Less Wrong

Less Wrong (German: Weniger Falsch) was an association of philosophers gathered on the internet in 2007, chaired by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Among its members were Yvain, Lukeprog, Michael Vassar, Will Newsome and Gwern. PeerGynt was an eminent student at the time. He was allowed to participate in meetings, but was not a member of Less Wrong.

Members of Less Wrong had a common attitude towards philosophy, consisting of an applied rationalism drawn from Eliezer Yudkowsky, whose Sequences formed the basis for the group's philosophy. Less Wrong's influence on 21st century philosophy was immense, and much later work was in response to the group's thoughts.

The pre-history of Less Wrong began with blog posts on the philosophy of science and epistemology from 2006, promoted by Robin Hanson on Overcoming Bias.

(This is only half joking. If you want the rest of the future history of Less Wrong, it is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Circle . )

(Edited to fix Google Translate's German grammar)

I've seen Chesterton's quote used or misused in ways that assume that an extant fence must have some use that is both ① still existent, and ② beneficial; and that it can only be cleared away if that use is overbalanced by some greater purpose.

But some fences were created to serve interests that no longer exist: Hadrian's Wall, for one. The fact that someone centuries ago built a fence to keep the northern barbarians out of Roman Britain does not mean that it presently serves that purpose. Someone who observed Hadrian's Wall without knowledge of the Roman Empire, and thus the wall's original purpose, might correctly conclude that it serves no current military purpose to England.

For that matter, some fences exist to serve invidious purposes. To say "I don't see the use of this" is often a euphemism for "I see the harm this does, and it does not appear to achieve any counterbalancing benefit. Indeed, its purpose appears to have always been to cause harm, and so it should be cleared away expeditiously."

The point I was trying to make is that, while I see females as agents in real life, in this analogy I am discussing the ethics of a choice that is only made by men.

You don't succeed in avoiding getting mind killed yourself. You switch for no reason towards real life.

For any of those things, if you give me a specific reason why it is relevant to the choice made by the Green Martians, then it certainly should have been part of the analogy.

General ethical consideration suggest that you only inflict pain on other humans if they consent. A doctor will only operate on a patient if the patient consents, even if the doctor believes that a decision to not consent is bad for the patient given the stated preferences of the patient. Respecting that decision means respecting the agentship of the patient.

That's even true for decisions such as whether to get vaccinated where herd immunity is a concern. No single person if forced to feel pain by getting vaccinate for the good of the group.

I definitely see the humans as agents, whose preferences are morally relevant.

Agents make decisions. The moment you ignore decision making and only think in terms of preferences agentship is gone.

Okay, women have a preference along a single axis which they do nothing about and do not express at all. The framework as described is all about what active agenty men could or should do to entirely passive npc women. I'm very far from being a feminist, but come on -- this is objectification and "don't worry your pretty head about it".

I feel like parables here on LW, especially the longer and more tortured ones, are pretty much fallacy and bias breeding grounds. A couple egregious offenders, to my mind, include

Blue and Green Martians; about pick-up artistry

and

The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant; about death

Why do I take issue with them? Because while using analogies, including fanciful ones, can help us take the outside view on a problem where we are irrationally biased, these sorts of parables can also be a selective re-telling of the facts, and conclusions drawn from them simply don't transfer to the real world because of the way those facts are distorted, elided or transformed. Any argument with the conclusion then has to take us back to whatever the real-world analogue is, and explain why the parable is flawed.

In other words, a parable (particularly the long-winded, over-constructed sort people like to post on LW) can give you an outside view but it often just pulls you away from the only way to actually solve a problem: to engage with the problem, down the the gritty details that will be erased or distorted by a parable.

It's been a day since this discussion peaked, and I've had a chance to think a little bit more about this on a meta-level:

First of all, having a community built around epistemic hygiene is extremely valuable. Discussions about topics that involve mindkill are incredibly unpleasant, and may make it impossible for such a community to be successful. I therefore fully understand people who want to keep these discussions away from Less Wrong, and I won't post again on this topic or any other mindkilling topic.

That said, I think the inability to discuss this rationally and dispassionately is a major problem for society in general, which may contribute to some individuals with abnormal psychology reacting in unpredictable ways. My only view on the object-level question is that low status men get a raw deal, that there is no good solution to the problem, and that PUA is probably very bad ethically. I have natural sympathy for low-status men, but I recognize that I may be biased because I have no experience seeing the situation from a female perspective. The post was an attempt to invite people to help me update my moral beliefs, by hearing from people who do not have those biases. Importantly, this could not have been done on any other website, because they would have been unable to convince me that their moral framework was coherent, that they are being honest about their ethical beliefs, or that they have made a good-faith effort to model low status males as relevant participants in the moral calculus.

There was some really good discussion in this thread, particularly Skeptical Lurker's comment, which may have made me aware of a contradiction in my worldview. I will keep thinking about what updates may be necessary. This is exactly the kind of feedback that I was hoping for - changing your mind is a good thing, and it is only possible if we can gave a genuine discussion as rationalists.

That said, for the Less Wrong community, the cost of these discussions probably outweighs the benefits.

From the reactions, it is tempting to conclude that most people object to PUA partially on epistemic grounds.

It seems that a common objection is that your analogy does not match well the PUA worldview.

I believe there exists an objective moral standard which is part of the territory. ... Obviously, we are unable to know whether our ethical maps correspond to the ethical territory.

Hold on. You're saying that there's objective morality but it's unknowable in principle? Then on what basis do you believe it exists and why would its existence even matter?

If we don't believe there is such a thing as an objective ethical standard ... then I fail to see the point in even discussing ethics.

Even if you think that ethics are a semi-arbitrary social construct, they are very useful for human societies and so worth discussing.

I want to point out that I, perhaps incorrectly, assumed this thought experiment could be interesting even to the anti-PUA crowd, because it would help them distill their thinking about whether they object to PUA on epistemic grounds ("they have incorrect beliefs about female psychology") or if they object on moral grounds ("they draw incorrect / evil conclusions about the ethical implications of the theory")

From the reactions, it is tempting to conclude that most people object to PUA partially on epistemic grounds. However, it is hard for me to understand why a disagreement about facts would lead to such heated debate in a community based around the Litany of Tarski.