Related on LW: Talking Snakes: A Cautionary Tale.
I changed my mind in a Cairo cafe, talking to a young Muslim woman. I let it slip during the conversation that I was an atheist, and she seemed genuinely curious why. You've all probably been in such a situation, and you probably know how hard it is to choose just one reason, but I'd been reading about Biblical contradictions at the time and I mentioned the myriad errors and atrocities and contradictions in all the Holy Books.
Her response? "Oh, thank goodness it's that. I was afraid you were one of those crazies who believed that monkeys transformed into humans."
I admitted that um, well, maybe I sorta kinda might in fact believe that.
It is hard for me to describe exactly the look of shock on her face, but I have no doubt that her horror was genuine. I may have been the first flesh-and-blood evolutionist she ever met. "But..." she looked at me as if I was an idiot. "Monkeys don't change into humans. What on Earth makes you think monkeys can change into humans?"
Also, on Yvain's old blog:
...On r/atheism, a Christian-turned-atheist once described an "apologetics" group at his old church. The pas
The other day, I asked a close friend of mine who's active in feminist organizations to read Yvain's post on bingo cards so we could discuss it. Some things that came out of that discussion:
It's actually useful to recognize repeated themes in opposing arguments. We have to pattern-match in order to understand things. (See this comment for a similar point — "[P]eople need heuristics that allow them to terminate cognition, because cognition is a limited resource") Even if mocking or dismissing opposing arguments is bad, we shouldn't throw out categorization as a tool.
One reason feminists make bingo cards is to say to other feminists, "You're not alone in your frustration at hearing these arguments all the time." Bingo cards function as an expression of support for others in the movement. This seems to me to be a big part of what feminists get out of feminism: "No, you're not alone in feeling crappy about gender relations. So do I, and so do all these other people, too. So let's work on it together." For that matter, a lot of what secularists get out of the secularist movement seems to be "No, you're not alone in thinking this god stuff is bogus. Let...
(Thanks for acknowledging the common ground; this response likewise deals only with the small area of disagreement.)
The issue here isn't whether feminists (or anyone else for that matter) are morally/emotionally justified in using these sorts of thought-terminating cliches,
Oh, I agree. My point in concocting the imaginary scenario of an embattled Less Wrong was to provide an alternative to the notion that feminism is fundamentally disposed to semantic stopsigns; namely that feminists find themselves in a situation) where semantic stopsigns are unusually cognitively necessary (as opposed to morally or emotionally).
That is, it's not possible to usefully understand the cognitive situation of public feminism without thinking about the death threats, the rape threats, the "you just need a good fucking" responses, the "feminists are just ugly women" responses, and so on. It's not that these morally justify the dismissive attitude represented by bingo cards, nor that they emotionally explain (i.e. psychoanalyze) it; but that they make it cognitively and dialectically a necessary tool.
...but whether these types of cliches lower the quality of discourse and make their
"everything is bad" is only a crappy thinking mode when unaccompanied by the obvious next step of "optimize all the things."
I disagree. "Bad" is a value judgement that is not optimized for maximum utility. In my opinion, there's usually little reason (signaling aside) to make fun of something rather than provide constructive criticism.
While it's certainly possible to use "bad" as a shortcut for "needs optimizing," the word "suboptimal" already means that and doesn't carry the same pejorative connotations.
If you can correct your beliefs by thinking up a good argument against them, isn't that a good thing? I'm unsure why you're terming it "warning."
Studies indicate that in some cases, writing arguments causes you to later believe what you wrote, even if you didn't believe it at the time.
I concur with you.
Also, you have an unlikely ally. I think it was C.S. Lewis that said that it was hard work to make a joke, but effortless to act as though a joke has been made. (google help me, yes, Screwtape Letters, number 11.) I generally try to let that guide me.
I think that genuinely funny jokes typically need some participation from the an aspect object of the joke. If you're mocking a policy by pointing out an incongruent consequence of that its certainly funny, but it wouldn't be possible if the root wasn't there to start with.
Say I'm an autho...
