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There is the unstated but implied "differences which are significant and have important consequences in real life".
Sure, I would still bet they're going to be statistically significant if we get millions of people into the dataset. They may also have some important consequences in real life (a higher resistance to a specific disease may be important for a person with some usually small probability. A population of million that is more resistant to the disease than it could be is about million times that important). It just shouldn't influence policies much. Though it can make a difference in healthcare... well, no. It actually can influence some policies and economic results for countries with different populations. Lactose tolerance may have effects on agriculture and the export structure, especially long term. The question singles out intelligence and personality traits for no apparent reasons but controversy, being hard to measure and being on the spiritual side of dualism. And probably being more involved in our ideas of human worthiness than height is.
After the survey I've become confused about what it means for HBD to be false.
I don't think the survey asks that question. Just like it doesn't ask whether feminism or social justice are false. Those are cultural movements that can't simply be understood by boiling issues down to one sentence.
I also believe that the differences are small and are mostly irrelevant to any real world problem.
The HBD crowd doesn't.
The question was: "115. How would you describe your opinion of the idea of "human biodiversity", as you understand the term? No Wiki page available, but essentially it is the belief that there are important genetic differences between human populations and that therefore ideas generally considered racist, such as different races having different average intelligence or personality traits, are in fact scientifically justified".
No matter how we clusterize people into races, unless it's some kind of a good randomization procedure I think the probability of their average traits being exactly equal is really small. I'm much less sure it's scientifically justified to say so as I don't know much about the state of research there.
I maybe kind of missed the "important" word there. Still...
In response to
Open thread, Apr. 18 - Apr. 24, 2016
After the survey I've become confused about what it means for HBD to be false. Should any difference between two separated populations be completely environmental? I believe it's an antiprediction to think it's not. I would bet that the "genetic potential" for any complex trait will be slightly different on average between different populations even if we are talking about two neighboring cities. Even if they started out as copies of each other just a few generations ago. I also believe that the differences are small and are mostly irrelevant to any real world problem. If it's HBD, how does a person argue that it's false? And how does someone argue that believing it makes someone a bad person?
There is no point to this "rationality" project anymore
Project? Which project?
Improving epistemic rationality, at least. Better thinking through understanding our mind's flaws. I don't think anyone here has a "perfect brain". Maybe it's possible to improve instrumental rationality while having no way to distinguish lies from truth, but it would probably be a random walk.
In response to
Rationality Quotes April 2016
Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men. The little man has no way to judge and the shoddy lies are packaged more attractively. There is no way to offer color to a colorblind man, nor is there any way for us to give the man of imperfect brain the canny skill to distinguish a lie from a truth.
-- Robert A Heinlein. Assignment in Eternity, Loc 939 (Kindle edition)
There is no way to offer color to a colorblind man, nor is there any way for us to give the man of imperfect brain the canny skill to distinguish a lie from a truth.
There is no point to this "rationality" project anymore, everybody can go home.
In response to
Lesswrong 2016 Survey
I'm always confused by the "spiritual atheist" question, that is, the "spiritual" part. Can anyone who selected this option try to explain what they meant when they selected it?
I don't know if this is an opinion I feel strongly enough about to argue on the internet about it. That just how I answered on the spot when the survey asked.
Something about cosmetic enhancements feels just wrong and creepy, in a way that intelligence enhancements don't. Higher intelligence is objectively good. Our society would benefit from an increase in IQ. Intelligence is what distinguishes us from animals and lets us do all the cool things we do.
But increasing attractiveness wouldn't make society any better. If anything it would make it worse, by creating obvious visual distinction between the modded and unmodded, which can't end well.
And it just feels creepy. Reminds me of anecdotes about the Nazis wanting to create a race of blonde hair blue eyed people, or the image that circulates occasionally on how Korean beauty stars all look identical.
If you make each house in a city to be more beautiful, no one gets an advantage, but you still get a more beautiful city.
I value diversity, so it would be a loss if all the modified people get similar, but I don't think it's going to happen any more than all the art becoming similar.
In response to
Lesswrong 2016 Survey
[Survey Taken Thread]
By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.
Let's make these comments a reply to this post. That way we continue the tradition, but keep the discussion a bit cleaner.
I believe at least some people here have some stuff they want to do ... and may be helped by a group effort.
That's generally true for any sufficiently large collection of people. The issue is how do you bootstrap the whole group coalescence process.
Generally true, and that's the reason I believe it. As for group coalescence process... I'm thinking about paying lots of attention to newcomers and setting an active chat as well as a dedicated "meeting" time at least once a week when everybody's online to discuss the topic at hand. Sure, any group may add anything they want if they think it helps.
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Scientific debates are never about whether two groups are "exactly equal". The notion that the question is about whether something is "exactly equal" ignores the core about what the debate is about.
Important is indeed an important word in the sentence.
When trying to understand writing, don't go for the strawman. Try to understand what could be meant. What differences in beliefs in the question about? It's not a hard question if you look at it with genuine interest of understanding it.
I try to, but here I could be overcompensating from sometimes "going too deep" with questions like that. If the question was "Do you believe interpopulational genetic differences in mental abilities or character traits are large enough to be a factor in policy making", I'd answer "No" and maybe even "Hell no, for a multinational population". But that seems like a very different question.