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Jiro comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (7th thread, December 2014) - Less Wrong
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Because the former is what a lot of other people using your rhetoric mean. And assuming that you mean what a lot of other people using your rhetoric mean is a reasonable assumption.
Also, even interpreting what you said as "I am angry about people beating LBGTQA+ individuals", it sounds like you are angry about it as long as it happens at all, regardless of its prevalence. Terrorism really happens too, but disproportionate anger against terrorism that ignores its prevalence has led to (or has been an excuse for) some pretty awful things.
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The same is true for terrorism, but if someone came here saying "I'm really angry at terrorism and we have to do something", you'd be justified in thinking that doing what they want might not turn out well.
I'm sure we can agree that terrorism is bad, too. In fact, I'm sure we can agree that Islamic terrorism specifically is bad. So being really angry at it is likely to produce good results, right?
I am very angry about terrorism. I think terrorism is a very bad thing and we should eliminate it from the world if we can.
Being very angry about terrorism =/= thinking that a good way to solve the problem is to randomly go kill the entire population of the Middle East in the name of freedom (and oil). I hate terrorism and would prevent it if I could. In fact, I hate people killing each other so much, I think we should think rationally about the best way to eliminate it utterly (whilst causing fewer deaths than it causes) and then do that.
Then why wasn't it included along with racism/sexism/etc. in your list of things your angry about in the ancestor?
I don't know, maybe because I was randomly listing some things that I'm angry about to explain why I'm motivated to try and improve the world, not making a thorough and comprehensive list of everything I think is wrong?
Could also fit under "war", which I listed, and "death", which I listed.
So what can I conclude from the things you found salient enough to include and the things you didn't? Especially since it correlates a lot better with what it is currently fashionable to be angry about then with any reasonable measure of how much disutility they produce.
You do realize no one thinks that. In particular that wasn't the position Jiro was arguing against.
If you see someone else very angry about terrorism, though, wouldn't you think there's a good chance that they support (or can be easily led into supporting) anti-terrorism policies with bad consequences? Even if you personally can be angry at terrorism without wanting to do anything questionable, surely you recognize that is commonly not true for other people?
It's the same for racism.
I think that there's a good chance in general that most people can be led into supporting policies with bad consequences. I don't think higher levels of idiocy are present in people who are annoyed about racism and terrorism compared with those who aren't. The kind of people who say "on average people with black skin are slightly less smart, therefore let's bring back slavery and apartheid" are just as stupid and evil, if not stupider and eviler, than the people who support burning down the whole Middle East in order to get rid of terrorism.
Caricatures such as describing people who disagree with you as saying "let's bring back slavery" and supporting "burning down the whole Middle East" are not productive in political discussions.
I'm not trying to describe the people who disagree with me as wanting to bring back slavery or supporting burning down the whole Middle East; that isn't my point and I apologise if I was unclear.
As I understood it, the argument levelled against me was that: people who say they're really angry about terrorism are often idiots who hold idiotic beliefs, like, "let's send loads of tanks to the Middle East and kill all the people who might be in the same social group as the terrorists and that will solve everything!" and in the same way, people who say they're really angry about racism are the kind of people who hold idiotic beliefs like "let's ban all science that has anything to do with race and gender!" and therefore it was reasonable of them to assume, when I stated that I was opposed to racism, that I was the latter kind of idiot.
To which my response is that many people are idiots, both people who are angry about terrorism and people who aren't, people who are angry about racism and people who aren't. There are high levels of idiocy in both groups. Being angry about terrorism and racism still seems perfectly appropriate and fine as an emotional arational response, since terrorism and racism are both really bad things. I think the proper response to someone saying "I hate terrorism" is "I agree, terrorism is a really bad thing", not "But drone strikes against 18 year olds in the middle east kill grandmothers!" (even if that is a true thing) and similarly, the proper response to someone saying "I hate racism" is "I agree, genocide and lynchings are really bad", not "But studies about race and gender are perfectly valid Bayesian inference!" (even if that is a true thing).
That compares racists to anti-terrorists, not anti-racists to anti-terrorists.
Well, right here is a nice example:
Would you care to be explicit about the connection between IQ-by-race studies and genocide..?
There is no connection. I'm not trying to imply a connection. The only connection is that they are both things possibly implied by the word "racism".
