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Lukas_Gloor comments on The Triumph of Humanity Chart - Less Wrong Discussion

23 Post author: Dias 26 October 2015 01:41AM

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Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 26 October 2015 12:47:36PM * -1 points [-]

The developments you highlight are impressive indeed. But you're making it sound as though everyone should agree with your normative judgments. You imply that doubling extreme poverty would be a good thing if it comes with a doubling of the rest of the population. This view is not uncontroversial and many EAs would disagree with it. Please respect that other people will disagree with your value judgments.

Comment author: Dagon 26 October 2015 03:44:43PM 7 points [-]

I think he's showing the opposite. The first graph does imply what you say. The second graph shows that EVEN if we look at number of people in extreme poverty as an absolute, rather than a ratio, we've been making steady progress since 1971 and are now below 1820 levels of poverty.

It's not judgement-free, as nothing on this topic can or should be. However, it's showing that the positive results are robust to multiple dimensions that people are likely to judge on.

To be specific: what normative judgement do you prefer for which this graph is misleading? Or are you saying "there are important things not covered in either graph", which is true of pretty much any such summary.

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 26 October 2015 06:33:22PM * 1 point [-]

I'm referring to the text, not the graph(s). The two paragraphs between the graphs imply

that doubling extreme poverty would be a good thing if it comes with a doubling of the rest of the population.

He does not preface any of it by saying "I think", he just presents it as obvious. Well, I know for a fact that there are many people who self-identify as rationalists to whom this is not obvious at all. It also alienates me that people here, according to the karma distributions, don't seem to get my point.

Comment author: Dagon 27 October 2015 12:19:40AM * 2 points [-]

I sympathize with the feeling of alienation and confusion when something valuable gets downvoted.I try not to learn too much from small karma amounts - there's enough inconsistency in what different groups of readers seem to want that it's easier to post mostly for my own amusement.

I don't agree that it's all that controversial that "copy an overall-positive-value population distribution" is positive. The second half of the repugnant conclusion (that adjusting satisfaction toward the average is non-negative) is somewhat disputed, but wasn't suggested here.

I also don't think that was the post's main point, so even if I disagreed, I'd be sure to call out that I agree with his main point and only want to clarify this side-implication.

Comment author: Lumifer 26 October 2015 06:55:35PM 3 points [-]

It also alienates me

And does that oblige anyone to do anything?

Comment author: ChristianKl 26 October 2015 08:07:52PM 2 points [-]

It also alienates me that people here, according to the karma distributions, don't seem to get my point.

Reading "implyed" claims into an article and then disagreeing with the claims you believe are implied is frequently not something that's good karma wise.

I also see no disrespect by Dias that warrents to call him to "please respect..."

Comment author: OrphanWilde comment score below threshold [+] (4 children)

Comment author: michaelkeenan 26 October 2015 10:49:42PM 7 points [-]

This comment seems aggressive and rude, so I doubt it will be persuasive to Lukas. As Yvain wrote in How To Not Lose An Argument, we should beware of status effects during arguments. If Lukas agrees with you now, then Lukas agrees he is a weasel-word-using rationalizing entitled infantile fake-victim, which is very difficult to accept. Without the insults, Lukas would have had the opportunity to make an easier update - that he misunderstood, or the text was unclear, or that he'd prefer Dias to have clarified but reasonable people could disagree, or something like that.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 27 October 2015 01:59:00PM 0 points [-]

Yvain makes the mistake of believing that the person he is arguing with is the person he is convincing.

I'm not interested in convincing Lukas of anything. My target is the audience, who I'm not arguing with, but negotiating with.

Observe the neutral karma score of my rude comment, at least as of now - it might change, as I reveal something: Had I been so rude to somebody else in different circumstances, it would have been deeply negative. Lukas lost considerable status by complaining about being downvoted, and half the participating audience is happy to upvote me for targeting somebody who has thus earned a lowered status. Those who downvote largely agree with the status assessment, but, like you, disagree with my behavior.

