Viliam_Bur comments on Factions, inequality, and social justice - Less Wrong

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 04 December 2012 04:41:11PM * 4 points [-]

this may not actually be a useful category, since it glues a harmful value to a virtuous one.

The important thing is whether this category reflects reality or not. Let's start the analysis there, not with the bottom line.

Comment author: RobbBB 04 December 2012 06:00:12PM * 0 points [-]

That's a very interesting response, but I think the issue of 'natural kinds' is more pertinent to fundamental physics and metaphysics than to classifications of high-level phenomena like social groups and ideologies. The more complicated the phenomenon, the harder it is to single out clear joints of Nature. That said, I think the above terms ('feminist,' 'antifeminist,' 'denialist,' 'supremacist,' 'egalitarian'...) are useful starting points for their relative precision and simplicity.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 05 December 2012 09:58:52AM * 3 points [-]

If you don't follow "nature", then the definition is kind of arbitrary. The arbitrary definitions can be used to help or hurt the cause. If you complain about "gluing a harmful value to a virtuous one", I feel like you have already decided to dislike A and like B, and you are biased to think about definitions that will hurt A and/or help B. The definition itself becomes a weapon. (Related: this article.)

As an example, imagine there is a movement around some concept C consisting of a sympathetic person P1, average people P2, P3, P4, and an unsympathetic person P5.

If you like C, you are motivated to invent a definition that includes P1, P2, P3, P4 and excludes P5. Then "C is movement popular among many people, including such paragons as P1".

If you dislike C, you are motivated to invent a definition that includes P5 and excludes P1. Inclusion of P2, P3, P4 depends on whether you prefer to describe it as "a dangerous movement" (include) or "a fringe belief" (exclude).

A simple, broad term for the salient grouping MRA falls into is 'antifeminists.'

My translation: "In my opinion, C pattern-matches P5."

You could pick out the MRAers who aren't just supremacists as 'antifeminists who happen to care a lot about men's rights,' but this may not actually be a useful category, since it glues a harmful value to a virtuous one.

My translation: "You could pick out other member of C, such as P1, P2, P3, P4, but this may not actually be a useful [for what purpose exactly?] category, since it glues P5 to P1".

Comment author: RobbBB comment score below threshold [+] (5 children)

Comment author: RobbBB 05 December 2012 11:37:47AM * -4 points [-]

If you don't follow "nature", then the definition is kind of arbitrary.

What could "arbitrary" mean here? Paraconsistent logic is not "arbitrary," though it is hard to say in what sense it follows nature. As it happens, no human being employs a language that has been completely purified of all interests, all values, all pragmatic considerations, of everything but the Truth. But from this it does not follow that all the non-joint-carving terms in human language are completely arbitrary; they may even be universalizable, if the prudential or moral values they are predicated on happen to be shared among the relevant linguistic community.

If you complain about "gluing a harmful value to a virtuous one", I feel like you have already decided to dislike A and like B, and you are biased to think about definitions that will hurt A and/or help B.

Guilty as charged, I suppose. I do indeed dislike denialism and male supremacism, and I do indeed like supporters of men's and women's rights. Is this an unacceptable leap? Does intellectual seriousness demand that I maintain perfect neutrality at all times regarding the existence or moral character of systemic sexism? Absent an argument for taking denialism seriously as a factual claim, or for conferring respect upon supremacism as a scalable moral project, I see no reason to even consider actively linking these practices to productive social activism, any more than I see a reason to coin a catchy new term for 'environmentalists who deny the occurrence of anthropogenic climate change,' or 'white supremacists who regularly give to charity.' Certainly there are such people, but we have no responsibility to rhetorically fortify their position for them by gerrymandering a more respectable slice of peoplespace in their honor. That goes well beyond steel-manning.

Remember, I did not suggest inventing a term merely to promote gender egalitarianism or human well-being or what-have-you. All I noted was that the values in question are potentially hindered if we go out of our way to coin a new term linking denialism or supremacism to the general idea of the promotion of men's (or women's) liberties, rights, welfare, etc. As it happens, this also isn't a natural kind, isn't one of Nature's privileged Joints; but I thought that point was relatively obvious, so I stuck to the pragmatic question of the utility of the coinage.

My translation: "In my opinion, C pattern-matches P5."