Optimally, only bad things would get made fun of, making it easy to determine what is good and bad-- but this doesn't appear to be the case.
How do you differentiate between benign comedy and "making fun of"? Is it just the implied intent? I've found this is an incredibly difficult line to draw, people are so variably calibrated. Many times couldn't have helped myself and have inadvertently insulted people. Later I have learned that quite a few laughs are not worth one wrongly placed offence, so I mostly joke among friends.
While that's all true, using humor can be a socially acceptable way to point out the flaws in someone else's "sacred cows" without them getting angry. By avoiding the anger response using humor, sometimes you can short-circuit the whole knee-jerk reaction and get someone to think in a more rational way, to actually take a closer look at their own beliefs. Political satirists have used this technique for a long time, and still do.
So it can be a positive and socially useful thing to do. Like all of these kinds of tools, it can either be used to get to the truth or to hide it, to think more deeply or to avoid thinking. It all depends on the details.
How many people actually did the exercises katydee suggested? I know I didn't.
katydee, perhaps you could take a semi-random sample of things in relevant reference classes (politicians/organizations) and demonstrate how easy it is to make fun of them? Otherwise I suspect many people will take you for your word that things are easy to make fun of.
Here's my semi-random sample of organizations and politicians. I'll take the most recent 3 Daily Show guests) I recognize the names of and the largest 3 charities I recognize the names of.
Richard Dawkins
Chels
The best conversations are in places that put a low value on humour. Unfortunately in wider society disliking humour is seen as a massive negative.
I think (albeit on the basis of limited evidence) that what's helpful for good conversations is a low value on humour rather than a negative value on humour. The fora I've seen with the best discussion don't generally regard humour as bad; they just regard it as generally not good enough to redeem an otherwise unhelpful comment. Exceptionally good humour, or humour produced incidentally while saying something that would have been valuable even without the humour, is just fine on (for instance) Less Wrong or Hacker News -- but comments whose only point is a feeble witticism are liable to get downvoted into oblivion.
This example pushed me into formulating Crowe's Law of Sarcastic Dismissal: Any explanation that is subtle enough to be correct is turbid enough to make its sarcastic dismissal genuinely funny.
Skinner had a subtle point to make, that the important objection to mentalism is of a very different sort. The world of the mind steals the show. Behaviour is not recognized as a subject in its own right.
I think I grasped Skinner's point after reading something Feynman wrote on explanations in science. You can explain why green paint is green by explaining that paint...
whether or not people are making fun of it is not necessarily a good signal as to whether or not it's actually good
Correct.
Optimally, only bad things would get made fun of
Incorrect. Being too serious is a deadly disease. Everything should be made fun of -- it's fun!
Second, if you want to make something sound bad, it's really easy.
"making something sound bad" is not at all the same thing as "making fun of"
This sort of premature cynicism tends to be a failure mode I've noticed in many otherwise very intelligent people.
As us...
I'm not sure if this post is meant to be taken seriously. It's always "easy" to make fun of X; what's difficult is to spread your opinion about X by making fun of X. Obviously this requires a target audience that doesn't already share your opinion about X, and if you look at people making fun of things (e.g. on the net), usually the audience they're catering to already shares their views. This is because the most common objective of making fun of things is not to convince people of anything, but to create a group identity, raise team morale, and ...
Nonsensical arguments are not useful after a certain point, naturally, but where the point lies is a matter we can only determine after assessing each nonsensical idea in turn. We can detect patterns among the space of nonsensical hypotheses, but we'd be neglecting our duty as rationalists and Bayesians alike if [...]
I agree with that, read literally, but I disagree with the implied conclusion. Nonsensical arguments hit diminishing (and indeed negative) returns so quickly that in practice they're nearly useless. (There are situations where this isn't so, namely educational ones, where having a pupil or student express their muddled understanding makes it possible to correct them. But I don't think you have that sort of didactic context in mind.)
- Feminism: Arguably a legitimate point to contend over. I'll allow this as evidence in counter to my stance if you can convince me that it was being legitimately argued: Someone would need to legitimately hold the stance of a feminist and not budge in terms of, "Well, I take feminism to mean..." Basically, I don't really believe this is a point of contention rather than discussion for the generalized LessWrong collective.
