There are also some examples of anti-sleepwalk bias:
1. World War I. The crisis unfolded over more than a month. Surely the diplomats will work something out right? Nope.
2. Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II. Surely some of Hitler's generals will speak up and persuade Hitler away from this crazy plan when Germany has not even finished the first part of the war against Britain. Surely Germany would not willingly put itself into another two-front war even after many generals had explicitly decided that Germany must never get involved in another two-front war ever again. Right? Nope.
3. The sinking of the Titanic. Surely, with over two and a half hours to react to the iceberg impact before the ship finished sinking, SURELY there would be enough time to get all of the lifeboats safely and calmly loaded up to near max capacity, right? NOPE. And going even further back to the decision to not put enough lifeboats on in the first place...SURELY the White Star Line must have a good reason for this. SURELY this means that the ship really is unsinkable, right? NOPE.
4. The 2008 financial crisis. SURELY the monetary authorities have solved the problem of preventing recessions and smoothing out the business cycle. So SURELY I as a private trader can afford to be as reckless as I want and not have to worry about systemic risk, etc.

Further: let's suppose, at least for the sake of argument, that you're very nearly right, that in our hypothetical HBD-is-right world you get scarcely any extra useful information from a person's race once you've looked at a few other equally trivial characteristics.

The issue isn't that there isn't extra useful information, the issue is that we're pretty terrible at quickly processing variable dependence to arrive at correct answers, where rapid processing is part of the situation in consideration.

In that kind of situation, clothing alone will tell you more than clothing plus race - not because you couldn't arrive at a better answer given more information, but because the additional information is almost certainly going to be overweighted by virtue of the brain not having a good intuitive handle on either dependent variables or small numbers.

Are US employers forbidden from setting all meet based tests, or just IQ tests?

Because task-specific tests aren't just an alternative to IQ tests, they're a better alternative in almost every case.

Looks like Andrea Rossi's E-Cat cold fusion scam is finally reaching its end-phase. Some previous LW discussion here, here and here.

So you're saying the social sciences are failing because black people are less intelligent than white people and they can't admit it.

Okay. How would one go about falsifying this belief of yours? What evidence would change your mind?

Estimating a person's capability to do X, Y, or Z (do a job effectively, be a law-abiding citizen, be a consistently productive citizen not dependent on welfare programs, etc.) based on skin color or geographical origin of their ancestry is a heuristic.

HBD argues that it is a relatively accurate heuristic. The anti-HBD crowd argues that it is an inaccurate heuristic.

OrphanWilde seems to be arguing that, even if HBD is correct that these heuristics are relatively accurate, we don't need heuristics like this in the first place because there are even better heuristics or more direct measurements of a person's individual capability to do X, Y, or Z already out there. (IQ, interviews, etc.)

The HBD advocates here seem to be arguing that we do, in fact, need group-based heuristics because individual heuristics:
*1. Are more costly in terms of time, and are thus just not feasible for many applications.
*2. Don't really exist for certain measures, such as in estimating "probable future law-abidingness" or "probable future welfare dependency".
*3. Have political restrictions on being able to apply them. (For example, we COULD use formal IQ tests on job applicants, but such things have been made illegal precisely because they seem to paint a higher proportion of blacks in a bad light).

