for 2 years of a full-time mission.

                        I'm still processing if BYU needs an honor code different than other universities. As a student at BYU, I wasn't an advocate of the moral and dress code provisions of the honor code. But I didn't behave or dress any differently as a college student at a different university before transferring to BYU so I thought it no big deal. I think BYU might be fine dropping the moral and dress provisions from the honor code. The vast majority of students would not behave or dress any differently. But then there will always be those exceptions that create problems so maybe BYU needs its honor code after all. I do think BYU is headed in the right direction with how it handles the honor code.
                        “Not the victory but the action. Not the goal but the game. In the deed the glory.”
                        "All things are measured against Nebraska." falafel

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                        • Originally posted by Paperback Writer View Post
                          Not so sure about the honor code's role in preserving the sanctity of BYU for purposes of preserving high LDS standard in regards to marriage. I think that is why some (many?) use the RM distinction as a qualifier. For example, I've heard of some deciding not to pursue a relationship because someone is not a RM. A lot rarer for that to happen because someone is not a BYU student or alumni. In other words, I think having an Ivy League or Stanford education would not put someone at a disadvantage in courtship because they chose not to attend BYU. Also, its a lot easier to go through the motions with respect to LDS standards during 4-5 years attending BYU than it is for 2 years of a full-time mission.
                          Just straight statistics. If you bring together males and females with a higher average commitment to LDS values, beliefs, practices, etc. You get a higher statistical ratio of future committed families which then propagate the culture. It's especially helpful that many "go forth to serve". I remember hearing that the church has done studies of wards and found that many of the core families that make up wards are often couples that met and married at BYU. I don't know if the church does it intentionally, but I suspect they are aware of what the long term benefits of the stricter standards produce. Many opt not to consider BYU because it's requirements are greater than within the church at large. There are those also for which that is an attraction.

                          Driving from Portland to BYU-I was a breath of fresh air for me. No tattoos, bizarrely colored and unkempt hair, scraggly beards, and other woke culture accoutrements. Many claim that BYU enforces conformity (and it's true), but Portland has just as many (or more) religious adherents signaling their loyalty through conformity also. I prefer the BYU version.

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                          • BYU announces changes to Honor Code Office following student criticism

                            Not having experience with the HCO, the biggest change I see is this:

                            Students who have been called into the office will also be told the name of the person who reported the violation, according to Utt’s letter. That excludes “situations where it is a matter of safety to a member of our campus community,” he said.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Bo Diddley View Post
                              BYU announces changes to Honor Code Office following student criticism

                              Not having experience with the HCO, the biggest change I see is this:
                              Doesn't look like it will be enough to satisfy the protesters (IMO).
                              Ain't it like most people, I'm no different. We love to talk on things we don't know about.

                              "The only one of us who is so significant that Jeff owes us something simply because he decided to grace us with his presence is falafel." -- All-American

                              GIVE 'EM HELL, BRIGHAM!

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                              • Originally posted by falafel View Post
                                Doesn't look like it will be enough to satisfy the protesters (IMO).
                                I'd hoped for more as well, but this about what I expected.

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