Undiscriminating Skepticism

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

Tl;dr:  Since it can be cheap and easy to attack everything your tribe doesn't believe, you shouldn't trust the rationality of just anyone who slams astrology and creationism; these beliefs aren't just false, they're also non-tribal among educated audiences.  Test what happens when a "skeptic" argues for a non-tribal belief, or argues against a tribal belief, before you decide they're good general rationalists.  This post is intended to be reasonably accessible to outside audiences.

I don't believe in UFOs.  I don't believe in astrology.  I don't believe in homeopathy.  I don't believe in creationism.  I don't believe there were explosives planted in the World Trade Center.  I don't believe in haunted houses.  I don't believe in perpetual motion machines.  I believe that all these beliefs are not only wrong but visibly insane.

If you know nothing else about me but this, how much credit should you give me for general rationality?

Certainly anyone who was skillful at adding up evidence, considering alternative explanations, and assessing prior probabilities, would end up disbelieving in all of these.

But there would also be a simpler explanation for my views, a less rare factor that could explain it:  I could just be anti-non-mainstream.  I could be in the habit of hanging out in moderately educated circles, and know that astrology and homeopathy are not accepted beliefs of my tribe.  Or just perceptually recognize them, on a wordless level, as "sounding weird".  And I could mock anything that sounds weird and that my fellow tribesfolk don't believe, much as creationists who hang out with fellow creationists mock evolution for its ludicrous assertion that apes give birth to human beings.

You can get cheap credit for rationality by mocking wrong beliefs that everyone in your social circle already believes to be wrong.  It wouldn't mean that I have any ability at all to notice a wrong belief that the people around me believe to be right, or vice versa - to further discriminate truth from falsity, beyond the fact that my social circle doesn't already believe in something.

Back in the good old days, there was a simple test for this syndrome that would get quite a lot of mileage:  You could just ask me what I thought about God.  If I treated the idea with deeper respect than I treated astrology, holding it worthy of serious debate even if I said I disbelieved in it, then you knew that I was taking my cues from my social surroundings - that if the people around me treated a belief as high-prestige, high-status, I wouldn't start mocking it no matter what the state of evidence.

On the other hand suppose I said without hesitation that my epistemic state on God was similar to my epistemic state on psychic powers: no positive evidence, lots of failed tests, highly unfavorable prior, and if you believe it under those circumstances then something is wrong with your mind.  Then you would have heard a bit of skepticism that might cost me something socially, and that not everyone around me would have endorsed, even in educated circles.  You would know it wasn't just a cheap way of picking up cheap points.

Today the God-test no longer works, because some people realized that the taking-it-seriously aura of religion is in fact the main thing left which prevents people from noticing the epistemic awfulness; there has been a concerted and, I think, well-advised effort to mock religion and strip it of its respectability.  The upshot is that there are now quite wide social circles in which God is just another stupid belief that we all know we don't believe in, on the same list with astrology.  You could be dealing with an adept rationalist, or you could just be dealing with someone who reads Reddit.

And of course I could easily go on to name some beliefs that others think are wrong and that I think are right, or vice versa, but would inevitably lose some of my audience at each step along the way - just as, a couple of decades ago, I would have lost a lot of my audience by saying that religion was unworthy of serious debate.  (Thankfully, today this outright dismissal is at least considered a respectable, mainstream position even if not everyone holds it.)

I probably won't lose much by citing anti-Artificial-Intelligence views as an example of undiscriminating skepticism.  I think a majority among educated circles are sympathetic to the argument that brains are not magic and so there is no obstacle in principle to building machines that think.  But there are others, albeit in the minority, who recognize Artificial Intelligence as "weird-sounding" and "sci-fi", a belief in something that has never yet been demonstrated, hence unscientific - the same epistemic reference class as believing in aliens or homeopathy.

(This is technically a demand for unobtainable evidence.  The asymmetry with homeopathy can be summed up as follows:  First:  If we learn that Artificial Intelligence is definitely impossible, we must have learned some new fact unknown to modern science - everything we currently know about neurons and the evolution of intelligence suggests that no magic was involved.  On the other hand, if we learn that homeopathy is possible, we must have learned some new fact unknown to modern science; if everything else we believe about physics is true, homeopathy shouldn't work.  Second:  If homeopathy works, we can expect double-blind medical studies to demonstrate its efficacy right now; the absence of this evidence is very strong evidence of absence.  If Artificial Intelligence is possible in theory and in practice, we can't necessarily expect its creation to be demonstrated using current knowledge - this absence of evidence is only weak evidence of absence.)

I'm using Artificial Intelligence as an example, because it's a case where you can see some "skeptics" directing their skepticism at a belief that is very popular in educated circles, that is, the nonmysteriousness and ultimate reverse-engineerability of mind.  You can even see two skeptical principles brought into conflict - does a good skeptic disbelieve in Artificial Intelligence because it's a load of sci-fi which has never been demonstrated?  Or does a good skeptic disbelieve in human exceptionalism, since it would require some mysterious, unanalyzable essence-of-mind unknown to modern science?

It's on questions like these where we find the frontiers of knowledge, and everything now in the settled lands was once on the frontier.  It might seem like a matter of little importance to debate weird non-mainstream beliefs; a matter for easy dismissals and open scorn.  But if this policy is implemented in full generality, progress goes down the tubes.  The mainstream is not completely right, and future science will not just consist of things that sound reasonable to everyone today - there will be at least some things in it that sound weird to us.  (This is certainly the case if something along the lines of Artificial Intelligence is considered weird!)  And yes, eventually such scientific truths will be established by experiment, but somewhere along the line - before they are definitely established and everyone already believes in them - the testers will need funding.

Being skeptical about some non-mainstream beliefs is not a fringe project of little importance, not always a slam-dunk, not a bit of occasional pointless drudgery - though I can certainly understand why it feels that way to argue with creationists.  Skepticism is just the converse of acceptance, and so to be skeptical of a non-mainstream belief is to try to contribute to the project of advancing the borders of the known - to stake an additional epistemic claim that the borders should not expand in this direction, and should advance in some other direction instead.

This is high and difficult work - certainly much more difficult than the work of mocking everything that sounds weird and that the people in your social circle don't already seem to believe.

To put it more formally, before I believe that someone is performing useful cognitive work, I want to know that their skepticism discriminates truth from falsehood, making a contribution over and above the contribution of this-sounds-weird-and-is-not-a-tribal-belief.  In Bayesian terms, I want to know that p(mockery|belief false & not a tribal belief) > p(mockery|belief true & not a tribal belief).

If I recall correctly, the US Air Force's Project Blue Book, on UFOs, explained away as a sighting of the planet Venus what turned out to actually be an experimental aircraft.  No, I don't believe in UFOs either; but if you're going to explain away experimental aircraft as Venus, then nothing else you say provides further Bayesian evidence against UFOs either.  You are merely an undiscriminating skeptic.  I don't believe in UFOs, but in order to credit Project Blue Book with additional help in establishing this, I would have to believe that if there were UFOs then Project Blue Book would have turned in a different report.

And so if you're just as skeptical of a weird, non-tribal belief that turns out to have pretty good support, you just blew the whole deal - that is, if I pay any extra attention to your skepticism, it ought to be because I believe you wouldn't mock a weird non-tribal belief that was worthy of debate.

Personally, I think that Michael Shermer blew it by mocking molecular nanotechnology, and Penn and Teller blew it by mocking cryonics (justification: more or less exactly the same reasons I gave for Artificial Intelligence).  Conversely, Richard Dawkins scooped up a huge truckload of actual-discriminating-skeptic points, at least in my book, for not making fun of the many-worlds interpretation when he was asked about in an interview; indeed, Dawkins noted (correctly) that the traditional collapse postulate pretty much has to be incorrect.  The many-worlds interpretation isn't just the formally simplest explanation that fits the facts, it also sounds weird and is not yet a tribal belief of the educated crowd; so whether someone makes fun of MWI is indeed a good test of whether they understand Occam's Razor or are just mocking everything that's not a tribal belief.

Of course you may not trust me about any of that.  And so my purpose today is not to propose a new litmus test to replace atheism.

But I do propose that before you give anyone credit for being a smart, rational skeptic, that you ask them to defend some non-mainstream belief.  And no, atheism doesn't count as non-mainstream anymore, no matter what the polls show.  It has to be something that most of their social circle doesn't believe, or something that most of their social circle does believe which they think is wrong.  Dawkins endorsing many-worlds still counts for now, although its usefulness as an indicator is fading fast... but the point is not to endorse many-worlds, but to see them take some sort of positive stance on where the frontiers of knowledge should change.

Don't get me wrong, there's a whole crazy world out there, and when Richard Dawkins starts whaling on astrology in "The Enemies of Reason" documentary, he is doing good and necessary work. But it's dangerous to let people pick up too much credit just for slamming astrology and homeopathy and UFOs and God.  What if they become famous skeptics by picking off the cheap targets, and then use that prestige and credibility to go after nanotechnology?  Who will dare to consider cryonics now that it's been featured on an episode of Penn and Teller's "Bullshit"?  On the current system you can gain high prestige in the educated circle just by targeting beliefs like astrology that are widely believed to be uneducated; but then the same guns can be turned on new ideas like the many-worlds interpretation, even though it's being actively debated by physicists.  And that's why I suggest, not any particular litmus test, but just that you ought to have to stick your neck out and say something a little less usual - say where you are not skeptical (and most of your tribemates are) or where you are skeptical (and most of the people in your tribe are not).

I am minded to pay attention to Robyn Dawes as a skillful rationalist, not because Dawes has slammed easy targets like astrology, but because he also took the lead in assembling and popularizing the total lack of experimental evidence for nearly all schools of psychotherapy and the persistence of multiple superstitions such as Rorschach ink-blot interpretation in the face of literally hundreds of experiments trying and failing to find any evidence for it.  It's not that psychotherapy seemed like a difficult target after Dawes got through with it, but that, at the time he attacked it, people in educated circles still thought of it as something that educated people believed in.  It's not quite as useful today, but back when Richard Feynman published "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" you could pick up evidence that he was actually thinking from the fact that he disrespected psychotherapists as well as psychics.

I'll conclude with some simple and non-trustworthy indicators that the skeptic is just filling in a cheap and largely automatic mockery template:

  • The "skeptic" opens by remarking about the crazy true believers and wishful thinkers who believe in X, where there seem to be a surprising number of physicists making up the population of those wacky cult victims who believe in X.  (The physicist-test is not an infallible indicator of rightness or even non-stupidity, but it's a filter that rapidly picks up on, say, strong AI, molecular nanotechnology, cryonics, the many-worlds interpretation, and so on.)  Bonus point losses if the "skeptic" remarks on how easily physicists are seduced by sci-fi ideas.  The reason why this is a particularly negative indicator is that when someone is in a mode of automatically arguing against everything that seems weird and isn't a belief of their tribe - of rejecting weird beliefs as a matter of naked perceptual recognition of weirdness - then they tend to perceptually fill-in-the-blank by assuming that anything weird is believed by wacky cult victims (i.e., people Not Of Our Tribe).  And they don't backtrack, or wonder otherwise, even if they find out that the "cult" seems to exhibit a surprising number of people who go around talking about rationality and/or members with PhDs in physics.  Roughly, they have an automatic template for mocking weird beliefs, and if this requires them to just swap in physicists for astrologers as gullible morons, that's what they'll do.  Of course physicists can be gullible morons too, but you should be establishing that as a surprising conclusion, not using it as an opening premise!
  • The "skeptic" offers up items of "evidence" against X which are not much less expected in the case that X is true than in the case that X is false; in other words, they fail to grasp the elementary Bayesian notion of evidence.  I don't believe that UFOs are alien visitors, but my skepticism has nothing to do with all the crazy people who believe in UFOs - the existence of wacky cults is not much less expected in the case that aliens do exist, than in the case that they do not.  (I am skeptical of UFOs, not because I fear affiliating myself with the low-prestige people who believe in UFOs, but because I don't believe aliens would (a) travel across interstellar distances AND (b) hide all signs of their presence AND THEN (c) fly gigantic non-nanotechnological aircraft over our military bases with their exterior lights on.)
  • The demand for unobtainable evidence is a special case of the above, and of course a very common mode of skepticism gone wrong.  Artificial Intelligence and molecular nanotechnology both involve beliefs in the future feasibility of technologies that we can't build right now, but (arguendo) seem to be strongly permitted by current scientific belief, i.e., the non-ineffability of the brain, or the basic physical calculations which seem to show that simple nanotechnological machines should work.  To discard all the arguments from cognitive science and rely on the knockdown argument "no reliable reporter has ever seen an AI!" is blindly filling in the template from haunted houses.
  • The "skeptic" tries to scare you away from the belief in their very first opening remarks: for example, pointing out how UFO cults beat and starve their victims (when this can just as easily happen if aliens are visiting the Earth).  The negative consequences of a false belief may be real, legitimate truths to be communicated; but only after you establish by other means that the belief is factually false - otherwise it's the logical fallacy of appeal to consequences.
  • They mock first and counterargue later or not at all.  I do believe there's a place for mockery in the war on dumb ideas, but first you write the crushing factual counterargument, then you conclude with the mockery.

I'll conclude the conclusion by observing that poor skepticism can just as easily exist in a case where a belief is wrong as when a belief is right, so pointing out these flaws in someone's skepticism can hardly serve to establish a positive belief about where the frontiers of knowledge should move.

Comments (1329)

Comment author: orthonormal 16 March 2010 01:12:41AM 46 points [-]

I think we've achieved a new record for "most distinct subthreads that would be flamewars anywhere else on the Internet, but somehow aren't yet".

The previous recordholder, I'm pretty sure, is also on Less Wrong.

Comment author: Jack 16 March 2010 01:57:13AM *  44 points [-]

A partial list to compare to future record breaking attempts: Global Warming, Meredith Kercher's murder, atheism, gun control, race and IQ, Pick-up artists, cryonics, Scandinavian social welfare, nuclear deterence, sweatshops, industry bailouts, immigration, UFOs, homosexuality, polyamory, bisexuality, pedophilia, necrophilia, cannibalism, rape, 2 girls 1 cup, sex change, generalizations about promiscuity, straight men like lesbians, masochism, incest, people getting off to cartoons, people getting off to cartoons of pre-teen girls, 9/11 was an inside job, and Communism.

Comment author: BenAlbahari 16 March 2010 02:09:16AM 23 points [-]

Don't forget the biggest of them all: "questioning our raison d'etre"; i.e. we debated the value of rationality, whilst remaining civil and keeping the discussion meaningful. For comparison, imagine suggesting that "tennis isn't all that great" on a tennis forum.

