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Eugine_Nier comments on Less Wrong’s political bias - Less Wrong Discussion

-6 Post author: Sophronius 25 October 2013 04:38PM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 31 October 2013 04:31:52AM 3 points [-]

The best way of handling mindkilling is to look at hard data.

To some extent you may have a valid point, but parties are extremely diverse entities. Even if one looked at small, fringe parties, there's heavy variation in the beliefs. So, you might have a more valid point if you said something like "Self-identified Republicans are on average more likely to believe crazy things than self-identified Democrats."

This is not actually all that objective since it's not clear what constitutes a "crazy belief". Is it simple a matter of how much easily available evidence there is against it? Or does it also include considerations like what proportion of people believe it and how much effort smart people have devoted to rationalizing it?

Comment author: ialdabaoth 28 November 2013 07:45:39PM * 3 points [-]

This is not actually all that objective since it's not clear what constitutes a "crazy belief". Is it simple a matter of how much easily available evidence there is against it? Or does it also include considerations like what proportion of people believe it and how much effort smart people have devoted to rationalizing it?

Ideally, yes (and I upvoted this for its insight), but that can easily becomes a Fully General Counterargument if we aren't EXTREMELY careful - since "how much effort smart people have devoted to rationalizing it" can look like "how much easily available evidence there is against it", and vice-versa.

As people have mentioned, this is a Very Hard Problem.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier comment score below threshold [+] (25 children)

Comment author: ialdabaoth 29 November 2013 01:01:46AM * 2 points [-]

the correlation between race and both propensity to violence and intelligence being the most obvious example.

In this particular example, though, I don't think (non-mindkilled) people try to train people not to notice it, and in most rational cases that I've seen, it isn't "rationalized away" so much as people spend a good deal of effort insisting that correlation does not always imply causation, and that social policies which take that correlation into account need to be VERY careful not to repeat tabooed historical solutions. I think if "I agree denotationally but object connotationally" were a more widespread concept, we would see a lot of this tendency disappear.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier comment score below threshold [+] (23 children)

Comment author: ialdabaoth 01 December 2013 07:09:57PM * 4 points [-]

Have you considered the alternative hypothesis that you're hyper-sensitized to noticing people who believe 3-and-ONLY-3, and are therefore ignoring evidence of people who believe 2-and-3, or occasionally 2-and-3-with-a-smattering-of-1? Because I know of PLENTY of people who agree that 2-and-3 are likely causes (with maybe a weak influence from 1), and operate together in a feedback loop - but I also know plenty of people that listen to the feedback loop theory and hear "so it's really all 3 then" instead of the actual message of "it's complicated, but 2 and 3 are entangled together in ways that make 2 difficult to treat without dealing with 3, and that make 3 difficult to stop as long as 2 continues".

And part of the problem is, people can't say "2-and-3 with a weak influence from 1" without having people jump up and down on them and say "SEE? SEE! YOU DO ADMIT 1! YOU ADMIT 1! THAT MEANS CONTINUING 3 IS JUSTIFIED! I WIN! I WIN!", which is a strong emotional disincentive to admitting 1 AT ALL. Going on and on and on about how "racial differences are real and EVERYONE IS LYING SO STOP LYING DAMNIT" is a great way to ensure that people become MORE mind-killed, because it doesn't leave a line of retreat.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier comment score below threshold [+] (21 children)

Comment author: ialdabaoth 01 December 2013 07:47:49PM 2 points [-]

Yes, I'm aware of the feedback theory.

Then as an aside (and I will address the rest of your post momentarily), why did you assert:

On the occasion most intellectuals are willing to admit this correlation exists at all, they immediately insist that it is completely due to (3) and proceed to ingeniously seek ever subtler forms of racism.

Secondarily, there are plenty of proposed interventions in the (2) part of the feedback, both from blacks and whites. Bill Cosby is rather famous for them; Chris Rock also has a particularly poignant set of criticisms. Part of the problem is that plenty of people have polluted the "criticize (2)" pathway by using it as a justification for reinforcing process (3) - "concern trolling" is a well-worn path.

As for the other groups, each of those groups came into their situations differently; I might suggest comparing black culture to native American culture, rather than Jewish, Irish or Asian culture. Sociology and history are complex, and outcomes are highly path-dependent.

Comment author: Lumifer 02 December 2013 05:05:14PM 3 points [-]

why did you assert

This assertion looks true to me by empirical observation.

plenty of proposed interventions in the (2) part of the feedback, both from blacks and whites

Can you show some examples of whites proposing interventions into black culture (and not immediately being tarred and feathered)? You mentioned two black guys.

Comment author: ialdabaoth 02 December 2013 05:34:24PM 1 point [-]

Can you show some examples of whites proposing interventions into black culture (and not immediately being tarred and feathered)? You mentioned two black guys.

If you add the second criteria (not immediately being tarred and feathered), it becomes more difficult. I'm aware of several hypotheses for why that may be. Would we like to discuss them?

continue this thread »

Comment author: ialdabaoth 01 December 2013 11:48:34PM 0 points [-]

On a seperate channel:

Yes, I'm aware of the feedback theory.

I didn't ask if you were aware of it, I asked if you had considered it.

I will point out that you still have the problem of how other groups, e.g., Jews, Irish, Asians, were able to break out of the feedback loop.

I am going to make a criticism about tone, here, but please understand that I'm not doing this as an attempt to refute or dismiss your argument; I'm doing this out of a legitimate desire to help you get your message across to people who would otherwise be unreceptive to it. You have a tendency to force your idea of other people's position down their throats; it often comes across as wanting to 'win points' against liberal positions, rather than an attempt to actually seek truth. If you avoided personalizing language when criticizing liberal positions, you might help people see an opportunity to distance themselves from those positions, and thus help people avoid mind-killing emotional responses to having their positions challenged.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 31 October 2013 05:10:16AM 0 points [-]

That's a really good point. I was thinking purely in terms of evidence levels against the belief but how much resources is spent rationalizing it might matter. I was trying to avoid thinking too much of that by using the most obviously crazy beliefs all around, but if there's systematic rationalization attempts more for one than another that might not help.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 02 November 2013 08:34:58PM 0 points [-]

I was thinking purely in terms of evidence levels against the belief

Well, your examples are not very well balanced by level of evidence against, although it's hard to compare this across different domains.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 02 November 2013 08:42:28PM 0 points [-]

Could you expand why you think they don't have about the same levels of evidence against? They seemed to to me, but it is possible that I'm missing something. I agree that making such comparisons across domains may be tough.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 02 November 2013 11:17:44PM 2 points [-]

Oops. I was comparing Birtherism to controlled demolition theories and forgot that not all 9/11 Truther theories were that crazy.

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