NancyLebovitz comments on Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant - Less Wrong

65 Post author: lukeprog 06 December 2012 12:42AM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 05 December 2012 04:06:29AM 1 point [-]

From the essay:

Or to put it more provocatively: The Aspier someone is, the more likely it is that he’ll be an eager utilitarian. (You probably know people like this. Anyone who self-identifies as a ‘utilitarian’ probably has Aspie tendencies — very fluent with abstract concepts, and very eager to apply them to all aspects of life.)

It might be possible to get some information about this from the survey.

Comment author: gwern 05 December 2012 08:41:27PM *  3 points [-]

The utilitarian/autism-spectrum correlation may be true in the general population, but there doesn't seem to be any correlation between self-reported AQ and consequentialism endorsement in the LW population (perhaps because the LW population is already self-selected for either being a consequentialist or coming up with good justifications for non-consequentialism):

R> lw <- read.csv("2012.csv")
R> lwa <- subset(lw, !is.na(AutismScore))
R> levels(lwa$MoralViews)
[1] " " "Accept / lean toward consequentialism"
[3] "Accept / lean toward deontology" "Accept / lean toward virtue ethics"
[5] "Other / no answer"
R> lwa <- subset(lwa, as.character(MoralViews) != " " & as.character(MoralViews) != "Other / no answer")
R> cor.test(lwa$AutismScore, as.integer(lwa$MoralViews))
Pearson's product-moment correlation
data: lwa$AutismScore and as.integer(lwa$MoralViews)
t = 0.1663, df = 289, p-value = 0.868
alternative hypothesis: true correlation is not equal to 0
95 percent confidence interval:
-0.1053 0.1246
sample estimates:
cor
0.009783

(A positive correlation suggests that higher autism scorers were a tad more likely to endorse a higher category, that is, deontology or virtue ethics.)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 05 December 2012 09:20:26PM 1 point [-]

Thank you for checking.