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Viliam_Bur comments on Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance - LessWrong
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This was a good example, but I think you probably missed a part of the message. Or maybe I am imagining a part that did not exist.
Generally, people are speaking imprecisely. To state one's opinion with a mathematical precision as you did, is rare. (For example, writing this paragraph I would have a problem to precisely define what "generally" and "rare" mean in this context.) And when normally speaking, people tolerate this. ...uhm, usually.
Asking people to be precise is also a signal of something. We usually don't demand perfect clarity for every sentence we ever read or hear, even on LW. I suppose we usually demand it when we disagree with one's opinion.
Placing a burden of preciseness on some people or some opinions, provides their opponents cheap counter-attacks, when they don't have to discuss the argument, only point out the impreciseness.
Now, carefully crafting one's comments into precise sentences is possible, but has a non-zero cost. So by selectively asking people, whose opinion we don't like, to be more precise than usual, we make them pay for their dissent. All while pretending that we only care about the truth, without taking sides.
Of course, people learn that they are asked for higher precision only when expressing certain opinions, so if they want to avoid the costs of such speech, they avoid the sensitive topics. But that's the point, isn't it? By increasing standards of speech for certain opinion, we gradually make it disappear.
I think that people often feel when this is done to them, but it's kind of difficult for them to express what is happening, without seeming kind of paranoid. Also it's kind of difficult to express your feelings in a situation when an extra dose of preciseness is required.
Summary: It is possible to selectively use demands for precision as a form of censorship.
I don't want "perfect clarity* from people, I want for the people on this site who make declarative statements about groups of people they're not in (especially when the implications shape their behavior toward members of that group) to be factually-accurate and not misleading in their implications. This is not a complex or censorious idea.
I don't want "politically correct", I want actually correct. Do you see the difference? What I want to see is people not committing the ecological fallacy (Population X is statistically Y on average, ergo more members than not will be Y) and nobody pointing it out just because the conclusions are agreeable to a majority on this site.
I do not have the power, let alone the desire, to censor you or any other poster on this site (other than by means of downvoting a comment, and I only get the one downvote).
If this was applied consistently for all low status groups I wouldn't mind it.
I'd certainly prefer it that way myself, and try to implement that in my approach to such discussions.
If your objection is over our perceptions of which groups are low-status and in what contexts, say that.
I'm not saying I object (at least not in the way some have). What I'm implicitly refering to is that these kind of usage disputes only ever arise when it comes to gender relations.
Can't speak for anyone else, but I've brought this up re: race and sexual orientation as well in conversations on this site. I don't go looking for it, so the conversation usually has to be fairly current (ie, comments are showing up on the sidebar or it was recently posted to Discussion).
In general I don't start conversations about such things here because I'm well aware my own beliefs and perspective on issues like this are in the minority on this site, and if there's one thing I don't need more of in my life it's arguing with a population comprised mostly of wealthy, white Libertarian-esque cisgendered/heterosexual men whether or not you can be racist/sexist/whatever without intentionally being a bigot.
I'm much more apt to get involved in an existing conversation when some comment grabs my attention and I feel able to reply (or provoked to annoyance by it -- that happens). I critique what passes into my attention, assuming I've get the energy and wherewithal to get into what will most likely be another unproductive argument about it (unproductive because apparently it just feels like mind-killing politics to many of the posters here, who don't have some hands-on experience with being in a social minority and are not apt to readily grasp the difference between "I am angry/hurt by this AND think it is incorrect" and "my disagreement is purely emotional").
Downvoted for formulating the question in a way that treats vaguely defined classes of ideological transgressions as having an independent Platonic existence, implying that their properties should be discussed as if they were independently existing elements of reality, rather than a matter of definition. (And in this case there isn't even anything resembling a standard, precise, clearly stated, and consistently used definition.)
Platonic?
If I step on your toe unintentionally, and you're in pain, just because I don't feel that pain (it wasn't my toe) doesn't mean that any harm done occurred either in a Platonic sense or not at all. It sure as heck doesn't mean that you're an ideologically-motivated, irrational zealot for getting mad when my response is anything other than "Whoops, sorry."
I do not think we share sufficient premises to make discussion worthwhile.
Yes, Platonic -- and it's easy to demonstrate that it follows in a straightforward manner from your phrasing.
