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Konkvistador comments on Video: Skepticon talks - Less Wrong
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The comments on the place of anger in a "social change movement" at 35:40 just got me laughing. Yes let's cherry pick all the social change movements that won or at least haven't yet been clearly defeated and the audience happens to mostly agree with! Hm I really can't imagine any angry "social change" movements that failed or I didn't like in the ... oh ... past 200 years.
Nope.
Getting a blank here.
She also really annoyed me in the death talk. She kept mentioning advantages atheists have over religious people, like that when it comes down to it we're less afraid of death. It seemed like she was just cheering for her (and my) team. But I'm not an atheist because it has social benefits or might be better for my mental heath. I'm an atheist because I think the religions are wrong. If there are benefits to being an atheist that doesn't make it more right to be one; the social benefits of religions certainly don't make them more true.
42:20 seems to be almost offering itself as a pedagogical example, lets do an exercise together:
angry [demographic X here]
Think of 10 examples by yourself. Now think about the implications. Overall my assessment is that this is a good pro-atheist pep talk, a neat catalogue of applause lights but it has very little if any rationalist value. Now you might ask me: "But Konkvistador was it supposed to have rationalist value?"
Why, yes. Yes it was.
Or rather it should have been a good source of tips to help improve our instrumental rationality to promote a sane beliefs (which happens to be atheism). I understand the need to do politics and rallies, the value of such a talk is basically purely entertainment, an ingroup ritual to keep people around for some boring stuff.
Too bad, lots of people can do that. In the long run a serious analysis of "angry atheism" would do the spread of atheist beliefs (though not necessarily the movement of atheism) more good.
Note: By which I don't mean to imply it is necessarily the wrong approach, just that rational analysis of it is practically non-existant, due to rational religious people being unreliable due to tribal loyalties and activist atheist being unreliable due to ... tribal loyalties.
It may be a good pep talk for her co-ideologists, but from the outside it looks like straight-out ideological warfare, which of course it actually is. Unsurprisingly, like nearly all such material, its reasoning is full of holes big enough to drive a truck through. (The stuff you pointed out is only the tip of the iceberg.)
If anything, this should be evident from the fact that she makes a number of highly controversial ideological statements about current issues -- which I'm sure many people here would in fact dispute or at least consider as lacking in evidence -- as plain and common-sense truth, to an enthusiastic response by the audience.
I think it's indicative of some deep biases that this stuff, unlike ideological rants in general, can be posted on LW with general approval.
I should have made it more clear that I was using "pro-atheist" in the sense of the organized atheist movement. And yes obviously that movement is ideological. Worse for quality of thinking, it is political, in the sense that it has some clearly defined political allies (and also enemies).
Remember it wasn't posted separately, just as a batch of stuff from Skepticon. I doubt that many people from LW have seen it.
But yes some blatantly ideological material gets a free pass or at least much less scrutiny than is warranted (such threads show up in discussion once every week or two) because of the demographics of Lesswrong. Like any group of people we bring our politics with us at least implicitly (even if it is explicitly banished), which translates into ideological sympathies and the vocabulary of applause lights we use and recognize.
In addition most users here have a warm fuzzy feeling when they hear atheism, which might mean they misidentify to which contrarian cluster someone actually belongs to.
Also, another bias (or rather, a whole huge complex of biases) that I see as even more problematic is the choice of targets of these "skeptic" luminaries. Looking through the website of their conference and the list of speakers, I see people who attack traditional religion and various low-status folk superstitions, many of whom also promote ideological positions of the sorts that tend to have high status among academics and other respectable intellectuals. I haven't see anything, however, about skepticism towards various falsities and biases that enjoy high status and official approval under the present academic system. Unless we are so lucky nowadays that no such things exist -- a proposition that seems plainly false to me -- I can't help but conclude that the whole enterprise ends up as a farcical parody of "skepticism."
Two potential counterexamples to keep in mind: (1) Yudkowsky's pro-cryonics and generally anti-death stance, as evidenced in the "death panel" discussion (which hasn't been posted yet, but his views are anyway familiar to regular readers of LW); and (2) J.T. Eberhard's (very personal) discussion of mental illness, which (except for certain fashionable exceptions, and despite occasional rhetoric you may hear from time to time) actually remains quite low-status virtually everywhere, elite intellectual communities included.