Hmm. I tend not to wade into the arguments about feminism so I don't remember any examples that unambiguously meet your criteria, and some quick Google searches don't give me any either, although you might have more luck. Still, even without evidence on hand sufficient to convince a sceptic, I'm fairly sure feminism, and related issues like pick-up artistry and optimal ways to start romantic relationships, are contentious topics on LW. (In fact I think there's something approaching a mild norm against gratuitously bringing up those topics because Less Wrong Doesn't Do Them Well.)
- HIV & AIDS: Can't perform assessment. Was anyone actually positing non-consensus ideas in the discussion?
Yep. The person I ended up arguing with was saying that HIV isn't an STD, that seroconversion isn't indicative of HIV infection, and that there's not much reason to think microscopic pictures of HIV are actually of HIV. (They started by saying they had 70% confidence "that the mainstream theory of HIV/AIDS is solid", but what they wrote as the thread unfolded made clear that their effective degree of confidence was really much less.)
- DDT: What's to discuss?
Here's the discussion I had in mind.
- Peak oil: Very legitimate topic. Surprised to hear that it was discussed here. Tell me though, how did the LessWrong collective vote on the comments composing the discussion? Is there a clear split composed of downvotes for comments arguing the dangers of peak oil, and upvotes for the other side?
I quickly skimmed the conversation I was thinking of and didn't see a clear split. But you can judge for yourself.
- Getting rich to donate to charity: Trivial. Absolutely trivial. This is the kind of LessWrong circlejerking that upsets me the most. It's never a discussion about how to actually get rich, or what charities to donate to, which problems to solve, who is best qualified to do it, or any such useful discussion.
Here's a post on deciding which charities to donate to. Here's a student asking how they can get rich for effective altruism. Here's a detailed walkthrough of how to maximize the cash you get when searching for a programming job. Here's someone asking straightforwardly how they can make money. Here's Julia Wise wondering which career would allow her to donate the most money.
It is always, every time, about whether or not that is the most optimal route.
This would appear to be false.
- "How much lead exposure harms children's development:" It's a bad thing. What's to argue or discuss?
Whether it affects children's development to such a degree that it can explain future variations in violent crime levels.
I had hoped that your going through my list of examples point by point would clarify how you were judging which topics were "legitimate" & nontrivial, but I'm still unsure. In some ways it seems like you're judging topics based on whether they're things LWers are actually doing something about, but LWers aren't (as far as I know) doing anything more about global warming or peak oil than they are about astronomical waste or the (insufficient speed of the) global demographic transition. So what makes the former more legit than the latter?
People have decided to dedicate years of their lives (and/or thousands of dollars) to attacking the problem of FAI because of their interactions with LW.
I have a strong opinion on this that LessWrong has more or less instructed me to censor. Suffice to say I am personally content with leaving that funding and effort in place.
The point I meant to make in bringing that up was not that you should cheer people on for dedicating time & money to FAI; it was that people doing so is an existence proof that some LWers are "changing their deep beliefs after 'seeing the light.'". If someone goes, "gee, I used to think I should devote my life to philosophy/writing/computer programming/medicine/social work/law, but now I read LW I just want to throw money at MIRI, or fly to California to help out with CFAR", and then they actually follow through, one can hardly accuse them of not changing their deep beliefs!
That is intensely interesting and the kind of thing I'd yell at you for not looking more into, let alone remembering only dimly. [...] I would immediately hold an interview in response to such a stimulus.
Unless my memory's playing tricks on me, Eliezer did ask that person to elaborate, but got no response.
This is where I can help, [...] I know how to navigate the transition. But of course that's an extraordinary claim; I'm not allowed to make it. First I have to give evidence that I can do it. Do what? Improve LessWrong on mass scale. [...] What evidence can I possibly give of my ability to do such a thing? (The last person I asked this question to was unable to divine the answer.)
