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Viliam_Bur comments on Factions, inequality, and social justice - Less Wrong
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Comments (171)
On meta level:
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:
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?
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:
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.
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.
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?
Only if there are exactly 100 MRAs in the world. ;-)