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Clarity comments on Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016 - Less Wrong
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—Singer (and former white supremacist) George Burdi.
I'm not white and this helped me feel more secure about my racial identity. I'm not secure about my LessWrong or Reddit identity either and sometimes ask myself, then why do it?
That depends on how you define "success".
Well, if we go with skin colour as the dividing line, I can certainly come up with quite a number of successful non-whites under several definitions of success.
Wealth? Consider Cyril Ramaphosa, whose current net worth is estimated (by Forbes) at US$450 million.
Politics? Consider Barack Obama.
Those are two fairly well-known definitions of success; there are plenty of successful non-whites for non-whites to be vicariously attached to.
(I notice that other comments have already provided a number of examples of successful gay people.)
He is or has been a director of a lot of companies; you can find a substantial background on his directorships over here. Given the salaries that high-end directors tend to receive, it;s no wonder he's built up that sort of wealth.
I'll admit, my knowledge of US history is very poor, as I do not live there. All I really know about Obama is that he seems to be a substantial improvement on Bush; I have absolutely no basis for comparison with anyone further back than that.
But becoming US President is, I think, something to be proud of in and of itself. It can't be something that's easy to do.
There was a recent thread in discussion trying to objectively evaluate Obama's presidency. The general conclusion seems to be, based on comparing policy outcomes and polling data with that of other presidents, that Obama is a fairly mediocre president, and unless some evidence surfaces that he was secretly the mastermind behind ISIS, in no way among the worst.
Yeah, that's about what my gut feeling would have said, too.
Oh, really.
"Gay pride" was, I take it, the granddaddy of them all. It doesn't seem difficult to think of some successful gay people, but here in case you're having trouble is a very short list. Oscar Wilde, world-class playwright. Tim Cook, CEO of the world's most successful company. Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, prime minister of Iceland. Benjamin Britten, greatest English composer since Purcell. Freddie Mercury, rock star. Alan Turing, mathematician, computer pioneer and helped win WW2.
"Black pride" is a thing, I guess. Martin Luther King, social and political reformer. Barack Obama, president of the world's only superpower. Desmond Tutu, archbishop. Toni Morrison, Nobel-winning writer. Neil deGrasse Tyson, astronomer and TV star. Louis Armstrong, jazz musician.
Those are actually the only two major "pride movements" I know of. There are "white pride" and "straight pride" movements, kinda, but they're quite different in character and I think in motivation, and in any case I don't imagine you'll have any difficulty thinking of successful white and straight people.
I expect there's such a thing as "trans pride", but transness is much rarer than gayness or blackness and was socially unacceptable for longer. (Hence: fewer of them, and more obstacles to their becoming successful.) Still, off the top of my head I'll name Wendy Carlos, musician, and Sophie Wilson, engineer, both of whom were world-famous (as men) for things that had nothing to do with gender identity before coming out as trans.
What pride movements were you thinking of that don't have examples of successful people to look at?
This is nitpicking really, but 'greatest' according to whom? I'd say that folks like Sullivan, Elgar and Holst (not to mention Vaughan-Williams) are a lot more notable than Britten, and even if you want to restrict your attention to reasonably modern composers, Brian Ferneyhough is more worthy of attention.
Decca, some guy writing for the New York Phil, some guy writing for the Daily Telegraph, etc.
Seriously: of course anyone trying to offer an actual careful assessment will say something like "one of the greatest" or "arguably the greatest" or something. As you'll see if you follow all my links above or search the web yourself, one very common practice is to say "widely regarded as the greatest" :-). Personally I rate him well above Sullivan and Holst and roughly equal with Elgar and RVW. I don't know enough Ferneyhough to have a useful opinion.
Well, yes; it seems that he really had a strong fanbase, mostly among his fellow musicians. But I think you may be underestimating the popularity of Elgar, Sullivan and RVW's music (if not Ferneyhough's). I mean, these might as well be household names among relevant audiences; you can't really say the same for Britten. Now, if I had to mention gay composers who are genuinely notable for their musical output, I'd say Lully and (most obviously) Tchaikovsky.
I wasn't talking about popularity. I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression somehow.
(But yes, in terms of popularity Tchaikovsky certainly trumps Britten.)
Off the top of mine, Lana Wachowski.
Cloud Atlas is my favorite movie ever and I recommend it to anyone reading this. In fact, it is my opinion that it is one of the most important pieces of early 21st century art.
The downvote is however not for your bad taste in movies, but for intentionally misgendering Lana. More generally, you can consider it payback for your efforts to make Less Wrong an unwelcoming place. I care about this community, and you are doing your best to break it.
At this stage, I call for an IP ban.
Given that Eugine very likely will be able to get around an IP ban, I wonder if it is legally possible for MIRI to take out a restraining order that prevents him from posting to Less Wrong? This will of course only be possible if we can discover his real identity.
That would be an absurd overreaction. I can't see the law taking the matter seriously, even if anyone knew "Eugine's" real identity.
