DeVliegendeHollander comments on Open Thread, Apr. 13 - Apr. 19, 2015 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Gondolinian 13 April 2015 12:19AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (319)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 April 2015 09:53:59AM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure why you're associating testosterone with SDO, as testosterone has not yet been convincingly shown to be correlated with SDO. In fact we have had this discussion here before: http://lesswrong.com/lw/84i/social_status_testosterone/

That discussion is about aggression. Why confuse aggression with dominance? They are so completely unrelated it is not even funny. Dominance (status-relevant concerns) is an in-group behavior, while aggression is typically directed towards the outgroup.

The link with dominance (again: not aggression) is so well-known that T is used a proxy for dominance-oriented interests (status relevant concerns) in stereotype threat studies: http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/bibliography_josephs_newman_brown_beer.html

SDO is obviously so much more about status-relevant concerns in-group than aggression towards the outgroup.

Note: SDO is a clearly shitty test and I have specifically mentioned it as a counter-example of how not to do psychology. The question sounds more like a laughable cardboard-cutout parody of a conservative person than something real people would use to describe their views: "It’s OK if some groups have more of a chance in life than others." the problem is obvious - it is the simply reverted form of an egalitarian credo, instead of actually trying to figure out how different people think. For this reason, SDO is pretty much useless, because the researcher just basically inverts what he believes and checks if people agree with the reversed form... so I meant it as a negative example, but so far as it has any utility at all, clearly it is something related to status-relevant concerns?

Why would self-identification make it 'useful'? Certainly few would self-identify as psychopaths (to give an example), even though we know that psychopathy most definitely exists and is quite a useful concept.

Bingo! Precisely for that reason. Because psychopathy is a disorder. Once it is turned into something people can identify with, it is probably no longer a disorder. That means charity / understanding was restored, and it is no longer medicalizing differing opinions. Ability to identify with is a measure of to what extent is it treated as a disorder or not.

Comment author: Viliam 13 April 2015 10:58:46AM *  1 point [-]

By your description (I haven't seen the test) it seems like SDO is a test for "nonapples".

(It is not round? Is it not red? Is it not a fruit? Be aware, you may have found a nonapple! People sometimes say that nonapples are useful and necessary, but we have clearly documented examples where nonapples have exploded, damaged property, or even killed people.)

Comment author: [deleted] 13 April 2015 11:41:04AM 0 points [-]

It's in the linked wiki, but yes.

Comment author: passive_fist 13 April 2015 10:26:40AM 1 point [-]

Why confuse aggression with dominance?

I haven't. Multiple quoted passages in that link talk about dominance.

Testosterone has been shown not to be linked with aggression. The link with dominance is less clear but still not established.

Once it is turned into something people can identify with, it is probably no longer a disorder.

What?

Comment author: [deleted] 13 April 2015 10:34:20AM *  1 point [-]

We may be misunderstanding each other. Reworded: testosterone's link with status-related concern is very clear. example Do you think it is not clearly demonstrated enough, or you think status-related concerns are a different thing than dominance? To me they mean the same thing.

I am preparing an article actually that relates to this, so if you have any concerns here please detail.

Once it is turned into something people can identify with, it is probably no longer a disorder.

What?

Sure, this is not a perfect measure. People often accept they have disorders (usually when they actually perceive suffering from them). Still, if you want to remove judgements (like it being seen as a disorder) from a psychological profile, checking whether people could identify with the label sounds kinda like an important milestone in that? If you want to check which words used to describe gay people are not offensive, it is sort of a good idea if they themselves use them?

Comment author: passive_fist 14 April 2015 09:25:24PM 0 points [-]

Thanks for the clarification. Yes, the link with status-related concern is definitely more established than with aggression. I'd be interested in reading your article.

I'm still not convinced that the purpose of SDO is to make behaviors correlated with testosterone look like disorders or that this is the mainstream position of psychology.

Still, if you want to remove judgements (like it being seen as a disorder) from a psychological profile, checking whether people could identify with the label sounds kinda like an important milestone in that?

It's not obvious to me why it should be important?

Comment author: [deleted] 15 April 2015 09:13:11AM 0 points [-]

Why it should be important to remove these judgements? Plain simply because it is highly uncharitable and hostile to people to basically invalidate their positions saying they don't come from a reasoning process like every other position, but from psychological malfunction.

Of course, we know actually most positions don't come from reasoning processes, but more like affective etc. heuristics and only rationalized with reasoning :) But since the social etiquette is (currently) to give people the benefit of doubt and assume and pretend they arrive to their stances rationally, singling out a few positions and basically saying they are exceptions because they come from specific psychological dispositions is I think hostile or disrespectful.