It was already suggested earlier in the discussion that P5 is a kind of C (i.e., that 'MRA' is a specifically anti-feminist movement). My addition was to suggest that insofar as that's the case, it's clearer to regularly speak of 'C' in place of 'P5.' 'MRA' is already being used as a term of abuse; my addition just lets us note a more natural grouping of the intended targets of the abuse, while conferring the advantage of not giving up the meme of men's rights to the Dark Side, and the secondary advantage of allowing people who happen to identify as feminist 'Men's Rights Advocates' to clarify that they belong to a special P5* that isn't really C at all. So much the better.

My translation: "You could pick out other member of C, such as P1, P2, P3, P4, but this may not actually be a useful [for what purpose exactly?] category, since it glues P5 to P1".

Again, you aren't applying your own analogy schema to the case at hand. I already allowed P5* into the Big Feminist Tent alongside P1-4. I can't allow anti-feminism into the feminism tent, on pain of logical contradiction. And I see no reason to define a new property D for an arbitrary and complex intersection of other properties. You give no principled reason to revise this policy; it's not as though we can define a new term for every possible intersection of properties in the Universe, so it is inevitable that our interests and desires will play a role in which intersections we pay heed to.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 05 December 2012 12:20:03PM * 7 points [-]

On meta level:

As it happens, no human being employs a language that has been completely purified of all interests, all values, all pragmatic considerations, of everything but the Truth.

Fallacy of gray. Just because we are not perfect, does not mean that some ways are not better than other ways. Humans are not perfectly unbiased, but we could still avoid the most obviously biased arguments.

Liking or disliking a group is not a problem per se. The problem for a rationalist would be if your liking or disliking motivated you to change your own perception of reality (for example by intentionally using non-natural categories) in a way that would make you more likely to believe false statements.

For example, if X% of MRAs believe that women should be chained in kitchens, we should want to believe that the number of them who believe so is X. Not X+1. Not X-1. This is unrelated to whether you consider women chained in kitchens to be the most horrible idea ever, a neutral culture-specific choice, or the best idea ever. One way to change the value of X is to include or exclude the people from the original set, so that the ratio within the new set becomes smaller or greater than X.

Usually, when people do this, they only report the number, and not the difference between the original set and the new set. For example one could say: "I have statistically proved that 100% of MRAs want women to be chained in kitchens (and here are the raw data)" and omit the part "...because I used a definition that only those who want to chain women in kitchens are the true MRAs." There could be other numbers for other definitions, for example "people who self-identify as MRAs", or "people recognized as MRAs by other people who self-identify as MRAs" or "people who agree with MRA ideas, regardless of the fact how they self-identify" (and then we also have to include our definition of "MRA ideas"). And for even greater justice one should also include a number of non-MRAs who want to have women chained in kitchens (instead of silently assuming that it must be zero).

On object level:

'MRA' is a specifically anti-feminist movement

Feminism is not clearly defined, so neither is anti-feminism. Does anti-feminism mean "opposing the voting rights for women" or "opposing job quotas for women" or "opposing how the divorce is typically handled by the courts" or "opposing the idea that all men are rapists and should be castrated"? Any of this? All of this?

'MRA' is already being used as a term of abuse

By some people, yes. By other people, no. Should we also use the word "feminist" to mean "a woman who refuses to shave her legs, and talks about it all the time" just because some people use it this way?

Or does the majority decide? Then most likely for any new movement, the outside definition is "those crazy people".

Generally, opponents of X will typically use X as a term of abuse, and readily provide strawman definitions of X.

EDIT:

I already allowed P5* into the Big Feminist Tent alongside P1-4. I can't allow anti-feminism into the feminism tent, on pain of logical contradiction.

Perhaps the ability or inability to be included in the Big Feminist Tent is not the essence of MRA. We should look at the essence independently.

Imagine that you already have a category called Apples. Now someone proposes a category of Green Things. It would be strange to say: "Let's define Green Things as those things which are green and are not apples... because the green apples are already included in the category Apples."

Some green things are apples. Some green things are not apples. Even if there is a correlation between green things and apples, it is still better to define Green Things as being green, instead of being green non-Apples. (That is not the same as asking someone to include also the green non-Apples into Apples, which would be a logical contradiction.) The definition of Green Things is unrelated to the definition of Apples.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 05 December 2012 03:22:28PM * 4 points [-]

General principle: When people like something, they assume that the best examples are typical of it. If people don't like something, they assume that the worst examples are typical of it.

Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crud) is an attempt to break out of that habit.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 05 December 2012 04:20:33PM * 1 point [-]

So taken together, there are at least three big problems with describing a set of things.

1) People are more likely to notice and remember the things which match their biases. This will be reflected in their descriptions, even with honest intentions.

2) People are likely to further shift the description for political reasons to make the described thing appear better or worse.