Comment author: Bill_McGrath 26 September 2011 10:44:29AM 5 points [-]

Eugenics; that ought to be a fun one as well.

Comment author: ciphergoth 24 March 2010 12:50:30PM 4 points [-]

We should try gun control some time...

Comment author: simplicio 16 March 2010 01:22:59AM 4 points [-]

That is so true. & that is why I bloody love this site.

Still, I think to get the perfect compendium, somebody ought to mention fascism.

Comment author: CronoDAS 16 March 2010 02:16:49AM *  15 points [-]

Fascism was never a well-defined political philosophy, as far as I can tell. It seems that, today, it seems to be a synonym for "non-Communist government I don't like".

Comment author: Jack 16 March 2010 02:28:20AM *  5 points [-]

I'd say it became increasingly less well-defined after it's creation.

Comment author: Yvain 16 March 2010 09:28:00PM 43 points [-]

Two more non-trustworthy indicators:

  • Ask the person in question which of the several ridiculous ideas they reject they find least ridiculous - for example "Which do you think is more likely to be true - astrology, or UFOs?" I've found people trying to signal affiliation have a hard time with this sort of question and will even be flustered by it, saying something along the lines of "They're both stupid" or "Is this some sort of trick to make me sound like I believe a crazy idea?". A rationalist will say something more like "Well, I don't believe either, but UFOs at least make sense with our idea of the universe, whereas astrology is just plain crazytalk" (or ze may refuse to answer on the grounds that you're wasting zir time; it's not a perfect test).

  • Observe the circumstances in which the person involved brings up the belief. If they just go to atheist forums and say "Man, those religious people sure are stupid," higher probability of signaller. If they actively talk to religious people, try to use atheism as a starting point for building new ideas, and don't bring it up much when it's not relevant, higher probability they believe it for the right reasons.

Comment author: goodside 17 March 2010 12:44:37PM *  11 points [-]

I wouldn't answer the astrology/UFO question. Extraterrestrials visiting in flying human-vehicle-sized ships from human-visible distances is so horribly anthropomorphic as to make it immeasurably improbable. Both propositions are far less likely than me winning the lottery, and that's the best I can get from my wetware. Anything further is like asking, "Which are you more certain is a European country, France or Spain?"

Also, I'm inclined to avoid questions of this form on principle. It's like Yudkowsky's "blue tentacle" in Technical Explanation: Being able to find outs for a theory that doesn't fit evidence is anti-knowledge, and the more practice you get at it the crazier you become.

Comment author: RobinZ 17 March 2010 12:50:07PM *  16 points [-]

Spain is more Middle-Eastern than France and France was on the European front of both World Wars, so France. I can see your point, though.

Comment author: jhuffman 26 September 2011 09:03:43PM 10 points [-]

UFOs are possible given what we know of the universe. Unlikely, yes, but its possible to have them without us learning much new about the universe. Astrology, not so much. Astrology means we have totally whiffed on science and have to integrate all the contradictory information we have in ways that are unimaginable.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 17 March 2010 08:36:47PM 10 points [-]

A sufficiently good rationalist should probably decompose astrology and UFOs into different possible definitions and discuss both priors and the nature of the processes that probably produce the two beliefs.

Comment author: Strange7 27 June 2011 06:15:12AM 4 points [-]

I'd be willing to seriously consider astrology in the sense that what time of year someone was born, and thus the weather and food their mother was exposed to in utero or that they had to deal with during some early developmental window, could have consistent effects on personality.

I've heard enough conflicting explanations for "UFOs" that I think there probably is some real phenomenon to explain, even if it's just neurological.

Comment author: DanielLC 19 March 2012 12:11:13AM 5 points [-]

I've heard enough conflicting explanations for "UFOs" that I think there probably is some real phenomenon to explain, even if it's just neurological.

What makes you think there's only one?

Comment author: Emile 15 March 2010 10:56:45AM 37 points [-]

Another good indicator (as djbc said) is the level of certitude : if someone expresses more certitude on a complex topic like gun control than on a slamdunk like God - then I won't trust their confidence much.

Does that mean only hardcore atheists are worth listening to? Maybe, but some claims about religion are not that obvious - for example, is religion good or bad for society in terms of enforcing moral behaviour, facilitating cooperation, raising children, etc. ? I don't consider that question a slamdunk.

Another red flag for me is "clannish" language, presenting issues in terms of "group A vs group B" ("this is a victory for us", "hah, that shows them", etc.). It's a sign that the wrong part of the brain is being used.

Comment author: simplicio 15 March 2010 04:02:40AM 34 points [-]

I'll bite the bullet and say global warming is the perfect example here. It's pretty clear to me that many people hold their positions on this issue - pro and contra - for political/social reasons rather than evidential ones.

Unfortunately that often seems to be the case when there are vested interests in the answer going one way or the other.

The impact of genetics on behaviour is another example. Most of the educated people I know are ultra-behaviorists, so if I see somebody argue that genes matter (but aren't everything), they definitely get brownie points. Especially since such a view tends to be seen as vaguely quasi-racist.

Comment author: jimmy 16 March 2010 03:45:58AM *  25 points [-]

The problem with asking race related questions is that there's a much stronger social pressure to shut up if you believe something that comes off as racist.

If you support cryonics, the worst that happens is that you come off as having strange beliefs. Take most any factual claim about race and you're an asshole for even thinking about it.

Of course, once the person is confident that you won't attack them for holding politically incorrect views, you can start to get some information flow, but that takes time to develop comfort. That's actually my litmus test for how comfortable someone is with me- whether they'll actually say something that is really unPC.

Comment author: simplicio 16 March 2010 04:09:40AM 14 points [-]

The problem with asking race related questions is that there's a much stronger social pressure to shut up if you believe something that comes off as racist.

I'm at a loss as to what to do about that, because I do get where that pressure is coming from. In presenting such data, you can hedge and qualify all you want, but what many people are going to hear is just a lot of wonderful reasons why their prejudices were right all along, and how science proved it. What can anybody do? A remedial course in ethics ("moral equality does not require literal sameness")?

Sometimes I do think discussions of race and gender-related fact questions are best not done "in front of the goyim." It's a vexing question.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 16 March 2010 12:15:06PM 17 points [-]

There's an additional problem-- there's a social circle where the consensus is that believing in race and gender differences in ability is proof of rationality, so if you're trying to do a counter-tribe rationality check, you'd need to know which tribe has a stronger influence on a person.

If Africa has the most genetic variation for humans, does that imply it's likely that the smartest human subgroup is likely to be African?

Comment author: Strange7 27 June 2011 08:00:54AM 12 points [-]

All else being equal, yes. However, many regions of Africa have ongoing problems with public health, availability of education, etc. that would wash out any advantages in genetic predisposition for intelligence.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 15 March 2010 05:26:27PM 11 points [-]

Most of the educated people I know are ultra-behaviorists

I'm pretty sure you're misusing the word "behaviorist".

Comment author: simplicio 15 March 2010 05:32:45PM 11 points [-]

On reflection, you're right. It's a pars pro toto thing I guess, since behaviourism is associated with the idea that personality comes from the environment alone.

"Nurturist" is probably a better term.

Comment author: wedrifid 15 March 2010 04:40:55AM 11 points [-]

The impact of genetics on behaviour is another example. Most of the educated people I know are ultra-behaviorists, so if I see somebody argue that genes matter (but aren't everything), they definitely get brownie points. Especially since such a view tends to be seen as vaguely quasi-racist.

Are educated people really that badly informed? I would believe it but sometimes I overestimate how much my own knowledge is representative.

Comment author: CronoDAS 15 March 2010 08:46:16PM 17 points [-]

I've found that, in general, yes, people really are that badly informed about basically everything.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 15 March 2010 10:20:01PM 15 points [-]

I'm not sure people are that badly informed, so much as people are unwilling to admit beliefs that contradict the beliefs they are "supposed" to have.

Comment author: AlexMennen 16 March 2010 03:21:15AM 10 points [-]

"I'll bite the bullet and say global warming is the perfect example here. It's pretty clear to me that many people hold their positions on this issue - pro and contra - for political/social reasons rather than evidential ones."

I used to think that global warming was a poor example of this because while the right wing has plenty of reasons to oppose actions to fight global warming, and thus irrational reasons to force themselves to believe that global warming does not exist, the left wing does not have any reasons to support actions to fight global warming aside from evidence that global warming is a threat. Then it occurred to me that many people on the left actually do have alternate motives for pushing anti-global warming actions: other people on the left support it too (see Eliezer's The Sky is Green/Blue parable, and this article too, I suppose). This is even more irrational, but due to the stunning level of irrationality among humans on all sides of the political spectrum, is probably a factor for some.

Comment author: Jack 16 March 2010 03:40:59AM 16 points [-]

the left wing does not have any reasons to support actions to fight global warming aside from evidence that global warming is a threat.

The story conservatives usually tell here is that the left wants to fight global warming as a way to further their economic agenda and narrative: corporations are bad and the government needs to stop them and control them. You see slogans like "Green is the new red".

Comment author: Larks 19 March 2010 11:15:46AM 8 points [-]

Fighting global warming can be used to justify the creation of 'green' jobs, in a new spin on the old keynesian make work ideas.

Alternatively, it can be used to provide justification for 'green protectionism'.

Comment author: simplicio 16 March 2010 03:27:32AM 5 points [-]

Then it occurred to me that many people on the left actually do have alternate motives for pushing anti-global warming actions: other people on the left support it too

Bingo. The Michael Moore-style crowd is engaged in nothing less than an immense progressive circle-jerk, if you'll excuse my Klatchian. It's too bad we can't just throw them at the Limbaughistas and liberate gamma rays.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 18 March 2010 05:38:40PM *  4 points [-]

the left wing does not have any reasons to support actions to fight global warming aside from evidence that global warming is a threat.

However, someone who believes that global warming is a threat, and who has a poor grasp of ethics, has a motive to exaggerate the evidence, to compensate for others having too strict evidential standards or not doing cost-benefit analysis correctly.

Also, the image of oneself as on the vanguard of saving the world is a strong motivation to believe the world is endangered (overlapping with but distinct from group identity).

(Disclaimer: I don't think this is most of what's going on with AGW believers. Not having studied the issue, I default (albeit tentatively) to believing the scientific consensus.)

This is even more irrational, but due to the stunning level of irrationality among humans on all sides of the political spectrum, is probably a factor for some.

It's absolutely a factor. People are crazy, the world is mad, you shouldn't be surprised by this or hesitant in calling it as you see it.

Comment author: FAWS 15 March 2010 11:35:13AM *  7 points [-]

I'll bite the bullet and say global warming is the perfect example here. It's pretty clear to me that many people hold their positions on this issue - pro and contra - for political/social reasons rather than evidential ones.

There seems to be plenty of motivated arguing on both sides. But even though climate science is complicated the basic mechanism for CO2 raising temperatures is really simple and well supported by basic science. No one is disputing CO2's absorption spectrum (that I know of). It's possible that CO2 might not have any such effect on aggregate in a complicated system, but that would be quite remarkable and I don't think any mechanism has been proposed (other than that global warming is miraculously balancing out a coming ice age).

Comment author: Hook 15 March 2010 12:46:20PM 9 points [-]

My litmus test for whether someone even has the basic knowledge that might entitle them to the opinion that anthropogenic climate change isn't happening is: "All other things being equal, does adding CO2 to the atmosphere make the world warmer?"

The answer is of course "yes." Now, if a climate change non-skeptic answers "yes" the follow up question to see if they are entitled to their opinion that anthropogenic climate change is happening: "How could a climate change skeptic answer 'yes' to that question?" The correct answer to that is left as an exercise for the reader.

Comment author: FAWS 15 March 2010 01:16:35PM *  6 points [-]

For example like this:

  • Yes, but the behavior of one component of the system doesn't necessarily determine the behavior of the system as a whole. It's the responsibility of those who propose an anthropogenic climate change to prove that it's happening, not the other way round.

Most of the actual scientific debate seems to be centered around the reliability of the temperature record (and of different proxies) and of climate models (I consider it very likely that the skeptics are right on many of these issues), not around the question whether an anthropogenic climate change of some level is happening at all. At least I'm not aware of any climate scientist making the argument that no anthropogenic warming effect could possibly exist due to X (where X is some [proposed] physical reality, not something of the sort "that would be human hubris").

Comment author: brazil84 15 March 2010 06:18:37PM *  5 points [-]

I agree. Anyway, it's easy to talk about the God test now because you won't get burned at the stake or anything.

One modern equivalent to the God test is whether the person believes that genetics play a significant role in the black/white IQ difference. This has become an area where stating the (obvious) and rational truth will get you in a lot of social/career trouble.

Heck, it might even get you downvoted on Lesswrong :)

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 15 March 2010 07:40:01PM *  25 points [-]

Obvious truth? Maybe it is given all available information — I don't know — but certainly not given the information most people have. (And "rational truth" is just a positive-affect type error.)

I would agree, if "believes" were replaced by "is willing to entertain the hypothesis" or "doesn't think one must be a racist to believe".

Comment author: CarlShulman 16 March 2010 10:42:40AM *  14 points [-]

Talk to the experts in psychometrics, and they'll tell you that this is still an open question. It was a plurality (not majority or consensus) view in psychometrics that there was some genetic influence (beyond the obvious, e.g. black skin attracting discrimination, etc) back in 1984, but since then there has been other work that changes the picture, e.g. that of James Flynn, Will Dickens, and Richard Nisbett. It's unclear what a poll done today would reveal.

The experiments that would give huge likelihood ratios just haven't been done. Transracial adoption studies have been very few, flawed in design, and delivered conflicting results. And so far, genomics has revealed almost nothing positive about the genetic architecture of intelligence in any ethnicity, much less differences between ethnicities. Cheap genome sequencing may well bring answers there in the next 5-7 years, pinning down this debate with utterly overwhelming evidence, but it hasn't done so yet.

Comment author: Sarokrae 26 September 2011 10:04:32AM *  11 points [-]

The problem with discussing racial differences is that when people say "black", they're already making inherent assumptions about genetics. "Black" incorporates an incredible amount of genetic diversity, far more than the label "white". The common error in these debates is that an awful lot of the population will see the label "black" and fail to distinguish between all people labelled as such. People distinguish between, say, east Asians and south-east Asians and Indians, but they say "black" as if all of Africa are the same.

Look at the performance at the Olympics running races. Would you note the fact that "100m winners are always black"? Would you be willing to make the statement that "black people are naturally better sprinters"? How about distance runners? As it turns out, the good sprinters are usually Jamaican or African-American, with little success from Africa itself. The good distance runners almost entirely come from the Nandi area of Kenya - hardly representative of Africa as a whole. Plenty of areas of Africa have fewer good runners, and probably lots of areas have just the same proportion as European countries.

