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army1987 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: fubarobfusco 06 January 2014 03:49:13PM *  31 points [-]

People with strong political identities usually have their maps systematically distorted.

Oh, certainly. Feminism points out, though, that the social mainstream is also a strong political identity which systematically distorts people's maps. They use somewhat unfortunate historical words for this effect, like "patriarchy". That's just a label on their maps, though; calling a stream a creek doesn't change the water.

So combining this with your guideline, we should be careful not to invite anyone who has a strong political identity ... but we cannot do that, because "ordinary guy" (and "normal woman") is a strong political identity too. It's just a strong political identity one of whose tenets is that it is not a strong political identity.

We don't have the freedom to set out with an undistorted map, nor of having a perfect guide as to whose maps are more distorted. Being wrong doesn't feel like being wrong. A false belief doesn't feel like a false belief. If you start with ignorance priors and have a different life, you do not end up with the same posteriors. And as a consequence, meeting someone who has different data from you can feel like meeting someone who is just plain wrong about a lot of things!


Also ... I wonder what a person whose maps of the social world were really "no better than random" would look like. I think he or she would be vastly more unfortunate than a paranoid schizophrenic. He or she would certainly be grossly unable to function in society, lacking any ability to model or predict other people. As a result, he or she would probably have no friends, job, or political allies. Lacking the ability to work with other people at all, he or she would certainly not look like a member of any political movement.

As such, I have to consider that when applied to someone who clearly does not have these attributes, that expression is being used as merely a crude insult, akin to calling someone a "drooling moron" or "mental incompetent" because they disagree with you.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 January 2014 11:12:49AM 2 points [-]

but we cannot do that, because "ordinary guy" (and "normal woman") is a strong political identity too.

If everyone has a strong political identity, then the phrase “strong political identity” is meaningless.

Also ... I wonder what a person whose maps of the social world were really "no better than random" would look like.

Exactly. Reversed stupidity is not intelligence.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 11 January 2014 07:11:20PM 1 point [-]

Let me try to unpack it a bit:

People who do not claim a named gender-related political identity (like "feminist" or "MRA") nonetheless typically explicitly teach and reinforce ideas about gender ... and get defensive about them in pretty much the same way that people get defensive about political ideas.