magfrump comments on [Link] Admitting to Bias - Less Wrong

19 Post author: GLaDOS 10 August 2012 08:13AM

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Comment author: magfrump 11 August 2012 05:48:15PM -2 points [-]

I can prefer some weighted mixture of "finding some truth now," and "setting pleasant social norms to make my truth-finding community healthier for the future," while still optimizing for truth.

However there are certainly plenty of reasons to pursue instrumental rationality (in fact, all reasons are reasons for this) and if we value people not feeling bad, I'm not sure what your case against politeness actually consists of.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 14 August 2012 09:14:31PM 4 points [-]

I can prefer some weighted mixture of "finding some truth now," and "setting pleasant social norms to make my truth-finding community healthier for the future,"

Given that those "pleasant social norms" seem to consist of declaring investigating certain subjects taboo, this is likely to make truth seeking harder in the future.

Comment author: magfrump 14 August 2012 10:07:23PM *  -2 points [-]

Given the current lack of diversity in our community, and that I have some (I will allow somewhat mysterious) sense that diverse perspectives will be useful to rationality, for example, in avoiding projecting our preferences, I personally believe that in a more diverse community we will be able to have a better discussion of the issues at hand which will be more truthful.

I don't mean to say you should stop having opinions about this, just that the opinion of even one person who is directly targeted would probably make the discussion about a thousand times more practical and useful to our community, whereas right now I feel like there are lots of bad feelings and no practical benefit.

I do agree with you that a permanent taboo would be obviously problematic.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 14 August 2012 10:20:35PM *  3 points [-]

Given the current lack of diversity in our community, and that I have some (I will allow somewhat mysterious) sense that diverse perspectives will be useful to rationality, for example, in avoiding projecting our preferences, I personally believe that in a more diverse community we will be able to have a better discussion of the issues at hand which will be more truthful.

You seem to be confusing racial diversity with ideological diversity.

Edit: Since you seem to have misunderstood me let me clarify. Your argument about the benefits of diversity is about the benefits of ideological diversity, whereas your complaint is about the lack of racial diversity.

Comment author: magfrump 15 August 2012 10:45:11PM -1 points [-]

People of different races have different life experiences. I think that those other life experiences, not the ideologies commonly associated with them, are what are missing from this conversation.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 August 2012 10:38:24PM -2 points [-]

You seem to be confusing racial diversity with ideological diversity.

Since you seem to be not reading the link:

Of our 1090 respondents, 972 (89%) were male, 92 (8.4%) female, 7 (.6%) transexual, and 19 gave various other answers or objected to the question. As abysmally male-dominated as these results are, the percent of women has tripled since the last survey in mid-2009.

We're also a little more diverse than we were in 2009; our percent non-whites has risen from 6% to just below 10%. Along with 944 whites (86%) we include 38 Hispanics (3.5%), 31 East Asians (2.8%), 26 Indian Asians (2.4%) and 4 blacks (.4%).

This is not a diverse propulation.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 15 August 2012 09:04:25PM 3 points [-]

See my edit of the parent.

Comment author: [deleted] 15 August 2012 09:08:11PM -2 points [-]

As far as I can tell, you've misunderstood his argument. This thread started out as a thread about racial diversity.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 11 August 2012 07:37:34PM 3 points [-]

As Eliezer said in this post:

Second-order rationality implies that at some point, you will think to yourself, "And now, I will irrationally believe that I will win the lottery, in order to make myself happy." But we do not have such direct control over our beliefs. You cannot make yourself believe the sky is green by an act of will. You might be able to believe you believed it—though I have just made that more difficult for you by pointing out the difference. (You're welcome!) You might even believe you were happy and self-deceived; but you would not in fact be happy and self-deceived.

For second-order rationality to be genuinely rational, you would first need a good model of reality, to extrapolate the consequences of rationality and irrationality. If you then chose to be first-order irrational, you would need to forget this accurate view. And then forget the act of forgetting. I don't mean to commit the logical fallacy of generalizing from fictional evidence, but I think Orwell did a good job of extrapolating where this path leads.

You can't know the consequences of being biased, until you have already debiased yourself. And then it is too late for self-deception.

The other alternative is to choose blindly to remain biased, without any clear idea of the consequences. This is not second-order rationality. It is willful stupidity.

Comment author: magfrump 14 August 2012 08:45:22PM -2 points [-]

I don't see how this applies, or disputes my point.

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