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XiXiDu comments on Rationality is Not an Attractive Tribe - Less Wrong
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So what you are saying here is that ideology is always irrational? Since this is a community blog devoted to refining rationality, why don't you address the particular points you believe do constitute the irrational consensus? Or are you saying that some individuals here know that their ideology is irrational yet shun rationality in favor of it? That could be better phrased as there are people here who follow selfish goals and argue based on matters of taste. But how do you know that those people are aware of it, that they do not honestly believe that their disguised ideology is actually rationality?
I would love to know which kind of posts and comments, and in particular what consensus, you are referring to. This is very important to me, so if you don't want to make it public I would like you to send me a short private message.
AND
are examples of the kind of thing that I would regard as the problem. Other examples are even more inflammatory, but basically the all boil down to:
Person1: X is a true fact about the world
Person2: But saying X is mean to {political correctness brownie points group Y}, and besides, you can't be absolutely sure it's true/I won't believe it until you provide an impossibly high degree of evidence/we should stop talking about it or people will think we are mean!
The result is typically that LW can recite lots of rationalist principles, but when it comes to applying them to a significant number of real-world problems, LW is clueless.
Now one might reasonably argue that we don't need to be right about everything. Sure, LW is mired in PC BS about X,Y and Z, but topics A,B,C,D,E, ... which are also important are not subject to PC irrationality pressure. To an extent I buy this argument. However, reality is not a disconnected series of isolated topics: if you're wrong about X,Y and Z you might make incorrect inferences about all sorts of other things.
For some of us, being perceived as nice is one of the most important ways we can help ourselves in real life. And the best way to be consistently perceived as nice is to be constantly concerned with the niceness of the statements one makes, and seriously try to avoid giving offense. If I became blunt and plain-spoken it would hurt me in real life. It would not be worth it to me. Except in very rare situations (such as if I'm personally responsible for saving lives, and I have to be deliberately rude to do it.)
In the interests of rationality, I'll refrain in future from criticizing un-PC statements because they're "not nice." I don't want to confuse anyone. But I can't make those statements myself -- that comes at a cost I won't pay.
Do you ordinarily find that you have difficulty maintaining different registers(1) for different contexts?
If so, I sympathize and wish you luck in overcoming that difficulty. It is an enormously useful skill: as you say, being perceived as nice is valuable, and different communities perceive different kinds of behavior as nice, so you do best to learn to signal appropriately for different contexts (2).
If you don't have difficulty with this, though, then your comment puzzles me. If you agree with FKARoko that LW norms support "un-PC" (3) posts, or in any event ought to, then what cost are you concerned about... what's the cost? Conversely, if you don't agree with him, why refrain from criticizing un-PC statements... what confusion?
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(1) I mean "register" in the linguistics sense.
(2) Unless, of course, you spend all your time in only one community.
(3) Caveat: I don't really understand what "PC" means; I'm using the term because it's the term you and FKARoko both use. I gather you use it here as synonymous with "nice," although in my own experience niceness often has more to do with how a statement is framed than what is actually being said.
For clarity's sake: PC means politically correct and usually refers to political inoffensiveness. The term isn't really apt for the current discussion because there was no talk of politics.
I don't know if I'm great at code-switching. I can tell that LW is "not PC" or blunt-spoken. But the thing is, when some heuristic is good for you in most of your life, you may internalize it and simply make it a constant feature of your personality. For example, if it's usually a bad idea for you to use swear words, you may be better off just not swearing at all, even when you're in the saloon and swearing would be socially appropriate. You may want to personally identify as a non-curser. It makes double-sure that you'll never swear at the wrong time.
If you don't trust yourself to be socially agile in switching from situation to situation, then I think "better safe than sorry" makes sense.
Agreed as far as it goes. But that's a big "if."
The social agility you're talking about is an important life skill. If I spend some time in contexts where a particular behavior has social benefits and some time in contexts where the same behavior has social costs, then I get the best results by staying aware of the context that I'm in and behaving appropriately.
