Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 07 February 2013 01:42:42AM *  8 points [-]

But the point is that it, to me, is much more interesting/useful/not tedious to consider this idea that challenges rationality very fundamentally

This is what I mean when I say I don't think you've correctly understood your friend's point of view. Here is a steelmanning of what I imagine your friend's point of view to be that has nothing to do with challenging rationality:

"Different domain experts use different kinds of frameworks for understanding their domains. Taking the outside view, someone who claims that a framework used in domain X is more appropriate for use in domain Y than what Y-experts themselves use is probably wrong, especially if X and Y are very different, and it would take a substantial amount of evidence to convince me otherwise. In the particular case that X = mathematics and Y = social justice, it seems like applying the methods of X to Y risks drastically oversimplifying the phenomena in Y."

My friend compared me to white supremacist philosophes from the early days of the Enlightenment. And when I said that I did not share their ideas, my friend said that it was not because of my ideas, but because I was trying to apply rationality to society.

You and your friend probably do not mean the same thing by "rationality." It seems plausible to me that your friend pattern-matched what it sounded like you were trying to do to scientific racism. Your friend may also have been thinking of the stupid things that Spock does and trying to say "don't be an idiot like Spock."

And maybe that offended me.

Yes, that sounds plausible.

Comment author: mszegedy 07 February 2013 02:04:29AM *  0 points [-]

Oh, okay. That makes sense. So then what's the rational thing to conclude at this point? I'm not going to go back and argue with my friend—they've had enough of it. But what can I take away from this, then?

(I was using the French term philosophe, not omitting a letter, though. That's how my history book used to write it, anyway.)

Comment author: B_For_Bandana 07 February 2013 12:15:21AM *  1 point [-]

They seemed to be saying both things.

My point was that they probably did think they meant both things, because the distinction between "it's impossible" and "I don't know how" is not really clear in their mind. But that is not as alarming as it would be coming from someone who did know the difference, and insisted that they really did mean "impossible."

I've been able to reduce my entire morality to two axioms...

Okay, I'll bite. What are they?

Comment author: mszegedy 07 February 2013 12:46:30AM 1 point [-]

My point was that they probably did mean both things, because the distinction between "it's impossible" and "I don't know how" is not really clear in their mind. But that is not as alarming as it would be coming from someone who did know the difference, and insisted that they really did mean "impossible."

Hmm, I agree, but I don't think that it adequately explains the entire picture. I think it might have been two different ideas coming from two different sources. I can imagine that my friend had absorbed "applying formalized reason to society is bad" from popular culture, whereas "I don't know what founding propositions of social justice are", and subsequently "there might not be able to be such things" (like you talked about), came from their own internal evaluations.

Okay, I'll bite. What are they?

I kinda wanted to avoid this because social approval etc., also brevity, but okay:

  1. Everybody is completely, equally, and infinitely entitled to life, positive feelings, and a lack of negative feelings.
  2. One must forfeit gratification of axiom 1 to help others to achieve it. (This might be badly worded. What I mean is that you also have to consider the entitlement of others as well to etc etc etc in their actions, and while others are do not have the things in axiom 1, one should be helping them get them, not oneself.)

I know it loses a lot of nuance this way (to what extent must you help others? well, so that it works out optimally for everyone; but what exactly is optimal? the sum of everyone's life/positive feelings/lack of negative feelings? that's left undefined), but it works for me, at least.

Comment author: B_For_Bandana 06 February 2013 11:34:38PM *  2 points [-]

It seems possible that when your friend said, in effect, that there can never be any axioms for social justice, what they really meant was simply, "I don't know the axioms either." That would indeed be a map/territory confusion on their part, but it's a pretty common and understandable one. The statement, "Flying machines are impossible" is not equivalent to "I don't know how to build a flying machine," but in the short term they are making the same prediction: no one is flying anywhere today.

Actually, and I don't know if you've thought of it this way, but in asking for the axioms of social justice theory, weren't you in effect asking for something close to the solution to the Friendly AI problem? No wonder your friend couldn't come up with a good answer on the spot!

