RobinHanson comments on The Psychological Diversity of Mankind - Less Wrong

79 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 09 May 2010 05:53AM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 10 May 2010 02:05:53AM *  8 points [-]

Yes, and I often see stark examples of how this difference in psychology reveals itself. It typically involves a NT joking about the observed behavior of an AS, where the "funny" bit takes the form, "[AS person] performed [action X], when you're OBVIOUSLY supposed to do ~X, though I am completely incapable of saying how ~X inexorably follows as the right one based on typical social experience."

Real example (some details may be off) that's representative of what I see a lot: "Yeah, there's this real weird kid in this class I teach who had read about the Protestant Reformation, but get this -- he actually pronounced it 'pro-TEST-ant'! It was SO funny [because obviously English has a really rigorous orthography that's designed to prevent this kind of thing]!"

I would like to see Eliezer Yudkowsky address the issues raised by NT/AS and by this book, because his position does have a lot of tension with it, even if there's no direct contradiction. (I'm guessing he can dismiss the NT/AS issues a being relatively small in the grand scheme of things.)

Comment author: RobinHanson 10 May 2010 09:36:51PM 7 points [-]

Perhaps someone could outline the perceived tension in more detail? We already knew humans weren't identical. So just how much variation is how much of a problem for what?