Does the concept of "the individual" just not exist anymore?

[Rekieta’s Broken Penis]

And this perspective is really the only logical way to analyze human behavior. It is individuals, not collectives, who ultimately drive all outcomes.

There’s nothing logical about it. You’re describing a method of analysis which is infeasible when considering groups of any more than a few people. In fact you’ll struggle to properly understand the actions and motives of any individual without identify the class(es) of which they are a member. Moreover, I deny that you could even analyse an individual, as opposed to simply an instantiation of class(es) of which that individual is a member.

 

[donksmanSupreme42]

it hasn't ended for everyone, just for normies

 

[Male Idiot]

Those actions are heavily influenced by the colony though. Such colonies use chemical messaging to force certain outcomes.
It’s actually interesting to think about the dynamics between the group and the individual. The choices an isolated individual human makes aren’t often the same as the ones in their immediate or larger groups. ‘Groups’ structure as well at various scales - family, tribe, wider society all exert their own pressures and checks on the individual.
I don’t think it’s so easy to make statements about THE individual versus the group. Maybe AN individual yes, which is why people get mad about it. We see ourselves as a specific individual rather than an archetype of an individual. So yeah you know you’re ’not all….’ But you can’t say the same about any other individual at random.
I think ultimately it boils down to only ever being able to experience being yourself. Everyone else is an unknown, individual or group.
And I’m not so sure about groups not being able to drive outcomes. A man is rational and a mob is not.

This, to the point that ants and other colonial organisms have inspired the concept of a hive mind in fictional literature.

This is not a recent phenomenon:

During world war 1, the US negercattle lynched almost all weiner dogs, despite the idea of the dogs somehow achieving the cognitive power to become german patriots and become sabouteurs is too retarded even for CWC to contemplate.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

There’s nothing logical about it. You’re describing a method of analysis which is infeasible when considering groups of any more than a few people. In fact you’ll struggle to properly understand the actions and motives of any individual without identify the class(es) of which they are a member. Moreover, I deny that you could even analyse an individual, as opposed to simply an instantiation of class(es) of which that individual is a member.

The fundamental insight is that groups are mere abstractions. Groups do not have motive or causal power that is independent of the individuals who compose that group.
Categorizing people into classes can sometimes be useful, but that is just a shorthand for describing shared characteristics of individuals.
In reality, every action and decision comes from an individual with unique preferences and incentives. Methodological individualism, aka "a method of analysis", is the only logically consistent way to explain human behavior. Groups and classes may emerge as statistical regularities, but they are not causative agents.
If you don't examine individual choices, you have no choice but to attribute agency to an abstract collective, and that is extremely analytically misleading.

 

[Smashed & Slamed]

Groups do not have motive or causal power that is independent of the individuals who compose that group.

That's retarded and you know it. Humans are social animals and experience many mechanisms when in a group. Many of them are subconscious and autonomous. The idea of some platonic concept of an individual is sophistic stupidity and nothing more.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

That's retarded and you know it. Humans are social animals and experience many mechanisms when in a group. Many of them are subconscious and autonomous. The idea of some platonic concept of an individual is sophistic stupidity and nothing more.

That's a red herring.
Humans are social animals and group dynamics exist. The point is that these dynamics do not emerge from some mysterious collective entity. They emerge entirely from individual actions. These group mechanisms are simply the sum or aggregation of individuals interacting, each of them driven by their own preferences and instincts.
Methodological individualism is a recognition of reality: Only individuals have motives, make choices, and bear responsibility. Attributing causal power to some abstract "group" means denying that every social phenomenon is ultimately rooted in the decisions and actions of individual human beings.

 

[Nicholas Gur]

The burden of proof lies with this theoretical "individual" to prove they aren't exactly like what I know to be true of the specific cohort I'm attacking. Also I get more exp from beating the entire group than a single mob.