Perhaps OrphanWilde might like to respond to these objections. Here's how I would respond:
*1. The costliness of individual judgment is warranted because using group-based heuristics has politically-toxic spillovers, and might miss out on important outliers (by settling on local optima at the expense of global optima). We are not trying to screen out defective widgets from an assembly line (in which case a quick but "lossy" sorting heuristic might be justified). We are trying to sort people. The costliness of mis-sorting even a small percentage of individuals (for example, by heuristically rejecting a black man who happens (unbeknowst to us without doing the individual evaluation) to have an IQ of 150 from a certain job) outweighs the cost-saving of using quick group-based heuristics: both because it will inevitably politically anger the black community, with all sorts of politically toxic spillovers, and because we are missing out on a disproportionate goldmine of economic potential by missing these outliers.
*2. If individual tests for probable law-abidingness or probable economic productivity don't currently exist, then maybe we should try to develop them! Is that so impossible? Personally, I find it a bit unbelievable that the U.S. does not currently have tests for certain agreed-upon foundational cultural values as part of its immigration screening process. For example, if applicants had to respond to questions such as, "Explain why impartial fairness towards strangers rather than favoritism towards friends and relatives is an essential aspect of national citizenship and professional behavior" or "Explain the advantages of dis-establishment of religion from the political and legal affairs of the state" then I would sleep much more easily at night about our immigration policy.
*3. Well, perhaps we should campaign to overturn the political restrictions on individual merit-based tests by pointing out that the only de-facto alternative that people will have is to use group-based tests of some sort or another (whether employers or other institutions openly admit to using such group-based heuristics or not, they will find a way to do so), and that group-based heuristics will actually hurt disadvantaged groups even more. In other words, unless you want all appointments in society to be decided by random casting of lots, people need some sort of criteria for judging others. Given this, it would be better to have individual-based tests rather than group-based tests. Even if the individual-based tests will end up showing "disparate impact" on certain groups, it will still be less than if we used group-based tests.

(Edit: formatting improved upon request).

Some of your black box examples seem unproblematic. I agree that all you need to trust that a toaster will toast bread is an induction from repeated observation that bread goes in and toast comes out.

(Although, if the toaster is truly a black box about which we know absolutely NOTHING, then how can we induce that the toaster will not suddenly start shooting out popsicles or little green leprechauns when the year 2017 arrives? In reality, a toaster is nothing close to a black box. It is more like a gray box. Even if you think you know nothing about how a toaster works, you really do know quite a bit about how a toaster works by virtue of being a reasonably intelligent adult who understands a little bit about general physics--enough to know that a toaster is never going to start shooting out leprechauns. In fact, I would wager that there are very few true "black boxes" in the world--but rather, many gray boxes of varying shades of gray).

However, the tax accountant and the car mechanic seem to be even more problematic as examples of black boxes because there is intelligent agency behind them--agency that can analyze YOUR source code, determine the extent to which you think those things are a black box, and adjust their output accordingly. For example, how do you know that your car will be fixed if you bring it to the mechanic? If the mechanic knows that you consider automotive repair to be a complete black box, the mechanic could have an incentive to purposefully screw up the alignment or the transmission or something that would necessitate more repairs in the future, and you would have no way of telling where those problems came from. Or, the car mechanic could just lie about how much the repairs would cost, and how would you know any better? Ditto with the tax accountant.

The tax accountant and the car mechanic are a bit like AIs...except AIs would presumably be much more capable at scanning our source code and taking advantage of our ignorance of its black-box nature.

Here's another metaphor: in my mind, the problem of humanity confronting AI is a bit like the problem that a mentally-retarded billionaire would face.

Imagine that you are a mentally-retarded person with the mind of a two-year-old who has suddenly just come into possession of a billion dollars in a society where there is no state or higher authority to regulate enforce any sort of morality or make sure that things are "fair." How are you going to ensure that your money will be managed in your interest? How can you keep your money from being outright stolen from you?

I would assert that there would be, in fact, no way at all for you to have your money employed in your interest. Consider:

*Do you hire a money manager (a financial advisor, a bank, a CEO...any sort of money manager)? What would keep this money manager from taking all of your money and running away with it? (Remember, there is no higher authority to punish this money manager in this scenario). If you were as smart or smarter than the money manager, you could probably track down this money manager and take your money back. But you are not as smart as the money manager. You are a mentally-retarded person with the mind of a toddler. And in that case where you did happen to be as smart as the money manager, then the money manager would be redundant in the first place. You would just manage your own money.

*Do you try to manage your money on your own? Remember, you have the mind of a two-year-old. The best you can do is stumble around on the floor and say "Goo-goo-gah-gah." What are you going to be able to do with a billion dollars?