The organized skeptical movement is aimed primarily at improving critical thinking among the general public. In LW terminology, this is about raising the sanity waterline about things like religion, astrology, and homeopathy. Given how much money is spent on such things, that's a useful goal even from a simple naive utilitarian perspective.
Can you give an example of these falsities or biases?
Meta-note: I'm watching out for confirmation bias here because I'm strongly inclined to agree with you. I'm requesting specifics to better understand you, but I'm wary of it turning into a case of asking for confirming evidence.
As always there's a bias against anything that might be considered to give aid and succour to the enemy. Since the time of Hitler, there's therefore a politically motivated bias in favor of egalitarianism, in all its forms, and against the strong linking of aptitudes, especially mental aptitudes, to genetics. And especially when statistically linked to politically relevant groups and politically relevant aptitudes. E.g nobody cares that Irish have red hair more commonly than Greeks, but to link average IQ and racial groups causes political shitstorms.
Why? Because Politics is the Mindkiller. Once a belief is identified as a belief of the enemies, defending it makes you perceived as defending the enemies.
I don't think it's useful to steer the discussion towards such extremely charged issues, as if there were no other ones pertinent for the topic. Even if the whole class of biases you describe were absent, there would still be plenty of questions where (in my opinion, at least) a consistent skeptic would have to take up issue with the consensus of the academic institutions. (By "consensus" I also mean situations where there exist significant disagreements within the academic mainstream, but all the positions acceptable within the respectable mainstream share some underlying assumptions, which it is not possible to dispute without consigning oneself to an unacceptable contrarian status.)
In many of these areas, contrarian opinions aren't particularly scandalous, and one doesn't have to fear any serious repercussions for voicing them. (Unless one aims for an academic career in a field under direct bureaucratic control by the purveyors of the disputed official truth, of course.) The problem is that contrarian statements tend to sound just laughably wacky, like the rants of a physics crackpot, unless one accompanies them with lengthy and careful arguments in order to bridge the inferential distances. (And finds an audience willing to give them a fair hearing instead of just laughing them off, of course.) This is often just too time-consuming, and possibly also too demanding on one's interlocutors.
However, the existence of such topics is, in my opinion, particularly damning for the selective skeptics of the sort I've been criticizing. Here they don't even have the excuse that contrarian opinions would be too offensive and inflammatory to bring up. Their silence betrays either complete lack of critical thinking about such topics or the unwillingness to take even a minor status hit by dissenting from the highest-status purveyors of respectable opinion -- in any case making their self-designation farcical.
Can you name one or two, then?
For example, in economics and in all kinds of fields related to health and lifestyle, there are many issues where the academic mainstream appears to be seriously detached from reality, and the falsities and delusions purveyed by it cause very real damage in practice. Attacking these is unlikely to be dangerous, but it will put you in a position where you're presumed to be a crackpot until proven otherwise (and likely even after that), since the word of the accredited experts is against you.
Now, if some people speak up against one sort of delusion and falsity, I certainly don't think that they are obliged to speak against all of them. However, if there is mass gathering where purported skeptics and free-thinkers assemble to discuss a broad agenda of topics where, according to them, skeptics must speak up because dangerous delusions and falsities are rampant, then their choice of included and omitted topics sends a message by itself.
I didn't choose it for being charged, I chose it for being the clearest and simplest example IMO.
In contrast, I read your three paragraphs above, and I don't know what in the name of Cthulhu you're actually talking about.
It does not seem to make much difference, whether examples are charged or uncharged: When I give, as an example, the seemingly uncharged mechanisms of speciation, the reaction is every bit as hostile, as when I give, as an example, the obviously highly charged female incapacity in science and maths.
People are happy with your criticism of academia in the abstract - but are unhappy with any particular example whatsoever. Indeed if there was a particular example that they were not unhappy with, then it would not be an example. Academia would be able to handle it OK.
Certain elsewhere controversial criticisms of academia are ok here sam, if one sticks to LW standards. Let me demonstrate, by what would be in many less reasonable place cause a blow up, even though its pretty obvious to be true:
Academia is biased against hereditary explanation of group differences.
