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

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

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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.

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