 

[Polyarmory]

I think acknowledging the diversity of the individual adds friction to getting your point across, so it gets elided in favor of shorter/more readable posts.

 

[DeathfatFag]

"The Individual" is a cishet, White Supremicist tool of oppression.

Ever hear of divide-and-conquer, sweaty?

 

[Smashed & Slamed]

That's a red herring.
Humans are social animals and group dynamics exist. The point is that these dynamics do not emerge from some mysterious collective entity. They emerge entirely from individual actions. These group mechanisms are simply the sum or aggregation of individuals interacting, each of them driven by their own preferences and instincts.

If I store a program on one computer or on a server made up of multiple computers that program is still a program. The human social conditioning is not gonna be beamed into you from the Cloud TM. It's in your genetic material. You are trying to hide behind pointless minutia. You are even giving up on instincts now to try and bury the lead.

Only individuals have motives, make choices, and bear responsibility

Your point is wholly irrelevant. Because at the end of the day you can deny reality all you want, you can't deny it's consequences away. Humans are social animals with built in preferences, those with stronger in group preferences do better and are more likely to pass on their genes, further reinforcing this trend and also the strong in groups will take advantage of the weak in groups to further apply pressure.

is ultimately rooted in the decisions and actions of individual human beings.

So the reflexive and subconscious mechanisms like lower morale and anxiety when exposed to outgroups and the inverse for in groups are non existent in spite of not being decisions or actions.

 

[Otterly]

The fundamental insight is that groups are mere abstractions

Mm… I’m not so sure.

They emerge entirely from individual actions.

They emerge from individual actions under the influence of many things one if which is the influence of group

These group mechanisms are simply the sum or aggregation of individuals interacting, each of them driven by their own preferences and instincts.

They are also driven by the group.
An individual encountering a situation where they know they will lose will act differently to one in a group. Let’s say two enemies are skirmishing. A lone scout from group A spots ten from group B. He hides because he knows he can’t win that fight. Then he goes and relays the info to his side. If he was with a hundred of group A, he could easily take out group B. Yes his decision is ‘his’ but it’s taken in the context of his group or lack there of.
Mobs of people behave differently. You even saw this with things like Covid - people were pressured with various bits if manipulation. I really wish I’d bookmarked it but there was an article here about different tactics of pressure used on various people. Some were swayed by calls to duty, it guilt from potential harm but most were swayed by ‘everyone else is doing it.’
The individual’s judgement and actions are swayed by their group environment. There are VERY few people willing to go against group consensus - there is work looking at this. The group does not behave as the individual

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

If I store a program on one computer or on a server made up of multiple computers that program is still a program. The human social conditioning is not gonna be beamed into you from the Cloud TM. It's in your genetic material. You are trying to hide behind pointless minutia. You are even giving up on instincts now to try and bury the lead.

Your point is wholly irrelevant. Because at the end of the day you can deny reality all you want, you can't deny it's consequences away. Humans are social animals with built in preferences, those with stronger in group preferences do better and are more likely to pass on their genes, further reinforcing this trend and also the strong in groups will take advantage of the weak in groups to further apply pressure.

So the reflexive and subconscious mechanisms like lower morale and anxiety when exposed to outgroups and the inverse for in groups are non existent in spite of not being decisions or actions.

You are retreating into genetic determinism. Humans are shaped by biology and social conditioning, but again, that is a red herring, these things do not grant a mysterious, independent causal power to the "group".
Even subconscious mechanisms are factors operating within individual minds, not dictating them from some collective realm.
You cannot claim that in-group dynamics override individual agency. The things you are describing are tendencies that individuals experience and act upon.
To assert otherwise would be denying that every outcome, every bias, is ultimately the product of individual decision-making and interaction.
You are conflating aggregate behavior of individuals with an independent group entity. These so-called group effects are created by individuals, with their inherited predispositions and conscious choices.

Mm… I’m not so sure.

