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Lumifer comments on Open Thread for February 18-24 2014 - Less Wrong
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Presumably the point of OKC questions is to find yourself a mate/partner/sex toy/etc. If you can filter out the stupidest part of OKC population right at the beginning, that's a win.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with making fun of stupid people. And nerds. And a variety of ethnic groups. And pretty much everything.
That's an odd view. I'm presuming that you would see something wrong with, say, a popular kid in high school who made a habit of beating up disabled kids. But you see absolutely nothing wrong if the same person doesn't physically assault the kids but instead simply ridicules them publicly for being disabled? In both cases, it seems pretty clear that the bully is doing harm to the kids, although the nature of the harm differs.
Could you clarify what the morally relevant distinction is between these two situations, why causing one form of harm is bad and the other isn't? It wouldn't just be a distinction that makes the second option less bad than the first option; it would be a distinction that makes the second option not bad at all, if I take your words literally.
Or maybe I'm misinterpreting what you mean by "making fun"?
Yes, you do. I am not talking about power games, or domination/submission, or even simple malice.
The opposite of "making fun of X" is "taking X very, very seriously". With a serious expression on one's face, according to the instructions and forms carefully collected in a three-ring binder, while being conscious of one's self-importance, and certainly not tolerating any deviation from the proper procedure or, God forbid, disrespect (of oneself, the proper procedure, and the three-ring binder).
They'll still answer the question,..they'll just answer it incorrectly and you'll throw noise into your data. OKC has many questions which are more direct proxies for intelligence.
Which makes sense, since you're reactionary in your politics, and political correctness is seen as a lefty thing. I think this particular lefty value is fairly easy to defend though:
Humor functions to ease tensions when everyone is in on the joke. Insults directed at an out-group who is not laughing and is hurt raises inter-group tensions. Discouraging members of your in group from insulting members of out groups is just a special case of encouraging cooperation over defection - something which is both pragmatic, and to me. intrinsically moral.
TL:DR it's bad PR.
Exceptions exist. If you're giving some sort of constructive criticism to an out-group, and your criticism takes the form of mildly insulting humor, that's okay - because once again, you're using humor as an outlet for tension rather than a conduit for it.
8-0 That's news to me.
I think you're a bit too hasty to equate humor and insults. They are quite different.
Humor also has more functions than just "ease tensions".
And why should I care about PR?
I'd be interested to hear more about what your political views are. I, too, had gathered the impression from my interactions with you that you were at least reactionary-leaning.
<shrug> I am not too fond of sticking labels onto myself. It's probably easier to answer this question in negatives. I'm not a liberal in the contemporary American sense. I am not a conservative. I'm not a neo-reactionary, though I'm sympathetic to and tend to cheer their skewering of sacred cows. On the other hand I have absolutely no desire to return to the imagined past of enlightened monarchy, benevolent aristocracy, and firmly established social order.
I thought that's what reaction is, essentially?...it seems "reactionary" as generally used refers to someone who counter-argues against prevailing ideas that are new and recently fashionable.
I wasn't intending to imply that you cluster with moldbug or neo-reactionaries specifically.
"Reactionary" in the political context is primarily a derogatory term, usually meaning "a conservative I really don't like".
Not to mention that sacred cows are skewered by revolutionaries much MUCH more often than by conservatives :-)
that's news to me. Reactionaries seem rather more self-consistent compared to conservatives.
It's a matter of which sacred cows are being skewered - the old, established sacred cows or the young, upcoming, and popular ones.
There is no such thing as a young upcoming sacred cow. If it's young and upcoming it's not sacred.
I'm not so sure about that. The sacredness of an idea doesn't come from its longevity, it comes from attachment to memes that make it immune to criticism; if there are already a lot of those memes floating around in a subculture, and if the binding criteria are loose or inconsistently applied, new sacred cows can evolve rather quickly.
But in the last few years certain people on the Web have (ahem) reclaimed the term.
Right, but in the grandparent post Ishaan specifically said that moldbuggery is not what she means.
Okay, I should write a script or something preventing me from replying to a comment unless I've seen all of its ancestors, because just telling myself not to do so clearly doesn't work. :-)
("moldbuggery" is a great word)
I mean, this was just an offhand comment and not really a big deal, but you do really not think there's something at least a little bit counterproductive about a forum like Lesswrong being disdainful towards members of the general population?
No, I don't.
First, I am not a forum. Second, counterproductive in pursuit of which goal? And third, I don't hold the general population in high regard.
? I was asking if you thought that the propagation of a certain dynamic between two cultures was unproductive. How is that related to whether or not you represent a forum?
The pursuit of good, humanity getting along together as a cohesive whole and being happy, etc
Why does that matter? You don't have to hold someone in high regard to care about them.
"High regard" is a relative measure anyway, not an absolute one. It doesn't make sense to hold the general population in "high regard" because the general population is by definition average, whereas "high regard" is by definition reserved for those who are above average.
Unless you meant "Regard" as "general concern for" ...in which case I have no answer, since that's a moral thing.
Because you start with me being disdainful and then switch to the issue of the forum being disdainful.
That's pretty meaningless handwaving. Among other things, humanity has never been and does not look likely to become in the foreseeable future "a cohesive whole". This is a good thing.
Because we are talking about "being disdainful" and "making fun of". That's not a discussion about caring, that's a discussion about holding in high regard or not.
I am glad we agree :-P