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lionhearted comments on Malice, Stupidity, or Egalité Irréfléchie? - Less Wrong
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(Parts of this comment were misinterpreted. I have slightly edited this comment to make it clearer; this editing was done after lionhearted replied to it. )
I downvoted this post. The OP describes a phenomenon that everyone knows about, then suggests that "stupidity" (a word mostly left undefined) and "malice" aren't good explanations. (How did "malice" ever seem like a good explanation in the first place?) That's kind of correct, maybe, depending on what class of things the OP is using "stupidity" to refer to. A single word is never a good explanation for an aspect of human psychology. The OP then suggests that the "egalitarian instinct" is an explanation. The OP gives little explanation for this explanation (ETA: I didn't mean explaining what the egalitarian instinct is, which is easily researched by those interested, but explaining more persuasively/effectively how it explains the phenomenon mentioned), no mention of other possible explanations (no acknowledgment of the existence of other possible explanations), and no description of what the world would look like if the OP's explanation were wrong. Thinking up one plausible explanation for an observed phenomenon is fine, I guess, if that's where you want to start, and you don't care too much about the phenomenon in question. Writing a Less Wrong post that looks exactly like that, though, is just wrong. This is not how you go about constructing a model of human psychology.
I would like to complain in more detail about the way "stupidity" and "malice" are brought up and almost immediately dismissed. It causes some part of the the reader's brain to read along and think "Yeah, stupidity doesn't sound like a very good hypothesis, and huh, malice doesn't either... I wonder what a good explanation would be? Oh, the OP suggests the egalitarian instinct, that's comparatively a lot more plausible than stupidity or malice which means it's probably correct." If stupidity and malice had never been brought up, the reader would be a lot more likely to treat the proposed explanation of egalitarianism with a healthier amount of skepticism. Bringing up the red herrings thus misleads.
In fairness, you did some raise some good points as well, and I'll address those -
Indeed. And yet, one many people can't explain. Which is why it's worth thinking about.
I defined stupidity in the post as "impl[ying] poor judgment," meaning going through a conscious faulty thought process. I could have been more explicit about this definition at the expense of pace and brevity, by making the post more heavy and harder for casual readers to digest, without adding significantly more clarity. I suppose it could have been defined explicitly, but I don't think the piece becomes stronger if I do. Rather, I think it becomes weaker for the vast majority of potential readers.
Some of this behavior certainly seems mean-spirited and malicious to people. Many examples available if you honestly can't think of any.
True, yes, but you must consider audience. There's a reason, unfortunately, why popular magazines are more popular than science journals. Style does matter, which always must be a consideration if you're tackling a complex theme and want your piece to be accessible to a wide variety of people.
It has been written about extensively. Again, this wasn't a PhD thesis. In fact, it's been written about extensively here on LessWrong before, notably "Tsuyoku vs. the Egalitarian Instinct" by Eliezer. I suppose I did assume some familiarity with the material that other readers might not have, and could have cited that as relevant prerequisite reading.
Again, because I was formulating a hypothesis, not writing a thesis.
I appreciate you taking the time to reply and elaborate on your thoughts, but there might be a difference in goals and expectations here. I've attempted to write a series of observations, reason through them, and come up for one explanation for a not-fully-understood phenomenon.
It's already stimulated some good discussion. I'm happy with that result and it has, thus far, done what I intended. I think a longer, weightier, more formal post would have been less effective at the intended goal of putting out observations, a hypothesis, and stimulating some discussion.
I didn't pick up that the article was "formulating a hypothesis". Did the article indicate that this is what it was doing? Perhaps I missed it.
Now that I do know, from your comment, that the article was doing that, I have to say I'm a bit surprised; I didn't expect to see that sort of article in the main section. Then again, I'm no expert on Less Wrong so maybe that sort of thing is not so uncommon.
Read and understood, we probably agree about most everything here and discussing it further is probably suboptimal.
I'll make a few clarifications that I don't think you'd argue with too much:
I had read the post and recognized the concept, but a link to it would have primed me more for looking at similarities/differences between the phenomena you and he discuss. Consider adding one?
I can think of many examples, but I can also think of many examples that don't seem malicious, in fact most don't, and since you're proposing an explanation of the class of behaviors, it seemed absurd to think that anyone would think that malice was an explanation. But upon reflection this was severe typical mind fallacy on my part.