Everybody who upvoted my rude comment, or was tempted to? I was acting like a bully of an approved low-status target - and you approved. Chew on that. (And observe your cognitive dissonance, as you rationalize that being a bully might be appropriate in some circumstances, given the right target.)

Comment author: Viliam 27 October 2015 10:37:22PM 1 point [-]

Observe the neutral karma score of my rude comment, at least as of now ... Everybody who upvoted my rude comment, or was tempted to? ...

Now I'm almost sorry I didn't see your comment while it had neutral karma. I believe I wouldn't have upvoted it, but that's exactly the kind of judgement I don't trust.

Okay, I generally have a rule to never upvote comments that speak about their own karma ("it may get me downvoted"), so at least that would have stopped me, if nothing else.

Anyway... such drama... so meta... wow

Comment author: OrphanWilde 02 November 2015 04:54:41PM 1 point [-]

Lukas' karma for the comment I responded to was quite negative when mine was neutral, as well (down to -5 at one point, if my memory serves me well, which is an iffy prospect). By turning Lukas into the underdog in this conversation (by identifying myself as a bully), I've changed people's perceptions of his comment, as well.

That part wasn't intentional, but in retrospect, it should have been an obvious side effect.

I actually inserted the "it may get me downvoted" as a signal, although I don't recall what the purpose of the signal was, and it's not obvious to me now. Pity.

Comment author: entirelyuseless 27 October 2015 02:15:12PM 1 point [-]

What exactly is the point you are making here? If you disapprove of your own behavior, you should apologize to Lukas. If you don't disapprove of it, then if you are right, people might not be rationalizing if they conclude that being a bully might be appropriate in some cases.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 27 October 2015 03:01:24PM -1 points [-]

Didn't I just say I was negotiating, rather than arguing? Quit looking for a point. Look instead for a purpose.

In one comment, I leverage a petty form of darks arts, with no karma penalty to myself, and a hefty cost to the person I targeted. In the next, I call myself out for doing so, and those who fell for it as well - with a pretty hefty karma penalty.

I'll dryly observe the amusement I find in a community which purports to be about becoming stronger getting rather huffy about having their weaknesses revealed to them. Which might suggest some of my purpose.

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 27 October 2015 01:03:35AM * -1 points [-]

Maybe I'm wrong, but my guess is that if someone wrote "Life is neutral; some states are worse than death, and adding new happy people is nice but not important", that person would be called out, and the post would receive a large portion of downvotes. I'm not sure about the downvotes (personally I didn't even downvote the OP), but I think pointing out the somewhat controversial nature of such a blanket statement is definitely a good thing. Would you oppose this as well (similarly aggressively)?

We could talk about whether my view of what's controversial or not is biased. I would not object to someone saying "Murder is bad" without prefacing it with "Personally, I think", even though I'm sure most uncontrolled AIs will disagree with this for reasons I cannot find any faults in. But assuming that we're indeed talking about an issue where there's no consensus among EAs, then to me it seems epistemically appropriate to at least hint at this lack of consensus, just like you do when you talk about a scientific hypothesis that is controversial among experts. And it makes even more sense to hint at this, if some people don't even realize that there's a lack of consensus. For whatever reason, EAs that came to EA through LW care much more about preventing death than EAs that found to EA through e.g. Peter Singer's books. And I thought it might be interesting to LW-originating EAs that a significant fraction of EAs "from elsewhere" feel alienated by the way some issues are being discussed on LW. Whether they give a shit about it is a different question of course.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 27 October 2015 01:33:29PM 2 points [-]

See, the issue is that you think the downvotes were because of your views. I can't speak for other people, but I downvoted you because you were engaging in behaviors I prefer to discourage; namely, ignoring the substantive thrust of a post to nitpick at a relatively insignificant comment made in the middle whose absence wouldn't affect the post as a whole. And, as we see here, you made that comment not because it was substantive or seriously detracted from the post, but because it was an ideological matter with which you disagreed with the author. Hence my comment to you: "I found it concern-trolling at worst, and irrelevant at best".

