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knb comments on [LINK] Why I'm not on the Rationalist Masterlist - Less Wrong Discussion

21 Post author: Apprentice 06 January 2014 12:16AM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 06 January 2014 08:00:47AM *  34 points [-]

I like Less Wrong-- there are courtesy rules here which keep it from going wrong in ways which are common in SJ circles. People get credit for learning rather than being expected to get everything right, and it's at least somewhat unusual to attack people for having bad motivations.

This being said, there are squicky features here, and I'm not just talking about claims that women are different from men-- oddly enough, it generally (always?) seems to be to women's disadvantage, even though there's some evidence that women are more trustworthy at running banks and investment funds.

I tolerate posts like this, but LW would seem like a friendlier place (to me) and possibly even be more rational if articles about gender issues would take utility for men and women equally seriously.

Reactionaries had something of a home here-- less so after the formation of More Right, I think. I haven't seen evidence of anything especially extreme on the egalitarian side, though there might be as good a rationalist case to be made for thorough reparations. Now that I think about it, I haven't even seen a case made for strong economic support for intelligent poor children.

Trolley problems..... I keep getting an impression that the point is that people don't have enough inhibitions against killing for the greater good. (By the way, how easy do you think it would be to move an unwilling person who weighs a good bit more than you do?)

And torture seems to be taken too lightly. It's a real world problem, not just a token to be passed around in arguments.

What the original post made me realize is that what I consider most certain to be valuable at LW is the instrumental rationality material, and it would be a good thing for there to also be an online site for instrumental rationality without the "let's do low-empathy discussions to prove how rational we are" angle.

Comment author: knb 06 January 2014 04:49:27PM 10 points [-]

I tolerate posts like this, but LW would seem like a friendlier place (to me) and possibly even be more rational if articles about gender issues would take utility for men and women equally seriously.

That post is by GLaDOS, who is female. I doubt GLaDOS values women less than men, but it would be nice if you would actually make a case for your insult/accusation rather than just throwing it in without any discussion.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 08 January 2014 02:43:52AM 2 points [-]

That post struck me as ignoring any advantages divorce might have (like getting out of bad marriages) for women.

Comment author: knb 08 January 2014 04:05:32AM *  6 points [-]

It seems clear to me that the post was not about weighing the pros and cons of divorce in total (something which would take a lot more than a short post). The post makes a more abstract point about the way incentive changes can have large impacts even without people coordinating to deliberately change behavior. That seems like a very appropriate topic for Less Wrong.