Emile comments on Open Thread June 2010, Part 4 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Will_Newsome 19 June 2010 04:34AM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 20 June 2010 04:46:47AM *  6 points [-]

I've separated some forms of alternative medicine out when one might arguably put them closer together. Also, I'm including Young Earth Creationism, but not creationism as a whole. Where that goes might be a bit more complicated. There's some overlap between some of these (such as young earth creationism and religion). The list also does not include any beliefs that have a fundamentally moral component. I've tried to not include beliefs which are stupid but hard to deal with empirically (say that there's something morally inferior about specific racial groups). Finally, when compiling this list I've tried to avoid thinking too much about the overall balance that the delusion provides. So for example, religion is listed where it is based on the harm it does, without taking into account the societal benefits that it also produces.

1-4: Religion, Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Traditional Chinese medicine (as standardized post 1950s)

5-10 The belief that intelligence differences have no strong genetic component. The belief that intelligence differences have no strong environmental component. The belief that there are no serious existential threats to humans. The belief that external cosmetic features or national allegiances are strong indicators of mental superiority or inferiority. That human females have fundamentally less mental capacity and that this difference is enough to be a useful data point when evaluating humans. The belief that the Chinese government can be trusted to benefit its people or decide what information they should or should not have access to. (The primary reason this gets on the list is the sheer size of China. There are other governments which are much, much worse and have similar delusions by the people. But the damage level done is frequently much smaller.)

11-20 Vaccines cause autism. Young Earth Creationism. Invisible Hand of the Market solves everything. Government solves everything. Providence. That there are not fundamental limits on certain natural resources. That nuclear power is intrinsically worse than other forms of energy. The belief that large segments of the population are fundamentally not good at math or science. Astrology. The belief that antibiotics can deal with viral infections.

There were a few that I wanted to stick on for essentially emotional reasons. So for example Holocaust Denial almost got on the list and when I tried to justify it I saw myself engaging in what was clearly motivated cognition.

This list is very preliminary. The grouping is also very tentative and could likely be easily subject to change.

Comment author: Emile 21 June 2010 08:21:40AM 2 points [-]

Lists like that are good !

The belief that the Chinese government can be trusted to benefit its people or decide what information they should or should not have access to. (The primary reason this gets on the list is the sheer size of China. There are other governments which are much, much worse and have similar delusions by the people. But the damage level done is frequently much smaller.)

I'm a bit surprised at that one - the current Chinese government seems pretty rational and efficient to me, and I'd be hard-pressed to say what I would do differently in it's place or rather - there are things I would do differently, but I'm not sure I'd get better results).

Control of information by the government should be seen mostly as a way of preserving it's own power. So I'm not really sure of how to interpret "The belief that the Chinese government can be trusted to [...] decide what information they should or should not have access to." - could you rephrase that belief so that it's irrationality becomes more apparent, maybe tabooing "can be trusted to" ? If you mean "Chinese people wrongly believe that the government is restricting information access for their own good", then I'm not sure that a lot of people actually believe that, and for those that do, that believing it does any harm.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 21 June 2010 03:42:33PM *  1 point [-]

If you mean "Chinese people wrongly believe that the government is restricting information access for their own good", then I'm not sure that a lot of people actually believe that, and for those that do, that believing it does any harm.

Ok. My impression is that that is a common belief in China and is connected to the belief that the government doesn't actively lie. I don't have a very good citation for this other than general impressions so I'm going to point to a relevant blog entry by a friend who spent a few years in China where she discusses this with examples. There are of course even limits to how far that will go. This is also complicated by the fact that many of the really serious harm in China (detainment of citizens for questioning policies, beatings and torture, ignoring of basic environmental and safety issues) stem from the local governments rather than the central government, and the relationship between Beijing and the local governments is very complicated. See also my remarks above to wedrifid which touch on these issues also. So yeah, it may make sense to take this off the list given the lack of harm directly coming from this issue.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 21 June 2010 09:09:29PM 2 points [-]

I don't interpret the story in that blog post that way at all. People repeating nationalist lies doesn't mean they've been fooled.

I highly recommend these posts about the psychology of mass lies. I don't recommend the third part.