I'd venture to say that there might be black ethnicities which are on average less intelligent, or have behavioural differences - after all, there are black ethnicities that average around 4ft tall. But will that difference makes any meaningful average when you're talking about "black" people? There are for more genetic variations within racial groups than between them, if you're willing to count "black" as a racial group. I personally don't like generalising in such a non-meaningful way. Compare to people of a specific ancestral origin, if you must compare. Comparing with the average of every ethnicity in Africa, without concern for your sampling bias giving you an inaccurate average (by using statements like "blacks are..." or "blacks have..."), does seem a bit, well, racist.

Comment author: brazil84 26 September 2011 11:02:46AM *  12 points [-]

The problem with discussing racial differences is that when people say "black", they're already making inherent assumptions about genetics. "Black" incorporates an incredible amount of genetic diversity, far more than the label "white".

I don't see why this is necessarily a problem. For example, if I observed that generally speaking, the South is warmer than Minnesota, I would be correct even though the South incorporates a lot more geographic diversity than Minnesota.

People distinguish between, say, east Asians and south-east Asians and Indians, but they say "black" as if all of Africa are the same.

For purposes of this discussion, it's a reasonable category. If there were a large subgroup of blacks which was highly intelligent, then it might be appropriate to use different categories.

Would you note the fact that "100m winners are always black"?

Generally speaking, yes.

Would you be willing to make the statement that "black people are naturally better sprinters"?

Probably not, since sprinting ability seems concentrated in a subgroup of blacks. (Relatively) low intelligence does not seem to be this way.

Perhaps more importantly, either way you look at it, it doesn't change the fact that genetics is partly responsible for the black/white sprinting gap.

But will that difference makes any meaningful average when you're talking about "black" people?

I would say "yes" in the same way that the South is generally warmer than Minnesota. Put another way, I'm not aware of any subgroup of blacks which stands out in terms of intelligence. But even if there were, it would not change the fact that there is a black/white IQ gap and genetics is responsible for a lot of it.

There are for more genetic variations within racial groups than between them,

Assuming that's true, so what?

Comment author: Sarokrae 26 September 2011 11:40:00AM *  6 points [-]

It means that there are few contexts where you might ask me "are blacks less intelligent than whites on average" without me saying anything more than "insufficient data: error bars too big".

And any scientist who researches the issue (or indeed anyone taken seriously who discusses the issue) and uses the term "black people" without considering whether or not they really mean "all black people" or even "a representative average of all black people" are being very misleading if they report it using that wording, considering the biases of the general public.

Comment author: brazil84 26 September 2011 03:47:11PM 6 points [-]

It means that there are few contexts where you might ask me "are blacks less intelligent than whites on average" without me saying anything more than "insufficient data: error bars too big".

I'm not sure I understand this. Are you denying that there is a statistically significant difference in intelligence (as measured by IQ) between blacks and whites?

considering the biases of the general public.

So you are saying that special rules need to apply when discussing race and intelligence?

Comment author: Alicorn 15 March 2010 06:33:11PM 10 points [-]

What makes you think this is obvious? While racial IQ differences certainly aren't ruled out a priori (Ashkenazi Jews are the quintessential example), Occamian reasoning about the black/white divide doesn't indicate that genetics is part of the best and most parsimonious explanation. There are adequate other factors at work - you can pick up a lot of data from studies on things like stereotype threat, for instance. And the fact that biracial children do better on IQ when the mother is the white parent than when the mother is black seems strong evidence to me that genetics are not the whole story, if they play any part at all.

Comment author: ciphergoth 16 March 2010 11:33:21AM 15 points [-]

What sort of human variable doesn't correlate with race? Are any of weight, height, blood pressure, athletic ability, or any other more measurable characteristic uncorrelated? How about if we measure these at birth, to work around environmental effects?

Comment author: Hook 16 March 2010 12:02:07PM 13 points [-]

Athletic ability at birth isn't really all that variable. Besides, "at birth" doesn't eliminate in utero environmental effects.

Correlation with race does not mean genetic causation. Having 100% recent African ancestry correlates highly with living in Africa.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 March 2010 07:07:21AM *  9 points [-]

.

Comment author: Alicorn 18 March 2010 05:51:56PM 10 points [-]

This would predict that the difference would be seen in biracial boys, but not in biracial girls. I've never heard anything to that effect - have you?

Comment author: jimrandomh 15 March 2010 07:18:04PM 7 points [-]

And the fact that biracial children do better on IQ when the mother is the white parent than when the mother is black seems strong evidence to me that genetics are not the whole story, if they play any part at all.

It is not evidence for that at all; an alternative explanation for the difference is that a child's intelligence depends to a significant degree on the prenatal environment, which is determined by the mother's genetics exclusively. I predict that the extra degree of correlation between a mother's and child's intelligence over the correlation between a father's and child's intelligence will be very close to equal to the degree of correlation between a genetically unrelated surrogate mother and child's intelligence.

Comment author: FAWS 15 March 2010 07:52:54PM 9 points [-]

It is not evidence for that at all

It may not be proof, but it's certainly evidence.

renatal environment, which is determined by the mother's genetics exclusively.

Err, what? Smoking? Just to name the most obvious counter example.

Mitochondrial DNA would also be a possibility ("white" mitochondria being optimized for neurons, "black" mitochondria for muscle cells, say), but environmental factors seems by far the most obvious explanation.

Comment author: Jack 15 March 2010 07:44:50PM 8 points [-]

the prenatal environment, which is determined by the mother's genetics exclusively.

I don't know about exclusively.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 15 March 2010 10:54:12PM *  5 points [-]

As the mother is usually the more involved parent when it comes to raising the child, mother-based differences strongly suggest nurture-based differences, unless of course there is some specific and identifiable pathway by which the mother's genetic composition could play an outsized role. I'm not aware of any evidence that the prenatal environment provided by black women is systematically different from that of white women for any genetic reason. Though, in your defense, you were decent enough to make a falsifiable prediction based on this.

Comment author: brazil84 15 March 2010 08:21:49PM 6 points [-]

What makes you think this is obvious?

Looking at the totality of facts without letting my wishes color my judgment.

Believing in "stereotype threat" as the main reason for the black/white IQ gap is like believing in Aquinas' arguments for the existence of God.

strong evidence to me that genetics are not the whole story,

Anyway, I'm going to try to avoid getting into the details of the debate, but this little snippet is worthy of note.

In my earlier comment, I talked about genetics "play[ing] a significant role" When you respond with evidence that "genetics are not the whole story," you are not contradicting me in the slightest.

Instead you are attacking a strawman. Why would a person who ordinarily thinks intelligently and logically make such a glaring error? Respectfully, I submit to you that it's because your thinking is muddled on this issue.

The problem is that people today are afraid to believe that genetics play a significant role in the black/white IQ gap. As Eliezer would say, it's not like going to school wearing black -- it's like going to school wearing a clown costume. It's like being an atheist back in the day.

Comment author: Jack 15 March 2010 08:33:32PM *  19 points [-]

What makes you think this is obvious?

Looking at the totality of facts without letting my wishes color my judgment.

The reasonable and helpful interpretation of Alicorn's question was "What evidence are you basing this strongly-held belief on?" Asserting that you are basing your belief on evidence is not an answer. We get that you think this position is tantamount to being an atheist in the past. You don't have to keep making that analogy. Instead, give us the evidence. We can handle the ugly truth if you're right.

Comment author: brazil84 15 March 2010 08:47:57PM 8 points [-]

Asserting that you are basing your belief on evidence is not an answer

Basically you are right. I tried to answer the question without saying anything which would invite a debate on the actual race/iq question.

Looking back at my response, I should have made it clear that I wasn't giving the answer Allicorn was looking for. But I admit it now.

I'm a bit torn, but I will try to put together a blog post which lays out my case and link to it.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 15 March 2010 10:48:25PM *  9 points [-]

A cultural explanation could exclude a genetic one. Simply put, the culture transmitted by black parents is not conducive to intellectual growth, just as the culture transmitted by Ashkenazi Jews is conducive to intellectual growth. This would also explain Alicorn's example, as the mother is more likely to do most of the cultural transmission, it would explain that data.

I'm not advocating this position, and I'm certainly not generalizing about every single member of a very large group, but this would explain the observed discrepancy and data without requiring a genetic basis. The actual explanation is doubtlessly more complicated; the point is that there are certainly other ways of explaining observed data that do not rely on genetics. That doesn't mean that genetics isn't a factor, only that it's not the case that it must be a significant one.

Also, while we're at it, I hate the term "significant." It's one of the most effective weasel words in existence.

If I wanted to claim that any one of these factors plays a significant role in the difference, I'd need to provide evidence. Because genetics is hard to see and so directly intertwined with other factors (the parents who create you generally raise you), claiming, "Genetics must be a key factor!" requires a significant amount of unambiguous evidence.

I admit there may be better evidence on this than I am familiar with, but I would be very surprised if that were the case. Good data on this topic is very hard to procure funding for.

I agree wholeheartedly with NT's statement, though. People unwilling to entertain the possibility that genetics differ between ethnic subgroups are indeed failing at rationality, though I'd have to say a socially motivated failing at rationality is less blameworthy than a personally motivated one.

Comment author: thomblake 15 March 2010 10:56:37PM 5 points [-]

People unwilling to entertain the possibility that genetics differ between ethnic subgroups are indeed failing at rationality

Those people are failing at something much more basic than rationality. Likewise for folks who think intelligence does not have any basis in genetics (try to debate a douglas fir!)

It is obviously true that different people differ genetically, and obviously true that intelligence is related to genetics. But it is not obvious in this way that differences in intelligence between two humans would have anything to do with genetics.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 April 2011 02:53:14PM *  5 points [-]

I actually find the genetic explanation more hopefull. Genetic engineering would be a cheap and easy fix to the problem at least compared to the price of current and past attempts to close the gap.

If its culture then we are stuck with doing more or less the same things we have already done for 50 or so years, just with more money and more energy this time.

If its a mysterious hereditary factor but not the culture... I'm even less optimistic unless it would turn out to be a family of infectious agents that cause damage in the prenatal environment or alter gene expression.

Comment author: brazil84 18 April 2011 04:31:33PM 9 points [-]

I actually find the genetic explanation more hopefull. Genetic engineering would be a cheap and easy fix to the problem at least compared to the price of current and past attempts to close the gap.


I'm not too optimistic about genetic engineering. It seems that any engineering process requires a lot of failures before you figure out how to do things right. People can accept that a few astronauts and test pilots will die fiery deaths, but I doubt anyone could accept babies being born with brains messed up due to genetic tinkering.

The other thing is that poor man's genetic engineering -- i.e. eugenics -- has been available for some time now and people are very reluctant to embrace it. Even without forced sterilization, it hardly seems outrageous to tweak public policy so as to incentivize the smartest people to reproduce more and discourage the stupidest. And yet it seems it would be politically very difficult to enact even a mild policy along these lines -- its proponents would surely be condemned as racists.

Comment author: CaveJohnson 07 January 2012 03:59:40PM *  12 points [-]

The other thing is that poor man's genetic engineering -- i.e. eugenics -- has been available for some time now and people are very reluctant to embrace it. Even without forced sterilization, it hardly seems outrageous to tweak public policy so as to incentivize the smartest people to reproduce more and discourage the stupidest.

It is widely employed in the US by parents using (for whatever reason) modern reproductive technology.

Of course we don't call it that, but please what else is it, when the eggs of women with very high SAT or even GRE scores cost thousands of dollars to obtain than those that are merely average? What else is it when you search for a tall/athletic/musically talented/ academically successful sperm donor? Or terminating a pregnancy where the fetus is identified to have a genetic disorder?

Comment author: brazil84 07 January 2012 09:37:56PM 6 points [-]

It is widely employed in the US by parents using (for whatever reason) modern reproductive technology

I would say it depends what you mean by "widely employed." Among the left half of the American bell curve, what percentage of children would you guess are the result of modern reproductive technology and a voluntary search for a high IQ egg or sperm donor? I would guess it's well under 5%. i.e. not enough to have a big impact on the intelligence of future generations.

Comment author: CaveJohnson 08 January 2012 10:46:38AM 4 points [-]

Why is this down-voted?

He is right. Reproductive technology is mostly currently employed by people with above average IQ, not just because this is the general pattern with all almost all technology and medical services in general, but because high IQ people are more likley to be infertile at the period in their life when they want to have children.

Comment author: CaveJohnson 07 January 2012 04:17:10PM *  5 points [-]

And yet it seems it would be politically very difficult to enact even a mild policy along these lines -- its proponents would surely be condemned as racists.

I guess that's true. But it can be framed otherwise. Let me demonstrate:

"In America today, minorities are often hardest hit by the widening gap between the rich and the poor and the gap between the technologically savvy and unsavvy. Besides the more abstract measure of "genomic literacy" blogged on by editors of the New York Beta Times last week, a recent disturbing study by the FDA shows that only 15% of African American mothers and 21% of Hispanic American mothers conceive via artificial insemination compared to 40% of white American mothers and 47% of Asian American mothers. Democratic house leaders have called for more generous government assistance and educational programs to help minorities take advantage of these vital services. In related news Republicans stir controversy by calling existing government support for such programs "racist and unconstitutional" in the already fraught atmosphere of last weeks "quarrelling preacher couple" viral video. In the first part of the YouTube video rev. Matthew Young called genetic enhancement an abomination unto God and "another attempt by elitists to push social engineering and sin, masked by false eugenic and evolutionary pseudo-science, unto an unwilling and pious public". The second part of the video is a youtube respond where his husband Jeffrey Young explains that while he strives to fulfil God's commandments to obey his minister, he just can't bring himself to think God would want people to live poorer and less fulling lives and so supports certain uses of reproductive technology and thinks government should make them available. Is this just another sign of the religious right becoming a house divided on the issue? Some experts say that the outdated legislation of 2019 may be repelled earlier than... "

In a very slow and overly cautious approach of just selecting the best embryo of the mix for implantation or even just picking the best sperm and egg, you would get convergence between the groups rather rapidly. Innovation is expensive, copying is cheap in such circumstances. Any genetic advantages of say Askenazi Jews, other Europeans or East Asians will be pretty cheap source of cognitive enhancement for the third world, while the First world will have to mine its talented fraction, which may have somewhat more unpleasant side effects.