To stick with the (relatively) less incendiary of the two, consider the notion of "sexism." Discussing whether some institution, act, or claim is "sexist" makes sense only if at least one of these two conditions applies:
There is some objectively existing Platonic idea of "sexism," so that whether something is "sexist" is ultimately a question of fact that must have an objectively correct yes or no answer.
There is a precise and agreed-upon definition of "sexism," so that whether something is "sexist" is, assuming agreement on questions of fact, ultimately a question of logic (i.e. whether the given facts satisfy the definition), which also must have an objectively correct yes or no answer.
Now, the option (2) is clearly out of the question. This is because the term inherently implies that any "sexist" claim does not belong to the set of reasonable and potentially correct claims and a "sexist" institution or act is outside the bounds of what is defensible and acceptable -- while at the same time nobody has ever given any definition of "sexism" that wouldn't be either so restrictive as to make most of the common usage of the term inconsistent with the definition, or so broad as to make many reasonable and defensible claims and institutions "sexist," thus again contradicting this essential implication of the term. Also, the very fact that you talk about "arguing [...] whether or not you can be [...] sexist [...] without [property X]" implies that there exists some Platonic idea of "sexism," since otherwise it would be a trivial question of whether property X is included in the definition.
Replace "sexism" by "X". Do you think this alternative is still valid?
Or maybe you should elaborate on why you think "sexism" gives rise to this alternative.
It is trivial. Jandila's definition of sexism and racism does not include the speaker being a bigot as a necessary criterion. Now, I often complain to my anti-subordination activisty friends that a lot of people don't realize their definitions of racism and sexism don't imply that. It's a problem since people tend to get more defensive than they need to be when someone points out something they did or said that is racist, sexist, anti- gay, etc. But people getting defensive after they know these words don't imply bigotry really is silly. And yet it still happens-- which is why Jandila doesn't always have the patience to deal with it.
the problem is that the pain is not caused by someone stepping on your toe, but by someone showing subtle but detectable signs of thinking thoughts that you disagree with.
The pain caused by someone committing thought crime against you has a more dubious ontological status than the pain caused impact upon your toe.
A typical example of this is the word "gay", the latest polite euphemism for male homosexual, the latest of a great many. Like every other polite euphemism for anything, it has become a swear word, a swear word that unlike Carlin's list of seven words you used not to be able to say on TV, still has the power to shock.
Indeed, as soon as one creates a new euphemism, it implies that the thing that it is a euphemism for is unmentionably disgusting, thus becomes good swear word, depriving the euphemism of the niceness that is the essential characteristic of a euphemism, while rendering all previous euphemisms for the thing (of which there are usually large number) too disgusting to speak.
The pain caused by the inevitable and inexorable transition from euphemism to curse word is fundamentally different from the pain caused by stepping on your toes. It is more like the pain caused by losing an election, or someone banging a prettier girl than you banged. The tenth commandment forbids you to experience or admit to experiencing certain kinds of pain. Not all pains have equal status as cause for complaint. You cannot help feeling pain if someone steps on your toes, but you can and should help feeling certain other forms of pain, which forms of pain are therefore less real.
The problem is that some insults (and this is currently true about those relating to homosexuality) get backed up with violence and/or with serious social exclusion-- they aren't "just words".
Also, people don't reliably put abuse behind them. Their reactions to threats that it might start up again are quite strong. The situation is complicated by the fact that these reactions can be amplified by social effects.
Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness has the thesis that, because overt racism isn't socially acceptable but covert racism still goes on, both black and white Americans search for more and more subtle clues to whether people are racist. This looks insane, but is a rational response to a difficult situation.
Hmm... I'd have guessed it was less about being a euphemism and more about English-speakers wanting to have a one-syllable word instead of a five-syllable one, much like "straight" is a one-syllable word for "heterosexual", without this meaning that hetero sex is "unmentionably disgusting".
Even from childhood we know that pain caused by deliberate insults often hurts more than physical fights. People should not seek to take offense where none was meant -- but when offense is meant, and you know it's meant, not being hurt is often harder than ignoring a merely stepped-upon toe. A deliberate insult can linger all day in your mind when a toe is soon forgotten.
Marginalizing or diminishing people due to the socially enforced classes they belong to is not at all the same thing as "showing subtle signs of thinking thoughts you disagree with".