Comment author: mszegedy 07 February 2013 12:08:18AM 0 points [-]

It seems possible that when your friend said, in effect, that there can never be any axioms for social justice, what they really meant was simply, "I don't know the axioms either." That would indeed be a map/territory confusion on their part, but it's a pretty common and understandable one. The statement, "Flying machines are impossible" is not equivalent to "I don't know how to build a flying machine," but in the short term they are making a similar prediction: no one is flying anywhere today.

They seemed to be saying both things.

Actually, and I don't know if you've thought of it this way, but in asking for the axioms of social justice theory, weren't you in effect asking for something close to the solution to the Friendly AI problem? No wonder your friend couldn't come up with a good answer on the spot!

Hah, that's true! I didn't think of it that way. I don't know that much about the Friendly AI problem, so I wouldn't know anyway. I've been able to reduce my entire morality to two axioms, though (which probably aren't especially suitable for AI or a 100% rational person, because there's no possibility at all that I've actually found a solution to a problem I know nothing about that has been considered by many educated people for long periods of time), so I thought that maybe you could find something similar for social justice (I was having trouble deciding on what to feel about certain fringe cases).

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 06 February 2013 11:22:43PM 3 points [-]

Thanks for the explanation. I still think it is more likely that you got angry at, for example, your friend's dismissive attitude, and thinking about the idea reminded you of it.

why would I get angry at an idea

You are a human, and humans get angry for a lot of reasons, e.g. when other humans challenge their core beliefs.

even if it was something that was truly impossible to argue against?

1) I don't think your friend's point of view is impossible to argue against (as I mentioned in my other comment you can argue based on results), 2) it's not obvious to me that you've correctly understood your friend's point of view, 3) I still think you are focusing too much on the semantic content of the conversation.

Comment author: mszegedy 06 February 2013 11:58:03PM 0 points [-]

I don't think your friend's point of view is impossible to argue against (as I mentioned in my other comment you can argue based on results)

I'm talking hypothetically. I did allow myself to consider the possibility that the idea was not perfect. Actually, I assumed that until I could prove otherwise. It just seemed pretty hopeless, so I'm considering the extreme.

it's not obvious to me that you've correctly understood your friend's point of view

Maybe not. I'm not angry at my friend at all, nor was I before. I felt sort of betrayed, but my friend had reasons for thinking things. If (I think) the things or reasons are wrong, I can tell my friend, and then they'll maybe respond, and if they don't, then it's good enough for me that I have a reasonable interpretation of their argument, unless it is going to hurt them that they hold what I believe to be a wrong belief. Then there's a problem. But I haven't encountered that yet. But the point is that it, to me, is much more interesting/useful/not tedious to consider this idea that challenges rationality very fundamentally, than to try and argue against the idea that everybody who had tried to apply rationality to society had it wrong, which is a very long battle that needs to be fought using history books and citations.

I still think you are focusing too much on the semantic content of the conversation.

Then what else should I focus on?

You are a human, and humans get angry for a lot of reasons, e.g. when other humans challenge their core beliefs.

I like having my beliefs challenged, though. That's what makes me a rationalist in the first place.

Though, I have thought of an alternate hypothesis for why I was offended. My friend compared me to white supremacist philosophes from the early days of the Enlightenment. And when I said that I did not share their ideas, my friend said that it was not because of my ideas, but because I was trying to apply rationality to society. And maybe that offended me. Just because I was like them in that I was trying to apply rationality to society (which I had rational reasons for doing), I was as bad as a white supremacist. Again, I can't be mad at my friend, since that's just a belief they hold, and beliefs can change, or be justified. My friend had reasons for holding that belief, and it hadn't caused any harm to anybody. But maybe that was what was so offensive? That sounds at least equally likely.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 06 February 2013 09:08:37PM 16 points [-]

A comment from another perspective. To be blunt, I don't think you understand why you got upset. (I'm not trying to single you out here; I also frequently don't understand why I am upset.) Your analysis of the situation focuses too much on the semantic content of the conversation and ignores a whole host of other potentially relevant factors, e.g. your blood sugar, your friend's body language, your friend's tone of voice, what other things happened that day that might have upset you, etc.