It seems pretty sensible to me to demand evidence when someone on the fringes of an established community says they're convinced they know exactly (1) how to singlehandedly overhaul that community, and (2) what to aim for in overhauling it.
I also can't divine the answer you have in mind, either.
I'm left with having to argue that I'm on a level where I can manage a community of rationalists. It's not an argument any LessWronger is going to like very much at all. You're able to listen to it now because you're not the average LessWronger.
I don't think you're making the argument you think you are. The argument I'm hearing is that LW isn't reaching its full potential because LWers sit around jacking each other off rather than getting shit done. You haven't actually mounted an argument for your own managerial superiority yet.
You're different, and if you've properly taken the time to reflect on the opening question of this comment, you'll know exactly why that is. [...] I need to you to be slightly more self-aware in order for you to see the true face of LessWrong that's hidden behind your assumption that the members of the mass are any bit similar to yourself on an epistemic level.
How about this: I need you to spell out what you mean with this "true face of LessWrong" stuff. (And ideally why you think I'm different & special. The only evidence you've cited so far is that I've bothered to argue with you!) I doubt I'm nearly as astute as you think I am, not least because I can't discern what you're saying when you start laying on the gnomic flattery.
LessWrong is a single point within a growing Singularity. [Rest of paragraph snipped.]
My own hunch: LW will carry on being a reasonable but not spectacular success for MIRI. It'll continue serving as a pipeline of potential donors to (and workers for) MIRI & CFAR, growing steadily but not astoundingly for another decade or so until it basically runs its course.
Focusing on this one currently-LessWrong-specific meme, what do you see happening if LW's memetic moment were right now? Now is LessWrong merely restraining its own members?
OK, yes, if the LW memeplex went viral and imprinted itself on the minds of an entire generation, then by definition it'd be silly for me to airily say, "oh, that's just an LW-specific meme, nothing to worry about". But I don't worry about that risk much for two reasons: the outside view says LW most likely won't be that successful; and people love to argue politics, and are likely to argue politics even if most of them end up believing in (and overinterpreting) "Politics is the Mindkiller". Little political scuffles still break out here, don't they?
There are situations where this isn't so, namely educational ones, where having a pupil or student express their muddled understanding makes it possible to correct them. But I don't think you have that sort of didactic context in mind.
I do, actually, which raises the question as to why you think I didn't have that in mind. Did you not realize that LessWrong and pretty much our entire world civilization is in such a didactic state? Moreover, if we weren't in such a didactic state, why does LessWrong exist? Does the art of human rationality not have vast ...
Making fun of things is actually really easy if you try even a little bit. Nearly anything can be made fun of, and in practice nearly anything is made fun of. This is concerning for several reasons.
First, if you are trying to do something, whether or not people are making fun of it is not necessarily a good signal as to whether or not it's actually good. A lot of good things get made fun of. A lot of bad things get made fun of. Thus, whether or not something gets made fun of is not necessarily a good indicator of whether or not it's actually good.[1] Optimally, only bad things would get made fun of, making it easy to determine what is good and bad - but this doesn't appear to be the case.
Second, if you want to make something sound bad, it's really easy. If you don't believe this, just take a politician or organization that you like and search for some criticism of it. It should generally be trivial to find people that are making fun of it for reasons that would sound compelling to a casual observer - even if those reasons aren't actually good. But a casual observer doesn't know that and thus can easily be fooled.[2]
Further, the fact that it's easy to make fun of things makes it so that a clever person can find themselves unnecessarily contemptuous of anything and everything. This sort of premature cynicism tends to be a failure mode I've noticed in many otherwise very intelligent people. Finding faults with things is pretty trivial, but you can quickly go from "it's easy to find faults with everything" to "everything is bad." This tends to be an undesirable mode of thinking - even if true, it's not particularly helpful.
[1] Whether or not something gets made fun of by the right people is a better indicator. That said, if you know who the right people are you usually have access to much more reliable methods.
[2] If you're still not convinced, take a politician or organization that you do like and really truly try to write an argument against that politician or organization. Note that this might actually change your opinion, so be warned.