It's hard to come up with a good counter-argument to "slavery is bad". Even women's suffrage and Prohibition didn't require lying.
That's bullshit. More precisely, it is quite possible that you don't consider any of the counter-arguments to be good. But you should not generalize it for everyone. A "good argument" is a 2-place word; it means that a given person accepts the premises of the argument and its style of reasoning. Also, there is a lot of hindsight bias and social pressure here: we already know which side has historically won and which is associated with losers; but before that happened, people probably evaluated the quality of the arguments differently.
I could start playing Devil's Advocate and give examples of specific arguments that would seem good to some people, but I am not sure the readers (and our stalkers at RationalWiki) would focus on the meta-argument of "it is possible to make good arguments for X" instead of taking the arguments as literally my true opinions (plus opinions of everyone who upvoted this comment, plus opinions of everyone who didn't throw a tantrum and publicly leave LW after seeing me publish this comment there)...
A consequence of this observation is that we should expect Marxists, who believe the free market doesn't work, to lie much more often than capitalists, who think it does. Empirically, however, Democrats seem to lie much less than Republicans (see, e.g., a recent NY Times report on PolitiFact checking of the Presidential candidates), even though Republicans have much more faith in the free market.
This is an extremely terrible proxy for the question you're interested in.
It's hard to come up with a good counter-argument to "slavery is bad".
I rather like Stefan Molyneux's (anarchist fellow on youtube) analysis of slavery across time, as an evolving institution to extract value from a subject population.
Under that analysis, we are tax cattle on the human ranch. We seem to go about free because the ranchers have found that "free range" tax cattle are more productive. Free range tax cattle work harder, more effectively, and produce more, than tax cattle physically yolked in a chain gang.
And a lot of people find this is a wonderful situation.
It's hard to come up with a good counter-argument to "slavery is bad".
It's not that hard if you look at them from a contemporary perspective instead of a modern one.
Let's consider a tribal level of society which can barely survive using solely a subsistence economy, where previously the only thing you could do to prisoners after a fight with a neighboring tribe was to kill them all. You can't release them because the enemy will have higher numbers in the next battle, and you can't afford to just feed them because you can barely survive yourself.
Now enter a reform: they are allowed to live, but they have to work. (just a side remark: this is what slavery meant for the ancient tribes in the old testament, which often gets quoted outside context to claim that Christianity "advocates" slavery). Also, if I remember correctly, it only lasted at most seven years? Even in that case it is of course cruel by modern standards, but our current economic model allows for the upkeep of prisoners of war, and for a rehabilitative prison system supported by taxpayer money instead of penal labor. A stone age or early bronze age economy didn't.
Empirically, however, Democrats seem to lie much less than Republicans (see, e.g., a recent NY Times report on PolitiFact checking of the Presidential candidates)
You're taking the New York Times and PolitiFact as unbiased estimators of the truth of Democrats and Republicans?
Literally, I laughed out loud.
"The argument that people need to be deceived into social reform assumes either that they're stupid"
I think the relevant point isn't what is needed, but what is possible. If lying wins, people will do it. Though stupidity is relevant.
I look at politics, and MoreWrong seems to win just fine. In fact, it wins better than LessWrong. When you fail to avail yourself of the Dark Side, you're failing to avail yourself of power. When the enemy doesn't, you lose.
When some people are much more intelligent than others, the Dark Side will work:
...Poets pries
A consequence of this observation is that we should expect Marxists, who believe the free market doesn't work, to lie much more often than capitalists, who think it does.
Another way of spinning the problem.
Is it likely that someone who feels they have the right to rule you by force would refrain from lying to you to achieve the same obedience?
"Even women's suffrage and Prohibition didn't require lying."
I'm pretty sure that Prohibition was often advanced by the argument that drinking alcohol is morally wicked, and I am very confident that this is false.
In any case, as Viliam has already pointed out, this is just a question of what you consider good arguments, and there were plenty of people who thought there were good arguments against any reform that you might support.