Neither solution in this metaphor is satisfactory.

In this metaphor: *The two-year-old billionaire is humanity. *The lack of a higher authority symbolizes the absence of a God to punish an AI. *The money manager is like AI.

If an AI is a black box, then you are screwed. If an AI is not a black box, then what do you need the AI for?

Humans only work as black-boxes (or rather, gray-boxes) because we have an instinctual desire to be altruistic to other humans. We don't take advantage of each other. (And this does not apply equally to all people. Sociopaths and tribalistic people would happily take advantage of strangers. And I would allege that a world civilization made up of entirely these types of people would be deeply dysfunctional).

So, here's how we might keep an AI from becoming a total black-box, while still allowing it to do useful work:

*Let it run for a minute in a room unconnected to the Internet. *Afterwards, hiring a hundred million programmers to trace out exactly what the AI was doing in that minute by looking at a readout of the most base-level code of the AI.

To any one of these programmers, the rest of the AI that does not happen to be that programmer's special area of expertise will seem like a black box. But, through communication, humanity could pool their specialized investigations into each part of the AIs running code and sketch out an overall picture of whether its computations were on a friendly trajectory or not.

Let's assume such an AI could be created perfectly.

Wouldn't there be a danger of freezing human values forever to the values of the society which created it?

Imagine somehow the Victorian people (using steampunk or whatever) managed to build such an AI, and that AI would forever enforce their values. Would you be happy with every single value it enforced?

Okay, so let's use some concrete examples to see if I understand this abstract correctly.

You say that the chain of causation is from fitness (natural selection) ---> outcomes ---> activities

So, for example: reproduction ---> sex ---> flirting/dancing/tattooing/money/bodybuilding.

Natural selection programs us to have a terminal goal of reproduction. HOWEVER, it would be a bad idea for an AI to conclude, "OK, humans want reproduction? I'll give them reproduction. I'll help the humans reproduce 10 quadrillion people. The more reproduction, the better, right?"

The AI would need to look ahead and see, "OK, the programmed goal of reproduction has caused humans to prefer a specific outcome, sex, which tended to lead to reproduction in the original (ancestral) programming environment, but might no longer do so. Humans have, in other words, come to cherish sex as a terminal goal in its own right through their affective responses to its reward payoff. So, let's make sure that humans can have as much sex as possible, regardless of whether it will really lead to more reproduction. That will make humans happy, right?"

But then the AI would need to look ahead one step further and see, "OK, the preferred outcome of sex has, in turn, caused humans to enjoy, for their own sake, specific activities that, in the experience and learning of particular humans in their singular lifetimes (we are no longer talking about instinctual programming here, but rather culture), has tended in their particular circumstances, to lead to this preferred outcome of sex. In one culture, humans found that flirting tended to lead to sex, and so they formed a positive affective connotation with flirting and came to view flirting as a terminal goal in its own right. In another culture, dancing appeared to be the key to sex, and so dancing became a terminal goal in that culture. In other cultures, bodybuilding, accumulation of money, etc. seemed to lead to sex, and so humans became attached to those activities for their own sake, even beyond the extent to which those activities continued to lead to more sex. So really, the way to make these humans happy would be to pay attention to their particular cultures and psychologies and see which activities they have come to develop a positive affective bond with...because THESE activities have become the humans' new conscious terminal goals. So we AI robots should work hard to make it easy for the humans to engage in as much flirting/dancing/bodybuilding/money accumulation/etc. as possible."

Would this be an accurate example of what you are talking about?

Even if I am not setting out trying to disparage a spiritual person's spiritual experiences—even if I am trying to be as charitable to them as possible—it is difficult to see how I could have a conversation with them about information (their own subjective spiritual experiences) that is not publicly accessible to me. It boils down to them telling me about their private experience and me replying, "Cool story bro." Once again, not because I WANT to sound flippant or dismissive...but what else can I say about it? I'm glad they had their experience.

