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MugaSofer comments on Can the Chain Still Hold You? - Less Wrong
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I was thinking of a movie that shows how the Nazi was mislead into gassing people, not simply one that makes the bald statement "this man is an ordinary human, yet also kills people".
Re-read the article. He doesn't claim his actions were the correct decision.
That was just an aside, TBH. But IIRC the author of the essay does criticize his own reasoning where it lead him to rape, although obviously not enough to stop. And he doesn't offer any defense of rape at all, he just assumes it to be bad (which seems reasonable.)
... which is relevant how? We're not discussing someone advocating bad things and it being defended for anti-censorship reasons.
The article doesn't show how he was misled into thinking that someone flirting with him while they're both drunk is consenting to any sex act, or into thinking that he gets to weigh the damage rape does to his victims against his fun. It just says that he thinks that, then adds "But I don't wanna feel like a bad person, waaaah!".
It's right there in the title. Also at the end
Yeah, but that's like our Nazi character saying "Sure, it's sad when we kill Jews. But if we don't they'll destroy the Aryan race, so it's worth it.".
He's advocating laxer social punishment for people who rape at parties. You're defending it because you think people should know about his reasoning.
I think you need to re-read the article. It describes, from the inside, someone who raped without believing that rape is OK. Most people in our society are aware that rape is Bad. Obviously rapists are more likely to believe that rape is OK, but here we have a rapist who acknowledges that what he did was wrong, and thus is able to give significantly less biased account. That's valuable information for most people.
Saying "I'm going to do this" is different from providing arguments why that's the correct decision. He admits he can't justify it;
Deciding someone is an inhuman monster is not a punishment, it's an error of rationality.
Lots of people believe "rape is bad, rape is a stranger leaping out of the bushes, rape isn't sex with someone too drunk to know who you are". That isn't news. This guy believed that, then learned better, then shrugged and kept on raping. I guess the valuable info is "Telling people what rape is might not convince them to stop".
He doesn't even admit it's bad. ("And maybe finding it livable-with condemns us all to hell. I don’t know.") The reaction he's going for is "Yeah, it's more complicated than I thought, we shouldn't be so harsh on you.". In particular he's telling that to himself, and hoping to get external validation for that.
It'd be a very different story if he was saying "This is horrible, but I can't bring myself to stop. Where can I get help?".
Aren't you reading too much into the denotation of insults? He's a specimen of H. sapiens with normal psychological development given his environment. He's also a person whose actions are harmful, and who should be pressured to stop through guilt and shunning. (And removed from society, but we don't know who to jail; if Brand has info he's not saying.)
It's possible that you know so much on the subject that this essay genuinely doesn't contain any information you can use.
He admits, repeatedly, that it's bad. He also admits that he's conflicted, and a mixture of akrasia, uncertainty and plain old hypocrisy means that he's not modifying his behavior as a result of this fact. But he doesn't claim that this is in any way the "right choice". Furthermore, he doesn't claim we shouldn't punish him or whatever - although clearly he's not exactly turning himself in - he claims (more or less) that we should stop modelling him, and others like him, as The Enemy and more as, well, people. People who have done things with some horrific consequences, but nonetheless people, not "predators" hiding beneath a human skin. To model our political enemies as Evil Monsters is a persistent fault in human rationality, for obvious evopsych reasons. It may not do all that much damage when it deals with rapists (although it's harder to stop something you don't understand.) But this is nonetheless a bias that should be fought, because in other, less forgiving circumstances it can produce horrific results (including some rapists more dangerous than this guy, ironically.)
It would be happier ending, sure, and obviously I wish that's how it had ended. But the virtue ethics of the author does not tarnish the information in the text, as long as it's not biased (it's a hell of a lot less biased than most such essays.)
Once again, there is a difference between deciding, for the good of the tribe, to treat this man like a demon that crawled into your friend's skin if you meet him on the street. (Although I suspect that's suboptimal, somehow.) But in terms of rationality - y'know, the thing this site is about? - it is factually wrong to be modelling him as one. And it's dangerous, judging from history, to start demonizing those who don't demonize.
Articles and studies on the psychology of rapists aren't rare. If someone doesn't understand all that much how rape works, they should read the Yes means yes blog, not an article saying "Consent is complicated".
I'm confused. Can you describe some differences between the two models?
The man who believes it's sinful for his wife not to put out is following moral principles, and is just factually mistaken. The woman who rapes someone, then is horrified and turns herself in, is trying to follow correct moral principles and failing due to akrasia. The man who knows he's raping people but is uncomfortable with admitting he should stop and thus doesn't try... isn't that best described by "evil monster"? Dude is the villain of his own story!
You mean because it shows the cognitive dissonance between "rape is bad" and "I don't wanna stop raping" head-on?
