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daenerys comments on LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance - LessWrong
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When epistemic rationality is counter to instrumental rationality
Epistemic rationality is about knowing the truth. Instrumental rationality is about meeting your goals.
The general case is that the more truth you know, the better you are at meeting your goals (and so instrumental and epistemic rationality are heavily tied to each other), however there exist rare occurrences where this is not the case.
More importantly, there are many times when SPEAKING the truth is counter to your goals.
For an absurd example: Say you are in a room full of angry convicts with knives. It probably is counter to your goal of staying alive and healthy to start proclaiming TRUE but insulting statements.
More realistically, raising children is one example where, if your goal is to raise happy, sane, well-adjusted adults, there are many statements that should NOT be spoken, no matter how true they are.
Examples:
Even if it the cooking and cleaning statement were epistemically true, it is not instrumentally rational to tell this to your child if your goal is to have her grow into an independent adult who can support herself, and does not feel bound by the "traditional" gender roles (which are falling out of favor anyway).
Likewise, if you value having a higher percentage of women on this site, it is not instrumentally rational to make statements such as "You only got upvoted because you're a girl", or "<X> girls aren't as attractive as <Y> girls," EVEN IF you believe that said statements are true.
I highly value truth. But a prime reason I value it is because it allows me to meet my goals. When speaking the truth is harmful to my goals, it is wise to hold my tongue.
I don't think this example is in the same class as the other ones...as in, there's a certain age at which I would think that it is a good idea to tell your child, at the very least, that torture/factory farming/poverty exist. Preferably in a "let's think of something small that you could do about nasty situation XYZ" format. I wouldn't recommend telling 4-year-olds about these things-they aren't at an age to understand them-but 10-11 year olds is a different story. To do otherwise is to raise children to unconsciously ignore these issues, as most adults do. These issues exist.
In my mind, the examples were for preschoolish age children, but now that you mention it, I see that I didn't include anything specifying age in the grandparent. I'll edit to say so.
See also Bostrom (2011).
Indeed. But why suppose those goals? I would value my daughter's happiness above her being independent and untraditional, in part because the former seems absolute while the latter two seem relational. When there are conflicting goals, all we can discuss are the empirical results of polices, and it's not clear to me that this is a case where accomplishing goals and speaking the truth conflict.
Why? I was under the impression that not telling children about sex was usually the result of an emotional hangup on the part of the parents and/or a culturally cached thought that originally arose from the “sex is dirty” meme from the medieval/early modern Christianity memeplex (possibly both things reinforcing one another), rather than a rational expectation that the child would be worse off if they knew about sex based on any kind of actual evidence. Am I wrong? (How common is that taboo among non-European-derived cultures?)
Telling children how sex works is important. You can do this when they ask about it or when they reach some level of sophistication that will let them understand the explanation you're ready to give. Telling anyone - especially your child - that you just had sex on the couch is a poor choice (outside of some plausible dynamics that consenting unrelated adults could set up). It's none of their business, and a psychologically typical child won't want it to be their business or will be embarrassed to have so wanted when they get older.
I looked up 'sex' in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
How old were you? Did it tell you anything that seemed useful, anything that in fact turned out to be useful? (Did you have a Britannica at home?)
Okay. For some reason I had focused on the "What's sex? Well..." (and assumed the dots stood for a truthful answer) rather than the "Your mom and I just had sex on the living room couch" part. (I'm reminded of parents customarily making shit up when asked what condoms are or how children are born -- even just saying "I'll tell you when you're older" would make more sense IMO.)
Sorry, that was partially my bad. The purpose of the "What's sex?" part was to illustrate that this was a younger child. (In my mind these were all preschoolers in the examples). I didn't consider that people might read that to mean that I don't think sex should be discussed truthfully with children. I do! But at a certain age, and in the right context (NOT in the context of parents discussing their own sexcapades.)
Why? Can you justify this without appealing to the traditions about sex and gender that you've just been arguing against?
