Alicorn:
I would be interested to hear your reply to the more substantive charges that Roko levels. I am in general in agreement with him that while the issue you raise is worth thinking about and discussing, your method of talking about it is thoroughly and consistently disingenuous. To wit: In your classification you left out a fourth group of people, of which I would consider myself one: people who actively support gender-neutrality but have a completely different definition of it and who consider people with your definition to be the ones similar to fis...
My main problem with this post is that it attempts to impose social norms based on nothing more than your personal feelings, Alicorn.
I found your "Disclaimer" very off-putting. Though I'm sure you will say that you were either trying to be as straight-forward as possible or that you are just being cute and charming (taking these assumptions from comments you have already posted), I immediately read this disclaimer as saying: "Anyone who disagrees in the comments with what I have to say in this post is almost certainly going to be labelled as...
My main problem with this post is that it attempts to impose social norms based on nothing more than your personal feelings, Alicorn.
If the evidence linked to in the post didn't persuade you that I'm not alone in those feelings, I'm afraid I don't have any more handy to offer, especially since as I write this comment the site is down and I can't do searches.
...I found your "Disclaimer" very off-putting. Though I'm sure you will say that you were either trying to be as straight-forward as possible or that you are just being cute and charming ...
This idea does not have my approval.
Alicorn:
What if I told you that talking about "getting a woman" was a direct and honest expression of my most inner desires, that I really did view her in that objectifying way, and that I considered this attitude perfectly natural and healthy, and that, furthermore, I find it objectionable for others to consider it their perogative to correct me on this?
And that I very often find "being offended" to be an offensive behavior in its own right?
And that I heavily discount verbal contradiction from other males because it signals a very well-established mating posture, that of the helpful and supplicant beta male?
Emily:
I have heard this argument before, and I don't think it carries quite the same force as you apparently do.
You seem to vastly underestimate the kinds of remarks that men hear constantly that tell them that because they are men, they must be a certain way. The general culture is full of notions, some loud and some winking, that men are terrible, evil, violent, lazy, stupid, inept, and on and on. Turn on any American primetime television show and observe the male characters with a dispassionate eye. Try to discern which gender is more often portrayed as...
Also somewhat off-point but I'll post this anyways:
I'll agree that this post is "male-centric" in the sense that Alicorn is talking about. But I don't think it's fatally so, as any smart woman (or homosexual for that matter) can of course recognize that the mate-choosing parallel is arbitrarily chosen, and can make the necessary changes to create a parallel example in mate-choosing that's more relevant to his/her own life.
However, as a heterosexual man myself, I'll respond directly to the example.
I must admit that I take a lot of pleasure in choo...
Yes, I think that you are just shunting the moral problem here down the pike.
Maybe you can imagine you just discovered Anne Frank's family was living in your attic moments before the brownshirts come knocking?
... and resume with dilemma.
Yeah... I can't think of any good actual examples either, but maybe we should be trying to falsify rationality, rather than verify it.
If anything, I have the convert's bias in this regard, Michael, not the true-born believer's. I'm fairly young and was raised in quite a progressive household. I'd suspect myself more of overstating my case because it has come to me as such a revelatory shock. But that's neither here nor there, as I'm not advocating for any specific "tradition."
I'll posit that gender roles and dynamics since the feminist movement began in earnest in the 60s and 70s have proven to be a sizable and essentially unprecedented break from the previous continuum in West...
What I personally have observed is that there are plenty of men and women who have a need or desire to be dominated. And that a minority of these people can't deal with the idea that it's "just" a sexual fetish or personal quirk, but must convince themselves instead that the entire world would be happier or much better off if only our entire society were male supremacist or female supremacist, accordingly.
I've also observed that there are plenty of people who have a leadership or followership preference in a relationship... but the desire to be...
Great, David! I love it.
Also, as I know you are aware because you linked to it once at OB, Eliezer, there is the work of Gregory Clark, which suggests a double reason refuting this essay's line of argument. Not a response directly to your comment then, but as an add on I mention it here.
I suppose this line of reasoning is not new to most here, but since I don't see it explicitly mentioned....
1) Most controversial, and almost an aside to the main argument that Clark makes but of course the claim that gets the most ink: that there is something in the culture or even genes of certai...