I'm not sure it's relevant to this post, but your description of your old post seems to be opposite to what it actually says. Here you say that practical directions come first and are deceitfully simplified to generate energy. There you said that naive energy creation comes first and later people harness and direct it. The difference seems important to me because in this post the person is trying to steer society, while in the previous post it seemed to me that the practical second person was just trying to harness the energy to personal benefit and maybe ...
This all depends on your goals and what you're optimizing for, as an agent. If your goals require lying, then from a rationalist perspective, you should lie. The requirement of lying is not evidence for or against the value of your goals. These are orthogonal issues.
A consequence of this observation is that we should expect Marxists, who believe the free market doesn't work, to lie much more often than capitalists, who think it does. Empirically, however, Democrats seem to lie much less than Republicans (see, e.g., a recent NY Times report on PolitiFact checking of the Presidential candidates), even though Republicans have much more faith in the free market.
There a lot of wrong with that paragraph. The main problem is that's based on the lies. The lie that the political spectrum being well partitionated into left ...
The argument that people need to be deceived into social reform assumes either that they're stupid or [clause which should be replaced with "selfish"].
What probability do you assign to the belief that 70% or more of current living humans are stupider, more short-sighted, and selfish than you are? I'm somewhat selfish in that I care far more about people I interact with than about distant (in time or space) strangers, but still likely in the top quartile on that dimension, and much higher on the first two.
I agree it's worth questioning your b...
If you're backing a cause which doesn't inspire the action you think it deserves, and you find yourself twisting the truth a bit for dramatic effect, how strong evidence is that that your cause is less worthy than you think it is? Can you give examples where you would go ahead and twist the truth anyway?
Ideally, I would estimate the negative effects: how many people would later learn I lied and abandon my cause, and how enemies of the cause might use the fact I lied against it, and the reputational harm to my other causes and to my allies.
To stop me fr...
You're right! Thank you for correcting me.
He has not got much data, though. That which he has is nearly all in his footnotes, and so far I haven't seen any of it used to support his major claims, but only on tangential matters.
Skimming the first 200 pages (8 chapters) of an unabridged version (Penguin) of Capital Book 1, this is all the data I find. All but the first two were relegated to footnotes, and I don't immediately see that any of it supports important claims. So this is one tangential piece of data per 20 pages.
So the reason I read so much Marx without seeing any data could be that, when one abridges Marx to present only Marx's explanation and justification for his important ideas, there is very little data in that part.
Or it could be that abridgers don't think data is important. After all, students won't be tested on the data.
What he has much, much more of is (a) reasoning without data, and (b) working-out of examples of made-up data, e.g., "Suppose that in spinning cotton, the waste for every 115 lbs. used amounts to 15 lbs., which is converted, not into yarn, but into “devil’s dust.” Now, although this 15 lbs. of cotton never becomes a constituent element of the yarn, yet assuming this amount of waste to be normal and inevitable under average conditions of spinning, its value is just as surely transferred to the value of the yarn, as is the value of the 100 lbs. that form the substance of the yarn...".
Book 1 Chapter 3
Section 3: Money
"Vanderlint, who fancies that the prices of commodities in a country are determined by the quantity of gold and silver to be found in it, asks himself why Indian commodities are so cheap. Answer: Because the Hindus bury their money. From 1602 to 1734, he remarks, they buried 150 millions of pounds sterling of silver, which originally came from America to Europe. [40] In the 10 years from 1856 to 1866, England exported to India and China £120,000,000 in silver, which had been received in exchange for Australian gold. Most of the silver exported to China makes its way to India."
Data, but it does not support the claim he's using it to support.
"To what extent this transformation depends upon the general conditions of production, is shown, to take one example, by the fact that the Roman Empire twice failed in its attempt to levy all contributions in money. The unspeakable misery of the French agricultural population under Louis XIV., a misery so eloquently denounced by Boisguillebert, Marshal Vauban, and others, was due not only to the weight of the taxes, but also to the conversion of taxes in kind into money taxes. [55] In Asia, on the other hand, the fact that state taxes are chiefly composed of rents payable in kind, depends on conditions of production that are reproduced with the regularity of natural phenomena."
Not really data, but at least references to external reality.