Usually spiritual people start with their story, and then they proceed with a conclusion that, "Because I had this experience, you should believe X and do Y." I don't see how that follows, especially when the story sounds implausible.

It is a little different if someone said to me, "I saw a rabid dog across the street, so don't go over there or else you gonna get bit." A rabid dog sounds plausible based on what I have previously concluded about the world. I could go and check for myself that the dog is there (it is, in theory, publicly-accessible information), or I could take the person's word for it if they seem like a trustworthy person with a good handle on reality. But most spiritual beliefs are much more implausible than this. Naturally, I would want to check for myself. But spiritual people are usually not able to explain to me how I could check for myself. "You just gotta believe" is not an operation that I can execute. It's not that I don't want to believe. I might very well want to believe, especially if their story sounds convenient or fortunate to me (such as, "We all go to heaven when we die.") But I really don't know how to just "believe" something.

Maybe some children are raised with the skill of "just believe this..." (For example: https://youtu.be/KPFUr1Nnk4k ) but for me (and my Unitarian background), it DOES NOT COMPUTE.

The situation is different with drug-induced experiences. In those cases, someone can tell me, "I had this profound experience. As of now, it is known only to me, but it is in theory publicly-accessible to you too IF you follow this well-defined set of steps: measure out 3 grams of psilocybin mushrooms...etc." Then I could have the experience, or at least AN experience, and we could move beyond just "Cool story bro." If my experience ended up being very similar to theirs...well, then I would naturally start to search for explanations to explain the correlation. Maybe their report of their experience before I had mine primed my brain for having a similar experience. For me to consider my experience to be evidence in favor of some supernatural reality, it would have to be very similar to theirs AND independently-arrived at. So, if they had an experience, wrote down a description of it (maybe with winning lottery numbers communicated to them by Poseidon), and then I had the exact same experience as them after following their instructions, but without having heard anything specific about their experience beforehand (and especially if I had been given the same winning lottery numbers that I independently wrote down immediately afterwards before talking to my friend), then WOW, that would be outstanding evidence in favor of some underlying spiritual reality of practical use.

If a spiritual person could tell me, "If you kneel and face Mecca 5 times a day and cry out, "Allah Ackbar!" you will achieve great contentment in life.", that is an operational instruction that I understand and could execute. Now, I'm pretty skeptical that it would work, and in order for me to expend the trivial inconvenience and social embarrassment involved with actually trying it, I would have to be pretty desperate for a feeling of contentment in my life...but in theory it is something that I could try.

But just telling me, "Pray to God with ALL YOUR HEART and you will find the strength to do X, Y, Z...", that's still too fuzzy for me.
Me: "Am I praying will all my heart?"
Friend: "You will KNOW when you are praying with all your heart."
Me: "Okay, I must not be praying with all my heart. How do I pray with all my heart?"
Friend: "Think of the thing in the world that you want or cherish the most. Think of that intense yearning. Apply that feeling to your desire to connect with God."
Me: "Okay...hmmmm...I'm sorry, I'm having trouble applying that feeling to something that just feels silly, I can't help it."
Friend: "Stop thinking it is silly, you have to really try and believe!"
Me: "I know, I'm trying, but it's just not working."

It's not just prayer. I have the same problems with meditation. Maybe it is just me, personally, but I don't find most recipes for making people's private spiritual experiences publicly-accessible to me to be very specific or comprehensible or operational. Is this typical-mind fallacy, or do others feel the same way?

Note that I'm not demanding that the experiences themselves be easily describable. I understand that the experiences themselves might not be the sorts of things that can be put into words. For example, people's mushroom experiences might be ecstatic and ineffable. But at least they could give me a clear recipe of how to get there so I could see for myself.

What's impressive is, the mushroom recipe would not require FAITH WITH ALL MY HEART. I could be thinking, going into it, "Man, this is all a bunch of hippy-dippy BS. I ain't gonna feel a thing." And then, BAM! That's impressive.