The reason why I believe a very slow and overly cautious approach might be probable, is because we already have a very slow and overly cautious approach when it comes to new medical technology.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 April 2011 09:44:04PM *  4 points [-]

I wasn't proposing we do anything novel, except the technology needed to modify genes in human eggs and perhaps sperm. Nothing truly transhuman in scope (for now).

I assume (eye-baling what I recall from the data) there are enough similarities between various disparate ethnicities and enough diversity within ethnicities that it wouldn't be that hard to simply spread around the wealth so to speak. Just increase the frequency of a few rare alleles or take a few from other groups. Or if you are feeling extra conservative, identify genes that where sweeping say a century or three ago (not sure exactly how long ago high IQ genes became maladaptive, estimating early dates for dysgenics in recent history is difficult) and are associated with IQ and just spread those.

Sure there are very likley some IQ increasing genes that simply wouldn't work for everyone or would cause some averse result, but again I expect these to be rare considering they've been test driven.

As for messed up brains... Just perfect technology for altering genes in eggs on animals, do only what nature has already done for a exceptional group or individual then simply vigorously screen among a few hundred created embryos to figure out which to implant so one can be certain to avoid bad PR.

Generally speaking I think there really is no reason that anyone needs to suffer a IQ lower than 100 in the late 21st century. I wouldn't however dictate to parents that they can't have low IQ children if they so desired, no more that I would at a later time forbid people from living and reproducing as the Homos Sapiens classic. Nature has tested the design, it works mostly, and the benefit to mankind should we find a way to help the lower half of the bell-curve catch up at least to the current average would be immense. The non-negligible increases in economic productivity would be dwarfed by gains in quality of life. This is why I am and have been for so long a supporter of transhumanism, its potential to improve the human condition through enhancement has always captivated my imagination.

The other thing is that poor man's genetic engineering -- i.e. eugenics -- has been available for some time now and people are very reluctant to embrace it. Even without forced sterilization, it hardly seems outrageous to tweak public policy so as to incentivize the smartest people to reproduce more and discourage the stupidest. And yet it seems it would be politically very difficult to enact even a mild policy along these lines

I actually think that having the government step away from barring people access to their genetic information as well as limiting with unnecessary regulation their access to technologies that require in vitro fertilisation (in my own country only infertile couples have access to it), a greater acceptance of genetics and evolution, and a academic culture less biased against hereditarian explanations would result in a strong enough trend of people making eugenic choices to counteract most of the dysgenic decline we are experiencing. Voluntary eugenics is a wonderful way how people can improve the lives of their children.

In the big picture two human generations is a short period from a biological perspective. As long as genetic engineering of humans is available and accepted by 2060 I remain optimistic about humanities long term chances. However if the date would be pushed back to 2090 or if enhancement wasn't accepted in most of the developed world, or perhaps limited to regions with authoritarian regimes then I would be very much concerned.

Comment author: brazil84 19 April 2011 09:55:30AM 4 points [-]

As for messed up brains... Just perfect technology for altering genes in eggs on animals, do only what nature has already done for a exceptional group or individual then simply vigorously screen among a few hundred created embryos to figure out which to implant so one can be certain to avoid bad PR.

Maybe, we are pretty much in the realm of speculation here. I am still skeptical but I will concede the possibility that with a conservative approach including animal testing, these sorts of genetic modifications might be done with minimal risk to humans. I tend to doubt it based on the observation I made before. Also, I think it's reasonable to expect that different alleles interact and affect an organism in a lot of subtle, unpredictable ways. Dog breeders know that trying to improve one feature often has deleterious effects on other, seemingly unrelated features.

And getting your typical American of low intelligence (perhaps IQ 85) to a point where he can succeed in college (perhaps IQ 115) would seem to require a pretty big jump.

a greater acceptance of genetics and evolution, and a academic culture less biased against hereditarian explanations would result in a strong enough trend of people making eugenic choices to counteract most of the dysgenic decline we are experiencing. Voluntary eugenics is a wonderful way how people can improve the lives of their children.

I kinda doubt that the people towards the bottom of the IQ spectrum have much interest in boosting the intelligence of their children. This is based on general observation of the kind of traits they select for in mating.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 January 2012 03:50:36PM 8 points [-]

Dog breeders know that trying to improve one feature often has deleterious effects on other, seemingly unrelated features.

Since we're basically talking about IQ, the negative side effects on anything like personality or health would have to be really big to outweigh the sheer socio-economic benefits one can statistically expect for say a boost of 10 or 20 or 30 IQ points.

I kinda doubt that the people towards the bottom of the IQ spectrum have much interest in boosting the intelligence of their children. This is based on general observation of the kind of traits they select for in mating.

Depressingly plausible.

Comment author: Jack 15 March 2010 08:44:48PM 6 points [-]

Anyone know if there is a racial IQ gap between blacks and whites in the UK?

Comment author: DonGeddis 16 March 2010 10:06:06PM 27 points [-]

Proposed litmus test: infanticide.

General cultural norms label this practice as horrific, and most people's gut reactions concur. But a good chunk of rationality is separating emotions from logic. Once you've used atheism to eliminate a soul, and humans are "just" meat machines, and abortion is an ok if perhaps regrettable practice ... well, scientifically, there just isn't all that much difference between a fetus a couple months before birth, and an infant a couple of months after.

This doesn't argue that infants have zero value, but instead that they should be treated more like property or perhaps like pets (rather than like adult citizens). Don't unnecessarily cause them to suffer, but on the other hand you can choose to euthanize your own, if you wish, with no criminal consequences.

Get one of your friends who claims to be a rationalist. See if they can argue passionately in favor of infanticide.

Comment author: simplicio 17 March 2010 04:03:57AM *  31 points [-]

Once you've used atheism to eliminate a soul, and humans are "just" meat machines, and abortion is an ok if perhaps regrettable practice ...

Kudos to you for forthrightness. But em... no. Ok, first, it seems to me you've swept the ethics of infanticide under the rug of abortion, and left it there mostly unaddressed. Is an abortion an "ok if regrettable practice?" You've just assumed the answer is always yes, under any circumstances.

I personally say "definitely yes" before brain development (~12 weeks I think), "you need to talk to your doctor" between 12 and 24 weeks, and "not unless it's going to kill you" after 24 weeks (fully functioning brain). Anybody who knows more about development is welcome to contradict me, but those were the numbers I came up with a few years ago when I researched this.

If a baby/fetus has a mind, in my books it should be accorded rights - more and more so as it develops. I fail to see, moreover, where the dividing line ought to be in your view. Not to slippery-slope you but - why stop at infants?

*(Also note that this is a first-principles ethical argument which may have to be modified based on social expedience if it turns into policy. I don't want to encourage botched amateur abortions and cause extra harm. But those considerations are separate from the question of whether infants have worth in a moral sense.)

Once you've used atheism to eliminate a soul, and humans are "just" meat machines...

This gave me a nasty turn, because probably the most annoying idea religious people have is that if we're "just" chemicals, then nothing matters. One has to take pains to say that chemicals are just what we're made of. We have to be made out of something! :) And what we're made of has precisely zero moral significance (would we have more worth if we were made out of "spirit"?).

I mean, I could sit here all day and tell you about how you shouldn't read "Moby Dick," because it's just a bunch of meaningless pigment squiggles on compressed wood pulp. In a certain very trivial sense I am absolutely right - there is no "élan de Moby Dick" floating out in the aether somewhere independent of physical books. On the other hand I am totally missing the point.

Comment author: DonGeddis 17 March 2010 05:56:29PM 15 points [-]

Is an abortion an "ok if regrettable practice?" You've just assumed the answer is always yes, under any circumstances.

Sorry, you have a point that my test won't apply to every rationalist.

The contrast I meant was: if you look at the world population, and ask how many people believe in atheism, materialism, and that abortion is not morally wrong, you'll find a significant minority. (Perhaps you yourself are not in that group.)

But if you then try to add "believes that infanticide is not morally wrong", your subpopulation will drop to basically zero.

But, rationally, the gap between the first three beliefs, and the last one, is relatively small. Purely on the basis of rationality, you ought to expect a smaller dropoff than we in fact see. Hence, most people in the first group are avoiding the repugnant conclusion for non-rational reasons. (Or believing in the first three, for non-rational reasons.)

If you personally don't agree with the first three premises, then perhaps this test isn't accurate for you.

Comment author: wnoise 20 March 2010 05:42:30AM 11 points [-]

If a baby/fetus has a mind, in my books it should be accorded rights - more and more so as it develops. I fail to see, moreover, where the dividing line ought to be in your view. Not to slippery-slope you but - why stop at infants?

The standard answer is that at that point there is no longer a conflict with the rights of the women whose body the infant was hooked into. We don't generally require that people give up their bodily autonomy to support the life of others.

Comment author: simplicio 20 March 2010 07:00:19AM 4 points [-]

We don't generally require that people give up their bodily autonomy to support the life of others.

The complication here is that a responsible, consenting adult tacitly accepts giving up her bodily autonomy (or accepts a risk of doing so) when she has sex. That's precisely the same reason men are required to pay child support even if they didn't wish for a pregnancy. (Yes, I see the asymmetry; yes, it sucks).

Case-by-case reasoning is probably a good thing in these circs, but unless the mother was not informed (minor/mental illness) or did not consent, then the only really tenable reason for a late-term abortion I can think of is health. In which case the relative weighing of rights is a tricky business, a buck I will pass to doctors, patients & hospital ethics boards.

Comment author: wnoise 20 March 2010 07:57:37AM *  6 points [-]

but unless the mother was not informed (minor/mental illness) or did not consent,

This is already a significant retreat from your previously stated position. ("not unless it's going to kill you" after 24 weeks)

The complication here is that a responsible, consenting adult tacitly accepts giving up her bodily autonomy (or accepts a risk of doing so) when she has sex.

That's a hell of an assertion. I don't really see any reason to accept it as other than a normative statement of what you wish would happen.

That's precisely the same reason men are required to pay child support even if they didn't wish for a pregnancy. (Yes, I see the asymmetry; yes, it sucks).

As you say, there is an asymmetry. Garnishing a wage is a bit different, and seems appropriate to me.

Case-by-case reasoning is probably a good thing in these circs,

Yes, it is, so long as it is reasoning rather than assertions that this case is different. We have to specify how it is different, and how those differences make a difference. The easiest way for me to do this is to use analogies. This is dangerous of course, as one must keep in mind that they can ignore relevant differences while emphasizing surface similarities.

So, in this case the relevant specialness you're calling out is that a risky activity was knowingly engaged in that created a person who needs life support for some time, as well as care and feeding far after that. So I'm going to try to set up an analogous situation, but without sex being the act (which I think is irrelevant) coming into the mix. This will also mean another difference: the person will not be "created" except metaphorically from a preëxisting person. I personally don't see how that would be relevant, but I suppose it is possible for others to disagree.

Suppose a person is driving, and crashes into a pedestrian. This ruptures the liver of the pedestrian. A partial transplant of the driver's liver will save the pedestrian's life. Is the driver expected to donate their liver? Should it be required by law?

Note that the donor's death rate for this operation is under 1%. When we compare this to the statistics for maternal death, we see it is similar to WHO's 2005 estimate of world average of 900 per 100,000, though developed regions have it far lower at 9 per 100000.

Comment author: simplicio 20 March 2010 09:09:11PM 4 points [-]

This is already a significant retreat from your previously stated position. ("not unless it's going to kill you" after 24 weeks)

Is it? I suppose it is. I contain multitudes. No, honestly, I just didn't name all my caveats in the previous post (my bad). Clearly there are two people's interests to take into consideration here. Also, as I noted, that was an ethical rather than legal argument. I don't have any strong opinions about what the law should do wrt this question.

That's a hell of an assertion. I don't really see any reason to accept it as other than a normative statement of what you wish would happen.

I don't think it's unreasonable, although you're right it's not a fact statement. But I think it's a fairly well-established principle of ethics & jurisprudence that informed consent implies responsibility. Nobody has to have unprotected sex, so if you (a consenting adult) do so, any reasonably foreseeable consequences are on your shoulders.

Suppose a person is driving, and crashes into a pedestrian. This ruptures the liver of the pedestrian. A partial transplant of the driver's liver will save the pedestrian's life. Is the driver expected to donate their liver? Should it be required by law?

It's a reasonably good analogy I guess. There are two separate questions here: what should the law do, and what should the driver do. I don't think anybody wants the law to require organ donations from people who behave irresponsibly. However, put in the driver's shoes, and assuming the collision was my fault, I would feel obligated to donate (if, in this worst-case scenario, I am the only one who can).

There is a slight disanalogy here though, which is that an abortion is an act, whereas a failure to donate is an omission. It's like the difference between throwing the fat guy on the tracks and just letting the train hit the fat guy.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 March 2010 01:19:04AM *  4 points [-]

.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 March 2010 06:31:14PM 28 points [-]

Despite some jokes I made earlier, things that could arguably depend on values don't make good litmus tests. Though I did at one point talk to someone who tried to convert me to vegetarianism by saying that if I was willing to eat pork, it ought to be okay to eat month-old infants too, since the pigs were much smarter. I'm pretty sure you can guess where that conversation went...

Comment author: ata 17 March 2010 09:52:27PM 28 points [-]

I'm pretty sure you can guess where that conversation went...

You started eating month-old infants?

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 19 March 2010 09:38:14PM 14 points [-]

Option zero: "There's an interesting story I once wrote..."

Option one: "Well then, I won't/don't eat pork. But that doesn't mean I won't eat any animals. I can be selective in which I eat."

Option two: "mmmmm... babies."

Option three: "Why can't I simply not want to eat babies? I can simply prefer to eat pigs and not babies"

Option four: "Seems like a convincing argument to me. Okay, vegetarian now." (after all, technically you said they tried, but you didn't say the failed. ;))

Option five: "actually, I already am one."

Am I missing any (somewhat) plausible branches it could have taken? More to the point, is one of the above the direction it actually went? :)

(My model of you, incidentally, suggests option three as your least likely response and option one as your most likely serious response.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 March 2010 10:59:15PM 29 points [-]

Well, not quite option two, but yes, "You make a convincing case that it should be legal to eat month-old infants." One person's modus ponens is another's modus tollens...

Comment author: DanielLC 18 March 2012 11:54:26PM *  11 points [-]

Option six: "I was a vegetarian, but I'm okay with eating babies, and if pigs are just as smart, it should be okay to eat them too, so you've convinced me to give up vegetarianism."

This reminds me of the elves in Dwarf Fortress. They eat people, but not animals.

Comment author: Desrtopa 29 May 2011 04:22:56PM 11 points [-]

I actually did a presentation arguing for the legality of eating babies in a Bioethics class.

And I don't eat pigs, on moral grounds.