That said, I do appreciate that it's harder for some people than others. If I can't do that, the next-best thing is to construct a superposition of rulesets and always apply it. This is similar to what you're suggesting here... if the costs of cursing in the no-curse environments are much higher than the benefits of cursing in the yes-curse environments, adopting a "don't curse regardless of context" rule as you suggest can work OK.
My point is, it's a second-best option. Paying attention to my environment as it changes and responding accordingly has better payoffs, if I can manage it.
not just for some, for all of us. It is in everyone's narrow self interest to sacrifice epistemology for signalling purposes. And in real life one has to do that. But here at least, I think that we should establish the opposite norm.
Look, what is the point of you trying to appear PC on LW? I for one am just not impressed. I already know that you're from a certain demographic that implies lots of good things about you. But it implies bad things about you if you can't turn off the the signalling BS in a context where it is socially very harmful, I.e. A rationality website.
Throughout the sequences it has been made clear that there usually is some local incentive for motivated cognition. Wanting to appear PC is no different: it's just another reason that people have for blowing their thought process up, with all the usual downsides, e.g. The downside that you often simply don't know what the cost will be because you would only be able to compute the cost of the motivated cognition if you were not engaging in it. Suffice it to say that I think we should have very strong norms against motivated cognition here on LW.
I know you're not impressed. I know folks around here don't like it much. I'm glad there are such folks who say what they think without signaling. I respect that attitude, and it's partly because I respect it that I'm here. I do want to know what people think when they're solely concerned with accuracy. But I don't really want to imitate them -- maybe a little, but not thoroughly.
Truth is, I used to be socially awkward. These days, I'm not, but it's not because I'm any cleverer at dealing with people, it's because I've adopted a persona that's all about being, let's say, harmless. Positive and gentle. Trying to please. It's kind of a good all-purpose heuristic -- if I make some kind of faux pas, people will think "oh, she's clueless, but she's nice." I'm good with nice-but-clueless.
And if you really want to be 100% nice-but-clueless, you have to be that way all the time. It's not just political PC -- I make a deliberate point of, as much as possible, never thinking or speaking badly of anyone. Not even in private. Not even in forums where the opposite norm holds. Once you start down that path, there's a chance that you might be bitchy in public. And you can't really afford that if you have other flaws and weaknesses, I think; I need people to forgive me my mistakes.
Would it be worth it to change? As you point out, I can't know, because I'm within the world of motivated cognition. That said, I can think of circumstances where I probably ought to change -- if I worked in the private sector, for example, or if I chose an advisor who really values frankness (both live possibilities.) There may come a point where "nice but clueless" stops working for me. And then I'll really have to take this stuff seriously. But I have no idea who I'll be, once I'm not nice-but-clueless.
A couple of times here, I've run into guys who find nice really annoying. It was useful for me to be a good bit blunter than unusual with them, and I'm inclined to believe that the experiment in flexibility was good for me.
The problem, I think, is that nice involves such a light touch that for some people, it fails to make contact.
I like nice. I prefer nice. And I think it's got some very definite limits.
Then I think that you are in grave danger of getting pretty badly screwed by someone. There are genuinely bad people in this world, and there are lots of kind-of-bad people who will screw you over and rationalize it somehow. You have to have a healthy skepticism (not paranoia) about people's motives, it's the only way to prevent someone taking your money or your job/house etc. Seriously, forget the darned debate: if what you say is true, you are probably in serious danger of being taken advantage of in some way.
If I were you, I would seriously consider trying to improve your social skills the hard way, i.e. by learning social skills, and not engaging in potentially massively self-harming motivated cognition.
You may be right there.
Ah... I should have read this before replying to what you said elsewhere.
So, you're aware that presenting as "nice but clueless" works against you in communities where cluelessness isn't a point in your favor, but you prefer to optimize for the communities where it is.
OK, fair enough: that's your choice to make.
I'm not sure, really. I'm open to changing my mind. I may have to, after all.
I doubt you'll ever "have to," in the sense of being forced to by circumstances. That's what I meant by it being your choice to make.
Plenty of people live their entire lives optimizing for minimizing social friction at the cost of expressing their thoughts clearly and unambiguously... presenting as "nice but clueless," in other words. "Going along to get along" is another way to say it. I suspect that as long as you make the choice to do so, you will be able to find situations that allow you to, just like they do.