Footnote 46: "According to a Parliamentary document of 1864 on the gold and silver import and export of India, the import of gold and silver in 1863 exceeded the export by £19,367,764. During the 8 years immediately preceding 1864, the excess of imports over exports of the precious metals amounted to £109,652,917. During this century far more than £200,000,000 has been coined in India."
Data, but he didn't supply any other data to use together with this to enable any conclusion to be drawn from it.
Footnote 53. "As an example of how little ready money is required in true commercial operations, I give below a statement by one of the largest London houses of its yearly receipts and payments. Its transactions during the year 1856, extending to many millions of pounds sterling, are here reduced to the scale of one million.
Receipts. Payments.
Bankers’ and Merchants’ £533,596 Bills payable after date £302,674
Cheques on Bankers, &c. payable on demand 357,715 Cheques on London Bankers 663,672
Country Notes 9,627 Bank of England Notes 22,743
Bank of England Notes 68,554 Gold 9,427
Gold 28,089 Silver and Copper 1,484
Silver and Copper 1,486
Post Office Orders 933
Total £1,000,000 Total £1,000,000
“Report from the Select Committee on the Bank Acts, July, 1858,” p. lxxi."
Footnote 56. "Although the average effective circulation of bank-notes in Scotland is less than three millions sterling, yet on certain pay days in the year, every single note in the possession of the bankers, amounting in the whole to about £7,000,000, is called into activity. On these occasions the notes have a single and specific function to perform, and so soon as they have performed it, they flow back into the various banks from which they issued. (See John Fullarton, “Regulation of Currencies.” Lond. 1845, p. 86, note.)"
Footnote 59: "About 25 years ago the ratio expressing the relative value of gold and silver was 15-1/2:1; now it is approximately 22:1, and silver is still constantly falling as against gold. This is essentially the result of a revolution in the mode of production of both metals. Formerly gold was obtained almost exclusively by washing it out from gold-bearing alluvial deposits, products of the weathering of auriferous rocks. Now this method has become inadequate and has been forced into the background by the processing of the quartz lodes themselves, a way of extraction which formerly was only of secondary importance, although well known to the ancients (Diodorus, III, 12-14) (Diodor’s v. Sicilien “Historische Bibliothek,” book III, 12-14. Stuttgart 1828, pp. 258-261). Moreover, not only were new huge silver deposits discovered in North America, in the Western part of the Rocky Mountains, but these and the Mexican silver mines were really opened up by the laying of railways, which made possible the shipment of modern machinery and fuel and in consequence the mining of silver on a very large scale at a low cost. However there is a great difference in the way the two metals occur in the quartz lodes. The gold is mostly native, but disseminated throughout the quartz in minute quantities. The whole mass of the vein must therefore be crushed and the gold either washed out or extracted by means of mercury. Often 1,000,000 grammes of quartz barely yield 1-3 and very seldom 30-60 grammes of gold. Silver is seldom found native, however it occurs in special quartz that is separated from the lode with comparative ease and contains mostly 40-90% silver; or it is contained, in smaller quantities, in copper, lead and other ores which in themselves are worthwhile working."
Chapter Six: The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power
Footnote 14: "In London there are two sorts of bakers, the “full priced,” who sell bread at its full value, and the “undersellers,” who sell it under its value. The latter class comprises more than three-fourths of the total number of bakers. (p. xxxii in the Report of H. S. Tremenheere, commissioner to examine into “the grievances complained of by the journeymen bakers,” &c., Lond. 1862.) The undersellers, almost without exception, sell bread adulterated with alum, soap, pearl ashes, chalk, Derbyshire stone-dust, and such like agreeable nourishing and wholesome ingredients. (See the above cited Blue book, as also the report of “the committee of 1855 on the adulteration of bread,” and Dr. Hassall’s “Adulterations Detected,” 2nd Ed. Lond. 1861.) Sir John Gordon stated before the committee of 1855, that “in consequence of these adulterations, the poor man, who lives on two pounds of bread a day, does not now get one fourth part of nourishing matter, let alone the deleterious effects on his health.”"
