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Alicorn comments on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks - Less Wrong
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I wish to point out that there is an important difference between censorship and saying that something ought not to be said. Censorship is taking steps to prevent the saying of a thing, or prevent it from being readily heard by interested audience members. Saying that a thing ought to be said does not call for censorship, nor imply that censorship is called for. For instance, I do not think that people ought to tell strangers on the street to smile, and I encourage people to refrain from doing that. I do not advocate preventing anyone who wishes to ignore this encouragement from telling others to smile, nor do I want to somehow protect all possible recipients of the smiling instruction from exposure thereto.
There is a difference there and I'd like to clarify that I have been referring to the broader concept here. When I refer to 'censorship' I am referring to attempts to control what people are free to be speaking through political manoeuvring. I include suggestions that people should be shamed for making statements on particular topics along with suggestions that said statements should be removed from view. If there was a word that emphasised the former category rather than the latter then I would use it instead. That sort of censorship is most relevant on lesswrong and far more insidious.
At the same time, we need to be able to have this kind of discussion without censoring (by your definition) people in Alicorn's position, either. To the best of my memory (and I've had a lot going on for the last few days, so I could easily have lost track of a relevant part of the conversation), Alicorn never called for anyone to be socially censured for voicing an opinion, just for us to, as we're discussing certain topics, keep in mind that our discussions have real effects in the world.
We wouldn't discuss the nuts and bolts of building AI here, because we consider that risky. Alicorn considers this kind of discussion to be similarly risky in some ways. She may be wrong, but until it's actually been established that she is, I suggest the possibility be taken into consideration.
I don't think the difference is important in this context. If you advocate that something not be said by someone who thinks it, you are advocating that the flow of accurate information be restricted, and thus --effectively -- that honesty be traded off in favor of some other value. The tradeoff may or may not be worth it, but it hardly matters whether it is initiated by a commenter or by a webmaster.
I disagree. I think self-regulation is very different in character from restriction imposed from without. I also think that honesty can better be interpreted to mean "saying only true things" than "saying all true things that pop into a speaker's head". Saying that I think people ought not to say Q doesn't mean that I think people ought to assert ~Q.
Perhaps I shouldn't have used a loaded word like "honesty". Let's just stick with "restriction of the flow of information". If someone believes that people should be more indulgent in granting sexual favors, or that society should address the problem (if it is a problem) of inequality in access to sex, exactly why should they refrain from saying so on this forum?
Phrased like that, no reason. Those are pretty general, safe statements. Phrased in a more one-gendered way (e.g. "women in particular should be..." "women as a group should address..."), or refined into narrower, scarier views, they shouldn't be said for the same sorts of reasons we shouldn't threaten to torch each other's homes or choose this venue to express supernatural beliefs: because those ideas are frightening, disruptive, and/or sufficiently widely discredited not to be worth our time.
Interesting. So your problem seems to be with generalizing into large categories ("women"), and then perhaps putting the matter in in-group vs. out-group terms, as in "we men are owed more sex from you women". Am I right?
As for "scary"/"frightening", I guess I just think that the quality of this site is high enough that people ought to be given the benefit of the doubt. Certain views may be "scary" when expressed "out there", because they signal an intention to do something bad. Here, I think we ought to be able to take more things at face value, without disclaimers.
That's the entrance to a death spiral.
A major part of the problem in discussing these things anywhere is people saying, "But we're smart! We're rational! We can't mean the nasty things you read us as saying!" But that cuts both ways. How about, "We're rational! Therefore you should reexamine your own words!"
When everyone imagines they're rational, rationality has left the building.
Oh come now. I didn't say anything about our alleged superior rationality. My claim is simply that participants in this forum are statistically unlikely to be dangerous people. This is mainly a consequence of (what I perceive to be) the small size of the community . (I could be wrong about this of course.)
But the discussion has become far too abstract by now, given that what I think this comes down to is that Alicorn and I have different mental images (caricatures) of "the person who says women owe more sex to men". I wonder if maybe Alicorn pictures some type of shady misogynist character willing to blurt the statement out loud in public (perhaps while drunk), whereas I picture a shy misunderstood "nerd" who would never dream of saying such a thing except anonymously in an unusually open-minded online community. What I was trying to say was that I thought my image was more accurate, for this tiny corner of cyberspace.
I don't know what else "the quality of this site" could refer to. And now you're saying it's the size, though I don't see how that changes the per-individual probability of being dangerous. Collectively, my impression is that larger communities are safer, because there's room to avoid the few nasty individuals.
Well now. Both of these imaginary characters believe that women owe them sex. The first is being blatant about it, so at least women know in advance to avoid him. The second, that you think "more accurate, for this tiny corner of cyberspace" is the dangerous one. And you think of him as "misunderstood". I think of him as "wrong". As in, believing false things, things that are the opposite of true. And dangerously wrong.
If that type is indeed "more accurate, for this tiny corner of cyberspace", no wonder there are so few women in it.