I'm trying to say that when I say "I oppose racism", intending to signal "I oppose people beating up minorities", and people misunderstand badly enough that they think I mean "I oppose IQ-by-race studies", it disturbs me. If people know that "I oppose racism" could mean "I oppose genocide", but choose to interpret it as "I oppose IQ-by-race studies", that worries me. Those things are completely different and if you think that I'm more likely to oppose IQ-by-race studies than I am to oppose genocide, or if you think IQ-by-race studies are more important and worthy of being upset about than genocide, something has gone very wrong here.
A sentence like "I oppose racism" could mean a lot of different things. It could mean "I think genocide is wrong", "I think lynchings are wrong", "I think people choosing white people for jobs over black people with equivalent qualifications is wrong", or "I think IQ by race studies should be banned". Automatically leaping to the last one and getting very angry about it is... kind of weird, because it's the one I'm least likely to mean, and the only one we actually disagree about. You seriously want to reply to "I oppose racism" with "but IQ by race studies are valid Bayesian inference!" and not "yes, I agree that lynching people is very wrong"? Why? Are IQ by race studies more important to your values than eliminating genocide and lynchings? Do you genuinely think that I am more likely to oppose IQ-by-race studies than I am to oppose lynchings? The answer to neither of those questions should be yes.
That's because most people who say "I oppose racism" mean the latter, and no one except you means the former. That's largely because most people oppose beating people up for no good reason and thus they don't feel the need to constantly go about saying so.
I don't think so.
False beliefs in equality are also responsible for millions of people being dead, and in fact have a much higher body-count then racism.
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Actually falsely believing in equality of ability => being willing to kill to make equality happen. The chain of reasoning goes as follows:
1) As we know all people/groups are of equal ability, but group X is more successful then other groups, thus they must be cheating in some way, we must pass laws to stop the cheating/level the playing field.
2) We passed laws to level the playing field but group X is still winning, they must be cheating in extremely subtle ways, we must pass more laws to stop/punish this.
3) Group X is still ahead, we must presume members of group X are guilty until proven innocent, etc.
No that's not what I'm saying. In the grandparent you said:
My point is that not being able to read IQ-by-race-and-gender studies is likely to lead to a repeat of Mao/Pol Pot. Thus being extremely concerned about being able to read them is a perfectly rational reaction.
Unfortunately, as we've just established you have very false ideas about how to go about doing that. Furthermore, since these same false ideas are currently extremely popular in academia, going there to study is unlikely to fix this.
An excellent way to stop people from being killed is to make them strong or get them protected by someone who is strong. Strong in a broad sense here, from courage to coolness under pressure etc.
Here is a problem. To be a strong protector correlates with having the kind of transphobic and so on, long list of anti-social justice stuff or bigotry, because that list reduces to either disliking weakness or distrusting difference / having strong ingroup loyalty, and there is a relationship between these (a tribal warrior would have all).
Here is a solution. Basically moderate, reciprocal bigotocracy. Accept a higher-status, somewhat elevated i.e. clearly un-equal social role of the strong protector type i.e. that of traditional men, in return for them actively protecting all the other groups from coming to serious harm. The other groups will have to accept having lower social status, and it will be hard on their pride, but will be safer. This can be made official and perhaps more palatable by conscripting straight males, everybody claiming genderqueer status getting an exemption, and also after the service expecting some kind of community protection role, in return for higher elevated social status and respect. Note: this would be the basic model of most European countries up to the most recent times, status-patriarchy and male privilege explicitly deriving from the sacrifice of conscription.
This is not easy to swallow. However there seem to be not many other options. You cannot have strong protectors who are 100% PC because then they will have no fighting spirit. Without strong protectors, all you can hope is a utopia and hoping the whole Earth adopts it or else any basic tribe with gusto will take you over.
But I think a compromise model of not 100% complete equality and providing a proctor role in return should be able to work, as this has always been the traditional civilized model. In the recent years it was abandoned due to it being oppressive, and perhaps it was, but perhaps there is a way to find a compromise inside it.
Policeman don't need fighting spirit to be able to go after violent criminals. Being PC is no problem for them.
Eh... Rotherham?
The last time I read an article on Rotherham even the Telegraph said that the officers in question were highly chauvinistic and therefore don't really follow the usual ideal of being PC.
At the same time reading articles about Rotherham is still registers me: "This story doesn't make sense, the facts on the ground are likely to be different than the mainstream media reports I'm reading" instincts. Have you read the actual report about it in-depth?
