drethelin comments on Open Thread for February 18-24 2014 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: eggman 19 February 2014 12:57PM

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Comment author: Ritalin 22 February 2014 11:07:05AM *  -1 points [-]

Frankly, he has my sympathies, and I say this speaking as one who is now officially and technically a fucking scientific racist, and is hating every minute of it. The increase in knowledge doesn't even seem worth the sacrifice; we're talking about differences in average IQ between 95, 105, 110, 115. For one such as I, who's got an IQ of 168, this degree of difference seems unimpressive, and, frankly, worth ignoring/not worth knowing.

"You're telling me all these massive groups of people have these slight differences in average between them? About one standard deviation? Of what use could this information possibly be?" "Let's forbid entrance to my particular country to immigrants from the inferior races, namely, people of 'african' and 'hispanic' ancestry; it's cheaper than giving everyone an IQ test. Is this not a clever idea that advances my nation's interest and saves taxpayer money?"

And then I sigh at the stupidity of people with high IQ's, myself included.

Nevertheless, pianoforte, you're definitely overreacting. Do give your friend Arthur some references on Ethical Injunctions and remind him of our Litanies. Even if you did nothing, I do not expect Arthur, or any lesswronger for that matter, to present a level of threat worth having actual cold sweats over.

Here's another argument you can give him; social justice seeks to achieve just ends, and to do so requires just means, an image of justice as well as a just system. To seek social justice is to seek righteousness, and to seek to be right; it demands that you be scrupulously rational. Since You Provably Can't Trust Yourself, you should not, cannot allow yourself to employ the methods of evil, of which irrationality, stupidity and incoherence are the very essence. Throughout my life, I have been in contact with all kinds of people who invested huge amounts of effort in struggling for the betterment of mankind, and, whenever they started thinking in martial terms, of Us Versus Them (see Robbers-Cave experiment), of a struggle where one allows oneself all dirty tricks because so does "the other side", Arguments Are Soldiers, and they lose themselves and their ability to identify the truth when it doesn't fit their narrative. And that's a huge handicap.

Keeping a clear mind and remaining open to the truth, no matter how inconvenient, is, I think, the only way to live through one's life, and remain sane to the very end. Once you forfeit your sanity, no matter your successes, you have lost.

Comment author: drethelin 22 February 2014 04:57:13PM 4 points [-]

If you could erase your knowledge of racial IQ differences would you? Assume you also erase the specific urge to rediscover it later.

Comment author: Ritalin 22 February 2014 05:06:12PM *  0 points [-]

Why? Besides enabling my enemies to call me a racist in much the same way a segregationist would call MLK a criminal, it leaves me right where I started. The initial emotional turmoil is offset by the anecdote utility: "Would you believe that I was once talked into becoming a freaking racist? Me?" This goes straight on my "hilarious misadventures" files, right next to "almost drowned in a lake"' "fell in love with a one-night-stand, suffered horribly, now we're BFF's"' and "that one time I was slipped ecstacy".

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 23 February 2014 01:22:38AM 3 points [-]

Besides enabling my enemies to call me a racist in much the same way a segregationist would call MLK a criminal,

So you don't like having low status true beliefs?

Comment author: Ritalin 23 February 2014 01:46:29AM *  7 points [-]

Eugine, at the risk of stating the obvious, I don't like that being known to have those true beliefs lowers my status and gets in the way of me doing good. I think it's unfair, and I find it frustrating.

Comment author: drethelin 22 February 2014 05:06:51PM 0 points [-]

well except without the mental anguish you seemed to have about it.

Comment author: Ritalin 22 February 2014 05:33:13PM 0 points [-]

Water under the bridge.

Comment author: Ritalin 23 February 2014 02:19:16AM 1 point [-]

Am I getting downvotes for my ability to get over my anguish in accepting inconvenient truths? Cause I don't know how else to interpret this.

Comment author: RowanE 23 February 2014 06:02:08PM 0 points [-]

Your holding these beliefs is not entirely in the past, and it doesn't seem like there's any reason to think the consequences of holding these beliefs are entirely in the past, making it impossible for you to have gotten over them.

Comment author: Ritalin 23 February 2014 11:44:51PM 1 point [-]

I've gotten over my emotional distress over acquiring them, and am now dealing with them and the consequences of holding them in a more practical manner. The anguish is gone, replaced with mild annoyance.