That's what value judgments are for, after all: they let you construct a preference order among possible states of the world, and therefore drive the choices you make. The decision to present as "nice but clueless" will affect the sorts of acquaintances you make, the sorts of communities you join, the sorts of organizations you work for, and so forth.
To put it differently: like it or not, you actually have a lot of power over your own future.
So the question is, how confident are you in the preference order you're defending?
If you're confident in it, then great... you're choosing the world you want, which is as it should be, and I wish you joy of it.
OTOH, if you are uncertain, then I suggest that you might do better to explore the roots of that uncertainty yourself, rather than wait for events to somehow force you to change your mind.
Do you think that your beliefs regarding what you care about could be mistaken? That you might tell yourself that you care more about being lazy than about getting cryonics done, but that in fact, under reflection, you would prefer to get the contract?
Because this is not a private mailing list?
Imagine some scientist or politician came here to get a dose of rationality just to come across a discussion where someone argues that he knows more and then tells everyone to keep their idiot mouths shut? This happened on Less Wrong and the person who said so might have even been factually correct. Besides that this caused some uproar and damaged Less Wrong it is also a bad way of communicating truth and rationality. Stating conclusions like that is not a way to refine rationality. People do not come here to learn facts, e.g. that they are dumb, but how to arrive at such factual conclusions.
IMO if a top politician or scientist came here and found politically correct BS as the standard ideology on this so called "rational" website, they would probably sigh and close the page never to return. Why should they? They have better things to do with their time than listen to BS.
On the other hand, I don't think they would be impressed if we didn't have the skill to frame potentially inflammatory facts in a delicate way. I am not arguing against careful, delicate framing. I am arguing against MOTIVATED COGNITION.
I'm not suggesting that Less Wrong should conceal the truth to schmooze certain ideologies. What I am suggesting is that Less Wrong is NOT about teaching people how to score Karma points on Less Wrong but in the real world.
Motivated cognition can be a double-edged sword. If you overcompensate against political correctness you can easily end up pursuing an introversive self-image that leads to ingroup bias. Less Wrong has to be in an equilibrium of internal affairs and public relations.
Political correctness bias is not the cure to ingroup bias. If you have an ingroup bias problem, you solve the ingroup bias problem with the usual rationality tactics -- like being honest about the weaknesses of the ingroup.
As far as I can tell, the best path is to vigorously fight PC bias and ingroup bias. You can have both. Really.
As I see it, the problem there is that saying "we shouldn't be affected by this stuff" does not mean that we aren't affected by this stuff. Knowing your cognitive biases allows for workarounds - it doesn't cause them not to exist.
In particular, saying to others "you're smart people, you should not be affected by such nuances" and then not bothering to put them into place oneself is almost a cliched way to come across as an arsehole on the Internet and have people not want to bother listening to the speaker, no matter how right they may be. The message communicated is not "you should be affected less", but "I am inept." This reduces one's effectiveness.
Postel's law: "Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept."
If someone posts like a raging arsehole, they can be as right as they like, but people still won't welcome them or want to listen to them. It's not as effective a communication strategy as thinking before typing: your aim is to get the effect you want, not to win the conversation.
I speak here as a (hopefully) recovering arsehole. I have no plans to compromise the accuracy of what I'm saying, but it is useful to say it in a way that doesn't repel people from even reading.
Sorry, I don't understand you. Who said that someone should not be affected by cognitive biases?
They got the SIAI funded.
The genome of the Ebola virus is a true fact about organisms. Yet it is dumb to state it on a microbiology forum. Besides, "if you don't agree you are dumb" is a statement that has to be backed by exceptional amounts of evidence. People who already disagree can only be convinced by evidence, if they are not intelligent enough to grasp the arguments.
There are cases where data or ideas can be really hazardous. I don't count "but it might hurt somebody's precious feelings" as one of those cases.
I just came across this:
This seems to be neither here nor there as regards the present debate.
I assign some probability to security in obscurity working for bio, some to it not working.
2+2=4 if you don't agree you are dumb.
