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bogus comments on Open Thread for February 18-24 2014 - Less Wrong
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Comments (454)
Arthur Chu was discussed here previously for his success with Jeopardy using careful scholarship to develop strategies that he knew had worked in the past for other people.
In the comments section here he makes a much more extreme case against LessWrong's policy of not censoring ideas than Apophemi did a while back. Frankly he scares me*. But on a more concrete note, he makes a number of claims I find disturbing:
1) Certain ideas/world-views (he targets Reaction and scientific racism) are evil and therefore must be opposed at all costs even if it means using dishonest arguments to defeat them.
2) The forces that oppose social justice (capitalism, systematic oppression) don't play nice, so in order to overcome those forces it is necessary to get your hands dirty as well.
3) Sitting around considering arguments that are evil (he really hates scientific racism) legitimizes them giving them power.
4) Carefully considering arguments accomplishes nothing in contrast to what social justice movement is doing which at least is making progress. Hence considering arguments is contrary to the idea of rationality as winning. (This seems extreme, I hope I am misreading him)
5) Under consequentialism, if intellectual dishonesty and rhetoric (the dark arts) are capable of advancing the causes of people that are good and opposing the forces of evil, then intellectual dishonesty and rhetoric are good.
There is some redundancy there but whatever.
*I mean this literally, I am actually physically frightened.
The clearest statement of Chu view (from the comment thread) seems to be: "As a very tentative general heuristic ... major ideologies that attempt to validate some form of the just-world fallacy should be terminated with extreme prejudice." He correctly names sexism ("Men have all the power because they're just better!") and racism ("Europeans have all the power because they're just better!") as examples.
But the obvious problem is, if you buy the neo-reactionary model of how "the Cathedral" works, then social-justice progressivism is a clear-cut example of a massive just-world-fallacy in action! What's more, I'd hardly expect Moldbug or other neo-reactionaries to take the view that "the world is inherently fair" seriously, even as hidden, low-level implication. And whether Moldbug's worldview is right about the Cathedral is an empirical question that would seem to require serious, rational investigation, not just faith-based political commitment.
This is not just world fallacy, in fact for specific values of "better" these are empirical statements. Or would he (and/or you) consider statements along the lines of "I defeated him in the fight because I was stronger" an example of "just world fallacy". What about "being rational helps me achieve my goals"?
No, the "just world fallacy" is a belief that the world always reaches morally "fair" outcomes. So "better" here has to mean that they deserve such outcomes in a moral sense. My guess is that many people here would reject these claims and find them quite objectionable, but it's hard to deny that some followers of the Dark Enlightenment (albeit perhaps a minority) seem to be motivated by them. The just world fallacy (in addition to other biases, such as ingroup tribalism) provides one plausible explanation of this.
Ok, so which moral theory are we using to make that determination?
Someone who behaves more rationally is more likely to achieve his goals. Do you consider this a "fair" or "unfair" outcome?