Comment author: ciphergoth 18 March 2010 09:00:14AM 10 points [-]

I'm imagining this conversation while you're both holding menus...

In seriousness, there are good instrumental reasons not to allow people to eat month-old infants that are nothing to do with greatly valuing them in your terminal values.

Comment author: Morendil 17 March 2010 09:15:06AM 26 points [-]

Time of birth serves as a bright line.

Comment author: ciphergoth 17 March 2010 10:15:21AM 12 points [-]

Very much agreed. This is also why we place much more moral value in the life of a severely brain-damaged human than a more intelligent non-human primate.

Comment author: CronoDAS 16 March 2010 11:20:27PM *  22 points [-]

Basically, this is a variant on the argument from marginal cases; infants don't differ from relatively intelligent nonhuman animals in capabilities, so they ought to have the same moral status. If it's okay to euthanize your dog, it should also be okay to euthanize your newborn.

(The most common use of the argument from marginal cases is to argue that animals deserve greater moral consideration, and not that some humans deserve less, but one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens.)

Comment author: Jack 17 March 2010 06:36:37PM *  22 points [-]

(The most common use of the argument from marginal cases is to argue that animals deserve greater moral consideration, and not that some humans deserve less, but one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens.)

Cerca 1792 after Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Women a philosopher name Thomas Taylor published a reductio ad absurdum/ parody entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes which basically took Wollstonecrafts arguments for more gender equality and replaced women with animals. It reads more or less like an animal rights pamphlet written by Peter Singer.

Comment author: khafra 24 March 2010 06:12:36PM 5 points [-]

Professor Mordin Solus solves marginal cases by refusing to experiment on any species with at least one member capable of Calculus, which is a bit different from criticism, "argument from species normality."

Comment author: wnoise 24 March 2010 06:19:57PM *  10 points [-]

any species with at least one member capable of Calculus,

Any species with at least one member who has demonstrated to humans the capability of Calculus.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 24 March 2010 06:35:59PM *  15 points [-]

So it's perfectly acceptable to use a time machine to gather your experimental subjects from before the 17th century.

Also, once a human solves the problem of friendly AI, aliens will stop abducting us and accept us as moral agents.

Comment author: khafra 24 March 2010 07:26:58PM 5 points [-]

That sounds like a reasonable conclusion--compared to an intelligence capable enough of introspection and planning to make a friendly AI, the overwhelming majority of my actions arise purely from unreasoning instinct.

Comment author: Alicorn 16 March 2010 10:19:07PM 22 points [-]

I like this test, with the following cautions:

The regrettability of abortion is connected to the availability of birth control, and so similarly, the regrettability of infanticide should be connected to the availability of abortion. A key difference is that while birth control may fail, abortion basically doesn't. I can think of a handful of reasons for infanticide to make sense when abortion didn't, and they're all related to things like unexpected infant disability the parents aren't prepared to handle, or sudden, badly timed, unanticipated financial/family stability disasters.

In either case, given that the baby doesn't necessarily occupy privileged uterine real estate the way a fetus must, I think it makes sense to push adoption as strongly preferred recourse before infanticide reaches the top of the list. Unlike asking a woman who wants an abortion to have the baby and give it up for adoption, this imposes no additional cost on her relative to the alternative.

Additionally, I think any but the most strongly controlled permission for infanticide would lead to cases where one parent killed their baby over the desire of the other parent to keep it. It seems obvious to me that either parent's wish that the baby live - assuming they're willing to raise it or give it up for adoption, and don't just vaguely prefer that it continue being alive while the wants-it-dead parent deal with its actual care - should be a sufficient condition that it live. I might even extend this to other relatives.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 17 March 2010 08:34:11PM 14 points [-]

A key point is that they don't need to advocate the legalization of infanticide, they just need to be able to cogently address the arguments for and against it. Personally, I think that in the US at this time optimal law might restrict abortion significantly more than it currently does and also that in many past cultural contexts efforts to outlaw or seriously deter infanticide would have been harmful. Just disentangling morality from law competently gets a person props.

Comment author: taw 23 July 2011 10:51:07AM 13 points [-]

That's an amusing example because infanticide was extremely common among human cultures, so all good cultural relativists should be fine with this practice.

Usually there was a strong distinction between actually killing a baby (extremely wrong thing to do), and abandoning it to elements (acceptable). I'm not talking about any exotic cultures, ancient Greece and Rome and even large parts of Christian Medieval Europe practiced infant abandonment. There are even examples of Greek and Roman writers noting how strange it is that Egyptians and Jews never kill their children - perfect stuff for any cultural relativists. It was only once people switched from abandoning infants to elements to abandoning them at churches when it ceased being outright infanticide.

Anyway, pretty much the only reason babies are cute is as defense against abandonment. This shows it was never anything exceptional and was always a major evolutionary force. By some estimates up to 50% of all babies were killed or abandoned to certain death in Paleolithic societies (all such claims are highly speculative of course).

Infant abandonment is normal, and people should have the same right to abandon their babies as they always had. Especially since these days we just put them into orphanages. Choosing infanticide over abandonment is pretty pointless, so why do it?

A lot of sources can be easily found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide

Comment author: Clippy 17 March 2010 11:20:32PM 13 points [-]

Infanticide and abortion are okay, as long as doing so increases paperclip production.

However, infanticide and abortion are obviously not alone in that respect.

Comment author: mattnewport 17 March 2010 11:25:54PM 26 points [-]

How do you feel about the destruction of a partially bent piece of steel wire before it has been bent fully into paperclip shape?

Comment author: Clippy 17 March 2010 11:29:20PM 26 points [-]

Is that some kind of threat???

Comment author: Jack 16 March 2010 11:41:52PM *  11 points [-]

I'll be the first to disagree outright.

First, when a woman is pregnant but will be unable to raise her child we do not force a woman to give birth to give up the baby for adoption. This is because bringing a child to term is a painful, expensive and dangerous nine-month ordeal which we do not think women should be forced into. In what possible circumstances is infanticide ethically permissible when the baby is born, the woman has already paid the cost of pregnancy and giving birth, and adoption is an option?

In general, I'm not sure it follows from the fact that persons aren't magic that persons are less valuable than we thought. Maybe babies are just glorified goldfish. Maybe they aren't valuable in the way we thought they were. But I haven't seen that evidence.

Comment author: wedrifid 19 March 2010 11:16:00PM 8 points [-]

Don't unnecessarily cause them to suffer, but on the other hand you can choose to euthanize your own, if you wish, with no criminal consequences.

Yes, I should also be allowed to kill adults. Especially if they have it coming. After all, the infant still has a chance to grow up to make a worthwhile contribution while there are many adults that are clearly a waste of good oxygen or worse!

Comment author: lispalien 16 March 2010 11:32:29PM 8 points [-]

My mother made this argument to me probably when I was in high school. Given my position as past infanticide candidate, it was an odd conversation. For the record, she was willing to go up to two or six years old, I think.

And let us not forget the Scrubs episode she also agreed with: "Having a baby is like getting a dog that slowly learns to talk."

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 March 2010 06:37:03PM 21 points [-]

My mother made this argument to me probably when I was in high school. Given my position as past infanticide candidate, it was an odd conversation.

Hey, now you know you were kept around because you were actually wanted, not out of a dull sense of obligation. It's like having a biological parent who is totally okay with giving up children for adoption - and stuck around!

Comment author: lispalien 25 March 2010 05:47:09AM *  6 points [-]

That's an interesting take. She clearly loves me and my siblings and has never hurt anyone to the best of my knowledge, besides. So, it wasn't an uncomfortable topic--only a bit of an odd position to be in.

Although, I also have to point out adoption does not carry the death penalty, so I can imagine a situation in which my hypothetical parent opts not to kill me because they think the fuzz will catch them.

Comment author: wnoise 17 March 2010 06:27:02AM *  13 points [-]

I have said before "I'm a moderate on abortion -- I feel it should be okay up to the fifth trimester." While this does shock people into adjusting what boundaries might be considered acceptable, I no longer think it is something useful to say in most fora. Too much chance of offending people and just causing their brains to shut off.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 17 March 2010 08:29:54PM 6 points [-]

Sounds like it would be interesting to have your mother make some comments on LW, if you think she would be interested.

Comment author: Rain 19 March 2010 06:47:35PM *  5 points [-]

Real world test of human value along similar lines: Ashley X.

Comment author: Strange7 18 March 2010 12:51:48AM 5 points [-]

I'd say the primary value of an infant is the future value of an adult human minus the conversion cost. Adult humans can be enormously valuable, but sometimes, the expected benefits just can't match the expected costs, in which case infanticide would be advisable.

However, both costs and benefits can vary by many orders of magnitude depending on context, and there's no reliable, generally-applicable method to predict either. No matter how bad it looks, someone else might have a more optimistic estimate, so it's worth checking the market (that is, considering adoption).

Comment author: FAWS 16 March 2010 10:15:07PM 4 points [-]

Voted up, but I think abortion shouldn't be legal once the fetus is old enough to have brain activity other than for medical reasons (life of the mother), and I'm an unrepentant speciesist.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 15 March 2010 10:25:08PM *  27 points [-]

There's an additional issue of subtlety that isn't addressed here. People will typically reveal "improper" views by starting small and seeing if their audience is sympathetic, not because they are irrational, but because they aren't stupid and they care about consequences.

That is, if I'm in some highly religious town, I'm not going to open my conversation with, "So, this whole God thing makes about as much sense as Santa Claus, am I right?" I'm going to open with, "You know, there's something about the story of Job that just doesn't sit right with me," or something else small, safe, and exploratory.

Comment author: Shae 16 March 2010 02:05:16PM 10 points [-]

Agreed. There's another reason why people might give religion the "respect" of treating it worthy of debate, while not doing so with astrology. One might feel that religious people are taking their agendas into politics and school classrooms to the detriment of society in a way that astrologists are not, and might therefore give religionists the respect necessary to engage them in debate and hopefully change their minds.

Comment author: djcb 15 March 2010 06:48:34AM 18 points [-]

I think it's also important to mention that not having a (strong) opinion on something may be the best (rational) thing to do, when things are not so clear.

For many things (say, the AGW controversy) it's not so clear-cut as to where to find the 'truth' (I do happen to find it more likely that there is a thing called AGW and that it really could lead to great problems... but to what extent? Hard to say). Saying that you don't know may sometimes be the best answer.

Now all we need is a test to separate 'I don't know' from ignorance to 'I don't know' because your epistemic error margins are too big...

(btw, I found this an excellent article)

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 15 March 2010 03:38:08AM 17 points [-]

I don't believe in UFOs.

To my own great embarrassment, I have experienced a "UFO sighting". It was in the late 1990s in Phoenix, Arizona. What I saw was 7 or 8 bright orbs in the shape of a triangle traveling very slowly over the Phoenix/Scottsdale area (which is why I thought it was a blimp at first). After about a minute and comparing it to a nearby mountain I decided that it couldn't possibly be a blimp. The length and width were way too large. Next, I thought that perhaps it was flares, but after watching it for about 10 more minutes was sure they they had either floated higher into the sky or stayed the same altitude and were still in the same configuration with respect to each other (an isosceles triangle).

Before my personal experience, I had assumed that the people on those ridiculous documentary shows on the Discovery Channel were simply fools or people suffering from a psychological illness. I wasn't the kind of person who believed in that stuff. The next day I started questioning if I even saw it (after all, I would probably has ridiculed someone who told me they saw such a thing the previous day). It must have been a mistake. A few months later, I rationalized it by telling myself that it had been a dream. This worked until my mother (who also saw it) reminded me about something that happened on that same day.

Comment author: JamesAndrix 15 March 2010 05:11:05AM 31 points [-]

Well, not believing in "UFOs" is just silly to start. They are definitely up there. The disagreement is usually over what they are.

You should certainly not be embarrassed. What you describe doesn't even rank as a sign of foolishness or psychological illness. Probably at worst it means you're not used to looking at aerial phenomena, so you couldn't identify it. On a bad day, it's taken me a little while to identify the Moon.

If you would have discounted as crazy someone who made a report like you just did, that was a rationalist error. Strangely moving lights in the sky are often reported by multiple witnesses and captured on videotape.

Comment author: nazgulnarsil 15 March 2010 07:46:33PM 25 points [-]

it is a grave mistake to believe that ultra-rationality means immediate dismissal of sensory experiences that (currently) have no good explanation.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 March 2010 09:56:17AM *  11 points [-]

My father was once involved in an UFO sighting - he built the UFO, and did the sound effects too, when the other kids got close. Summer camp was involved.

Hope no one ever told those kids it was a flock of birds...

Comment author: Eneasz 18 March 2010 07:37:45PM 6 points [-]

I had a very similar UFO sighting, just a couple months ago. Fortunately I've been consuming rationalist media for a long time, and I was able to say "There is a non-magic answer to this question, just because I don't know the answer doesn't mean UFOs exist. My map is incomplete, but the territory isn't magic."

It doesn't make the creepy shiver-up-your-spine and cold-knot-in-your-stomach feelings go away, those are biological reactions. But it does let you accept them and ride them out, like the cramp you know will go away in a while that isn't ACTUALLY a knife in your leg, no matter how much it feels like it.

Comment author: TimFreeman 08 May 2011 08:29:19PM 4 points [-]

Don't discount the possibility of a joke. Wouldn't it be fun to make an assembly of PVC pipe, lights, a motor, batteries, and a large balloon, launch it, and watch people make up excuses about what it is?

Actually, I remember where I first heard the idea, and if I recall correctly it was a triangle over Arizona somewhere. I don't recall whether the joke hypothesis was based on seeing the thing fly or seeing the thing be assembled or hearing reports from the people who assembled it. I'll forward a pointer to your article to the person I heard it from and see if he wants to share what he knows.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 18 November 2011 03:15:33PM 16 points [-]

No, I don't believe in UFOs either

Sometimes things are in flight and the observers can't identify them. What we don't believe in is paranormal or space alien explanations for UFOs.

I've seen undiscriminating skepticism applied to doubting the reports of slightly weird things in the sky.

Comment author: JulianMorrison 16 March 2010 05:18:00PM 16 points [-]

Of course, once you pick a test you have to keep it secret - a well known test will be memorized as a shibboleth.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 16 March 2010 10:54:40PM *  14 points [-]

Did anyone read this post and worry whether they're one of the poseurs and not one of the true-blooded rationalists?

I could believe I'm a poseur with respect to this group, i.e. adopting the opinions of the average Less Wrong reader without doing much thinking myself. But this might be rational in the case of issues where the average Less Wrong reader has done more thinking than me, right?

