Azathoth123 comments on 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong

88 Post author: Yvain 26 October 2014 06:05PM

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Comment author: Azathoth123 07 November 2014 03:27:20AM 1 point [-]

No, it is a set of people who have similar ancestry and thus presumable similar features and behaviors (the latter is the part where it shades into non-genetics since it is a combination of nature and nurture). For example, no one considers dark skinned Indians to be "Black".

I've also seen it used to refer to tribes since these tend to overlap the above definition.

Comment author: satt 10 November 2014 05:33:56AM * 4 points [-]

No, it is a set of people who have similar ancestry and thus presumable similar features and behaviors

No, I don't think that quite captures it either. Under your definition, families would be races, but that doesn't accord with the typical "social usage of 'race'".

For example, no one considers dark skinned Indians to be "Black".

About six months ago, a woman surprised me in a conversation by describing her (very) visibly South Asian boyfriend as "black".

I'm sceptical that "no one considers dark skinned Indians to be 'Black'"; I can readily find examples of people categorizing South Asians as black until as recently as 20-30 years ago. It's no longer common (hence my surprise when someone does it) but it's not an utterly unfamiliar usage, either.

I notice that all of the concrete examples I can think of are British. Presumably this is a usage difference between Britain and the US. (That the operationalization of "black" varies across time & place is interesting.)

Comment author: Jiro comment score below threshold [+] (9 children)

Comment author: satt 13 November 2014 01:48:07AM * 3 points [-]

It's no longer common (hence my surprise when someone does it) but it's not an utterly unfamiliar usage, either.

"No one" doesn't literally mean "a number of people which is equal to zero".

I reflected on that before I posted my comment. Here are my thoughts.

Even if I read "no one" as "a nonzero but negligible number of people", Azathoth123 is probably still wrong. I can name only one person who's said "black" to me with the meaning "South Asian" in mind, but then I've only met a tiny fraction of all Brits; chances are there are thousands of other people out there using the term in a similar way whom I just haven't met. That this was a relatively frequent usage before 1990 or so makes it all the more likely. (See also "Moslem", which has been almost wholly displaced by "Muslim" in everyday speech here, but which I hear (albeit not that often) from middle-aged and old people, quite often see in old books, and occasionally encounter in more recent texts by non-native writers of English, like this book.)

Moreover, it's a bit of a bad habit to write claims which are false when read straightforwardly & literally. It's better to avoid writing things which are only true if read generously, to minimize the risk of planting falsities in people's heads. Qualifiers are not expensive. (If you've ever wondered why I lean on adverbs like "relatively", "occasionally", "rarely", "mostly", "likely", "probably", "almost", "nearly", "hardly", and "presumably" as much as I do, you now know why.)

Moreover moreover, asserting not-quite-true things makes room for mischief. If you're arguing for some conclusion C which gets more convincing if your premise P is less qualified, there's a temptation to grab illicit rhetorical power by asserting P too strongly in a plausibly deniable way, gambling on no one noticing; and if someone does flag it, you can just say you weren't really asserting P in its bluntest form, even if that's literally what you did. (I am not saying Azathoth123 consciously did that here, not least because their conclusion — the social meaning of "race" isn't just about appearance — still mostly goes through if you appropriately weaken their premise. I just think this general phenomenon's another reason to take notice of false-as-literally-stated assertions.)

Comment author: Jiro 13 November 2014 05:39:37AM 0 points [-]

It's better to avoid writing things which are only true if read generously, to minimize the risk of planting falsities in people's heads.

But this amounts to "it's better to avoid talking the way that pretty much every human being not in a minority of literal-minded Internet users talks in most contexts".

there's a temptation to grab illicit rhetorical power by asserting P too strongly in a plausibly deniable way, gambling on no one noticing

This is of course correct, yet it still doesn't change that.

And the correct way to respond to someone doing that is to respond when you think they're doing it--not to be uncharitable and interpret every non-literal statement as literal regardless of whether you think it''s a case of that or not .

Even if I read "no one" as "a nonzero but negligible number of people", Azathoth123 is probably still wrong.

Sure. I'm not arguing that he's right. But "he's wrong even when I interpret him charitably" is not a reason to interpret him uncharitably.

Comment author: satt 14 November 2014 12:34:41AM * 0 points [-]

But this amounts to "it's better to avoid talking the way that pretty much every human being not in a minority of literal-minded Internet users talks in most contexts".

Which I also agree with! Ceteris paribus, would it not be better if people were less keen to assert literal falsities in debates about facts?

I do of course give people more leeway on this in most contexts. If someone says something that's literally false in a face-to-face conversation, but their intended claim is clear and basically accurate, I'm unlikely to bother contradicting them. But we are in fact talking about something written on Less Wrong, and I'm OK with applying a higher standard here.

This is of course correct, yet it still doesn't change that.

I can parse that but I don't understand the point it's making.

And the correct way to respond to someone doing that is to respond when you think they're doing it--not to be uncharitable and interpret every non-literal statement as literal regardless of whether you think it''s a case of that or not .

For whatever it's worth, I think there was a fair chance Azathoth123 was doing it unconsciously out of habit. (They have something of a track record of saying things I find incredible, apparently completely guilelessly.) And the effect of doing it can be pretty much the same, regardless of intention, so there's a reason to flag when someone's engaging in the behaviour even if there's no objective evidence of mischievous intent. (Plus, again, this is LW, not a live chat where people have to compose sentences in real time, so why not exercise higher standards?)

Sure. I'm not arguing that he's right. But "he's wrong even when I interpret him charitably" is not a reason to interpret him uncharitably.

But "he's wrong even when I interpret him charitably" drains the force from an objection of the form "that's an uncharitable interpretation". If someone's wrong under both available interpretations, they're just wrong; why not respond as such?

Comment author: Lumifer 10 November 2014 06:26:05PM 2 points [-]

"No one" doesn't literally mean "a number of people which is equal to zero".

Actually, it does. Literally.

Comment author: Jiro 10 November 2014 06:54:34PM * 0 points [-]

Normal human speech isn't literal. Just because someone failed to include qualifiers like "most" or "as a rule" doesn't mean that a statement which is without such qualifiers should be read as unqualified. "No one" as used by actual human beings in this context doesn't literally mean "zero".

Comment author: Lumifer 10 November 2014 07:05:00PM 2 points [-]

In which sense are you using the word "literally" in your posts?

Notice the difference in two sentences. One of them is correct and the other one is wrong.

"No one" doesn't usually mean "a number of people which is equal to zero".
"No one" doesn't literally mean "a number of people which is equal to zero".

Comment author: Jiro 10 November 2014 07:15:01PM * -1 points [-]

You are misparsing the sentence. "No one" doesn't mean "zero", as it would mean if taken in a literal manner.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 November 2014 12:02:19PM 4 points [-]

You want to rephrase that sentence, as it's very easy to misparse the way Lumifer did.

Comment author: Neo 10 November 2014 06:23:12PM 1 point [-]

"No one" literally means exactly that.

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