My current understanding of the way emotions work is something like this: first you feel an emotion, then your brain guesses a reason why you feel that emotion. Your brain is not necessarily right when it does this. This is why people watch horror movies on dates (first your date feels an intense feeling caused by the horror movie, then hopefully your date misinterprets it as nervousness caused by attraction instead of fear). Introspection is unreliable.

When you introspected for a reason why you were upset, you settled on "I was upset because my friend was being so irrational" too quickly. This is an explanation that indicates you weren't trying very hard to explicitly model what was going on in your friend's head. Remember, your friend is not an evil mutant. The things they say make sense to them.

Comment author: mszegedy 06 February 2013 11:02:41PM 2 points [-]

It took me the whole day to figure even that out, really. Stress from other sources was definitely a factor, but what I observed is, whenever I thought about that idea, I got very angry, and got sudden urges to throw heavy things. When I didn't, I was less angry. I concluded later that I was angry at the idea. I wasn't sure why (I'm still not completely sure: why would I get angry at an idea, even if it was something that was truly impossible to argue against? a completely irrefutable idea is a very special one; I guess it was the fact that the implications of it being right weren't present in reality), but it seemed that the idea was making me angry, so I used the general strategy of feeling the idea for any weak points, and seeing whether I could substitute something more logical for inferences, and more likely for assumptions. Which is how I arrived at my conclusions.

Comment author: Mestroyer 06 February 2013 08:00:21AM 12 points [-]

If you really contemplated suicide over this subject, I am afraid to discuss it with you.

Comment author: mszegedy 06 February 2013 08:16:27AM 5 points [-]

Oh. Well, that was a while ago, and I get over that stuff quickly. Very few people have that power over me, anyway; they were one of the only friends I had, and it was extremely unusual behavior foming from them. It was kind of devastating to me that there was a thought that was directed at me by a trusted source that was negative and I couldn't explain... but I could, so now I'm all the more confident. This is a success story! I've historically never actually committed sucide, and it was a combination of other stress factors as well that produced that response. I doubt that I actually would, in part because I have no painless means of doing so: when I actually contemplate the action, it's just logistically impossible to do the way I like. I've also gotten real good at talking myself out of it. Usually it's out of a "that'll show 'em" attitude, which I recognize immediately, and also recognize that that would be both cruel and a detriment to society. So, I appreciate your concern for me a lot, but I don't think I'm in any danger of dying at all. Thanks a lot for caring, though!

Comment author: Antisuji 06 February 2013 07:39:57AM 8 points [-]

"Sorry if it offends you, I just don't think in general that you should apply this stuff to society. Like... no."

I felt offended reading this, even though I was expecting something along these lines and was determined not to be offended. I've come to interpret this feeling, on a 5-second level, as "Uh oh, someone's attacking my group." I'm sure I'd be a little flustered if someone said that to me in conversation. But after some time to think about it, I think my response would be "Why shouldn't math be applied to social justice?" And I really would be curious about the answer, if only because it would help me better understand people who hold this kind of viewpoint.

Also, I expect there are good reasons why it's dangerous to apply math to social justice, especially since most people aren't good at math.

Comment author: mszegedy 06 February 2013 07:59:58AM 0 points [-]

Well, the friend had counterexamples to "math as a basis for society is good". I sort of skipped over that. They mentioned those who rationalized bad things like racism, and also Engels. (We both agree that communism is not a successful philosophy.) Counterexamples aren't really enough to dismiss an idea unless they're stronger than the evidence that the idea is good, but I couldn't think of such evidence at the time, and I still can't think of anything particularly convincing. There's no successful society to point at that derived all of its laws and givernment axiomatically.

