Vaniver comments on What truths are actually taboo? - Less Wrong
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I've read it. Still waiting for your examples.
Of Hatewatch targeting people who oppose immigration? You realize that's one of their tags, right?
I recommend reading it again. Consider what you wrote in the great-grandparent:
Don't it seem odd that the only dimension on which immigration is politically relevant is personal warmth towards Hispanics? As a policy decision, it has way more impacts than that. To pick just one dimension, where are the environmentalists comparing per capita carbon production in Mexico and America, and analyzing what impact Mexicans moving to America will have on global carbon production?
Yes, and I searched that tag before responding, and I didn't find people listed for doing careful cost-benefit analyses. Instead, I saw neo-Nazis and "minutemen."
Don't it seem odd that ain't what I said?
Duh, but your question was whether or not politicians are conducting cost-benefit analyses to arrive at their positions. They aren't. Republicans are busy trying to figure out how to get more of the hispanic vote without "alienating the base." Do you think the base will be alienated out of a concern for carbon emissions?
I'll ask once more for you to answer the question you keep refusing to answer: where is the failure of rationality in inferring that Bill is a racist? Why is it that true statements cannot serve as signals for the presence of false beliefs, or why is it that that rule, if sometimes sound, is not sound in this or similar cases?
Edit: Whoa I needed to fix some grammar.
Did you seriously expect the SPLC to say "this guy is an evil racist who hates immigrants, but he brings up sound, quantitative points that we ought to consider"? To the best of my knowledge, there is no American Thilo Sarrazin. Peter Brimelow might be close (and the SPLC excoriates him accordingly), but I haven't looked for or found anything carefully quantitative by Brimelow. Similarly, Steve Sailer is worth paying attention to, but calls for cost-benefit analyses rather than doing them himself (beyond back-of-the-envelope ones).
Thank you for repeating the question; that made it clearer what you were interested in.
In my opinion, strongly caring whether or not Bill is a racist is a mistake. There are reputational concerns about associating with racists, but I think it is poor epistemic hygiene to weight those concerns highly.
Even then, supposing it were important to care whether or not Bill was a racist, I think that most people overestimate the likelihood ratio of racism vs. non-racism upon hearing a politically incorrect comment.
I suspect most people do, in fact, weigh this too highly, but could you articulate why?
This is a good place to start. If you have more time, chapter IX of Mysterious Stranger is also relevant.
I'm ... not entirely clear why that's relevant.
Are you saying we should deliberately handicap our estimation of racism, because even people who disagree will go along with it?
I'm saying that the question of "Is Bill a racist?" has structural similarities to "Is Bill a witch?", both in how the question is pursued and the social consequences of the conclusion, and that tacit support of the witch-hunting apparatus because of the of the social costs of not supporting (rather than because of a genuine dislike for witches) is a group failure mode that could be avoided by conscious acknowledgement of it being a group failure mode. Further, it seems to me that rationalists with an interest in epistemic rationality should make that investment in avoiding that failure mode.
So ... you're saying you're worried that everyone will overreact to the correct estimate of racism, because they expect everyone else to and don't want to be excluded? I suspect I still don't understand, since that doesn't really sound like an epistemic failure...
No. What I don't expect is for somebody who does decent work to end up on Hatewatch. Which is what you said I should expect. Which I don't. Because I shouldn't. Because the stuff about immigration which ends up on Hatewatch actually tends to be in the indefensible territory.
Good, so we'll be answering it!
No, we'll be saying it's not worth answering. Well shit.