Feeling demeaned or socially excluded is a fundamentally different kind of pain than that caused by having one's toe stepped on: it is a much more damaging one.
Whether you feel pain or not is a fact. It's territory, not map.
Whether someone is racist/sexist depends on definitions. These are categories -- which are map, not territory.
I'd guess that whatever value is derived by arguing over whether someone is racist or sexist can be produced better by tabooing those words, and arguing more specifically over what the specific claim is ("would his words be offensive to a significant number of member of such group" "is he trying to increase his own group's relative power/privilege over the other group", "does he believe in an innate inferior moral worth for that group", etc, etc)
I notice a glaring omission from your list of questions. Namely "are his words if interpreted as a factual claim and/or argument true and/or valid"
Back in the days when incorrect beliefs about the trinity could get you into trouble, it became heresy to doubt that Jesus was god. Shortly thereafter some people stopped believing he was man, which in due course also became heresy. Much drama ensued on the question of whether Christ was cosubstantial with god, or consubstantial with god, and whether the holy ghost proceeded from Christ, or God, or both, and whether God was three or one or both.
Discussions of racism are apt to develop a similar character.
On a conservative blog, the blogger will say something politically incorrect, which in less right wing circles would be deemed "racist". Then one of the commenters too plainly says something horribly racist, which is clearly implied by and logically follows from the original post on which he is commenting. The right wing blogger, of course, firmly denies his post has such horrid implications, denounces the commenter as disgustingly racist, and bans him.
I agree these are helpful paraphrases-- but as a practical matter increasing the burden on the person trying to point out the offense or marginalization isn't necessarily a good idea since it often very difficult for people to call their friends and acquaintances on such matters. For example, I imagine it is very difficult for a black person surrounded by white people to call out behavior that makes them feel marginalized-- there is a great deal of social pressure against this. In normal social contexts a minority should be free to express how something makes them feel without being expected to enter into an extended defense of the matter.
Here at Less Wrong, I almost always translate "is x-ist" in the way you suggest and think it is worthwhile where the goal of the discussion is truth seeking (I'm not a member of many relevant minorities, though)
Why is this being downvoted?
Dunno. Didn't cite any sources I guess. ;p
I downvoted it for the following claim:
"many of the posters here, who don't have some hands-on experience with being in a social minority and are not apt to readily grasp the difference between "I am angry/hurt by this AND think it is incorrect" and "my disagreement is purely emotional")."
I think it is unfair to say they do not understand when they may simply believe that motivated cognition is occurring or similar.
I tried.
I'd be intrigued to see an example of an argument for the statement:
"You can't be racist/sexist/whatever without intentionally being a bigot"
because I have never seen that sentiment expressed in my life. And I find it hard to see many people agreeing with it. Reasoning that it is false is far too simple.*
*(imagine a world where the general belief is that green people are brutish and ignorant, and should be killed on sight. Now imagine a farmer who has been told this, and believes it, and has never seen any evidence to the contrary. Has he ever made a decision of the form "Should I be bigoted? Yes I should"?)
You raise a good point, and that's that definitions are unclear and there is little consensus on them. I'm not making my meaning explicit enough, and should probably taboo the words I'm using here.
I've often observed people defend themselves or others against accusations of racism, sexism, and whatever by replying that they are not intentionally being bigoted.
It's not ridiculous to infer from that observation that many people believe that, in order to be racist/sexist/whatever, one must be intentionally bigoted.
That said, I think it's the wrong inference. What I infer from it is instead that many people emotionally reject such accusations and grab whatever arguments they can think of to counter them, even arguments that depend on premises that many of those same people would rightly reject as absurd when phrased in the abstract.
(Comment retracted because it was based on a misreading.)
So, according to you, what is the definition of being "racist/sexist/whatever" that would allow us to draw the conclusion that this inference is wrong? And what is the reason why we should agree on this definition?
To consider a less controversial analogy, if you are accused of theft, there are multiple necessary conditions in the standard definition of theft that you can use to counter the accusation if your act did not involve any one of them. For example, you might argue that the property claim of the accuser is invalid, that the taking was unintentional or done under duress or out of life-saving necessity, that the act is excusable under the de minimis principle, etc., etc.
