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Brillyant comments on Open thread, Oct. 03 - Oct. 09, 2016 - Less Wrong
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I'm pretty sure that is what she means. There is a big controversy in the US over whether the police are racist, not over whether the police have cognitive biases. I would be overjoyed if presidential candidates really were discussing cognitive biases.
No disagreement here.
Hm. I don't think it's this clear a distinction. Clinton seems to be suggesting there is perhaps more nuance to the issue than just arguing about whether or not lots of cops are racist.
Interesting. I was very happy to hear Clinton speak of implicit bias because it seemed to be a way to advance the discussion to something more rational.
Why do you think that? The Gender studies folks that speak most about implicit bias aren't the demographic that tries to create evidence-based policing policy. It also doesn't seem to be a group of people who are on good terms when it comes to speaking with police departments about how to design their policy.
Because people have implicit cognitive biases. It's useful to discuss them.
Peoples' cognitive maps aren't the territory. And people aren't always conscious of the mistakes. Further, many people I've heard discuss politics in this election cycle seem unaware that there even could be errors in their map.
Instead of arguing over our competing maps, one good first step is to acknowledge our maps have errors, which is what I think Clinton's line about "implicit bias" did.
The fact that a claim is true doesn't automatically mean that it's useful to discuss it.
No, it's not an admission of Clinton that her maps have errors. In general people ability to interactually recite "all maps have errors" doesn't mean that they use that belief for interacting with their own maps differently.
When it comes to having a rational discussion this is even bad, because it allows people to easily play motte-and-bailey.
It doesn't? In what way would it not be useful?
I think it's extremely useful to discuss how the brain you are using to solve problems has flaws that may be inhibiting you from solving those problems, or even recognizing the problems accurately. (It's why I was on LW originally...)
(Maybe you're using "automatically" here as a qualifier to make your statement technically correct—Is that what you mean? Like, people could discuss cognitive biases in a really stupid and irrational way that would make it unproductive? If that's what you mean, then, yeah. Of course.)
It's not? I thought she said we all (i.e. humans) have implicit biases? Wouldn't that include Clinton?
Whether a discussion is useful depends on the results of the discussion. There are a lot of true things you can say that don't advance a discussion into a direction that leads to a positive outcome.
It wasn't a discussion of how implicit bias works but an uncited assertion that it has effects in certain conditions.
That might be true but it's not what the LW mission of rationality that's about systematic winning is about. I understand the mission to be about finding thinking strategies that lead to making winning decisions.
You can make an argument that logically it includes Clinton. You can also look at the decision making literature and see what saying "everyone has biases" does to a person self awareness of their own biases. It generally does little.
People could discuss cognitive biases in a really stupid and irrational way that would make it unproductive? If that's what you mean, then, yeah. Of course.
Yeah? It wasn't really the format for a CFAR plug.
Right. Like approaching policy debates with a reduction in mind-killedness. Acknowledging implicit bias is a great step.
It does more than not acknowledging people are biased—this was literally what Clinton's critics said in regard to her comment. They essentially denied that implicit bias exists.
You seem to making a black or white argument that Clinton's comment isn't useful because it's not that useful—it won't solve anything or make rationality win U.S. policy on this issue. I am not under the illusion her one sentence will un-mindkill U.S. politics. I'm merely contrasting the (a) acknowledgement of bias with (b) being apparently unaware that it exists.
A is better than B.
The way she discussed it wasn't productive. There also the general field of Gender studies. As a field it doesn't encourage open and data driven debate about the subject. When you start a discussion with saying that your opponent holds their position because of implicit bias that doesn't tend to be a discussion where it's easy to focus on rational argument.
The problem is that you are making claims that are wrong. It wasn't a discussion of how implicit bias works. If you want to analyse claims about a debate it's useful to stay with the facts.
No. Focusing a discussion on implicit bias means to not focus the discussion on "How can we solve this problem?" It's a rhetoric strategy to signal concern about Black Lives Matter while at the same time not having to actually discuss policy solutions to the problems.
There's also a good chance that a conservative person who hears the debate is harder to educate about the concept of implicit bias after listening the debate.
The intellectual toolkit of Gender studies with includes asserting that the opponent is driven by implicit bias and privilege is not useful for having rational discussions. The communities that engage in that toolkit generally don't want to let data decide.
The also don't ask the obvious questions such as whether the fact that more Whites get killed than Asians is also due to implicit bias. That a very straightforward question if you look at the data and want to use implicit bias as a cognitive tool for explaining the data of police killers.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can you restate it?
You mentioned "gender studies" a couple times in a negative light—Why? It doesn't have anything to do with this discussion.
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Generally, the idea that (a) we all have implicit biases based on how our brain works and our life experiences, (b) these biases may significantly obscure our map of the territory, and (c) in the special case of police—where men and women need to quickly make highly consequential decisions under extreme stress—this obscured map may lead to irrational, "non-winning", decisions seems uncontroversial. Certainly nothing you've said has rebutted it.
For the record, I don't think every police shooting is racist. Not even close. And I think the left goes way too far trying to spin this.