Don't be silly.
Please explain. Do you believe that it is legally impossible, or that it is possible, but it shouldn't be done for some other reasons...?
All of the above. Really, think about the issue for 30 seconds.
Listen, the right way to go here is what Vaniver is trying to do (and ultimately do a whitelist for posters, not a blacklist).
Our good friend EY moved to fb groups for partly this reason, I think.
a) I don't think that would be taken seriously by the law and b) I don't WANT things like that to be in the jurisdiction of the law.
Before trying to invoke the law it might make sense for a moderator to ask Eugine for a Skype chat.
As expected, my karma fell by 38 points and my "positive percentage" fell from 97% to 92% shortly after leaving this comment
Cloud Atlas is my second favourite movie, after Master and Commander.
I find myself confused because Metacritic believes Sense8 (63/8.1) was better than Jupiter Ascending (45/4.5), whereas I would argue the latter is more compelling. V for Vendetta (62/7.3) also doesn't seem to deserve its mediocre scores.
Let me know when you make it to the end of the sentence in gjm's comment that I quoted.
I'm not an expert on the history of these things, but according to Some Guy On The Web the first "black pride" event in the US was in 1991 and the first "gay pride" one was in 1970.
Here's a tip for you. If you wish to be seen as someone who simply follows the scientific evidence where it leads and sees that black people are on average of lower intelligence than white people, rather than a garden-variety racist, you might do better not to pretend that no black people are genuinely really good at anything. (Seriously, Louis Armstrong, notable only for being able to play jazz at all despite the handicap of being an inferior black person? Really?)
I think this says more about what you're prepared to be impressed by when it's done by gay people, than about what gay people have achieved.
You wish to deny that Tim Cook is a good example of a successful gay person? OK, then. I'll just remark that it's not a very uncommon opinion that Cook was as critical to Apple's success as Jobs.
Certainly not for the same reason, since no one is claiming that gay people (or black people or any other category of people) are responsible for all that's good in mathematics, or literature, or music, or business, or whatever.
Well, there's a thing named after him that I'd guess more than half of all professional mathematicians have heard of. That's better than most of us manage. But sure, he's a long way from being Gauss or Riemann.
I don't see that there's anything very bad about a country naming its mathematical institutions after its best mathematician, even if he's not on anyone's top-10 list. (I'd have expected you to be keen on national pride -- or does that only apply to some nations?)
How about Michael Jordan? Usain Bolt? Chuck Berry?
The original question was not about "impressive" but about "successful". Are you willing to agree that being elected President of the United States constitutes success?
The actual original words: "so then need to attach yourself vicariously to the success of other white people". As I say: success rather than excellence as such.
For this purpose, it doesn't matter whether you consider him "one of the worst", nor whether he is objectively "one of the worst" (whatever that might mean). It matters whether he's someone black people might attach themselves vicariously to the success of. Looking at the relationship between race and political affiliation in the US, it seems unlikely that most black Americans would consider Obama "one of the worst US presidents".
(Of course the whole "vicarious attachment" thing is just one guy's analysis of what "white pride" movements are about. I don't know whether he's right about "white pride" movements, still less whether something similar is true of "black pride" or "gay pride" or whatever. The application of his words to other __ Pride movements was yours, not mine.)
Nancy, why is this dude still here?
"Dancing bear" is a term. It doesn't literally indicate that he's comparing black people to animals.
I'm not sure the connotation of the term (i.e. a black person being successful at anything is so shocking it's entertainment value all on it's own) makes the statement any better. Especially when discussing, say, one of the most important American musicians of all time (among others).
I think you spelled "except in" wrong.
I don't think Ilya thought the latter.
No, it means he's saying that all the examples I gave are of people who aren't actually any good at what they do and are interesting only because for a black person to be able to attempt those tasks at all is remarkable. The stupidity and obnoxiousness of that doesn't depend on a comparison with animals.
In any case, one reason why people use metaphors is precisely the fact that the literal sense of the metaphor produces an effect. You call someone a "dancing bear", and your readers are going to get a mental image of a dancing bear and (in so far as they accept what you say) associate it with the person you're talking about. You don't get to do that and claim you're not comparing the person to an animal.
[EDITED to fix a trivial typo.]
In all fairness, this describes a lot of lists of "achievements of minority X in field Y". To some extent, it's a natural result of looking for "achievements" from a tiny minority (e.g. Turks or whatever) in a field where they don't really have a comparative advantage.
Eugene is saying not that "they don't really have a comparative advantage", but that they have a comparative disadvantage so strong that any purported great achievements should be dismissed as fakery, exaggeration, or, if it seems that one of them really has achieved something, "exceptions". In Eugene's view, they're still nothing more than performing dogs, they've just managed the miracle, despite their intrinsic inferiority, of doing it as well as the best real people.
