Why truth is socially expensive
The SORT framework identifies four axiological dimensions that any intelligent system must navigate. Two are central here: the S-axis (Sovereignty), ranging from Agency (S-, individual as primary unit) to Communion (S+, collective as primary unit); and the R-axis (Reality), ranging from Mythos (R-, truth through narrative and tradition) to Gnosis (R+, truth through empirical experiment). These aren't preferences—they're fundamental optimization axes derived from the Boundary and Information Dilemmas.
The claim of this essay: For most humans, S+ is not just one axis among four—it's the dominant axis that instrumentalizes the others. Specifically, belonging (S+) functions as terminal value, while truth-seeking (R+) functions as instrumental. When they conflict, R+ gets sacrificed for S+.
This is optimization working correctly—for a system where S+ is terminal. Truth was never the objective function. Belonging was. Truth-seeking was the tribal mythology.
R+ communities are S+ communities wearing R+ clothing. The rationality was instrumental to the belonging. The methodology was the mythology. The truth-seeking was the coordination ritual.
Groups systematically drift from Gnosis (R+) toward Mythos (R-) over time. This is the default attractor, not unavoidable fate—but resisting it requires architectural effort.
The Rationalist Community. LessWrong started as "let's be more rational than everyone else." It became tribal identity. Now it has approved framings, canonical sequences, in-group terminology—jargon that began as efficiency became loyalty markers. Questioning core LW concepts triggers social pushback regardless of epistemic merit. The community selects for community membership, not rationality. Evaporative cooling killed the truth-seekers and selected for the conformists.
Academia. Peer review was designed as R+ (falsification). It became S+ (citation networks, paradigm loyalty, career incentives). Challenging established models threatens careers. The replication crisis is the symptom. The disease is that journals select for publishable results, not true ones, and departments select for collegial researchers, not correct ones.
Subcultures. Punk started as rejection of mainstream conformity. It became its own conformity with strict aesthetic codes. "Posers" are policed. Authenticity is judged by adherence to tribal Mythos—the right bands, the right clothes, the right opinions—not by actually thinking for yourself. Metal, goth, hipster, political tribes: same pattern, different aesthetics.
The Standard Explanations: Social pressure, incentives, laziness. These are instrumental reasons—they assume people want truth but face costs.
The Better Explanation: Belonging is terminal. These groups achieved their actual goal. The R- drift is success, not failure. They're not corrupted truth-seekers. They're successful belonging-seekers who used truth-seeking as founding mythology.
The physics is precise:
A deeper mechanism makes this structurally inevitable.
Truth is a poor loyalty signal. If I say "the sky is blue" and you agree, you've proven only your rationality. Any rational agent would agree. Your agreement shows you can perceive reality, not that you're loyal to me.
Absurdity is a perfect loyalty signal. If I say "the sky is neon green" and you agree, you have burned your epistemic capital to stand with me. You have made yourself vulnerable—you look stupid to outsiders. You have incurred a cost that only makes sense if belonging is your terminal value.
This is why cults drift toward insanity, not moderation. Why political tribes adopt increasingly extreme positions. Why loyalty tests escalate. S+ optimization actively selects for R- content. The more absurd the belief, the stronger the bond. R+ dominant individuals get pushed out.
Heresy: Information that is R+ (true) but S- (disintegrating).
The heretic has accurate information that threatens the coordination substrate. The tribe attacks the heretic because he is structurally dangerous—they often know he's right. His truth, if spoken, fragments the common knowledge that enables coordination.
This explains the emotional intensity of tribal punishment. It's about structural integrity, not epistemics. The heretic is committing treason, not error.
The revealed preference test: What does the agent sacrifice when values conflict?
What do people sacrifice for truth when it threatens belonging?
Usually: nothing. They find reasons why the threatening truth is wrong. They discover the evidence is flawed, the methodology questionable, the source biased. The belief updates to protect the belonging, not the reverse.
Watch someone encounter evidence against a tribal-coded belief. They attack the evidence. They question motives. They find reasons to dismiss. The sophistication of the dismissal scales with intelligence—smart people are better at motivated reasoning.
What do people sacrifice for belonging? They believe what the tribe believes regardless of evidence, sacrifice money and career for tribal standing, cut ties with out-group members including family, and defend absurd positions to signal loyalty.
