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Relsqui comments on Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism - Less Wrong
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Huh? In all of those examples the unmentioned fourth level is correct and the second and third level both about equally useless.
Half-agree with you, as none of the 18 positions are 'correct', but I don't know what you mean by 'useless'. Instead of generalizing I'll list my personal positions:
If I failed to notice that there are scientifically proven genetic differences I would be missing a far more important part of reality (evolutionary psychology and the huge effects of evolution in the last 20,000 years) than if I failed to notice that being a bigot was bad and impeded moral progress. That said, if most people took this position, it'd result in a horrible tragedy of the commons situation, which is why most social scientists cooperate on the 'let's not promote racism' dilemma. I'm not a social scientist so I get to defect and study some of the more interesting aspects of human evolutionary biology.
No opinion. Women seem to be doing perfectly fine. Men seem to get screwed over by divorce laws and the like. Tentatively agree more with third level but hey, I'm pretty ignorant here.
What can I say, it's politics. Libertarians in charge would mean more drugs and ethically questionable experiments of the sort I promote, as well as a lot more focus on the risks and benefits of technology. Since the Singularity trumps everything else policy-wise I have to root for the libertarian team here, even if I find them obnoxiously pretentious. (ETA: Actually, maybe more libertarians would just make it more likely that the 'Yeah yeah Singularity AI transhumanism wooooo!' meme would get bigger which would increase existential risk. So uh... never mind, I dunno.)
Too ignorant to comment. My oxycodone and antiobiotics sure did me good when I got an infection a week ago. My dermatologist drugs didn't help much with my acne. I've gotten a few small surgeries which made me better. Overall conventional medicine seems to have helped me a fair bit and costs me little. I don't even know what Robin Hanson's claims are, though. A link would be great.
Okay, anyone who cares about helping people in Africa and can multiply should be giving their money to x-risk charities. Because saving the world also includes saving Africa. Therefore position 3 is essentially correct, but maybe it's really position 4 (give aid to Earth) that's the correct one, I dunno.
Um, Patri was just being silly. Obama is obviously not a Muslim in any meaningful sense.
In conclusion, I think that there isn't any real trend here, but maybe we're just disputing ways of carving up usefulness? It is subjective after all.
Added: Explanations for downvotes are always welcome. Lately I've decided to try less to appear impressive and consistently rational (like Carl Shulman) and try more to throw lots of ideas around for critique, criticism, and development (like Michael Vassar). So although downvotes are useful indicators of where I might have gone wrong, a quick explanatory comment is even more useful and very unlikely to be responded to with indignation or hostility.
I actually disagree with this statement outright. First of all, ignoring the existence of a specific piece of evidence is not the same as being wholly ignorant of the workings of evolution. Second, I think that the use or abuse of data (false or true) leading to the mistreatment of humans is a worse outcome than the ignorance of said data. Science isn't a goal in and of itself--it's a tool, a process invented for the betterment of humanity. It accomplishes that admirably, better than any other tool we've applied to the same problems. If the use of the tool, or in this case one particular end of the tool, causes harm, perhaps it's better to use another end (a different area of science than genetics), or the same one in a different environment (in a time and place where racial inequality and bias are not so heated and widespread--our future, if we're lucky). Otherwise, we're making the purpose of the tool subservient to the use of the tool for its own sake--pounding nails into the coffee table.
Besides--anecdotally, people who think that the genetic differences between races are important incite less violence than people who think that not being a bigot is important. If, as you posited, one had to choose. ;)
I have a couple other objections (really? sex discrimination is over? where was I?) but other people have covered them satisfactorily.
New here; can I get a brief definition of this term? I've gotten the gist of what it means by following a couple of links, I just want to know where the x bit comes from. Didn't find it on the site's wiki or the internet at large.
X-risk stands for existential risk.
It about possible events that risk ending the existence of the human race.
Got it; thank you.
What do you have in mind?
I'm not sure what "what" would refer to here. I didn't have an incident in mind, I'm just giving my impression of public perception (the first person gets called racist, and the second one gets called, well, normal, one hopes). It wasn't meant to be taken very seriously.