Because, as Dagon pointed out, using your criteria, the progress is -still- a positive thing. That's the point of this post. Taking it as an opportunity to try to start an ideological fight is just bad manners.

See, downvotes here don't mean Less Wrong disagrees with you (although that's how some people use it, it's not the cultural standard). Downvotes mean people want to see less of the kind of post/comment that was downvoted.

I honestly don't give a tinker's cuss about the intra-movement arguments within EA, and if this is how EA behaves, I'd like to see less of it as a whole. You're not representing your movement very well.

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 27 October 2015 02:22:36PM -1 points [-]

you made that comment not because it was substantive or seriously detracted from the post, but because it was an ideological matter with which you disagreed with the author

I generally dislike it when people talk about moral views that way, even if they mention views I support. I might be less inclined to call it out in a case where I intuitively strongly agree, but I still do it some of the time. I agree it wasn't the main point of his post, I never denied that. In fact I wrote that I agree the developments are impressive. By that, I meant the graphs. Since when is it discouraged to point out minor criticism in a post? The fact that I singled out this particular post to make a comment that would maybe fit just as well elsewhere just happens to be a coincidence.

Taking it as an opportunity to try to start an ideological fight is just bad manners.

No one is even talking about arguments or intuition-pumps for or against any of the moral views mentioned. I wasn't "starting an ideological flight", I was making meta remark about the way people present moral views. If anything, I'd be starting an ideological fight about my metaethical views and what I consider to be a productive norm of value-related discourse on this site.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 27 October 2015 03:09:03PM 0 points [-]

Since when is it discouraged to point out minor criticism in a post?

Again, I wasn't speaking for all of Less Wrong. You'd have to ask the others why they downvoted you, but having committed the major faux pax of complaining about being downvoted, I don't think they'll be as receptive at this point.

I discourage anything that relates to pedantry, downvote whenever somebody is making a point, not because the point needs to be heard, but because they need to be heard. There's some subjectivity to it, of course. But it boils down to "Do I find that this comment adds, or detracts, from the meaningful conversation that can be had?" And I found yours to detract more than it added, for reasons already specified.

There's also more than a slight smell of identity politics to the way you're approaching this, particularly in the way you immediately threw yourself into the "Victim" role as soon as you perceived you weren't being treated with the gravity you expected. That might be an avenue for you to consider. Identity politics don't go over well here.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 26 October 2015 11:12:40PM 2 points [-]

You imply that doubling extreme poverty would be a good thing if it comes with a doubling of the rest of the population.

Kind of? The point of the second plot is to show that we didn't get where we are in fractional terms by murdering the poor, which would be bad, I think, regardless of whether one holds that doubling the overall population is good or bad. And if we got where we are in fractional terms by adding rich people without actually cutting into the number of poor people, that would be bad too, though not as bad as murdering them.

Of course, the plots can't show that we didn't grow the rich population while also killing the poor, but, well, that's not what happened either.

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 26 October 2015 11:46:26PM -2 points [-]

I at one point phrased it "comes with a doubling of the (larger) rest of the population" to make it more clear, but deleted it for a reason I have no introspective access to.

And if we got where we are in fractional terms by adding rich people without actually cutting into the number of poor people, that would be bad too, though not as bad as murdering them.

It would, obviously, if there are better alternatives. In consequentialism, everything where you have better viable alternatives is bad to some extent. What I meant is: If the only way to double the rest of the population is by also doubling the part that's in extreme poverty, then the OP's values implies that it would be a good thing. I'm not saying this view is crazy, I'm just saying that creating the impression that it's some sort of LW-consensus is mistaken. And in a latter point I added that it makes me, and probably also other people with different values, feel unwelcome. It's bad for an open dialogue on values.

Lukas_Gloor comments on The Triumph of Humanity Chart - Less Wrong Discussion

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