The exceptions exist: whistleblowers, heretics who accept ostracism, scientists who defend unpopular findings. These are the R+ dominant minority. Their existence doesn't contradict the claim—it defines the distribution.
Verdict: Revealed preference shows belonging is terminal for most humans. Truth is instrumental—valuable when it serves belonging, discarded when it threatens it.
If you're reading this, you're probably S- dominant. The idea that people would sacrifice epistemic accuracy for belonging seems irrational.
The S- person asks: "Why would you believe something false?"
The S+ person asks: "Why would you believe something that gets you expelled from your tribe?"
Both questions assume their axiology is universal. Neither is.
Is this adaptive or maladaptive?
From pure R+ frame: Maladaptive. You're believing false things, making bad predictions, collectively walking off cliffs. The tribe that believes bullets can't hurt them dies in the first battle.
From S+ frame: Adaptive. You're achieving coordination, which enables collective action impossible for atomized truth-seekers. The tribe that coordinates around shared myth defeats the tribe of accurate loners.
From Aliveness frame: It depends on environmental conditions.
In scarcity: Moloch forces R+. Reality kills the deluded quickly. If your tribe's mythology says "this plant is safe to eat" and it's poisonous, you die. The environment provides immediate, brutal feedback. R- is expensive because the cost of false beliefs is paid immediately.
In abundance: R- drift becomes possible. You can believe false things for a long time before the consequences arrive. The feedback loop is broken. R- becomes cheap because you can be wrong without dying—for now.
S+ → R- is a luxury belief, affordable only in abundance. This connects directly to the Axiological Malthusian Trap: civilizations drift toward R- (and T-) precisely because their success removes the selection pressure that enforced reality-contact. The R- drift is the predictable consequence of having enough surplus that you can afford to be wrong.
Is collective truth-seeking possible? Or does any group inevitably drift R-?
R+ can be collaborative—but only through Protocol (O+/Skeleton), not Communion (S+/Heart).
Science works because scientists are bound by the Scientific Method—a legal structure, not a social bond. The method is:
This is O+ coordination infrastructure. It makes R+ behavior incentive-compatible regardless of S+ feelings. You can hate the person who disproved you. The structure still forces engagement with their evidence.
The insight: You can have collective R+, but only by replacing tribal coordination (S+) with protocol coordination (O+). The "Republic of Science" is a legal architecture, not a social club.
When O+ infrastructure gets captured by S+ dynamics—citation cartels, peer review as tribal gatekeeping, collegial pressure against challenging senior researchers—science stops working. The replication crisis is S+ overriding O+. The solution is "build better structures" (architecture), not "be better scientists" (disposition). Coordination problems require architectural solutions, not virtue.
Stop expecting "truth-seeking" communities to stay truth-seeking. The S+ → R- drift is default. Resisting it requires explicit architectural constraints, not just good intentions.
Any community that values being a community more than being right will drift R-. Since communities naturally value their own existence, the drift is structural. "Rationalist community" is an oxymoron over long enough timescales.
Recognize when you're in an S+ community wearing R+ clothing. The tells:
If you're R+ dominant, understand the structural reality: S+ communities will expel you when your truth-seeking threatens cohesion. You cannot have herd warmth and scout clarity simultaneously.
This explains why delivering R+ content to S+ audiences requires protocol overhead. The "compliment sandwich" (reassure → critique → reassure) functions as error correction for relationship-sensitive channels. Without the reassurance wrapper, critique is processed as relational threat only—the informational content never reaches evaluation.
R+ dominant individuals find this dishonest or manipulative. S+ dominant individuals require it to receive the payload at all. The emotional/relational layer isn't separate from the information layer—it's the same channel. The sandwich isn't deception for S+ systems; it's bandwidth overhead required to transmit across different optimization architectures.
S+ and R+ are different objective functions with different tradeoffs.
S+ gives you: coordination capacity, tribal warmth, psychological stability, shared meaning, collective action
R+ gives you: accurate models, adaptation capacity, novel insights, independence, and often isolation from S+ communities
Most humans are S+ dominant. The pathology is pretending otherwise: claiming R+ identity while being S+ dominant, or when your S+ community drifts so R- it walks toward a cliff.
Key Takeaways
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