3) The results may significantly differ according to what weight we assign to the individual items of the set. When speaking about books, do we consider all published (or even unpublished? unfinished?) books as equal, or do we weigh them by number of exemplars printed (or sold?) or by how many people read them (and how often?) or liked them? When speaking about a political movement, do we weigh opinions by the number of people who hold them, by the number of articles (or books? or lectures?) expressing them, or by the number of members who read those articles / books / listen to lectures and agree with them?

Comment author: [deleted] 05 December 2012 04:28:10PM * 2 points [-]

For example, if X% of MRAs believe that women should be chained in kitchens, we should want to believe that the number of them who believe so is X.

Only if there are exactly 100 MRAs in the world. ;-)

Comment author: RobbBB comment score below threshold [+] (0 children)

Comment author: RobbBB 05 December 2012 12:52:55PM * -3 points [-]

Fallacy of gray. Just because we are not perfect, does not mean that some ways are not better than other ways. Humans are not perfectly unbiased, but we could still avoid the most obviously biased arguments.

Straw-man fallacy. (And fallacy fallacy. A word to the wise: Your arguments so far have been extremely vague and have only rarely intersected with my specific claims. You may be relying too much on general pattern-matching of vaguely similar argument types, rather than grappling specifically with what I've suggested here.)

Nowhere did I suggest that we should make 'obviously biased arguments.' But what is meant by 'biased' here? If admitting that we believe 'sex-based discrimination exists' and 'sex-based discrimination is bad' immediately makes us 'obviously biased' in the context of any discussion about sex and gender, then we seem to have committed ourselves to a rather untenably austere True Neutrality stance. Would admitting that I believe the Holocaust occurred, and that the Holocaust was bad, similarly call into question my credibility and objectivity as a reasoner? I think that's a bit over-the-top.

The problem for a rationalist would be if your liking or disliking motivated you to change your own perception of reality (for example by intentionally using non-natural categories) in a way that would make you more likely to believe false statements.

You're reifying categories too much. The way we group the world is almost never a completely neutral, interest-free sorting of empirical clusters. The take-away lesson from that isn't 'Despair of ever identifying any of Nature's joints,' nor is it 'Despair of ever being unbiased.' The take-away lesson is to beware of essentializing, i.e., of treating groupings we adopted for convenience as ultimately real. The advice you give is good in broad strokes, but unworkable if it requires that we simply stop having any terms we've defined as we do for purposes of convenience. Our choice of everyday terms is not (nor should it be) in all cases a deep worldly matter, even if the things we assert using those terms is indeed in all cases a deep worldly matter.

For example, if X% of MRAs believe that women should be chained in kitchens, we should want to believe that the number of them who believe so is X. Not X+1. Not X-1.

Yes. Nothing I've said suggests otherwise. Coining a new term specifically for people who care deeply about the welfare of men and think sexism (or female-directed sexism) doesn't exist would not help us better understand the world or its property clusters. Respond to my assertions, not to the most proximate schematic memes my words can be fitted into.

"...because I used a definition that only those who want to chain women in kitchens are the true MRAs."

Yes. Fortunately, my recommendation helps address and correct for precisely this problem.

Feminism is not clearly defined, so neither is anti-feminism.

I defined feminism in the very post you're responding to. I even explicitly defined anti-feminism using exactly this consideration. This again suggests to me that you aren't reading my posts with much care, but are just trying to pattern-match me to the nearest fallacy you can think of. That isn't a good way to persuade someone. Fortunately, I already agree with the good points you've raised, though not their relevance here.

By some people, yes. By other people, no. Should we also use the word "feminist" to mean "a woman who refuses to shave her legs, and talks about it all the time" just because some people use it this way?

If we're continuing the fallacy kick: Slippery slope fallacy. The fact that we shouldn't accept everything as a term of abuse doesn't mean that we shouldn't accept anything as one. 'Neo-nazi,' for instance, seems rightly pejorative. When the referent offends us, and for good reason, the term can acquire a pejorative character; but since it's the world and not the word choice that's causing the bad aftertaste, there's little to be gained via the euphemism treadmill.

This is also a distraction. My original argument corrects the problem of treating 'MRA' as a term of abuse. Whether we should take a principled stance against All Pejorative Words Forever is not my concern; I sidestep the issue when I propose the pragmatic resolution of adopting clearer and more natural terms for the subject matter in question. This conversation will be rather confusing if you continue to make my points for me while thinking they're repudiations of my practices or views.

Viliam_Bur comments on Factions, inequality, and social justice - Less Wrong

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