Chapter Seven: The Labour-Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-Value
Footnote 18: "Laing estimates that in England (and Wales) the livelihood of 11,300,000 people depends on unskilled labour. If from the total population of 18,000,000 living at the time when he wrote, we deduct 1,000,000 for the “genteel population,” and 1,500,000 for paupers, vagrants, criminals, prostitutes, &c., and 4,650,000 who compose the middle-class, there remain the above mentioned 11,000,000. But in his middle-class he includes people that live on the interest of small investments, officials, men of letters, artists, schoolmasters and the like, and in order to swell the number he also includes in these 4,650,000 the better paid portion of the factory operatives! The bricklayers, too, figure amongst them."
Chapter Eight: Constant Capital and Variable Capital
Footnote 5: "In The Times of 26th November, 1862, a manufacturer, whose mill employed 800 hands, and consumed, on the average, 150 bales of East Indian, or 130 bales of American cotton, complains, in doleful manner, of the standing expenses of his factory when not working. He estimates them at £6,000 a year. Among them are a number of items that do not concern us here, such as rent, rates, and taxes, insurance, salaries of the manager, book-keeper, engineer, and others. Then he reckons £150 for coal used to heat the mill occasionally, and run the engine now and then. Besides this, he includes the wages of the people employed at odd times to keep the machinery in working order. Lastly, he puts down £1,200 for depreciation of machinery, because “the weather and the natural principle of decay do not suspend their operations because the steam-engine ceases to revolve.” He says, emphatically, he does not estimate his depreciation at more than the small sum of £1,200, because his machinery is already nearly worn out."
He has not got much data, though.
That is true. But then, he was formulating a conceptual framework and not building statistical models.
I've said before that social reform often seems to require lying. Only one-sided narratives offering simple solutions motivate humans to act, so reformers manufacture one-sided narratives such as we find in Marxism or radical feminism, which inspire action through indignation. Suppose you tell someone, "Here's an important problem, but it's difficult and complicated. If we do X and Y, then after five years, I think we'd have a 40% chance of causing a 15% reduction in symptoms." They'd probably think they had something better to do.
But the examples I used in that previous post were all arguably bad social reforms: Christianity, Russian communism, and Cuban communism.
The argument that people need to be deceived into social reform assumes either that they're stupid, or that there's some game-theoretic reason why social reform that's very worthwhile to society as a whole isn't worthwhile to any individual in society.
Is that true? Or are people correct and justified in not making sudden changes until there's a clear problem and a clear solution to it?
Examples, I think, of good social reform, were the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Those movements didn't require wholesale lying and sleight-of-hand, because they could make valid and true one-sided arguments. It's hard to come up with a good counter-argument to "plantation slavery is bad". Even women's suffrage and Prohibition didn't require lying.
If you're backing a cause which doesn't inspire the action you think it deserves, and you find yourself twisting the truth a bit for dramatic effect, how strong evidence is that that your cause is less worthy than you think it is? Can you give examples where you would go ahead and twist the truth anyway?
For example, if you want to build an asteroid defense system for Earth, and the numbers say that the odds of it being needed in any given human generation are 0.0001%, it might not ever be worth it to any "purely selfish" human to pay the taxes to build that system. I'm ruling that example out, because it is really about the questions of how to discount the future and how to value future human lives. That's a known problem which this angle provides no new insight into.
If you want people to cooperate to reduce risk from AI, or to cure aging, but hardly anyone seems to care, would that fact affect your judgement of the task's true value to most people?
Essentially I'm asking whether you believe in the free market of ideas, in which the effort people put into different tasks is the real measure of their value, or whether you think we need some good-old Marxist centralized planning of values. Answer carefully, because I don't think you can both support the manipulation of public opinion wrt social issues or existential threats (because the public is too stupid to know what it should value), and still believe the free market can solve economic problems (because people are smart enough to know what they value).
A consequence of this observation is that we should expect Marxists, who believe the free market doesn't work, to lie much more often than capitalists, who think it does. Empirically, however, Democrats seem to lie much less than Republicans (see, e.g., a recent NY Times report on PolitiFact checking of the Presidential candidates), even though Republicans have much more faith in the free market.