I think it's possible to make the same point, drained of malice. To take Neil deGrasse Tyson as an example, he's a PhD physicist, but when compared to other popularizers of science I'd say he's closer to Bill Nye than he is to Carl Sagan when it comes to scientific productivity. (All three of those are people I like and respect, so this isn't meant as a slur against any of them; if only there were more Nyes and Tysons and Sagans!)
Similarly, I remember the three recurring examples of scientists during my time in elementary school being Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and George Washington Carver. Again, all three are worthy of respect, but it's misrepresenting the mechanics of science to see those three as equally prominent in the history of science, and when comparing groups what matters is not the most extreme member of each group, but the depth of the field.
AIUI, Eugine The Fourth is trying to suggest that there's something more than this going on: that black people are underrepresented in lists of successful people not because there are few of them but because they're mentally inferior for some (presumably genetic) reason.
Black people are not a tiny minority globally, so to first order it would be evidence for that theory if in fact lists of successful black people look like lists of successful Turkish people.
Of course there are other factors; e.g., most of Africa is grindingly poor -- though I expect Eugine would say, or at least imply, that that's because Africa is full of mentally-inferior people -- and while there are quite a lot of black people in the USA they've historically had some difficulties to contend with.
Funny how that worked out for Jews in Medieval Europe...
BTW, the original, sourceable quotation uses the image of "a dog walking on its hind legs". Your response still applies.
I know what "dancing bear" means.
Serious question: have the admins checked The_Lion's comments for evidence of vote manipulation? Their apparent popularity is surprising (and arguably sends a very bad message about the current state of the Less Wrong community), and their content seems to match the interests and opinions of a user who is well-known for abusing the voting system.
It is currently not easy for admins to investigate voting on comments. I'll add that to the list of changes to investigate.
Heh, typical Eugine. Making a good point in the least pleasant way (preferably also with some exaggerations). The username changes, but the style doesn't.
I'm pretty sure that MLK and Desmond Tutu would be quite notable even if their minority status wasn't a factor. I'm not familiar enough with jazz music to be able to say much about Louis Armstrong one way or the other, but Scott Joplin certainly qualifies as successful (The Entertainer is possibly his most popular piece, but he wrote plenty more of course). And what about sportspeople like Pelé (one of the greatest soccer players of all time)?
He's also "involved" in heavily critiquing the current (ANC-led) South-African government. Of course, this struggle does not "fit a currently popular narrative", and so it has not contributed to his being "famous". Overall, this seems to say a lot more about the determinants of popular fame than it says about Desmond Tutu.
What about Peter Thiel?
This is one of the worst comments I've seen on LessWrong and I think the fact that this is being upvoted is disgraceful. (Note: this reply refers to a comment that has since been deleted.)
This note is for readers who are unfamiliar with The_Lion:
This user is a troll who has been banned multiple times from Less Wrong. He is unwanted as a participant in this community, but we are apparently unable to prevent him from repeatedly creating new accounts. Administrators have extensive evidence for sockpuppetry and for abuse of the voting system. The fact that The_Lion's comment above is heavily upvoted is almost certainly entirely due to sockpuppetry. It does not reflect community consensus
...katydee?
Whoops, my apologies. Thanks for noticing. Corrected
To clarify, there are 4 embarrassing/disgraceful/noteworthy things happening here, which are embarrassing to different people in different ways.
First, the fact that The_Lion thinks this way is a disgrace for The_Lion.
Second the fact that his comment is heavily upvoted is due to the fact that he has sockpuppet accounts which he uses to upvote his posts. It is slightly embarrassing for The_Lion that he chooses to interact with the internet in this way.
Third, the fact that The_Lion has not been banned despite making comments like this one and generating upvotes in violation of the site's policy is a sign of how woefully undermoderated LessWrong is. It is actually worse than it appears from this one example, because The_Lion is the fourth account by a person whose first 3 accounts were banned for similar abuses of the karma system. But after each account is banned, he makes a new account, continues to act in the same ways, and doesn't get banned again for several months.
Fourth, the fact that many people are responding to The_Lion as if this was a serious discussion, despite how transparently false and odious his comments are, and despite (many of) them knowing The_Lion's four-account-long history, shows how badly LessWrong as a community has failed at the virtues behind "don't feed the trolls" and avoiding "someone is wrong on the internet".
I like how you added some italicized text to the end of your comment, there. Sneaky.
Well, the quote applies to most identity-based movements; there's nothing in it that would be specific to "white" folks. Paul Graham is very clear that keeping one's identity small is often more conducive to success and personal satisfaction.
Because the people who have been explicitly racist to me, where that racism has not been intended to humour me, have been people who they themselves aren't successful. This helped me realise this discrepancy and adjust the credence I give to that perspective that my racial identity makes me worth less as a person. Conversely, it suggests the pride in my racial identity that I attribute to the success of other people of my race is misplaced and that I ought to earn my own.
People who are successful and want to be racist to you might not be obvious about it. They could smile at you and then just not hire you or whatever.
I don't believe that kind of racism is so big a deal. Its like the racial equivalent of second gen feminism.