How to offend a rationalist (who hasn't thought about it yet): a life lesson

9 mszegedy 06 February 2013 07:22AM

Usually, I don't get offended at things that people say to me, because I can see at what points in their argument we differ, and what sort of counterargument I could make to that. I can't get mad at people for having beliefs I think are wrong, since I myself regularly have beliefs that I later realize were wrong. I can't get mad at the idea, either, since either it's a thing that's right, or wrong, and if it's wrong, I have the power to say why. And if it turns out I'm wrong, so be it, I'll adopt new, right beliefs. And so I never got offended about anything.

Until one day.

One day, I encountered a belief that should have been easy to refute. Or, rather, easy to dissect, and see whether there was anything wrong with it, and if there was, formulate a counterargument. But for seemingly no reason at all, it frustrated me to great, great, lengths. My experience was as follows:

I was asking the opinion of a socially progressive friend on what they feel are the founding axioms of social justice, because I was having trouble thinking of them on my own. (They can be derived from any set of fundamental axioms that govern morality, but I wanted something that you could specifically use to describe who is being oppressed, and why.) They seemed to be having trouble understanding what I was saying, and it was hard to get an opinion out of them. They also got angry at me for dismissing Tumblr as a legitmate source of social justice. But eventually we got to the heart of the matter, and I discovered a basic disconnecf between us: they asked, "Wait, you're seriously applying a math thing to social justice?" And I pondered that for a moment and explained that it isn't restricted to math at all, and an axiom in this context can be any belief that you use to base your beliefs on. However, then the true problem came to light (after a comparison of me to misguided 18th-century philosophes): "Sorry if it offends you, I just don't think in general that you should apply this stuff to society. Like... no."

And that did it. For the rest of the day, I wreaked physical havoc, and emotionally alienated everyone I interacted with. I even seriously contemplated suicide. I wasn't angry at my friend in particular for having said that. For the first time, I was angry at an idea: that belief systems about certain things should not be internally consistent, should not follow logical rules. It was extremely difficult to construct an argument against, because all of my arguments had logically consistent bases, and were thus invalid in its face.

I'm glad that I encountered that belief, though, like all beliefs, since I was able to solve it in the end, and make peace with it. I came to the following conclusions:

  1. In order to make a rationalist extremely aggravated, you can tell them that you don't think that belief structures should be internally logically consistent. (After 12-24 hours, they acquire lifetime immunity to this trick.)
  2. Belief structures do not necessarily have to be internally logically consistent. However, consistent systems are better, for the following reason: belief systems are used for deriving actions to take. Many actions that are oriented towards the same goal will make progress in accomplishing that goal. Making progress in accomplishing goals is a desirable thing. An inconsistent belief system will generate actions that are oriented towards non-constant goals, and interfere destructively with each other, and not make much progress. A consistent belief system will generate many actions oriented towards the same goal, and so will make much progress. Therefore, assuming the first few statements, having an internally consistent belief system is desirable! Having reduced it to an epistemological problem (do people really desire progress? can actions actually accomplish things?), I now only have epistemological anarchism to deal with, which seems to work less well in practice than the scientific method, so I can ignore it.
  3. No matter how offended you are about something, thinking about it will still resolve the issue.
Does anyone have anything to add to this? Did I miss any sort of deeper reasons I could be using for this? Granted, my solution only works if you want to accomplish goals, and use your belief system to generate actions to accomplish goals, but I think that's fairly universal.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 December 2012 08:18:47AM 12 points [-]

Haven't you ever heard the saying, "God does not throw dice games"?

Comment author: mszegedy 10 December 2012 11:30:08PM 0 points [-]

Wasn't that what Einstein said about QM?

Comment author: Will_Sawin 10 January 2011 01:49:06AM 10 points [-]

Which is more likely "God exists" or "I just hallucinated that" For the third one, probably that He exists, for the second one, definitely hallucination, for the first, I'm not sure.

Comment author: mszegedy 10 December 2012 08:06:57AM 7 points [-]

I once conducted an experiment in which I threw a die 500 times, and then prayed for an hour every day for a week that that die consistently land on a four, and then threw the die 500 more times. Correlation was next to zero, so I concluded that God does not answer prayers about dice from me.

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