While I will refuse to speculate on how good the hereditarian explanation is in this thread (anyone reading my comment history can figure out where I stand on that), I don't think this post will get me downvoted. Recall a similar response I gave you on matters of gender relations.
But, you are obviously right in the sense of many more LWers thinking they are open minded to such criticism than they actually are. Despite your previous perceived norm violations, note that this particular comment isn't downvoted below -1, despite basically Eliezer Yudkowsky himself branding you generally a troll or disruptive element. I'm actually quite sure the exact same post made by someone else would be in the +1 to +4 range.
Aaaaaaaaaaand because espousing such a belief probably means you are "the enemy", that you're a reasonable person who came to the same conclusion (and didn't have the sense to introduce it in a more effective way) is probably much less likely.
That's pretty much the same point I made in a different thread
By correlating X with Y (where e.g. X=race and Y=average intelligence), other people end up correlating "People who correlate X with Y" with Z (Z=people who are evil racist bastards).
That's a proper correlation, but it's still a epistemological bias to prejudice against the idea, just because the speakers of that idea are often evil.
Well said!
The trouble is that by the very nature of the problem, concrete examples are bound to provoke controversy, at least if stated bluntly and without careful explanation. See my comments in this thread, where I presented my views on this issue at length, and especially this subthread.
Don't you see a blatant inconsistency between you criticizing others for not putting their faces and names on a public attack to such high-status biases, and yet you hesitate to speak clearly even when you are anonymous through the Internet?
Right now religion is arguably still killing more people than any other bias in the modern world - and unless one defeats it and its accompanying delusions of a just, designed, meant-to-be world, one has little chance of defeating deathist or other biases as well. Because most of them stem from the idea that what is was also meant to be. Inshallah and stuff.
I don't think people have any obligation to speak publicly against anything, and I am not criticizing anyone for mere failure to do so. What I am criticizing is when people claim to be skeptics, free-thinkers, etc. loudly and proudly, while at the same time effectively demonstrating this skepticism and free-thinking only on issues where it's safe and easy to do so. (Safe in the sense that it won't result in a controversy dangerous for one's status, reputation, or career, and easy in the sense of sticking to topics where the existing official intellectual institutions provide reliable guidance -- as opposed to those where they are unreliable, or worse, and one needs genuine skepticism and independent thinking to discern the truth. Unless you deny that any such topics exist, would you not agree that they are the ones that represent a real test of whether one deserves to be called a "skeptic," "free-thinker," etc.?)
This is a complex and difficult topic in its own right, but in my opinion, if you operate with "religion" as a special category of metaphysical beliefs and accept the customary distinctions applied to this category in the contemporary ideological debates, you have likely already fallen prey to some deep and widespread biases. The main difference between ideologies and religions is, in my view, principally in the way that the former masquerade their metaphysical beliefs, instead of declaring them explicitly, in order to misrepresent themselves as commonsensical or even scientific. It shouldn't be hard to see that this introduces only greater problems and dangers, and recent history, in my opinion, readily confirms this. (If you don't think this position is reasonable, I can provide arguments for it at greater length.)
Moreover, if one engages in selective skepticism that consistently refrains from targeting high-status and official institutions, one can't avoid sending off the implicit message that these institutions are fundamentally sound and trustworthy, that we shouldn't be reluctant to put our destiny in their hands, and that people who have deep disagreements with them should be immediately written off as crackpots. Even if nothing of the sort is stated explicitly, such a message is clearly implied, willingly or not, and I don't consider it a positive contribution to public discourse under any reasonable criteria.
Perhaps the metaphysical beliefs aren't that much important. They are almost always free-floating, not tied in any significant way to expectations and experiences, and serve as a group identification sign. (After all, it doesn't seem to me that, say, Rand's Objectivism is less explicit with its assumptions than Zoroastrianism. That ideologies don't refer to gods doesn't imply that they masquerade their basic beliefs.) Putting too much attention to these beliefs is itself a mistake, since it diverts attention from the real mechanisms of harm, which are related to biases and shared among ideologies and religions.
Upvoted for concreteness.
The outside view is that angry people don't think as clearly as non-angry people. I don't think I'll be watching that video.