But I do propose that before you give anyone credit for being a smart, rational skeptic, that you ask them to defend some non-mainstream belief. And no, atheism doesn't count as non-mainstream anymore, no matter what the polls show. It has to be something that most of their social circle doesn't believe, or something that most of their social circle does believe which they think is wrong.

Maybe we should have a thread where we all do this? Heh, what a cult initiation ceremony that would be: loudly proclaim to the cult what they're wrong about.

Comment author: CronoDAS 15 March 2010 03:43:49AM *  14 points [-]

To what extent does "ability to choose the right tribe" mitigate "undiscriminating skepticism"? There are lots of different tribes with different beliefs, and people often explicitly choose what tribe to affiliate with...

As far as I can tell, "not-mainstream" (for the right value of "mainstream") is almost always a huge hurdle to overcome...

Comment author: Rain 15 March 2010 03:40:35AM *  12 points [-]

I've used AI as a sniff test many times (>10 tests), along with better-than-human humans (posthumans) and engineered immortality (SENS). Very few people, even those who are smart and educated, are able to argue against them rationally. Every time I've been given more than 10 minutes to discuss the point with someone who disagrees they're possible, it comes down to some sort of mystical mysteriousness which humankind cannot fathom or recreate. Quite often (>20%), it's even revealed a religiosity in the person they don't express in any other way apparent to me (god of the gaps).

Comment author: Nirgal 15 March 2010 01:36:55PM 11 points [-]

Poincare said: “To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.”

Comment author: clarissethorn 15 March 2010 02:23:54AM 10 points [-]

Sorry if this is overly tangential, but as a sex educator I'm interested to know what you all think are your tribal beliefs around sexuality, and what kind of sexuality-related arguments would lead you to consider someone to be defending a non-mainstream belief.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 March 2010 02:42:44AM 16 points [-]

Heh. My tribal beliefs are from reading Spider Robinson books as a teen. Ciphergoth is an example of the sort of person I grew up thinking of as normal, and I've always felt a little guilty about not being bisexual. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to go outside that mainstream, which is one reason I went to the lengths of postulating legalized rape in Three Worlds Collide.

Comment author: ciphergoth 15 March 2010 08:43:44AM 7 points [-]

*smiles* I'm sure you know this, but I don't think it makes any sense to think you should enjoy X. And I agree, alt-sex is not a useful discriminator here. I've been having a lot of arguments about cryonics with my friend David Gerard who is also an alt-sex community member, and this article could have been written specifically with him in mind (as well as other contributors to the "RationalWiki" article on cryonics).

There's a warning flag you don't mention: the logical rudeness of the skeptical Gish Gallop. I have over and over again begged David to pick one counter-argument to cryonics and really press it home. Instead he insists on picking up everything that looks to him like shit and flinging it as fast as he can, and it appears to give him no pause at all when one argument after another turns out to be without merit.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 March 2010 08:47:51AM 16 points [-]

I'm sure you know this, but I don't think it makes any sense to think you should enjoy X.

Why doesn't it make sense? If there were a pill to turn me bisexual, I'd take it, modulo the fact that in general I take almost no pills (it'd have to be really really safe, but I hold all mind-affecting substances to that standard, don't drink etcetera, it's not a special case for the bisexuality pill).

Comment author: ata 15 March 2010 09:13:00AM *  14 points [-]

I'm somewhat sympathetic to that idea (I haven't felt guilty about being straightish, but I've wished I were more bisexual once in a while, and succeeded in pushing myself in that direction in some cases), but I'm curious now: is gender the only dimension you'd apply that to? Would you also take a pill (again assuming it's really really safe) that would make all outward physical attributes irrelevant to how attractive you find someone? Would you take a pill that would make you enjoy every non-harmful sexual practice/fetish (not necessarily seeking them out, but able to enjoy it if a partner initiated it)?

(I originally started writing this comment thinking something like "hmm, I'd take the bi-pill, but let's take that reasoning to its vaguely-logical conclusion and see if it's still palatable", but now I'm actually thinking I'd probably take both of those pills too.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 March 2010 10:25:38AM 10 points [-]

Well, to ask the non-mainstream-relative-to-this-community version of the question, ask "Would I take the loli pill?"

Comment author: CronoDAS 15 March 2010 07:40:49PM 18 points [-]

How about the anti-Westermark effect pill? ;)

Comment author: clarissethorn 15 March 2010 10:43:50AM 5 points [-]

I'd definitely take all three of the above pills. In fact, I wonder how much harm such pills would have to do for me not to take them.

Comment author: Strange7 15 March 2010 04:16:39PM 4 points [-]

There is a well-established mechanism within the transformation fetish subculture making use of devices which work a bit like temporary tattoos, altering the subject's body and/or personality in ways both profound and fully reversible. Like most magic intended to make a story possible rather than to make it interesting, the patches in question are entirely without negative side effects.

As demonstrated with Clippy, I would be willing to provide further information even if doing so does not serve my long-term interests in any obvious way.

Comment author: ciphergoth 15 March 2010 09:25:25AM 6 points [-]

Why would you take such a pill? So that you can have more fun, or for some other reason?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 March 2010 10:22:41AM 17 points [-]

So I wouldn't miss out on half the fun.

Comment author: ciphergoth 15 March 2010 12:15:45PM 24 points [-]

How do you distinguish the sort of fun it's worth changing your values to enjoy from the sort of fun (like wireheading) it's worth not having access to?

Of course, it's nothing like half the fun you're missing. Adding a gender would increase your fun by less than 100% since it's not that different in many ways. Adding all the sexual variation in the world would be a humongous amount of fun, but you'd start to hit diminishing returns after a while.

Comment author: CronoDAS 15 March 2010 07:26:26PM 12 points [-]

Technically, given that most people are heterosexual, Woody Allen's quote - "The good thing about being bisexual is that it doubles your chance of a date on a Saturday night." - is inaccurate. It only increases your chances by the percentage of people of your gender who are open to same-sex encounters.

Comment author: Jack 15 March 2010 07:41:33PM 21 points [-]

I think I have enough evidence to say this confidently without unfairly stereotyping: On balance, gay men are so much more promiscuous than straight women that being bisexual really might double or triple the opportunities for a man to have sex. But your point is well taken and certainly applies to chances for a monogamous relationship.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 March 2010 09:27:46PM 14 points [-]

Point of curiosity if anyone knows the answer: How promiscuous are bisexual men and do they tend to have more m-m than m-f sex because the m-m sex is much easier to obtain? If not, why not?

Comment author: Kevin 15 March 2010 11:00:30PM *  8 points [-]

I'm a 1 on the Kinsey scale but I have only had sex with women, not men. I don't identify as bisexual.

I suspect that the median bisexual man has more m-m sex because the median person willing to identify as bisexual is not a 3 on the Kinsey scale but leans towards the homosexual side of the scale. Also, especially for young people just coming to terms with their sexuality, identifying as bisexual is often a path towards identifying as gay, and such people are likely to have more sex with their true preferred type of partners.

There is a negative perception in the gay community that bisexual people are more promiscuous, but this probably isn't true. I'm pretty sure the reason bisexual men tend to have sex with men more often than women is not because getting gay sex is as easy as posting a "Hey, who wants to come over, blow me, and leave right away without talking?" on Craigslist, but because most people that identify as bisexual are just more gay than straight.

Btw, if anyone was intrigued by the possibility of making such a Craigslist post, if you say you're straight you'll get at least twice as many replies! :D

Comment author: Psychohistorian 15 March 2010 11:03:10PM 7 points [-]

My understanding is that bisexuality rarely endures past one's twenties, and that bisexuals of both genders tend to end up choosing men. Of course, that may stem from the fact that publicly displayed bicuriousity is far less ostracized when it occurs amongst women, so more straight-leaning women are tempted to fool around than straight-leaning men, resulting in most bisexuals settling with men.

Of course, there are people who remain bisexual past that, and my data is not exactly rigorously gathered - I have some friends who study psychology and sexuality, and I've heard it from them.

Comment author: Jack 15 March 2010 10:50:34PM 4 points [-]

Bisexual males often don't identify as 50-50 which complicates the matter.

Comment author: clarissethorn 15 March 2010 10:42:04AM *  6 points [-]

Ah, Spider Robinson. I remember buying a stack of his books at Borders around age 12 and having the clerk give my mother an alarmed look. Mom just waved her hand ....

I think it's pretty normal for science-fiction-reading middle- to upper-middle-class kids to think that alternative sexuality is "normal" and to feel guilty for being vanilla/monogamous/whatever. (I used to feel a lot of pressure to be polyamorous.) Interestingly, though, there still seems to be a lot of internalized stigma about certain forms of sexuality, as demonstrated for example in my coming-out story. I would imagine that most people here fit that tribal group.

Still, within that tribal group I still encounter a lot of people with assumptions I'd call weird and/or irrational, which is why I asked specifically what kind of sexuality-related arguments would lead you to consider someone to be defending a non-mainstream belief. I think your legalized rape post (it was forwarded to me last year, actually, and I still haven't decided how I feel about it) is a definite example of defending a non-mainstream belief, but I wonder if there are less dramatic ones.

Comment author: Multiheaded 16 March 2012 10:02:05AM *  4 points [-]

I'm adamant that none of us should use the messed-up word "Rape" to point to a benevolent social practice of a made-up libertarian utopia, where that term and its implications are not just forgotten but can hardly be understood. Something like "meta-consensual sex" would be way better. This alone would've allowed us to avoid half the controversy about this relatively minor point.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 15 March 2010 03:12:58PM *  9 points [-]

Someone who believes that homosexuality is not immoral, but believes it is a dysfunction.

Actually I have more answers, but this question is just too toxic. So I'll go meta: Anyone who responds to this question either by saying that rationality is indicated either by signalling acceptance of more-outlandish sexuality, or by signalling intolerance, is indicating their own irrationality; they are turning this question into a tribal test.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 15 March 2010 03:24:55PM 6 points [-]

How far can you judge a person's rationality by what sort of evidence they use to support their beliefs about sexuality?

Comment author: Morendil 15 March 2010 03:26:06PM 4 points [-]

I'm having difficulty parsing your meta observation.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 15 March 2010 03:33:52PM *  18 points [-]

There's a large community where you are expected to be open to anything except sex with children; and a large community where you are expected to not be open to anything except sex between a monogomous man and woman.

I'm not arguing whether either of these points of view is valid. But both have enough adherents that no position that can be characterized entirely as more liberal or less liberal can identify its holder as rational. Therefore, anyone who says that such a position (for instance, being open to polyamory) indicates rationality, is merely stating their tribal affiliation. The fact that they think that such a stance demonstrates rationality in fact demonstrates their irrationality.

I can think of a few possible exceptions (sexual practices that are far enough beyond the pale that even tongue-pierced goths disclaim them, yet which have no rational basis for being banned), but they're too toxic for me to mention.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 15 March 2010 11:18:46PM *  15 points [-]

Therefore, anyone who says that such a position (for instance, being open to polyamory) indicates rationality, is merely stating their tribal affiliation.

"Merely" is incorrect. If people are employing consistent justifications for their beliefs, that indicates rationality. If their beliefs rely on inconsistent justifications, then they are not.

Suppose I believe polyamory is OK, because I believe that sex between consenting parties will make people happier. If you provided me with overwhelming evidence that most people who practice polyamory are especially miserable specifically because they practice polyamory, that would test my rationality. If I continue to be OK with it, I have an inconsistent belief system. If I cease being OK with it, I am consistently adhering to my beliefs.

Conversely, suppose I believe, "Homosexual sex is wrong because two men can't procreate." If you point out, "Post-menopausal women can't procreate," then, if I say, "Well, they shouldn't have sex either!" then I may be a bit crazy, but I'm consistent. If I say, "Well, that's different" without providing a very specific "that's different" principle, my beliefs are inconsistent, and I am irrational. If I say, "Homosexuality is wrong because the bible says so," then I'd better not be wearing clothing made from both cotton and wool while I burn oxen for the Lord.

I think most of what you see in the "internet crowd" is approval of any sexual activity between consenting adults, which is (usually) a highly consistent principle. I am not aware of any such consistent principle among the married hetero-only crowd. I'm not saying there aren't consistent principles that support a married hetero-only lifestyle, only that it is not my understanding that a large group of people embrace such principles.

If this observation is correct, beliefs about sexuality can be a very strong indicator of rationality if inconsistent, or (at least) a weak indicator if consistent. If they remain consistent through difficult or unusual hypotheticals, that is a strong indication of rationality.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 March 2010 11:28:06PM 16 points [-]

If this observation is correct, beliefs about sexuality are a very strong indicator of rationality.

The problem is if the supposedly rational beliefs also happen to be the tribal belief system of a large, pre-existing tribe. Then someone was rational, sometime back in the history, but it isn't necessarily the person you're talking to right now.

A better test would be to ask them to defend a sexual view of theirs that they see as unconventional, or at least, not a typical view of their tribe as yet.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 15 March 2010 11:45:47PM 6 points [-]

A better test would be to ask them to defend a sexual view of theirs that they see as unconventional, or at least, not a typical view of their tribe as yet.

This is absolutely true and I've changed the last paragraph to reflect that.

Comment author: Morendil 15 March 2010 04:03:51PM *  5 points [-]

Therefore, anyone who says that such a position (for instance, being open to polyamory) indicates rationality, is merely stating their tribal affiliation.

I wouldn't suppose that "being open to polyamory" per se indicates rationality. But I would consider someone rational who, having thought about the matter, and concluded on the basis of sound reasoning that there is no valid reason to condemn polyamory, decided to adopt that lifestyle even in the face of some cultural opposition.

And I would consider someone irrational who, having no sound reasoning behind that position, would act in such a way as to deny others the enjoyment of a non-straight-monogamous lifestyle.

Controversies involving third parties are a valid matter of debate, for instance, I'd concede that there is some grounds to ask whether gay couples should adopt. But to assert, without argument, an interest in what consenting adults do behind closed doors, and that doesn't cause anyone lasting harm, just because it concerns sex - that does strike me as irrational.

Comment author: RobinZ 15 March 2010 02:33:19PM 9 points [-]

Emotionally, I feel I have two tribes: the meatspace upper-middle-class collegiate culture and my Internet circle of acquaintances.

In the meatspace tribe, vanilla heterosexuality or homosexuality are considered normal and unremarkable, things like 2 girls 1 cup, goatse, etc. are considered disgusting/gross-out material - and I cannot remember anyone acknowledging anything else.

In the Internet tribe, sexual relations of any kind between consenting adults are considered fine provided that they are carried out in private, sexual intercourse between teenage minors is considered normal (fine or not may vary), and crossing the line ... well, I haven't heard Snape/Hermione strongly condemned, but pedophilia is definitely out. I note that no-one I know talks about anything involving permanent damage, however.