They emerge from individual actions under the influence of many things one if which is the influence of group

They are also driven by the group.
An individual encountering a situation where they know they will lose will act differently to one in a group. Let’s say two enemies are skirmishing. A lone scout from group A spots ten from group B. He hides because he knows he can’t win that fight. Then he goes and relays the info to his side. If he was with a hundred of group A, he could easily take out group B. Yes his decision is ‘his’ but it’s taken in the context of his group or lack there of.
Mobs of people behave differently. You even saw this with things like Covid - people were pressured with various bits if manipulation. I really wish I’d bookmarked it but there was an article here about different tactics of pressure used on various people. Some were swayed by calls to duty, it guilt from potential harm but most were swayed by ‘everyone else is doing it.’
The individual’s judgement and actions are swayed by their group environment. There are VERY few people willing to go against group consensus - there is work looking at this. The group does not behave as the individual

Your example of the lone scout is evidence for my point.
You show that individuals adjust their behavior when others are present. This is exactly what methodological individualism predicts.
Group environments influence individual decisions, but that does not mean that the group itself has independent motives or causal power. Each person's choice, even under social pressure, is still made by an individual reacting to incentives, fears, and expectations.
In other words, what you call "group behavior" is nothing but the aggregated outcome of individual decisions shaped by their context. Treating the group as a separate, autonomous actor is a category error that obscures the real drivers behind social phenomena.

 

[Smashed & Slamed]

You cannot claim that in-group dynamics override individual agency. The things you are describing are tendencies that individuals experience and act upon.

They override human agency when they happen autonomously. Which they do. The mechanisms of in group preference are subconscious. Your agency is irrelevant because you can't choose to react or not react to a reflex. If I hit your knee you can't choose to kick forward that is done by your body without your consent or agency or input. And should you somehow not have that reflex it's an indication to a major malfunction. It's not a red herring. Humans are animals. You may educate, dress up and coerce/force a human to act how ever you want. Biology is the basis of the human. And the genetic, epigenetic and other biological mark ups are so deep they are even lower than reflexes. They make up your very structure of your mind determining how and why you think let alone basic stuff like breathing. Calling it a red herring is delusional.

 

[Otterly]

I think we are arguing at cross purposes:
The individual, alone, acts one way
The individual, in a group, acts another.
Do we agree on that?
Then the disagreement is maybe not real. I don’t think anyone is arguing ‘the group’ IS an individual type entity in its own right. They’re arguing that being in a group alters behaviour.
I’m arguing that group pressures are different from individual pressures and that evolution and selection CAN act at a group level or at least via actions taken by the group. I disagree with Dawkins in this. That behaviour alteration can benefit the group, but harm the individual short term. Example: social taboos. Being a gay orgy enjoyer may be fabulous for the individual, but if they spread diseases then it harms the individuals in the group. So all groups in the past have tended to have social taboos that repressed the desires of the individual. The same goes for a lot of thimgs. Religion is also a group level advantage. Put twenty Muslims and atheists in a room and make them fight it out for their beliefs. Who wins? What’s that driving force? It’s a group level one.
It doesn’t mean the group is an entity like an individual.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

I think we are arguing at cross purposes:
The individual, alone, acts one way
The individual, in a group, acts another.
Do we agree on that?

That is exactly what my point is.
The individual acts.
"The group" cannot act independently from the individuals within that group acting.

 

[Otterly]

The group" cannot act independently from the individuals within that group acting.

I dunno. How do you define the group acting? it acts differently to x number of individuals. So for modelling purposes it’s a useful analogy, no?
Being in a group affects behaviour, in a way that doesn’t emerge until there is a group.
The brain is composed of individual neurons, and each fires, but the brain as a whole does things individual neurons can never do, and creates feedback loops that affect individual neurons and so there is a thing called ‘the brain.’