That both women and men are far happier living with traditional gender roles. That modern Western women often hold very wrong beliefs about what will make them happy, and have been taught to cling to these false beliefs even in the face of overwhelming personal evidence that they are false.
How traditional? 1600s Japan? Hopi? Dravidian? Surely it would be quite a coincidence if precisely the norms prevalent in the youth and culture of the poster or his or her parents were optimal for human flourishing.
Thanks, Vladimir. You have interesting friends!
One of the reasons parents often give for the Santa myth is that it is "fun" and it's good to give children a sense of wonder and joy. This is not a trivial argument.
I don't have children yet, but this post has made me wonder if a strictly no-lies-about-basic-reality policy wouldn't lead to just as much wonder. Is Santa really that necessary, even for the stated junior-level purpose it's given?
There are lots of fantastic, amazing things to wonder at, as a child and as an adult:
Everything in our universe may have started in the biggest, most gigan...
thomblake:
I also agree with the post's assertion that relying on the absurdity heuristic alone is dangerous ground, it is still an excellent tool for at least calling in to question a set of beliefs which, upon further and more rigorous examination, may or may not merit rejection.
But, I must protest, a talking snake is not "a really bad reason" to reject that set of common beliefs. It is an EXCELLENT reason.
Snakes do not talk.
Yvain:
You've hit on something that I have long felt should be more directly addressed here/at OB. Full disclosure is that I have already written a lot about this myself and am cleaning up some "posts" and chipping away here to get the karma to post them.
It's tough to talk about meditation-based rationality because (a) the long history of truly disciplined mental practice comes out of a religious context that is, as you note, comically bogged down in superstitious metaphysics, (b) it is a more-or-less strictly internal process that is very hard to...
Vladimir:
It seems you are being respectful of the anonymity of these people, and very well, that. But you pique my curiosity... who were these people? What kind of group was it, and what was their explicit irrationality all about?
I can think of a few groups that might fit this mold, but the peculiar way you describe them makes me think you have something very specific and odd in mind. Children of the Almighty Cthulu?
I’ll describe three most interesting cases.
Number One is a Russian guy, now in his late 40s, with a spectacular youth. Among his trades were smuggling (during the Soviet era he smuggled brandy from Kazakhstan to Russia in the water system of a railway car), teaching in a ghetto college (where he inadvertently tamed a class of delinquents by hurling a wrench at their leader), leading a programming lab in an industrial institute, starting the first 3D visualization company in our city, reselling TV advertising time at a great margin (which he obtained by un...
I think you are mistaking ambition and the spirit of betterment for "naivety and arrogance."
You say "it is one of those things that humans do and efforts to get rid of it would seem doomed," but that was once applicable to slavery. It may be difficult, quixotic, and almost comically ambitious. But the only thing that would make it "doomed" would be an attitude that says it must be.
MBlume's comment below summarizes nicely how we as a society might go about that (as does this whole thread).
Incidentally, I don't think this comment is really so bad; it's within reasonable argument, if only it didn't come blasting out of the gates with insults.
Johnicholas:
You leave yourself open to the reply that the non-rigorousness of the analogy makes it useless or even pernicious. Owning up to a fault doesn't make it go away.
Owning up to a fault doesn't make it go away.
Congratulations, you have just reduced the proper use of humility to a single proverb. I shall endeavor to go around repeating this.
I think this is a good answer to Eliezer's thought experiment. Teach those budding rationalists about the human desire to conform even in the face of the prima facie ridiculousness of the prevailing beliefs.
Teach them about greens and blues; teach them about Easter Islanders building statues with their last failing stock of resources (or is that too close to teaching about religion?). Teach them how common the pattern is: when something is all around you, you are less likely to doubt its wisdom.
Human rationality (at least for now) is still built on the bl...
Thank you for this lengthy and thoughtful reply. I, too, am encouraged to notice the points on which we agree or are not that far off.
I don't really think you are the "thought police," and I didn't mean to imply that. But I do stand by my assessment of your post as vaguely coercive. There is such a thing as coercion by public shaming. I think this is what Roko might have been getting at in his recent post. If you do not see how this is a legitimate concern, then perhaps I can pull an "Alicorn" and just insist that if you were a man, you... (read more)