(trigger warning for a bunch of things, including rape and torture)
The Rotherham scandal is very well-documented on Wikipedia. There have been multiple independent reports, and I recommend reading this summary of one of the reports by the Guardian. This event is a good case study because it is easily verifiable; it's not just right-wing sources and tabloids here.
What we know:
To substantiate that last claim, you can check out one of the independent reports from Rotherham's council website:
And there you have it: concerns about racism hampered the investigation. Authorities encouraged a coverup of the ethnic dimensions of the problem. Of course, there were obviously other institutional failures here in addition to political correctness. This report is consistent with the mainstream media coverage. And this is the delicate, officially accepted report: I imagine that the true story is worse.
When a story is true, but it doesn't "make sense," that could be a sign that you are dealing with a corrupted map. I initially had the same reaction as you, that this can't be true. I think that's a very common reaction to have, the first time you encounter something that challenges the reigning political narratives. Yet upon further research, this event is not unusual or unprecedented. Following links on Wikipedia, we have the Rochdale sex gang, the Derby sex gang, the Oxford sex gang, the Bristol sex gang, and the Telford sex gang. These are all easily verifiable cases, and the perpetrators are usually people from Muslim immigrant backgrounds.
Sexual violence by Muslim immigrants is a serious social problem in the UK, and the multicultural political environment makes it hard to crack down on. Bad political ideas have real consequences which result in real people getting hurt at a large scale. These events represent a failure of the UK elites to protect rule of law. Since civilization is based on rule of law, this is a very serious problem.
Have you tried updating your model to reflect reality?
Er.....Rotherham?
Typo fixed, thanks.
You know what else is a good way to stop people being killed? Create a liberal democracy where people are equal. So far in history, that has kinda correlated... really strongly... with less people dying. There is both less war and less crime. Forget strength, give them equality and elections. (I don't actually think democracy is the optimal solution, I think I advocate more of an economics-exam-based meritocratic oligarchy, but it is a really good one to put in place while we figure out what the optimal one is. And I need to read lots more books before I actually try and design an optimal society, if I'm ever qualified to try something like that.)
Being "strong" in a meaningful way, in the modern world, means being intelligent. Smart people can use better rhetoric, invent cooler weapons, and solve your problems more easily. Being well-educated and intelligent and academic actually strongly correlates with not being racist or sexist or transphobic or homophobic. Oh, and also liberal democracies seem to have much less prejudice in them.
Find me decent evidence that patriarchal societies are safer for everyone involved than liberal democracies where everyone is equal, and you'll have a valid point. But it kind of looks to me like, as a woman, I'm much safer in the modern Western democracies that prohibit sexism than I am in the patriarchal societies where women have no rights and keep getting acid thrown in their faces for rejecting advances. You say that in the recent years it was abandoned due to being oppressive but we should try and go back and compromise with it, but... why would we want to go back to that when literally everything has been improving ever since we abandoned those social models? To entertain your delusions of being a Strong Tribal Hero Protector Guy? Sorry, no.
I also don't see how we can't have strong protectors who are 100% PC. I'm not straight, male, neurotypical, traditional or even an adult. I try and protect and help those around me and on many occasions I succeed. I am the one in my friendship group who takes the lead down dark alleyways, carrying all the bags, reassuring my friends that it's safe because nobody's going to mug us while I'm there. Why exactly am I a weak and unworthy protector? Because I'm a girl? You're going to have to do an awful lot better than that. Put me in a physical fight with most boys of my age, and I would annihilate them. Every male who has picked a fight with me thinking that he'll be able to beat me because he's male has walked away rather humiliated. On exams and IQ tests I score far higher than your average male. Judging by how much I actually end up doing versus what I observe the boys around me doing, I have higher levels of inbuilt-desire-to-help-and-protect-others than the average male. (I suspect that the latter two facts at least are true of most women whom you might find on this specific website.) Why exactly does the average male, whom I can both outfight and outthink, get to protect me and not the other way around?