IMO:
Traditions or not, the role of a child doesn't "by default" include any script for interaction, even as an unwilling observer, with the parents' sex life. A child simply wouldn't be sure how to process and break down something they see or hear from it.
People instinctively appear to see familial and sexual intimacy as two separate kinds of bonds, and the mind-screw that comes with mixing them might be one of the reasons for having incest fantasies. Such a mind-screw could easily be discomforting/unpleasant in everyday contexts!
Why should a child have a predefined role or script?
People also instinctively appear to see men and women as two different kinds of people.
All of those examples are cases of the hearer being insufficiently intelligent, insufficiently sane, or insufficiently mentally developed, and thus not equipped to hear truth-statements without taking unreasonable offense. Into which of those categories do you think the women on LW fall...? I'm going to guess "none of the above". But that leaves you with an absence of examples that actually support your point.
Also: the empirical statement "making this statement will probably lead to this-and-such bad outcome for me" is not equivalent to the value judgment "this statement is offensive [to this-and-such part of my audience]".
Back at the top of this thread, what is discussed is "A father tells his daughter X. Some here may find that objectionable." - what would be obejctionable wouldn't be X, but the fact that a father tells his daughter X.
Daenerys's examples are analogous to X - things that may not be particularly offensive as truth statements, but that one still may not want to tell small children.
(I think in this subthread some don't pay enough attention to the differences between "what's okay for discussion on LW" and "what's okay for a father-daughter discussion")
Hmmm, a fair point. I took the people objecting to said statement as saying that it's offensive/objectionable in general, or offensive/objectionable to them specifically, rather than saying "maybe so, but perhaps not something you should say to your kid". If my interpretation was incorrent, I apologize.
IME certain topics are so mind-killing that few people are sufficiently intelligent, sane and mentally developed for them -- even on LW.
Likely so. Do you think that classifying statements on such topics as "offensive" is the appropriate conclusion? I do not, but perhaps we are operating under different notions of "offensive". It seems to me that if the problem with a statement is solved by fixing the listener's deficiencies (intelligence, sanity, mental development, etc.), then "offensive" is not really the issue at hand.
I was about to ask you to taboo “offensive”, but you say...
Well, “X is offensive” is not something I'd normally say -- I'd specify who is offended (e.g. “I'm offended by X”, or “X might offend [class of people]”), even though sometimes “[class of people]” is as generic as “someone”.
You mean in principle or in practice? How would you go about making a community sane enough that the follow-up to posts such as this or this or this could be actually be written without mind-killing people too much? In principle I think it's possible, but doing that in a pre-Singularity world would likely be so hard that the game wouldn't be worth the candle.
(EDIT: I'm no longer sure about what I wrote the last paragraph -- the people at The Good Men Project appear to be extremely sane and hardly mind-killed at all despite their subject matter.)
Fair enough, but it's not obvious that the mere fact of someone being offended is something I (or "we") should care about.
I noted here that
As for fixing the listener's deficiencies...
Well, here's the thing. Let's say I say something to someone, or a group of someones, that this person(s) finds offensive. Let's say it's the case that in principle, the situation would be fixed (that is, the offense obviated) by suitably "fixing" the listener, but in practice this is not feasible.
The question still remains: did I do anything wrong? If so, what?
Well, I might plausibly be guilty of not knowing my audience. That's an important skill to have and use. Some people, though, seem to behave as though any instance of a speaker saying something that is offensive to anyone who (by intent or otherwise) hears it, constitutes a horrible crime on the part of the speaker, and not only is inherently terrible, but reveals personal evil.
And my response is: no, if this offense would not have happened but for the listener's stupidity or insanity, then all that's happened here is that the speaker might have to exercise more caution on what to say to whom. We should not throw our social approval behind the listener's offense (which is what we seem to mean in practice when we label utterances as "offensive"). We should not demand groveling public apologies, excoriate the speaker for being a terrible person, demand that he/she never say such things again, kick him out of our club, demand that policies be put in place to prevent such horrible things from being said ever again, etc. etc.