Now, if it often happens that there is a complete agreement on facts but there is still a disagreement on whether a given act constitutes theft, we can only conclude that the definition of "theft" is controversial and non-standardized, so it doesn't make any sense for people to talk about "theft" before they've made it explicit what exact definition they apply. Which indeed may be the case -- sometimes there are conflicts between people coming from cultures or milieus that have very different ideas on what constitutes a valid property claim, what counts as duress or necessity, what is excusable under de minimis, and so on. Such conflict has no objectively correct resolution, and the outcome depends on who will prevail by means other than rational discussion of facts and logic. And if it makes sense to accuse someone of theft, it is only under the assumption that there is an agreed-upon definition of theft that is clearly satisfied by the fact asserted in your accusation.
Yet unlike this analogy, you seem to believe that there is some objective sense in which someone is "racist/sexist/whatever," despite the evident lack of agreement on what these terms are supposed to mean, or even whether they make any sense at all.
Nope, I don't believe that "racism" (etc.) is any more objectively defined a category than "theft", and I don't think there's any particular definition of it we should all agree on. I agree with you that disagreements about category membership can arise even when there's agreement on facts, both with respect to "racism" (etc.) and more or less every other human category.
(This is not surprising, given that the way human brains categorize percepts and concepts maps very imperfectly to how we imagine definitions working; the whole idea of categories having definitions is a very poor approximation of what's going on. But that's a digression.)
If anything I've said implies that "racism" or any other category has an objective definition in the sense you seem to mean here, I've completely missed that implication and am likely very confused. If you feel inclined to unpack what it was I said that implies that, I'd be appreciative.
Precision is a way of fighting availability bias-- if all you see is "women are shorter than men" because most women are in fact shorter than most men, then it can be hard to remember that there are women who are taller than most men.
Agreed; this is also important.
It also seems to lead to treating actual examples (say, of taller women) as irrelevant, simply because they're in a numerical minority.
My point was that I suspect that a presence of "politically incorrect" ideas increases our desire for actual correctness, while an absence of such ideas makes us relax.
Perhaps this bias already has a name; I don't remember it. It means requiring stronger evidence to ideas you disagree with; and not being aware of it.
If you require the same level of proof for both "politically correct" and "politically incorrect" comments, then it is OK. But it seems to me that in many discussions the level of proof rises up at the moment that "politically incorrect" opinions are introduced.
EDIT: Of course, even if my hypothesis is true, this is not an evidence for "politically incorrect" ideas (that would just be trying to reverse stupidity).
EDIT2: I would like to taboo the term "politically incorrect" in this comment, but I can't find a short enough substitute with the same expressive power. I would like to make it more group-dependent, not outside-world-dependent. It is supposed to mean: something that a decent member of this group would hesitate to say, because the morality keepers of this group will obviously disagree.
It's pretty clear that if we're dealing with ideas whose incorrect versions have great potential to do harm, then we should be careful to only disseminate the correct versions. It's a question of epistemic hygiene and minimizing the effects of contaminated mindware.
If we were discussing the recipe for a food that tasted marvelous when prepared correctly, but could cause severe poisoning when prepared incorrectly, then I would want people to be precise and careful in their wording as well. "Requiring stronger evidence for ideas you disagree with" doesn't have much to do with it: it's a straightforward expected utility calculation.
Suppose someone made the comment that "men and women are equal." Would that statement be acceptable, or would it need revision for preciseness?
(To try and not bias your response, I'll hold off on explaining the utility calculation I made with regards to that statement.)
What would be the context of the comment, and what sense of "equal" is implied?
For instance, I probably wouldn't object to someone saying "men and women are equal" if it was clear from the context that they meant "men and women should have equal rights". On the other hand, there are a variety of well-documented statistical differences between men and women, and trying to deny some of those might be harmful.
E.g. I've often heard it claimed that the difference in average pay between women and men is mostly attributable to differences in ambition and time voluntarily spent at home with children. I haven't looked at the matter enough to know if this is true. But if it is, then denying any population-level differences between men and women seems harmful, because it implies that something that actually has an innocuous explanation is because of discrimination.
I don't think I'd use the word innocuous with the example of this reason for this gender difference. If it is a rational choice, why don't both genders make similar choices?
Heh, when arguing for the case that people should be careful with their wording, I'm challenged for a careless choice of wording. :-)
Innocuous in the sense of emerging from different-gendered people on average having different preferences and on average making different choices as a result. Me eating french fries every day, because I want to, is an innocous reason for eating french fries every day (though such behavior will probably cause health problems in the long term). Eating french fries every day because somebody pressures me into doing so, or because I genuinely can't afford anything else, is a non-innocous reason.
