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chron comments on 2016 LessWrong Diaspora Survey Analysis: Part Four (Politics, Calibration & Probability, Futurology, Charity & Effective Altruism) - Less Wrong
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Comments (27)
Have you considered adding the geometric mean for certain questions? It should help a bit to deal with extreamly large answers.
Some things I found interesting:
1) The case for being pro-choice is so strong even neoreactionaries and fascists are pro-choice. Interestingly, on this specific issue, conservatives are to the right of fascists!
2) On political opinions, HBD is about an objective, falsifiable, scientifically mesureable characteristic of the world, whereas the other opinions are opinions. Opinions on HBD also correlates strongly with other views, and so I am interested as to how poeple's opinions would change if it was proved to them that the truth about HBD is the opposite of what they currently believe it to be. Would their other views change?
3) Some of the '90% of humanity die' risks seem extremely low probability to me, and I am perplexed by why so many people chose them:
The worst case scenario for nuclear war at the hight of the cold war was about 40% of humanity dies. I suppose that its possible that vast numbers of new bombs could be built, without similar investment in bomb shelters, but this does seem a little implausible.
In the 'Cretaceous hothouse' period CO2 levels were 8x higher, and there was still enough vegetation to support giant dinosaurs far bigger than the largest animal today. The worst-case scenarios are a decrease in economic growth and a migrant crisis, not 90% of humanity dies.
Its difficult enough to imagine political collapse killing 90% of the population in one country. The Syrian civil war has killed 3% of the population. The Japanese invasion of China killed 4%. I'm aware of some wars that killed 50% - parts of the thirty years war, the Mongol invasion of China - but I think these were combined with famines or disease outbreaks. In the 1870 Japanese civil war, the samurai combatants took over 99% casualties, but the non-combatants survived. 90% deaths of one country would be mind-boggling. But 90% deaths of the whole of humanity? A political collapse that affects the entire world, including countries of every culture? Including China and other countries that are not democracies?
Rather, the standard conservative argument against abortion, based on the fetus's right to life, isn't going to convince neo-reactionaries or fascists who don't believe in human rights. On the other hand, they might well be convinced by Margret Sanger-style arguments about aborting undesirables.
This is a good point, although I would partially agree with them - not only am I pro-choice, but I would strongly advice someone to abort if the child would have Down's syndrome for instance. It is the humane thing to do for all involved - you don't condemn a child to sickness and parents to possibly watching a child die before they do.
Ok, would you extend that logic to other undesirable traits, including ones that correlate with race?
Well, firstly I'm saying this should be voluntary, and most people are not going to try to commit genocide, especially against their own race. Secondly, do you realise that the number of kids people have already correlates strongly with race and religion? Although, the correlation is more that race correlates with religion and development which in turn causes fertility. I'm not claiming that race causes religion. Thirdly, aborting kids with horrible genetic deceases could actually raise the population after two generations, because the diseases would stop the kids from having kids of their own.
Generally, I don't find the argument "X is bad because it's affects correlates with race" to be plausible, because its so universal. It would stop you doing anything.