I think I will not discuss with you this for about 5-10 years, because you sound a lot like me when I was around 21, and I know how naive and inexperienced and entirely unrealistic I was. Ultimately you miss the experiences that would make you far more pessimistic. For example nobody talked about making Western liberal democracies like third-world hellholes, it was about making them like their former selves when crime levels were lower, violence was lower, people were politer, people were politer with women and so on. In fact, turning Western liberal democracies into third-world hellholes is actually happening, but through a different, asylum-seeking / refugee pathway, a perfectly idiotic counter-selection where instead of exercising brain drain, we drain the most damaged people and expect it to turn out good. But that is just a small part of how you probably need to get more pessimistic experience before we can discuss it meaningfully. I have no interest in engaging with angry rants, they are not able to teach me anything, they just sound like both people really sweating and trying to win something, but there is no actual prize to win. Being drunk on the idea of social progress and the improvability of human nature is just like other addictions, you really need to hit rock bottom before you see what is the issue, I think anything I would try to explain here would be pointless without such a wake-up happening. So I wish you luck and maybe re-discuss this again in 5-10 years where you maybe got influenced by more experience.
Telling your opponent that they are incapable of arguing with you until they are older is a fully general counterargument, and one of the more aggravating and toxic ones.
Even if it wasn't a fully general counterargument, it would be fallacious because it's ad hominem. There are plenty of people 5-10 years older than me who share my ideas, and you could as easily be arguing with one of them as you are arguing with me now; the fact that by chance you are arguing against me doesn't affect the validity/truth of the ideas we're talking about, and it's very irrational to suggest that it should. Attack my arguments, not me.
As for everything being better in "their former selves", do I seriously have to go find graphs? I have the distinct feeling that you won't update even if I show you them, so I'm tempted not to bother. If you've genuinely never looked at actual graphs of crime levels and violence over time and promise to update just a little, I can go dig those up for you. (For now, you're pattern matching to the kind of person who could benefit from reading http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-faq/ . I don't like SSC that much, but when the man's right, he's right.)
(As for "people were politer with women", my idea of polite is pretty politically correct, and I can guarantee you that political correctness doesn't increase if we look backwards in time...)
I am not your opponent, that is where it begins. Opponent means there is something to win and people compete over that prize. There is nothing to win here except learning, and this discussion quickly turned to be not conducive to it - you got all defensive and emotional instead of trying to understand use my models and see what you can do with them. Opponentism belongs to precise that kind of tribalism you are trying to want to overcome. Interesting, isn't it? Besides you keep being boringly solipsistic. Your strength instead of statistical strength differences, your idea of politeness instead of the social function of politeness... it seems you primarily subject you have useful information about is, well, you. Not interested. The first precondition to being interesting is to understand nobody gives a damn about you. I.e. to get out of the gravity well of the ego, to adopt viewpoints that don't depend strongly on personal desires. I am not even saying I would expect everyone to be able to do it, I am perfectly aware of how long it took for me, how much XP, read, suffering it took, so I don't even blame you for not having made it, it's just that it is seriously difficult to generate information interesting for others from that source. But if you think you can, then do it, say something genuinely interesting, try to offer any sort of a model or information from this utopian-progressivist school that is genuinely different and not the same stuff the mainstream media, BuzzFeed or Tumblr pouring on day and night. The only condition of interestingness is 1) it is not about you 2) it is not "done to death" a million times by the media or blogs.
Crime levels are lower in the West then they were in the past. It's only media mentions of crime that have risen and which result in a majority of the population believing that crime rates haven't fallen. Violence is down.
We haven't gotten increased politeness to woman measured by factors like the number of man who open doors for woman. On the other hand we have a lot more equality than we had in the past. Feminism was never about demanding politeness.
Levels, not rates. Rates are largely about the police trying to look good in numbers. It is seriously difficult to quantify these things properly. One distinct impression I have is that violent behaviors escaped the lower classes and middle-class people stopped being so sheltered from them. Perhaps if I could find a database relating to the education level of the victims of violent crimes I could quantify that better. The 1900 to 1920's idea of a romantic and dangerous "underworld" went away(example ), but yet it affects middle-class people far more, from their angle of life experience life got more dangerous.
It is true that feminism is not about politeness, however politeness and preventing specifically violence as seemingly this was the core issue raised are closely related. A normal fella is not going to "please, good sir/madam" and then suddenly head-butt him/her. Formality is a way to avoid the kind of offense that gets retaliated physically, or a way to see if the other is peaceful and reliable, because if the other does not talk in a non-aggressive way then he is more likely to behave physically more aggressively and thus avoidance is advised. This is why it matters, not that relevant to feminism but relevant to safety, people being physically hurt and so on.
Um, if you want a society with less crime try Singapore or places like Shanghai. Hell, even Japan have much lower crime rates despite being more patriarchal then western liberal democracies.
Yes, and that will help you so much when someone tries to punch/rob/rape you.