<aside> 🚀 This begins Unit 1 of Values-Based Social Design

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What is Crowding Out?

In this course, we get very specific about what people pay attention to when making choices, and when paying attention to one thing makes it so you can’t attend to something else.

<aside> ◼️ An Example: Fear of Rejection vs. Courage and Honesty

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We use the term “crowding out” to refer to this phenomenon—when one consideration makes it impossible to attend to another. In this case, thinking how to avoid rejection takes precedence over thinking what’d be courageous or honest. We say that the courage and the honesty are crowded out by the fear of rejection.

We use the term “crowding out” whether the fear of rejection is rational/environmental or due to a psychological issue.

Why Study Crowding Out?

For most people, crowding out is only salient when it’s real bad: when one of their main sources of meaning is absolutely crushed by the environment or their psychology. In this course, we want to become acutely sensitive to crowding out. The truth is that we are crowded out hundreds of times a day! We want to notice even these subtle occurrences.

Why?

• First, when we notice them, our sources of meaning leap into focus. The contrast makes our own values clearer.
• Second, we get ideas on how to change things—to make them more meaningful. Once you practice seeing your own crowding out in detail, you’ll have intuitions whenever you see any kind of social design (a design for an event, a social network, etc)—intuitions about which motives will rationally dominate in that environment, and what values will be crowded out. That helps you critique existing social spaces, and design new ones.
• Finally, it gives you a vision for a very different society—one with much less crowding out. It’s impossible to entirely eliminate it, of course: designing social spaces always involves trade-offs. What supports one person's values may undermine another’s, and outcome-oriented activities cannot be entirely avoided (everyone needs to be fed, etc.).

How to Study Crowding Out

So, to sharpen your sense for crowding out—to tune into those subtle occurrences—we have material and exercises. The main thing is this: a taxonomy of what you could consider when making a choice.

Below, I’ll step through the taxonomy, and then give you exercises where you apply it to your own motivations.

The Variety of Motives

At the root is the distinction between values and goals or fears. Sources of meaning like honesty and courage are about process, whereas fears (like the fear of rejection) are about outcomes. In general, if your values / sources of meaning are crowded out, it’s because of outcome-related considerations: goals and fears. (Goals and fears are interchangeable: a fear of rejection is the same as a goal of remaining accepted.)

<aside> 💎 There can be results/outcomes from sources of meaning, but they are diffuse results—results about living your best life—rather than definite outcomes to achieve or avoid. (Read more about this distinction in Making Values Concrete.)

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Achieving Goals, Avoiding Fears strategizing