Because there's always going to be someone who is sufficiently stupid or insane to be offended by virtually anything. And when that "anything" happens to be the truth, then by socially approving the offense taken, we create an environment where the truth (even if it's only a specific subset of the truth) is less likely to be spoken. That is a great loss.
I'm not sure I agree -- Yvain in “Offense versus harm minimization” seems to have a good point.
Having read the linked post... much as I usually love and agree with Yvain's writing, no, I really don't think he has a good point. Several good reasons to reject almost everything Yvain says there are extensively pointed out in the comments to that post.
Speaking as a woman of LessWrong, when I was 16, I was insufficiently sane and insufficiently mentally developed. If you go back to 14 and assuming my journals aren't a practical joke I played on myself, I'd say I was also insufficiently intelligent/rational.
It's key to remember the context here: these things are often said to children and adolescents.
So was I. I don't think we disagree that when speaking to children, adolescents, and other people who aren't equipped to hear truth-statements without taking unreasonable offense, we should suitably modify our statements.
But the original question was whether we (here at Less Wrong) — who are more or less sane, intelligent, and mentally developed — ought to take offense, or even whether we should consider the statements to be "offensive" in the sense of saying that any offense taken to them is justified. In other words, which of these scenarios is closer to what should be going on:
Father: You need to be able to cook and keep a clean house, or what man would want to marry you?
LW Observer, looking on from the sidelines: What an offensive statement! I am offended.
or
Father: You need to be able to cook and keep a clean house, or what man would want to marry you?
LW Observer, looking on from the sidelines: That statement is probably poorly suited to its intended audience.
The thing about offense is that it's an emotional reaction, and one that prompts us to certain sorts of behaviors toward the person or group who caused the offense. We should be careful to be offended by those things that we actually think should prompt us to the resulting behaviors. I happen to think that there are very few kinds of actions or statements that deserve the sort of response that we see to "offensive" things these days, certainly much fewer than actually get such a response. This suggests that we should get offended at fewer things. Emotions have consequences.
Edit: How the heck do I put in a line break...? Is there an equivalent to <br /> here?
I would say 75-95% of all white, male, fathers in the United States currently have at least some gender biases that they will pass down to their kids.
I would say that people who phrase things in that way are likely to either be "very cool person who will happily take to correcting and clarify their meaning" or else "actually trying to pass down gender biases (whether due to ignorance or active sexism)". The cool people are more likely to phrase it in a way that signals "I am a cool person", and thus avoid phrasing that are prone to give people offense, but obviously no one has a perfect map of what is currently offensive.
Therefor, given this statement, and given that "bias spreader" is the more common group, and given that the "bias spreader" is more likely to say this, I can, with fairly high confidence (call it 95%?) say that if I get offended, I am getting offended at someone who is spreading a gender bias that I strongly disagree with.
The other 5% of the time, as long as I don't go in guns blazing, I'm unlikely to seriously offend the other person.
Therefor, I can fairly safely act as though the person is spreading a gender bias. Since they are a hypothetical person, I obviously can't investigate them further to confirm this, but I CAN model the group of people who say offensive things, and conclude that it is perfectly rational and reasonable to treat them as though they were saying offensive things.
NOW, there's still the open question: given that I am offended, what should I do? You believe my emotions prescribe a specific set of actions, and I'd bet you can even do the same priors I just did to demonstrate that 95% of all people who cry "that's offensive" do something stupid.
BUT, I am not a hypothetical, so you can interact with me and learn what my actual response would be.
Which, as it turns out, boils down to "I'm offended. If I think speaking up will help, I will." If both of them already understood it in the non-offensive context, then I have good evidence that in the future I can interpret both of them as cool, savvy people who are just taking a slightly awkward linguistic shortcut. If one or both of them was stuck in the offensive context, it can help to break them out - if nothing else, it at least makes it clear that there's other viewpoints out there, and I'll often make it clear I'm someone they can talk to in private or right now if they want to learn more about my perspective.