I absolutely agree that there are many statistical differences between men and women, and trying to deny this is actually ludicrous, whether or not it is harmful!
However, I object to the word ludicrous, because while I agree that there are statistical (as well as biological and almost certainly evolutionarily-based cultural) differences between men and women, the assumption of harmlessness, based on that claim you've often heard, suggests that there is no bias involved other than personal choice. And personal choice is biased by so many other factors!
And, though I did not make this clear, I was not trying to suggest that the harm was one-sided.
The thing about bias was difficult for me to argue specifically until I explored the matter of pay inequity and the current state of research. Over the years I have heard a lot on the subject, which I do not remember that well.
Because though it is no trivial matter to me personally, personally, If I can't identify a personal or cultural bias as actually causing me harm, I don't get that excited about it. And frankly, if I haven't identified what I should do about it, I try not to get exited about it if it is causing me harm. There are plenty of people in the world much more inclined than I to actually address the problems of gender-based pay inequities, which I think is a good thing.
It pretty much seems clear to me that a lot of men care more than women about getting a big pile of negotiable tokens. Statistical. Why women do less about getting a pile of negotiable tokens, I already understand. Some of this understanding of women may be visceral, or biological. I'm pretty sure most of it is pretty self-aware, or rational as well.
Why men care more I don't understand as viscerally, but I am actually trying to understand better because I would like a bigger pile of negotiable tokens to play with. :)
Sexual dimorphism?
(One specific example: women have ovaries, men have testes. Both organs release mind-affecting hormones, in different distributions.)
you do not address my point of the word choice 'innocuous'.
Ok: let's suppose he intended the primary definition of innocuous, "not harmful." If a choice is made voluntarily, then by the assumption of revealed preferences it is the least 'harmful.' If we forced women to choose with the same distribution that men do, then on net women would be worse off- i.e. harmed by our force.
It seems incontestable to me that distributions of values are different for men and women. If values are different, choices will be different, and that is optimal.
Suppose lukeprog put it in the ancestral post.
"Clear from the context" seems like the heart of the matter, here. If it can be clear from the context that when someone says "men and women are equal," then mean the most sensible interpretation, then it seems similarly clear that a generalization with neither "some" nor "all" specified should be assumed to mean "some," not "all."
That's still insufficient context: to be able to give a definite answer, I'd need something like the paragraph the sentence was contained in.
Indeed. For what it's worth, my prior for people misinterpreting "men and women are equal" is lower, though still not neglible, than my prior for people misinterpreting "all men want". But again, depending on the context either interpretation for either sentence could be blindingly obvious, not obvious at all, or anything in between.
"Taboo" itself actually sounds about right, although it carries connotations of low value that may not be what you're going for.
I misread what you meant. Sorrry for adding noise.
Yeah, I'm familiar with Rationalist Taboo, and I was looking for a substitute for "politically incorrect" fitting the description provided. "Taboo", in its sense of "culturally forbidden" rather than its sense of "party game about avoiding words", is what I came up with. Sorry if that lacked clarity.
There are several reasons to play Rationalist Taboo, though; I'd assumed that the grandparent wanted to drop the phrase mainly because of its political loading (which seems to be causing some problems here), not because of any implicit assumptions or ambiguity of definition that needs to get aired out. In which case brevity would be no sin.
Misleading-ness isn't a property of a statement, but of a statement-interpreter pair.
So if people claim statements are misleading because some other minds will misinterpret it to the detriment of their in-group, when there is no sign such misinterpreters exist in significant number, that seems like a power grab (independent of the question of whether or not that group should have more power) at the expense of the principle of charity.
Thus wouldn't be the case if people were leaving comments arguing against what they thought were authors' beliefs with them wrong about the author's beliefs, or agreeing with what they thought were the authors' beliefs with them wrong about the author's beliefs.
Now now, insight like that might slow the evaporative cooling that has been happening on Lesswrong when it comes to gender and sexuality (and to a much lesser extent on all unPC matters). Thinkers here used to be much less burdened by this, makes even a fool hard pressed to chuckle.
This comment is shockingly insightful and I would like to thank you for it.