Rationality Considered Harmful (In Politics)

The_Jaded_One

Why you should be very careful about trying to openly seek truth in any political discussion

1. Rationality considered harmful for Scott Aaronson in the great gender debate

In 2015, complexity theorist and rationalist Scott Aaronson was foolhardy enough to step into the Gender Politics war on his blog with a comment stating that extreme feminism that he bought into made him hate himself and try to seek ways to chemically castrate himself. The feminist blogoshere got hold of this and crucified him for it, and he has written a few followup blog posts about it. Recently I saw this comment by him on his blog:

As the comment 171 affair blew up last year, one of my female colleagues in quantum computing remarked to me that the real issue had nothing to do with gender politics; it was really just about the commitment to truth regardless of the social costs—a quality that many of the people attacking me (who were overwhelmingly from outside the hard sciences) had perhaps never encountered before in their lives. That remark cheered me more than anything else at the time

2. Rationality considered harmful for Sam Harris in the islamophobia war

I recently heard a very angry, exasperated 2 hour podcast by the new atheist and political commentator Sam Harris about how badly he has been straw-manned, misrepresented and trash talked by his intellectual rivals (who he collectively refers to as the "regressive left"). Sam Harris likes to tackle hard questions such as when torture is justified, which religions are more or less harmful than others, defence of freedom of speech, etc. Several times, Harris goes to the meta-level and sees clearly what is happening:

Rather than a searching and beautiful exercise in human reason to have conversations on these topics [ethics of torture, military intervention, Islam, etc], people are making it just politically so toxic, reputationally so toxic to even raise these issues that smart people, smarter than me, are smart enough not to go near these topics

Everyone on the left at the moment seems to be a mind reader.. no matter how much you try to take their foot out of your mouth, the mere effort itself is going to be counted against you - you're someone who's in denial, or you don't even understand how racist you are, etc

3. Rationality considered harmful when talking to your left-wing friends about genetic modification

In the SlateStarCodex comments I posted complaining that many left-wing people were responding very personally (and negatively) to my political views.

One long term friend openly and pointedly asked whether we should still be friends over the subject of eugenics and genetic engineering, for example altering the human germ-line via genetic engineering to permanently cure a genetic disease. This friend responded to a rational argument about why some modifications of the human germ line may in fact be a good thing by saying that "(s)he was beginning to wonder whether we should still be friends".

A large comment thread ensued, but the best comment I got was this one:

One of the useful things I have found when confused by something my brain does is to ask what it is *for*. For example: I get angry, the anger is counterproductive, but recognizing that doesn’t make it go away. What is anger *for*? Maybe it is to cause me to plausibly signal violence by making my body ready for violence or some such.

Similarly, when I ask myself what moral/political discourse among friends is *for* I get back something like “signal what sort of ally you would be/broadcast what sort of people you want to ally with.” This makes disagreements more sensible. They are trying to signal things about distribution of resources, I am trying to signal things about truth value, others are trying to signal things about what the tribe should hold sacred etc. Feeling strong emotions is just a way of signaling strong precommitments to these positions (i.e. I will follow the morality I am signaling now because I will be wracked by guilt if I do not. I am a reliable/predictable ally.) They aren’t mad at your positions. They are mad that you are signaling that you would defect when push came to shove about things they think are important.

Let me repeat that last one: moral/political discourse among friends is for “signalling what sort of ally you would be/broadcast what sort of people you want to ally with”. Moral/political discourse probably activates specially evolved brainware in human beings; that brainware has a purpose and it isn't truthseeking. Politics is not about policy!

4. Takeaways

This post is already getting too long so I deleted the section on lessons to be learned, but if there is interest I'll do a followup. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Why you should be very careful about trying to openly seek truth in any political discussion

1. Rationality considered harmful for Scott Aaronson in the great gender debate

As the comment 171 affair blew up last year, one of my female colleagues in quantum computing remarked to me that the real issue had nothing to do with gender politics; it was really just about the commitment to truth regardless of the social costs—a quality that many of the people attacking me (who were overwhelmingly from outside the hard sciences) had perhaps never encountered before in their lives. That remark cheered me more than anything else at the time

2. Rationality considered harmful for Sam Harris in the islamophobia war

Rather than a searching and beautiful exercise in human reason to have conversations on these topics [ethics of torture, military intervention, Islam, etc], people are making it just politically so toxic, reputationally so toxic to even raise these issues that smart people, smarter than me, are smart enough not to go near these topics

Everyone on the left at the moment seems to be a mind reader.. no matter how much you try to take their foot out of your mouth, the mere effort itself is going to be counted against you - you're someone who's in denial, or you don't even understand how racist you are, etc

3. Rationality considered harmful when talking to your left-wing friends about genetic modification

In the SlateStarCodex comments I posted complaining that many left-wing people were responding very personally (and negatively) to my political views.

A large comment thread ensued, but the best comment I got was this one:

One of the useful things I have found when confused by something my brain does is to ask what it is *for*. For example: I get angry, the anger is counterproductive, but recognizing that doesn’t make it go away. What is anger *for*? Maybe it is to cause me to plausibly signal violence by making my body ready for violence or some such.

Similarly, when I ask myself what moral/political discourse among friends is *for* I get back something like “signal what sort of ally you would be/broadcast what sort of people you want to ally with.” This makes disagreements more sensible. They are trying to signal things about distribution of resources, I am trying to signal things about truth value, others are trying to signal things about what the tribe should hold sacred etc. Feeling strong emotions is just a way of signaling strong precommitments to these positions (i.e. I will follow the morality I am signaling now because I will be wracked by guilt if I do not. I am a reliable/predictable ally.) They aren’t mad at your positions. They are mad that you are signaling that you would defect when push came to shove about things they think are important.

4. Takeaways

This post is already getting too long so I deleted the section on lessons to be learned, but if there is interest I'll do a followup. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Suppose modern elevator-gate-y feminism operates a bit like a mafia protection racket: they (the feminists) cream off status and money for themselves by propagating a set of ideas that are clearly ridiculous, but they keep everyone in line by threatening to doxx and shame and generally destroy the reputation of anyone who challenges them. A small group of Rebecca Watsons could dominate a much larger group of Slytherin Rationalists if all the Slytherins aren't prepared to take even a small risk to stand up for what they believe in.

You're absolutely right. I don't know of any good coordinative solution to this that doesn't look more like people sticking their necks out and getting guillotined in sequence.

You can "prepare the ground" to some extent, but really what that means is that you take the slow route to unfriending the person rather than the fast route. You want to hang around in your free time with someone who you have to constantly filter yourself around and construct elaborate lies for? I didn't think so....

I find it's much easier to do this kind of thing in real life. If you really want to talk about some unusual belief, you can always calibrate your approach based on the initial position of the person you're trying to talk to. On the Internet (which is where this type of thing usually goes wrong) you're usually posting semi-contextualized text in public. It's almost doomed to failure.

coordinative solution

Well it isn't as if this is the first time ever that humans have had to coordinate on something. The usual tricks would include creating anti-SJW movements, setting up an alternative status-structure with its own reward and punishment mechanisms, giving power and status to key people who challenge SJWs.

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Rationality Considered Harmful (In Politics)

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Rationality Considered Harmful (In Politics)

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