SO... I'm not sure why I'd want to get offended less frequently, given my actual reaction. Emotions have consequences, but consequences can be POSITIVE too! :)
And here's the minor quibble:
Why specify "white"? Your statement is probably true, but there appears to be an implication that it doesn't apply to the non-white population. That has not been my experience (if you construe "white" to mean "as opposed to black/Asian/Hispanic/etc., my experience is by observation and word of mouth; "white" could also be interpreted as more like "WASP", in which case my contrary experience is also personal).
Sorry that wasn't clear - I specified white because I feel I'm ignorant on POC families and lack the necessary data to do an extrapolation with anywhere near the same confidence :)
I more or less agree with what you said, especially this:
and this
and I certainly support this
And in general I am a big fan of actually having conversations with people, and clarifying each other's viewpoints; not barging ahead and drawing strong conclusions and acting on them on the basis of the only evidence you've gotten so far, but trying to get more evidence, especially when it's easy to do so. So in that, I think, we are in agreement.
I have a minor quibble which I'll address in another reply, but for now I'd like to say that I am not a big fan of the "bias spreader" vs. "cool person" dichotomy. I get the impression from your comment that you didn't, exactly, mean to suggest that everyone who has any sort of a gender bias is necessary a bad person... but that is an all-too-common meme these days; and I disagree with it.
Basically, if we allow that biases can be largely or even entirely unconscious, it seems slightly absurd to suggest that "bias spreader" and "cool person" don't overlap. Like, maybe the guy in the hypothetical didn't just pick a poor turn of phrase, maybe he actually has unconscious gender biases... but it doesn't follow that being offended is the reasonable response.
The question is this: is this a person who would, upon full consideration, prefer not to have biases and unjustified prejudices? Or is he ok with being biased? It seems to me that many more "bias spreaders" fall into the first category than the second. And taking offense does not seem like the optimal way to rectify the situation (that is, to fix this person's biases, which is what they themselves would want).
Then again, it seems that you, personally, react to taking offense in a calmer and more reasonable way than do many other people, which is great. I think (based on what you've said) what you refer to as "being offended" is a lot closer to my scenario #2 than it is to how most people react to "offensive" things, so again, I do not think we actually have a great deal of disagreement here.
That was lazy writing on my part, and I apologize for it. It seems like we are pretty much on the same page :)
Put two space characters at the end of the line. Though it's usually better to just put a blank line in-between and live with the paragraph spacing.
Man, except for the 'I could do better' part (I can't), I tell my kid this all the time.
That's harsh! Do you have a particular reason to do that?
(I'm genuinely curious; my personal inclination wouldn't be to do that, though of course it is true of my kid's current drawings, he's two years old)
Praise means more when it has to be earned.
Especially for little kids, you don't want to make praise too hard to get.
Exactly. "What is it? <pause to listen> I think I see it! I bet you can do even better next time!" is far less discouraging than "that's horrible, I can't even tell what it is!"
Assuming that your goal is to construct a well-functioning mind, that is. (Which I hope is the goal of everyone who decides to make a child)
It's a tricky balance. I don't agree with Esar's strategy, but I can see the logic behind it and was trying to share that understanding with Emile.
Well, the kid I'm talking about is 8, so he can handle criticism better than a preschooler. To my credit, he is an awesome artist.
As a vegetarian, I am obligated to point out that you shouldn't have to hide torture from your kids because there shouldn't be torture. How would you like it if it turned out that your car was secretly powered by a forsaken child, but the government covered it up because it might make you depressed? You wouldn't thank them for protecting your mental health, you would condemn them for allowing a horrible injustice to continue by suppressing the populace's natural horror.
</rant>
Ahem.
You're absolutely right, concealing lovecraftian mindbreaking knowledge is a good thing, because duh. Thank you for pointing this out, it's easy to forget "what we should say" is not the same as "what we should believe".