There are complex rules about what are you allowed to say where. Saying something as a joke a in romantic comedy may increase your revenues; saying the same thing in academy can get you fired. I should have added the proper disclaimers.
The same message can be at the same time in the same country both popular and forbidden, both mainstream and ostracized, both "of course everybody knows this" and "you must be an evil mutant if you even think about this".
In their private lives many people find a win-win solution. Also, many don't. Even without the explicit game theory people gradually gain some insight that (1) with some people pressing the "cooperate" button brings you horrible outcomes, but (2) pressing the "defect" button almost always brings bad long-term outcome; therefore the key to long-term happiness is pressing the "cooperate" button with a person who is able and willing to respond properly.
But even then there is the nagging feeling that your outcome could have been better if you just were allowed to press "defect" while the other person would for some reason press their "cooperate" button. And there are often friendly people telling you that this is exactly what you deserve, and that you should be true to thyself and never compromise for other than the greatest value in your payoff matrix.
Of course the problem is that the buttons are not labelled "cooperate" and "defect" on both sides; that would make the whole situation much easier. Instead, my "cooperate" button comes with a label "Sacrifice", and the "defect" button comes with a label "Freedom". I don't clearly see what is written on your buttons, but considering the effect they have on me, I simply call your "cooperate" button the good button, and your "defect" button the bad button. Therefore it seems obvious to me that you have a moral obligation to push the good button, while I have a moral right to push the freedom button. And I don't understand why do you always have to discuss this obviously superior solution.
This is what being in a Prisoners' Dilemma with unacknowledged different values feels like from inside.
My point was that some sort of gender essentialism ("men and women necessarily have different values") and heteronormativity ("the ideal outcome for every man and every woman is a Cooperate/Cooperate pairing with a member of the opposite sex") are so mainstream as to be almost entirely uncontroversial until rather recently.
In many contexts, anyone who complains about them, or considers that the world could be otherwise, is dismissed as a loser incapable of dealing with reality. (Whether male or female; one word for a female loser is &q...
I've been reading a lot of the recent LW discussions on politics and gender, and noticed that people rarely bring up or explicitly acknowledge that different people affected by some political or gender issue have different values/preferences, and therefore solving the problem involves a strong element of bargaining and is not just a matter of straightforward optimization. Instead, we tend to talk as if there is some way to solve the problem that's best for everyone, and that rational discussion will bring us closer to finding that one best solution.
For example, when discussing gender-related problems, one solution may be generally better for men, while another solution may be generally better for women. If people are selfish, then they will each prefer the solution that's individually best for them, even if they can agree on all of the facts. (It's unclear whether people should be selfish, but it seems best to assume that most are, for practical purposes.)
Unfortunately, in bargaining situations, epistemic rationality is not necessarily instrumentally rational. In general, convincing others of a falsehood can be useful for moving the negotiated outcome closer to one's own preferences and away from others', and this may be done more easily if one honestly believes the falsehood. (One of these falsehoods may be, for example, "My preferred solution is best for everyone.") Given these (subconsciously or evolutionarily processed) incentives, it seems reasonable to think that the more solving a problem resembles bargaining, the more likely we are to be epistemicaly irrationality when thinking and talking about it.
If we do not acknowledge and keep in mind that we are in a bargaining situation, then we are less likely to detect such failures of epistemic rationality, especially in ourselves. We're also less likely to see that there's an element of Prisoner's Dilemma in participating in such debates: your effort to convince people to adopt your preferred solution is costly (in time and in your and LW's overall sanity level) but may achieve little because someone else is making an opposite argument. Both of you may be better off if neither engaged in the debate.