Yes, but if we are talking about real world problems then we have to deal with people who are dumb and sometimes we also have to convince them to get what we want. It is rational to limit the truth output of a forum of truth-seekers. An analogy would be the intolerance of intolerance. To maximize tolerance you have to be intolerant of intolerance. This is also the case with rationality as you won't be able to make the world a more rational place by telling the irrational folks the truth, namely that they are irrational, that would just result in more irrational behavior.
You are being logically rude. Please don't!
Let me clarify my last comment. It is really all about what we want. We just have to accept that Less Wrong is not only about refining rationality. Less Wrong also won't be able to refine rationality if it allows the discussion of some topics in great detail, as they risk the future of this platform. So every statement here has to be taken with a grain of salt and to be put and understood in a larger context. Proclaiming the truth might be rational if you value rationality in and of itself. But since rationality is about winning you have to ask for what constitutes winning. The answer to this question is ultimately ideological and about matters of taste.
Again, you are being logically rude. I refuted (I think) the idea that ""if you don't agree you are dumb" is a statement that has to be backed by exceptional amounts of evidence.". Don't switch the goalposts mid-debate. Admit that, in fact, there are some statements such that if you disagree with them, you are dumb, no massive dossier of evidence required.
So what is it that you are trying to argue which I evade? I don't think that you can generalize from the example of avoiding to signal the intellectual superiority of LW to the general issue of political correctness. Some factual statements are simply bad arguments to use in a debate.
I'm not being logically rude, I'm just trying to argue that political correctness and epistemological issues are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Further, if you want to output a plan for action you better tweak it for real world use, which naturally must include some signaling. Only afterwards one is able to tackle the more fundamental issues of the general rationality of political correctness, e.g. overcoming human nature.
I do not think that you have refuted it. I also believed that part of your argument was to assert that we sometimes shouldn't keep quiet about the truth, whatever the consequences. I do not agree with that either.
Telling people they are dumb means that you are sufficiently sure that 1.) you are right 2.) they are wrong and not just more demanding (more evidence, different kinds of evidence etc.) 3.) the reason for that they disagree is that they are intellectually inferior. Further, even if you are sure someone is dumb, it is still a really bad argument as it is not persuasive. If someone is dumb you have to be even smarter to convince that person. If you just proclaim someone is dumb, maybe you are not as smart as you thought either.
Some people don't know that they are alive. Does that mean that they are dumb? Eliezer Yudkowsky might be able to rationalize such a disorder because of all his background knowledge. But would he be able to do so if he grew up without being able to acquire his current set of skills? A lot of one's potential intelligence is unleashed due to certain environmental circumstances, e.g. an advanced education. There are indeed people who do possess less potential. Yet if we want to make them aware of their shortcomings it is not rational to do so by telling them they are dumb but rather telling them to try to estimate their intelligence objectively. There are other, more effective ways to communicate the truth than proclaiming the conclusion.
My calculator agrees that 2+2=4, so? If someone does challenge your beliefs, it does not mean that the person is dumb but that maybe you accepted something as given that might be less obvious than you think. The complete proof of 2 + 2 = 4 involves 2,452 subtheorems in a total of 25,933 steps.
A belief is irrational if you use irrational methods of thinking to obtain it. I consider most irrational beliefs to be the result of ignorance of or incompetence in the methods of rationality, rather than selfishness or malice. (I guess we could argue about whether anti-epistemology is an example of incompetence or of willful going-astray.)
I can't speak for Roko, but I imagine that on Less Wrong, almost all failures of rationality are the result of incompetence.
If I'm not able to understand my failure I still want to know if one thinks I am incompetent. I won't be able to understand how the person arrived at this conclusion, if it is due to a lack of intelligence on my side, but I'll be able to allow for the possibility and take it into account if I ever get stuck trying to reach a goal. So if someone honestly believes that I am too dumb he/she should say so and I won't perceive it as an insult. I just want to stress this point because he claimed that some posts, comments and the LW consensus about many things that real people deal with in the real world is actually (factually) wrong. He has to tell me because I'm not sure what he means, yet it is very important to know.