Comment author: CronoDAS 15 March 2010 04:01:06AM 8 points [-]

Hi Clarisse, and Welcome to LessWrong! I've seen your blog, and I'm happy to see you commenting here. (I comment as "Doug S." on various feminism-related blogs - I'm not very prolific, but you may have seen a couple here and there.)

Comment author: rwallace 15 March 2010 02:37:04PM 7 points [-]

Almost every tribe tacitly accepts the assumption that it is healthy and appropriate to have a passionate interest in the sex lives of complete strangers. Disagreement with that assumption would lead me to consider someone to be defending a non-mainstream belief.

Comment author: Morendil 16 March 2010 12:57:17PM 9 points [-]

On reflection, polyamory really is just wrong. Count me as a skeptic on this unnatural alliance.

(Yes, yes, I can hear the comebacks already: "Playing with the use-mention distinction" isn't "everything in life, you know".)

Comment author: thomblake 16 March 2010 01:25:33PM 8 points [-]

Geh - It's the new "pun".

"polyamory" really is just wrong.

Really? Do you have the same problem with "television"? What about zoological binomial nomenclature?

Comment author: ciphergoth 16 March 2010 01:37:13PM 4 points [-]

Homosexuality is also wrong, as are many other things...

Comment author: Eoghanalbar 03 September 2010 03:31:16AM 7 points [-]

Awesome. =]

If say, "This isn't about a test of rationality itself, but a test for true free-thinking. All good rationalists must be free-thinkers, but not all free-thinkers are necessarily good rationalists", is that a good summary?

Comment author: CassandraR 15 March 2010 11:39:11AM 7 points [-]

Speaking as someone that has been going to a therapist off and on for the past three years I have come to be pretty skeptical of the idea. Pretty much all the progress I have made in coping with and solving my problems has been on my own. I currently see one mainly because it is required of me by my college and because of the entertainment value of talking about myself for an hour or so.

Comment author: orthonormal 16 March 2010 01:06:31AM 10 points [-]

Therapy has worked well for me, but usually as a more effective means of rubber ducking, i.e. getting to discuss out loud problems that I'd been ruminating unproductively on. This often makes it clear which parts of my internal monologue actually make sense, and which parts might be covering up for my real priorities. A good therapist can help in other aspects, but I'd say most of the benefit just comes from this phenomenon.

The main reason therapy works for this and talking with friends doesn't is that I'm much more likely to filter my thoughts when talking to a friend, lest it come back to hurt me socially.

(Take this all with a grain of YMMV; I'm not contradicting your experience.)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 16 March 2010 02:55:01PM *  8 points [-]

For the same reason, it helps a lot to honestly write up one's understanding of one's ideas where no one is supposed to see them.

Comment author: dclayh 15 March 2010 01:57:48AM 7 points [-]

Huh, I had completely forgotten that P&T did an anti-cryonics bit. Disappointing. On the other hand, their basic point ("Why not spend that $125,000 on hookers?") reminded me of Reedspacer's Lower Bound.

Comment author: sketerpot 15 March 2010 07:54:31AM 8 points [-]

There's still hope for Penn and Teller; their last episode is going to be a bunch of miscellaneous retractions for the times they've been wrong on their show. Which is a good sign in itself.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 24 March 2010 08:30:17PM *  6 points [-]

If you disagree with your tribe, you get rationality points for independent thinking; but you lose rationality points for failing to update. Is the total positive or negative?

Comment author: gelisam 19 March 2010 08:03:19PM 6 points [-]

I've been following Alicorn's sequence on luminousness, that is, on getting to know ourselves better. I had lowered my estimate of my own rationality when she mentioned that we tend to think too highly of ourselves, but now I can bump my estimate back up. There is at least one belief which my tribe elevates to the rank of scientific fact, yet which I think is probably wrong: I do not believe in the Big Bang.

Of course, I don't believe the universe was created a few thousand years ago either. I don't have any plausible alternative hypothesis, I just think that the arguments I have read in the many popular science physics book I have read are inconclusive.

First, these books usually justify the Big Bang theory as follows. Right now, it is an observable fact that stars are currently moving away from each other. Therefore, there was a time in the past where they were much closer. Therefore, there was a time where all the stars in the universe occupied the same point. It is this last "therefore" which I don't buy: there is no particular reason to assume that if the stars are moving away from each other right now, then they must always have done so. They could be expanding and contracting in a sort of sine wave, or something more complicated.

Second, the background radiation which is said to be leftover stray photons from the big bang. If the background radiation was a prediction of Big Bang theory, then I might have been convinced by this experimental evidence, but in fact the background radiation was discovered by accident. Only afterwards did the proponents of Big Bang theory retrofit it as a prediction of their model.

Third, the acceleration. The discovery that the expansion was accelerating was a surprise to the scientific community. In particular, it was not predicted by Big Bang theory, even though it seems like the kind of thing which an explanatory model of the expansion of the universe should have predicted right away.

Fourth, the inflation phase. This part was added later on, once it had been observed that Big Bang theory did not fit with the observed homogeneousness of the cosmos. To me, this seems like a desperate and ad hod attempt to fix a broken theory.

Now, it could be that all these changes are a progression of refinements, just like Newtonian physics was adjusted to take into account the effects of relativity, and just like the spherical Earth was adjusted to make it an elliptical Earth. But the adjustments which Big Bang theory has suffered seem like they should change the predictions completely, rather than, as in the other cases, increasing the precision of the existing theory.

I am, of course, open to being convinced otherwise. If Big Bang theory really is true, then I wish to believe it is true.

Comment author: orthonormal 20 March 2010 06:02:43PM *  25 points [-]

There is no particular reason to assume that if the stars are moving away from each other right now, then they must always have done so. They could be expanding and contracting in a sort of sine wave, or something more complicated.

The key is there at the end of your quote. From the first set of observations (of relatively close galaxies), the simplest behavior that explained the observations was that everything was flying apart fast enough to overcome gravity. This predicted that when they had the technology to look at more distant galaxies, these too should be flying away from us, and at certain rates depending on their distance.

When we actually could observe those more distant galaxies, we did in fact see them red-shifted as predicted. This alone should be enough to put the "sine wave" theory in the epistemic category of "because the Dark Lords of the Matrix like red shifts", because the light left these galaxies at all different times! It would take a vast conspiracy for them all to line up as red-shifted right now, from our perspective.

With strong evidence in hand that the galaxies had been flying apart for billions and billions of years, the scientists then noticed an irregularity: the velocities of those distant galaxies were different from the extrapolation made on the early data! However, they differed in a patterned way, and the simplest way to account for this discrepancy was a variant of Einstein's "cosmological constant" idea.

Additional support for the Big Bang:

  • Stephen Hawking calculated that there would have been no way for matter to fly towards a point, "miss" colliding with itself, and fly apart in an apparent expansion without a singularity and Big Bang. (This is somewhere in A Brief History of Time, but Google Books won't let me find it.)

  • We can roughly estimate our galaxy's age by other means (i.e. how much hydrogen has been used up in stars, how much is left). Have you looked into this, to see whether the estimates thus derived are consistent with the estimate of about 10 billion years that the Big Bang theory implies?

  • Finally, the cosmic background radiation gives us way more than one bit of data; its spectrum is precisely the black-body radiation one expects from a Big Bang.

ETA: Also, this seems like exactly the sort of issue where the "physicist-test" applies, as described above. For example, being critical of QM on common-sense grounds (of course the electron has to go through one slit or the other!) doesn't make for discriminating skepticism, since one should assign high probability to physicists having strong evidence to this effect if they're claiming something weird, or else one should have strong evidence that common sense usually beats the consensus of the physics community. Needless to say, I wouldn't hold my breath on the second claim.

Comment author: gelisam 20 March 2010 11:58:17PM *  28 points [-]

You win. I did not realize that we knew that galaxies have been flying apart for billions and billions of years, as opposed to just right now. If something has been going on for so long, I agree that the simplest explanation is that it has always been going on, and this is precisely the conclusion which I thought popular science books took for granted.

Your other arguments only hammer the nail deeper, of course. But I notice that they have a much smaller impact on my unofficial beliefs, even thought they should have a bigger impact. I mean, the fact that the expansion has been going on for at least a billion years is a weaker evidence for the Big Bang than the fact that it predicts the cosmic background radiation and the age of the universe.

I take this as an opportunity to improve the art of rationality, by suggesting that in the case where an unofficial belief contradicts an official belief, one should attempt to find what originally caused the unofficial belief to settle in. If this original internal argument can be shown to be bogus, the mind should be less reluctant to give up and align with the official belief.

Of course, I'm forced to generalize from the sole example I've noticed so far, so for the time being, please take this suggestion with a grain of salt.

Comment author: orthonormal 22 March 2010 12:53:41AM 28 points [-]

I prefer the meme where you've just won by learning something new; you now know more than most people about the justifications for Big Bang cosmology, in addition to (going meta) the sort of standards for evidence in physics, and (most meta and most importantly) how your own mind works when dealing with counterintuitive claims. I won too, because I had to look up (for the first time) some claims I'd taken for granted in order to respond adequately to your critique.

I take this as an opportunity to improve the art of rationality

Good idea! It's especially helpful, I think, that you're writing out your reactions and your analysis of how it feels to update on new evidence. We haven't recorded nearly as much in-the-moment data as we ought on what it's like to change one's mind...

Comment author: DSimon 11 March 2011 01:47:33PM *  20 points [-]

When two people argue, and they both realize who is actually right, without drama or flaring tempers, then everybody wins. Even people down the block who weren't participating at all, a bit; they don't know it yet, but their world has become slightly awesomer.

Comment author: simplicio 20 March 2010 07:55:44AM *  9 points [-]

If the background radiation was a prediction of Big Bang theory, then I might have been convinced by this experimental evidence, but in fact the background radiation was discovered by accident. Only afterwards did the proponents of Big Bang theory retrofit it as a prediction of their model.

Not true; Alpher & Gamow predicted the radiation, although they were off by a few kelvins.

there is no particular reason to assume that if the stars are moving away from each other right now, then they must always have done so. They could be expanding and contracting in a sort of sine wave, or something more complicated.

True, but this lacks parsimony, & the mechanism by which the "sine wave" (or whatever) could be produced is unknown. The universe is expanding now, implying some force behind the expansion. Gravity is attractive only. Celestial objects almost all have net electric charge as close to 0 as makes no odds, so they do not repel each other. The strong nuclear force is always attractive too. You see what I mean? What could possibly cause the outward oscillation, if not extreme density? It's not like when stars come close to each other they suddenly feel a repulsion.

I don't see how you can make sense of this without the Big Bang, except by positing unknown physical forces or something.

Very interesting post though. You seem curious; I'd recommend Jonathan Allday's book "Quarks, Leptons & the Big Bang" on this subject. It's reasonably technical, given that it's not a textbook.

Comment author: gelisam 20 March 2010 02:52:33PM 7 points [-]

Thanks! I had only heard about the accidental discovery by two Bell employees of an excess measurement which they could not explain, but now that you mention that it was in fact predicted, it's totally reasonable that the Bell employees simply did not know about the scientific prediction at the moment of their measurement. I should have read Wikipedia.

The probability of predicting something as strange as the background radiation given that the theory on which the prediction is based is fundamentally flawed seems rather low. Accordingly, I should update my belief in the Big Bang substantially. But actually updating on evidence is hard, so I don't feel convinced yet, even though I know I should. For this reason, I will read the book you recommended, in the hope that its contents will manage to shift my unofficial beliefs too. Thanks again!

Comment author: wedrifid 20 March 2010 12:29:52AM 9 points [-]

but now I can bump my estimate back up. There is at least one belief which my tribe elevates to the rank of scientific fact, yet which I think is probably wrong: I do not believe in the Big Bang.

I don't think we can reasonably elevate our estimate of our own rationality by observing that we disagree with the consensus of a respected community.

Second, the background radiation which is said to be leftover stray photons from the big bang. If the background radiation was a prediction of Big Bang theory, then I might have been convinced by this experimental evidence, but in fact the background radiation was discovered by accident. Only afterwards did the proponents of Big Bang theory retrofit it as a prediction of their model.

I am wary of this kind of argument. I should not be able to discredit a theory by the act of collecting all possible evidence and publishing before they have a chance to think things through.

Comment author: gelisam 20 March 2010 03:44:24PM *  4 points [-]

I don't think we can reasonably elevate our estimate of our own rationality by observing that we disagree with the consensus of a respected community.

But isn't Eliezer suggesting, in this very post, that we should use uncommon justified beliefs as an indicator that people are actually thinking for themselves as opposed to copying the beliefs of the community? I would assume that the standards we use to judge others should also apply when judging ourselves.

On the other hand, what you're saying sounds reasonable too. After all, crackpots also disagree with the consensus of a respected community.

The point is that there could be many reasons why a person would disagree with a respected community, one of which is that the person is actually being rational and that the community is wrong. Or, as seems to be the case here, that the person is actually being rational but hasn't yet encountered all the evidence which the community has. In any case, given the fact that I'm here, following a website dedicated to the art of rationality, I think that in this case rationality is quite a likely cause for my disagreement.

I should not be able to discredit a theory by the act of collecting all possible evidence and publishing before they have a chance to think things through.

I agree that if a piece of evidence is published before it is predicted, this is not evidence against the theory, but it does weaken the prediction considerably. Therefore, please don't publish this entire collection of all possible evidence, as it will make it much harder afterwards to distinguish between theories!

Comment author: thezeus18 21 March 2010 12:19:50AM 6 points [-]

"But isn't Eliezer suggesting, in this very post, that we should use uncommon justified beliefs as an indicator that people are actually thinking for themselves as opposed to copying the beliefs of the community? I would assume that the standards we use to judge others should also apply when judging ourselves.

On the other hand, what you're saying sounds reasonable too. After all, crackpots also disagree with the consensus of a respected community."

Eliezer didn't say that we should use "disagreeing with the consensus of a respected community" as an indicator of rationality. He said that we should use disagreeing with the consensus of one's own community as an indicator of rationality.

Comment author: nazgulnarsil 15 March 2010 07:55:21PM 6 points [-]

Democracy is my litmus test.

Comment author: FAWS 15 March 2010 08:04:25PM 6 points [-]

Do you mean being willing to consider the possibility that some other form of government might be better at pursuing the interests of a society as a whole?

People also value democracy simply for being democratic, so saying that democracy is best is to some extent just stating your values.