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

My core point is that the idea that groups act as independent agents is misleading.
A colony of ants appears to function as a single organism, but that is nothing but a convenient description. In reality, every action, every decision, is made by individual ants. All social or "group" phenomena must be traced back to the choices of individuals. Without individual actions, no group exists at all.
When you reduce sociology to the actions of individuals, you avoid the pitfalls of interpreting intentions or properties to an abstract "group" that never really exists. And this perspective is really the only logical way to analyze human behavior. It is individuals, not collectives, who ultimately drive all outcomes.

You have clearly missed the point.
Your argument is the same as saying "when you reduce psychology to the action of neurons, you avoid the pitfalls of interpreting intentions or properties to an abstract 'thought' that never really exists." And if you realize how retarded that statement is, you should realize the problems with your own statement.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

You have clearly missed the point.
Your argument is the same as saying "when you reduce psychology to the action of neurons, you avoid the pitfalls of interpreting intentions or properties to an abstract 'thought' that never really exists." And if you realize how retarded that statement is, you should realize the problems with your own statement.

Your analogy is off target. Reducing psychology to neurons does not deny the reality of thoughts, it merely explains that thoughts emerge from neural processes.
In a similar way, when we analyze social phenomena, it is undeniable that groups have observable patterns, the core argument is that these patterns ultimately come from individual actions. Ignoring the role of the individual leads to confusing and vague explanations. My stance is simply recognizing that while emergent phenomena exist, they do so only because of the choices of real people, not because some abstract "group mind" has its own independent agency.

I dunno. How do you define the group acting? it acts differently to x number of individuals. So for modelling purposes it’s a useful analogy, no?
Being in a group affects behaviour, in a way that doesn’t emerge until there is a group.
The brain is composed of individual neurons, and each fires, but the brain as a whole does things individual neurons can never do, and creates feedback loops that affect individual neurons and so there is a thing called ‘the brain.’

The analogy of the brain is useful for modeling, but it does not imply that a group has independent agency. Just as the functions of the brain ultimately arise from individual neurons and their interactions, a group's behavior is simply the aggregate outcome of individual actions. The "feedback loops" you mention are real, yet they are still produced by individuals responding to their environment and each other.
It can be convenient to talk about the group "acting" as one in some situations, but that is nothing but a linguistic shorthand for describing complex interactions - it is not evidence that groups have motives or causal power separate from the individuals within them.

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

Your analogy is off target. Reducing psychology to neurons does not deny the reality of thoughts, it merely explains that thoughts emerge from neural processes.

So my analogy is perfectly on target.
Nobody's denying that group behavior emerges from individual behavior. But when you look at group behavior as a collective, there are patterns that appear which are nonexistent at the individual level. An individual can't "half-buy" a product. But there are products which half of people buy. So in the case of advertising, the individual can be largely forgotten in place of demographics.

As an advertiser, you don't care if some guy living at 1488 Fuckyou Street somewhere in Nebraska is gonna buy your asshole licking device. But knowing which groups are more likely to buy it is vital if you're deciding whether you want to pay Linus Tech Tips to give a live demonstration.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

So my analogy is perfectly on target.
Nobody's denying that group behavior emerges from individual behavior. But when you look at group behavior as a collective, there are patterns that appear which are nonexistent at the individual level. An individual can't "half-buy" a product. But there are products which half of people buy. So in the case of advertising, the individual can be largely forgotten in place of demographics.

As an advertiser, you don't care if some guy living at 1488 Fuckyou Street somewhere in Nebraska is gonna buy your asshole licking device. But knowing which groups are more likely to buy it is vital if you're deciding whether you want to pay Linus Tech Tips to give a live demonstration.

Demographics are a practical tool for market segmentation, but it does not prove that a group acts as an independent agent. What aggregated data does is reveal patterns, but those patterns emerge from individual choices. Demographics make analysis easier, but they do not replace the fact that every purchase is made by an individual with his own preferences. The "group" in advertising is merely a convenient abstraction, not an independent decision maker.