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Jandila comments on Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance - LessWrong
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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.
I agree that men and women have different distributions of values due to sexual dimorphism. It isn't obvious, though, that those different values are sufficient to explain women choosing to stay and home and raise children at a greater rate than men. For example, it may be the case the women face greater social pressure to raise children or that when couples choose who should continue working and who should stay home there is an unjustified cultural assumption that women should be the ones who stay home. There may also be social pressures in the other direction: pushing men to work more than is optimal. It is harder to find social companionship as a stay at home father and Western culture ties the ability to provide for a family to man's worth. Even if these cultural norms are the product of on-average sexual dimorphism they would still harm those who deviate from the average values of their sex. A man who prefers to stay home and raise children and a woman who prefers to leave children at home to work may face additional costs to their decisions because their values deviate from what they are expected to value due to their gender.
I do not have any objection to your use of the word innocuous, here.
I think that calling the choice to spend more or less time doing financially unrecompensed work in the home an innocuous gender difference, is careless. The harms of the various choices have not been evaluated that well. And it may be impossible to evaluate that harm without bias.
It is not uncompensated financially, if the alternative is hiring someone to do the same work. It may or may not be under-compensated, depending on her other options.
I find this a fascinating assertion. What other harms do you imagine might be unevaluatable?
Who would compensate them? Whose benefit is it for?
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.