Comment author: nazgulnarsil 15 March 2010 08:27:05PM *  6 points [-]

Yeah, but even just in people's reaction to the topic. I try to avoid framing the issue and just feel people out. For example I would take someone responding to the subject like you did to be a very positive sign. Someone immediately jumping to the possibility of alternatives followed by a reasoning on how normative statements work is not exactly a common reaction.

Comment author: christopherj 14 October 2013 06:37:27PM 5 points [-]

Want to know if someone is a good rationalist? Ask them what the best arguments are for a belief he strongly opposes on a complex issue. See if the arguments he gives are the strongest ones, or the weak ones. To strongly oppose a belief on a complex issue, requires hearing the best arguments from both sides. Being unaware of the best opposing arguments, or being unwilling to speak them, is pretty good evidence that he let his biases get in the way of his reasoning.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 14 October 2013 07:08:06PM 4 points [-]

It helps if, prior to using this technique, I've given them reason to trust me to be primarily interested in something other than scoring points off of them by "winning" arguments.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 16 March 2010 02:53:56PM *  5 points [-]

I can see that it would be useful to have a fast filter for rationality, but how possible is it?

There are some opinions which are irrational (frex, there doesn't seem to be any solid arguments for the idea that homosexuality is bad, and if it can't be eliminated, it should at least be kept out of public view), but that's not the same thing as having a positive test for rationality.

There comes a point when there's no substitute for actual knowledge, and in this case, it means looking at people's thinking rather than their opinions.

I suggest asking people what they've changed their mind about, and why. The opinion change could be tribal, too, but at least it's not a completely static view of the other person's mind.

One other test-- does the person judge the things they like by the most attractive examples, and the things they dislike by the least attractive examples? This test is faster than asking questions.

Comment author: Morendil 16 March 2010 03:08:56PM 4 points [-]

ISTM that we could summarize Eliezer's post, conclusions, subsequent discussion, and much previous LW material thus: "there are no reliable epistemic shortcuts".

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 16 March 2010 04:22:43PM 4 points [-]

I was wondering if there was a top level post explicitly about the need to have tools for checking the territory now and then because your map is necessarily incomplete.

The messy thing is that you need to have tools and habits for being able to notice it when reality is tugging on your sleeve or bashing you about the head and trying to find out what important thing you've missed -- but if you formalize that procedure, you're in a map again.

Comment author: aretae 15 March 2010 04:08:44PM *  5 points [-]

This is clearly a good way to do skepticism, if you're going to do it. However, I wonder, at my blog (http://aretae.blogspot.com/2010/03/cognitive-antivirus.html), whether skepticism is generally wise at all, and whether religion is a much more useful and effective cognitive antivirus system (especially for the only normally intelligent) than anyone else here seems to give it credit for.

Comment author: CronoDAS 15 March 2010 08:42:57PM 6 points [-]

In matters not related to Catholic dogma, the Catholic Church is (or at least used to be) a consistently skeptical organization.

Comment author: simplicio 16 March 2010 02:32:11AM 4 points [-]

religion is a much more useful and effective cognitive antivirus system (especially for the only normally intelligent) than anyone else here seems to give it credit for.

That is at least plausible, and it is certainly better in a sense to have one piecewise-sane dogma than to be swept away in a deluge of weird and wacky truth claims about crystals and auras. But problems will arise, in god's good time. The stem cell "controversy" for example is the result of a prima facie pretty innocuous doctrine that life begins at conception. How many more harmless little bits of scripture are waiting in the wings to impede us? Are they not pathogenic as well?

Nonetheless I think you have a point that it's pretty hard to imagine a majority of people adopting the skeptical procedure used here. I think our best hope is actually to press for the private-ization of spirituality: it's "true for you" and "metaphorical." But that will involve a lot of training our gag reflex.

Comment author: nerzhin 16 March 2010 02:42:44PM 9 points [-]

The stem cell "controversy" for example is the result of a prima facie pretty innocuous doctrine that life begins at conception.

Let's suppose that cryonically preserved human brains are found to be especially useful for the treatment of several terrible diseases, because of some quirk of the vitrification process. Should we haul out cryonically suspended people and use them for medicine?

Comment author: simplicio 16 March 2010 02:55:54PM *  11 points [-]

I think this is pretty disanalogous. We're basically talking about killing people who are unconscious in the cryonics case, versus harvesting non-to-semi-differentiated cells in the other.

Let me clarify that although ''life" is a good, quick word, it doesn't really capture what we value morally, which is mind or consciousness. That's why we don't cry when our appendix is taken out, and why we remove people from ventilators when they're braindead, even though they are "still alive" in the sense of breathing and having a pulse. A frozen brain is a conscious entity that's temporarily unconscious. The stem cells never were in the first place.

You have to choose if you value actual fellow humans, or just fetishize that blip on a monitor.

Comment author: nerzhin 16 March 2010 03:17:38PM 6 points [-]

You basically answered my question when you said

what we value morally, which is mind or conciousness.

But I'm going to pick at you one more time and then shut up. Both an embryo and a cryonically suspended person are presently unconcious. If what you value is past conciousness, then there's no problem, you're consistent. If you value potential (or long-future) conciousness, there might be a problem. I'm guessing that you value short-future conciousness - a suspended person (or a sleeping person) can in principle be concious in five minutes, while an embryo cannot.

The next stage of the argument asks about infants and animals and so on, but I said I'd shut up.

Comment author: simplicio 16 March 2010 04:08:13PM 10 points [-]

I'm guessing that you value short-future conciousness - a suspended person (or a sleeping person) can in principle be concious in five minutes, while an embryo cannot.

I think there is a more salient difference, which is that it's not the embryo that will be conscious in ~20 weeks, whereas it is the brain.

The next stage of the argument asks about infants and animals and so on, but I said I'd shut up.

By all means continue, I always enjoy parsing these things. My friends are so sick of hearing about trolley cases they'd throw themselves on the tracks.

Comment author: Strange7 16 March 2010 06:32:29PM 4 points [-]

I would say that we should conduct trials on equivalent use of vitrified pig or chimpanzee brains before proceeding, or maybe a nonfunctional mockup of a human brain based on organ-printing techniques. I mean, if somebody discovered that it was possible to get high by snorting powdered high-density hard disks, I'd recommend grinding up blanks rather than the last copy of some valuable data.

Comment author: simplicio 16 March 2010 11:17:00PM 4 points [-]

Good point, but probably not the Least Convenient Possible World.

Comment author: Strange7 17 March 2010 12:12:40AM *  10 points [-]

If it turns out that pig and chimp brains don't have the same effect, that would be less convenient, yes. I still wouldn't regret having run the trials.

In such a case, the next step would be to run tests on volunteers (that is, suicides) or people sentenced to be executed. If it turns out that criminals and those who wanted to die are also unsuitable, I'll allow people with those horrible diseases to sign up for treatment on the condition that, if it doesn't work, they get their brains vitrified and used to treat the next generation of patients, as a stopgap measure until strictly synthetic treatments becomes available.

The real world is not maximally inconvenient. Training your mind to respond to binary decisions by ruling out any options not explicitly presented is a deliberate subversion of the drive to cheat, which might, in the long term, compromise your ability to win.

More generally, if I were put in some sadistic moral dilemma (say, choosing between rescuing my love-interest or my sidekick) where either option is repugnant but inaction is somehow worse than both of them put together, I've got no reason to believe I'd have either enough knowledge of the consequences or enough time for my moral calculus to run in full. Under those circumstances, I would flip the fairest coin I had handy and decide between the two least-repugnant options on that basis, then try not to get backed into such situations in the future.

Comment author: simplicio 17 March 2010 05:08:01AM 6 points [-]

Training your mind to respond to binary decisions by ruling out any options not explicitly presented is a deliberate subversion of the drive to cheat, which might, in the long term, compromise your ability to win.

That is actually a really good point. Getting in the habit of "accepting the problem as stated" could be a very bad thing.

However, this scenario was contrived right from the beginning. A magical cure from eating frozen brains? Unlikely. It was a question about where to draw the line on the ethical worth of living things, that was illustrated with a little story.

Comment author: Liron 15 March 2010 07:26:57AM 5 points [-]

What are some questions without a standard LW in-group response that I could use to prove my own conclusion-reaching soundness?

I know the Meredith Kurcher murder case has been offered as an example "rationality test".

Comment author: CarlShulman 15 March 2010 01:20:54AM 5 points [-]

The "skeptic" tries to scare you away from the belief in their very first opening remarks: for example, pointing out how UFO cults beat and starve their victims (when this can just as easily happen if aliens are visiting the Earth). The negative consequences of a false belief may be real, legitimate truths to be communicated; but only after you establish by other means that the belief is factually false - otherwise it's the logical fallacy of appeal to consequences.

This can be legitimate for a reporter wanting someone to read the story, and to show why the subject of the story matters practically.

Comment author: taw 15 March 2010 12:53:17AM 5 points [-]

I'm increasingly inclined to use reactions to data that Communist economies did no worse on average than Capitalist economies as a new litmus test.

People who as their first reaction start pulling excuses why this must be wrong out of their asses get big negative points on this rationality test.

I don't need to explain why this is not mainstream. It is also extremely unlikely to be significantly wrong.

Comment author: toto 15 March 2010 02:20:15PM 17 points [-]

People who as their first reaction start pulling excuses why this must be wrong out >of their asses get big negative points on this rationality test.

Well, if people are absolutely, definitely rejecting the possibility that this might ever be true, without looking at the data, then they are indeed probably professing a tribal belief.

However, if they are merely describing reasons why they find this result "unlikely", then I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that. They're simply expressing that their prior for "Communist economies did no worse than capitalist economies" is, all other things being equal, lower than .5.

There are several non-obviously-wrong reasons why one could reasonably put a low prior on this belief. The most obvious is the fact that when the wall fell down, economic migration went from East to West, not the other way round (East-West Germany being the most dramatic example).

Of course, this should not preclude a look at the hard data. Reality is full of surprises, and casual musings often miss important points. So again, saying "this just can't be so" and refusing to look at the data (which I presume is what you had in mind) is indeed probably tribal. Saying "hmmm, I'd be surprised if it were so" seems quite reasonable to me. Maybe I'm just tribalised beyond hope.

Comment author: knb 16 March 2010 06:42:20AM 13 points [-]

I'm increasingly inclined to use reactions to data that Communist economies did no worse on average than Capitalist economies as a new litmus test.

This is extremely problematic for a number of reasons.

You are using (or at least citing) one study to argue for an extremely unorthodox claim that is highly values dependent. For example, what does it mean "to do worse on average" than capitalist countries? The paper you cite only demonstrates that GDP growth was not much worse for communist countries than for less liberalized non-communist countries. Perhaps the totalitarian communist systems were worse, even if their arbitrary GDP numbers, inflated by massive military spending, were fairly respectable.

Be careful, using this as a "litmus test" for rationality could make you dismiss arguments for why you should actually change your opinion about whether communist countries did "worse on average".

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 March 2010 03:32:27AM 13 points [-]

It's not a good litmus test until you also point to what you consider the best honest skeptical response - albeit this is often damned hard to do with poor skepticism, cryonics being exhibit A in point.

Comment author: brian_jaress 15 March 2010 09:20:47AM *  11 points [-]

You should offer a reward for the best top-level anti-cryonics post. Something to entice quiet dissenters to stick their necks out.

You can post it together with a pro-cryonics reading list, so people know what they're up against and only post arguments that haven't already been refuted.

EDIT: reworded for clarity, punctuation

Comment author: PhilGoetz 24 March 2010 07:04:40PM *  9 points [-]

After glancing at the study [and after editing again after RobinZ's comment]:

It criticizes other studies for not controlling for such details as ethnolinguistic fractionalization, religion, natural resource abundance, or the wealth of neighboring countries. It's full of references to other variables that ought to be controlled for, like climate, resource-richness, and social mores. But the only thing this study claims to control for is initial wealth.

Much of the article lists rankings of growth rates that control for nothing at all. It has a large initial section claiming that communism performed well because a bunch of Communist countries that started out poor, grew faster than a bunch of non-Communist countries that started out rich. Then, in the other section of the paper, it claims that we can't compare Russia to Western Europe, because Russia started out poor, and of course every economist knows that poor countries grow faster than rich countries! So we must compare Russia to Mexico. Besides the fact that they conveniently ignored this in the first half of the paper, that doesn't make sense. A comparison that showed Russia growing slower than Western Europe (as it did) would only indicate that the difference in the effectiveness of their governments was even greater.

It says that Eastern Europe's economic performance was only dismal as compared to Western Europe's, and Asia; and that a more fair comparison is with Mexico, or the US, or New Zealand, or Switzerland, or a variety of other names that come up. But the cases it dismisses seem like better parallels than the cases it includes. It has a section acknowledging that most economists would say it isn't fair to compare the growth rates of nations with different initial wealth (the cases it uses in the first section), and would instead compare the growth rates of nations with similar initial wealth (the cases it excludes in the first section). It tries to justify this, and I'm afraid I can't now remember what the reasoning was.

It's odd for a study to talk so much about the standard tools of economic analysis, such as regression, and yet not use any. There's no math in this paper. It presents a bunch of graphs and argues verbally about what they imply. Also, it has not been published in a refereed journal; and I predict that it won't be until the author remedies this.

I'm not being thorough here, and you might want to read the paper yourself rather than trust my admittedly hasty judgement. Consider yourself notified that the opinion I'm expressing here is not based on careful study. taw is a smart person and has studied it more carefully than I have.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 24 March 2010 06:46:12PM 6 points [-]

The only good experiment performed was the partitioning of Germany. East and West Germany were economically equivalent at the end of World War 2, with very similar populations, socioeconomically and genetically.

When they reunified, West Germany was very far ahead of East Germany. I know many people who've come from or been to both East and West Germany, and their opinions on the subject are so strong and unanimous that I will flatly deny any study that says they were equivalent economically. I will not even bother to read such a study.

To make the comparison completely fair, you might have to adjust for the fact that America loaned money to West Germany for reconstruction, while Moscow IIRC saw East Germany as a revenue source. But then again, you might not. Because having your wealth transferred to the capital is one of the distinguishing characteristics of a communist economy.

Comment author: taw 24 March 2010 10:19:54PM 4 points [-]

The only good experiment performed was the partitioning of Germany. East and West Germany were economically equivalent at the end of World War 2, with very similar populations, socioeconomically and genetically.

This is just plain false. Their income ratios in 1950 were about 2.1:1. Income ratios in 1990 were still about 2.1:1.

Comment author: CarlShulman 01 May 2010 09:21:26PM *  4 points [-]

Here's a discussion of this post at the James Randi forums. Reaction seems net negative with high variance: http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=5726673