MugaSofer comments on Rationality Quotes November 2012 - Less Wrong

6 [deleted] 06 November 2012 10:38PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 20 November 2012 09:21:38PM *  2 points [-]

You are claiming that low intelligence and violent tendencies are racial characteristics, which is generally considered racist nonsense by, well, non-racists.

Which are you more interested in being, non-racist or correct?

I hope that question doesn't come off as too offensive, and it may turn out that you are genuinely more interested in being non-racist than correct. Given the treatment of prominent biologists for stating truths, one whose livelihood depends on public opinion and who isn't an expert in biology might decide that adopting the dogma of the times is the wisest move.

But supposing that you are actually curious- that you are seriously attempting to determine the quantitative effect that race has on crime or intelligence or so on- what makes "0" such a special number? Sure, it's the null hypothesis, but the null hypothesis for the effect of class on violence or intelligence is also 0. Why reject one out of hand, and not the other? Notice that we don't have non-classists breathing down our necks to ensure we don't point out that the poor are disproportionately represented in the jails.

Comment author: MugaSofer 21 November 2012 06:45:48PM 1 point [-]

I am non-racist because assuming all humans are ultimately the same has proved a better heuristic than the natural tendency to assume that people's flaws are inherent aspects of their nature. In addition, statistically, I am almost certainly biased against other races (as are you.) While there is probably a negligible effect of race on intelligence and violence, it's almost(?) too small to measure and the problems of taking it into account are far greater than the amount of influence it has.

TL;DR: I'm non-racist in order to be correct. It's a heuristic that has served me well, and has served it's users well historically.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 21 November 2012 09:57:27PM *  2 points [-]

I am non-racist because assuming all humans are ultimately the same

What do you mean by this? Do you mean that all humans are equally smart? Or do you mean assuming some humans are in fact smarter than others but smartness isn't correlated with say skin color? If the latter, that "all humans are ultimately the same" doesn't seem like a good summary.

Edit: Or are you attempting some version of what Christians mean by this statement, namely "all humans have a soul and all souls are equal before God"?

Comment author: DaFranker 21 November 2012 10:12:19PM 1 point [-]

I was also slightly offset by this, particularly the vague phrasing "ultimately the same", which by reflex I would've asked to taboo. However, by charitable interpretation, I think the intended meaning is that everyone is running on the same source code. Even if the source code contains modules that take set values according to runtime events and then become irreversible (or extremely difficult to alter), which leads to the same "program" doing vastly different things and having different capabilities.

An example intuition pump here might be to imagine a standard PC running a custom OS that enables or disables a bunch of its key features and messes a bunch of its parameters or will use different optimization subroutines and garbage collection procedures during it startup routine all according to some hidden, unknown algorithm that takes pictures of the user during said startup as input.

Obviously the sourcecode and hardware are the same, but the behavior and capabilities will be radically different depending on the user. You might even be able to hack parts of the OS during runtime to enable certain disabled features or tweak some parameters, but how much can be hacked and how to do it is unknown at first.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 22 November 2012 07:40:25PM 1 point [-]

I think the intended meaning is that everyone is running on the same source code. Even if the source code contains modules that take set values according to runtime events and then become irreversible (or extremely difficult to alter), which leads to the same "program" doing vastly different things and having different capabilities.

Well, this can be made trivially true through a suitable choice of the line between "source code" and "set values". For example, define the laws of physics and basic biology to be the "source code" and let our DNA and upbringing be the "set values". I fail to see how this is interesting.

Comment author: Bugmaster 22 November 2012 01:11:31AM 1 point [-]

I took his statement to mean, "the variation among individual humans across the entire human species is far greater than any variation between racial subgroups, to the point where the racial variations become negligible".

Comment author: MugaSofer 22 November 2012 02:11:12AM -1 points [-]

While there are of course minor differences between individuals, they tend not to correlate with anything much, and are generally far, far smaller than humans tend to assume. Those terrorists don't hate our freedom, those women aren't naturally more emotional, and those blacks aren't really savages.

I would not object to Bugmaster's summary, although it seems somewhat overly specific.

Comment author: [deleted] 22 November 2012 02:19:35AM 0 points [-]

What do you mean by "really"?

If you mean that if I go out into the world and measure savageness and emotionalness and terroristness (the freedom-hating thing is straw), I will not find an effect? This is a rather radical claim, and I would like to see such a study. My impression is that studies like that find that there are effects.

If you mean "really" to mean "genetically", note that my "weak racism" would still be a valid interpretation. (For reference, "weak racism" is the claim that whether the effect is genetic or memetic or societal only matters for what kind of intervention to fix it with, and does not have bearing on whether the effect exists or is something worth talking about.)

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 22 November 2012 07:45:17PM 1 point [-]

(the freedom-hating thing is straw)

Actually no. If one were to ask (Islamic) terrorists how they think society should be organized, one would find that their suggestions contain significantly less freedom than modern western societies.

Comment author: Bugmaster 21 November 2012 07:05:17PM 1 point [-]

Is that really true, though ? As far as I know, and I may be wrong, there are some flaws that are indeed attributable to race. For example, white people suffer from a lack of UV protection as compared to almost everyone else; Asians find it more difficult to metabolize alcohol; etc.

Granted, you are very probably right about intelligence and violence, though.

Comment author: MugaSofer 21 November 2012 08:01:48PM 1 point [-]

Sorry, I meant flaws in their personality or whatever. The psychological unity of mankind and all that. Your co-worker kicks his desk because he's an angry person, you kick your desk because your alarm clock didn't go off and you had to skip breakfast and then it was raining ... or, more to the point, we have to keep on killing Them because those bastards wont stop trying to kill us. And so on.