Informative ones, by actual rapists, who aren't defending rape, are pretty damn rare.
Funny.
Please stop claiming that's all this is. I've refuted it like five times now.
Imagine two serial killers. One is a robot, sent from the future to kill Sarah Conner. The other is crazy, and believes that only he can stop the Moon People from taking over.
Pretty much. It's not trying to persuade you that rape is OK, it's trying to help you understand why (some) rape happens, and that it doesn't require an evil mutant or even a particularly dangerous person (except to the people getting raped, obviously.)
PS:
I don't understand this bit.
Okay, so you're trying to say that... rapists don't literally endorse hurting humanity? They know that rape does so, and they don't try to figure out a way to stop, and you have to use force to make them stop because moral concerns don't move them, but unlike evil mutant robot monsters, they feel guilty about it and write self-pitying essays?
No it isn't. It's trying to help me understand what rapists tell themselves is why rape happens. I very much doubt those are the real causes.
If the scores of articles by feminists about how anyone, no matter how charming and friendly and good to have in your tribe, can be a predator don't convince people, but this one article by a rapist does... then the article is worthwhile and I weep for humanity.
I was giving examples of rapists who think of themselves as good people. The first has incorrect beliefs about morality, and does what he believes is right. The second has correct beliefs, but fails to follow them once, though she does most of the time. Someone who has correct beliefs about morality and consistently fails to act on them (akrasia shmakrasia, he's not trying to figure out a way to make himself stop) pretty much has to think of himself as evil.
Chirping in: This formulation is problematic. Rapists aren't "predators disguising as people" until they shed their social pretense and let loose their inner evil upon unsuspecting victims. This is not a "one of them could be inherently rapist, we just don't know who".
Until they rape, rapists are just people in the exact same way that until they get elected/nominated politicians are just people. It could be argued that for the entire set of all humans, there exists for each human at least one non-contrived configuration-space of "current situation" in which they would rape, either by choice while aware of it, by choice while not realizing that it's rape, or with some form of pressure that makes it clearly unreasonable not to.
After the rape, have those people become fundamentally changed in some way? Are their neural systems now different, and now optimizing for a completely different utility function that has a parameter for reducing other peoples' utility as much as possible? They're still the same people, to the extent that "same people" remain "same people" throughout time.
This... doesn't seem to follow. They do have to think of themselves as perfect on pain of not being perfectly consistent, yes. However, making the jump from there to "evil because not maximizing morality" is far-fetched, and I doubt most of these people are rational and/or smart enough to even reason about this in these terms.
There is such a thing as a rapist type. A little over half of rapists are repeat offenders, with six victims on average. This group is also more likely to slap or choke people they have sex with, and to hit children. (And also to commit sexual assault, but at this point that's obvious.)
The remaining group, of one-time rapists, probably matches your model.
I'm pretty sure that's false, assuming we're counting fuck-or-die situations (where both parties are being raped, anyway) and messing with meds as contrived. To stretch your metaphor horribly, until Obama was first elected he wasn't president, but he was the type of person who wants a political career and has positions that fit in a party's platform and can give good public speeches and raise money to campaign and so on, in the way that most people aren't.
To take a N=1 sample, I can't think of a non-contrived situation where I would rape. What's more, when I model myself being born in the kind of environment that would lead me to rape, the person stops being recognizably me long before puberty. Whereas other unfortunately-raised mes remain me well into invading Poland or going postal or torturing heretics.
There are certainly some people, possibly more than I think (but way less than the whole of humanity), who can lose control. And as they're still the same people, once they regain control of themselves, they are horrified and atone as much as they can.
Or are you thinking of something like war, where (or so I heard) people go berserk and kill and rape indiscriminately? That I'll buy. (It does change people fundamentally, but doesn't replace them with evilbots.) But that's nowhere near what we're discussing here.
Wait, is the jump from "anyone who chooses to do this is evil, I do this, I know ways to stop doing this, I'm not taking them" to "I'm evil" far-fetched? Isn't that as basic as cognitive dissonance gets?
I'm saying that they're human, and best modeled as such. I am not advocating any particular method of rape prevention, but since we're on LessWrong it should come as no surprise that I think understanding the problem fully is probably going to make our solutions better.
No, it isn't. He's clearly an atypical rapist in that regard. If he was a typical rapist, then the essay would be hopelessly biased and would never have been published. Instead it is only mildly biased, and offers an opportunity to see into the mind of a rapist via his future self, who is now aware that his actions were rape and thus doesn't try to excuse them.
Just because someone is charming doesn't mean they can't be a monster. Most actual psychopaths are pretty good at hiding the fact. But that doesn't mean that we should assume that just because someone is both charming and hurting people they're a psychopath. Because it doesn't take a psychopath to hurt people. If it did, the world would be a very different place.
Oh. Why?