Please note that nobody on this site has actually stated that men are owed sex from women as a group. As with any such dispute as to who is ethically owed what, this would clearly be a cause of conflict; and we're trying to avoid having such "mind-killer" discussions on Less Wrong.
It was Alicorn who made the leap (see this post), which is evidence that this meme is floating around in mainstream culture. What people were saying is that men with romantic aspirations should be empathized with, given the difficulties they may face.
Is this a "dangerously wrong" notion? Why aren't you objecting to mainstream culture, where the kinds of implied obligations and entitlements Alicorn refers to seem to be widespread?
A somewhat greater ability (and tendency) to make statements for purposes other than signalling. I for example, often point out fallacies in comments even when they argue for positions that I support. In many cases these rebuttals could be labelled 'frightening/scary'. If participants on LessWrong are closer in nature to myself than those in the general population are then I am less likely to take epistemic claims to be evidence of threat.
I support Kompos suggestion that significant benefit of the doubt should be given to posters when it comes to inferring danger from speaking on 'scary/frightening' topics. I do not believe I am owed more sex from anyone. The chain of inference 'Wedrifid supports people being allowed to say scary things -> Wedrifid believes scary things -> Wedrifid is likely to do scary things -> Wedrifid is dangerous' would not be a reasonable one to make in this circumstance.
The opposite of true would imply that the position makes enough sense for falsehood to neatly imply. The position is far more scrambled than that (not even wrong).
What's your prior probability that someone reading this thread (during, say, October 2009) has committed or will commit rape or sexual assault within ten years?
I think you are being extremely judgmental. I described my hypothetical character as "misunderstood", and indeed, here you are misunderstanding him. He's not dangerous; you can add that to the description: "shy, misunderstood, non-dangerous..." The fact that he "would never dream of saying such a thing except anonymously in an unusually open-minded online community" was intended to illustrate his kindness and sensitivity as a human being in contrast to the boorish brute I placed him in opposition to.
Why? How is this supposed to work?
So you're saying that the only relevant difference, and the reason men in this community are less likely to actually rape women, is that they're more shy? And maybe don't get drunk in public?
I'm aware that's probably not what you meant, but it's the literal meaning of your words. You need a better argument in favor of what seems to be your actual position - "people interested and/or adept in rationality are less likely to rape out of a sense of entitlement".
I agree with Richard - and you have yet to present an actual argument for your position. Not just that you feel the people here are "high quality".
My position? Let's remember what Alicorn said:
My position, if position I have, is that Alicorn is wrong to be frightened by that line of thinking. In general (that is, not necessarily with regard to sex), it's a perfectly reasonable leap to make, whether or not we ourselves would make it. Compare:
-Person to beggar: "Aw, I feel bad that you have trouble obtaining money." => "Aw, someone should give you money"/"Aw, people should give more to charity".
In a case like that, we don't usually consider the drawing of that implication to be dangerous or frightening. We may consider it incorrect, for example if we think that giving money to beggars has a net negative impact on society; but even so we usually consider the person making the leap a (misguided) bleeding-heart liberal, not a promoter of "evil behaviors, up to and including armed robbery".
Now, what I would want to fight against, so to speak, is the imposition of a taboo on making analogous arguments in the realm of sex (presumably because of a special human anxiety about that subject). Let those arguments be right or wrong, let the analogy hold or fail to hold, let sex be different or the same; but the thoughts should not be discouraged from being spoken.
Do I really need to defend myself beyond this?
That's a tangent. You said it was more wrong to be frightened here on LW, than in general; that the people here were more trustworthy. That's the claim you need to substantiate. I'm not expressing any opinion on the taboo discussion, it's been talked about enough in other comment sub-threads.
I hear that in the US there are some people who view government-mandated redistribution of money from the rich to the poor (i.e. social support) very much like evil, armed robbery...
No, that was the tangent, actually. I didn't expect that remark to be picked up and seized upon as a controversial claim. I expected the contrary arguments to run "Yes, of course no one here is a rapist, but even so we still shouldn't have people saying X because..."
If you don't share my intuition that proportionally fewer rapes occur in the context of academic conferences and philosophy club meetings than sporting events and bars, then we'll just have to refer to statistical data to find out who is right.
But in either case, I consider the taboo discussion to be more interesting/important, belabored though it may be.
Really? How are government tax collectors any different than armed robbers, on the relevant dimensions? After all, governments love to trot out "giving money to the poor" as a rationale for taking your money, don't they?
(And no, the fact that the requirement to pay taxes is imposed by statute, or that the IRS labels your compliance with their policies as "voluntary" are not relevant dimensions)
For the original discussion about taboos, I agree completely. My requests for proof were about komponisto's comment that
That was in the other subthread so perhaps this is my fault for replying to the wrong comment. The two threads have been referencing each other quite a lot though.
I have problems with generalizing over groups smaller than "people in general" and with othering, yes.
Don't you just hate those groupgeneralizers?