All of Journeyman's Comments + Replies

Saving the refugee kid is emotionally appealing and might work out OK in small numbers. You correctly note that there might be a threshold past which unselective immigration starts creating negative utility. I think it's easy to make a case that Britain and France have already hit this point by examining what is going on at the object level.

European countries with large Muslim populations are moving towards anarchy:

• Rule of law is declining due to events like mass rape scandals like Rotherham, the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and riots. Here's a video of a lar

I think your implication is that Muslims are assimilating if their attitudes are shifting towards Western values after immigration. But assimilation isn't just about a delta, it's also about the end state: assimilation isn't complete until Muslims adopt Western values.

Unfortunately, there is overlap between European and non-European Muslim attitudes towards suicide bombing based on polls. France's Muslim population is especially radical. Even if they are slowly assimilating, their starting point is far outside Western values.

I think you have the right idea by studying more before making up your mind about open borders and immigration. It’s really hard to evaluate moral solutions without knowing the facts of the matter, and unfortunately there is a lot of political spin on all sides.

In a situation of uncertainty, any utilitarian policy that requires great sacrifices is very risky: if the anticipated benefits don’t materialize, then the result turns into a horrible mess. The advantage of deontological ethics and rule/act utilitarianism is that they provide tighter rules for how ... (read more)

My response is the friendly version, and I think that it is actually relatively mild considering where I am coming from. I deleted one sentence, but pretty much the worst I said is to call Acty's position "repugnant" and engage in some sarcasm. I took some pains to depersonalize my comment and address Acty's position as much as possible. Most of the harshness in my comment stems from my vehement disagreement with her position, which I did back up with arguments. I invited Acty to correct my understanding of her position.

I think Acty is a fundamen... (read more)

Redistributing the world's rapists from less developed countries into more developed countries with greater law and order to imprison them? Is that really what you're suggesting? I find this perspective truly stunning and I object to it both factually and morally.

Factually, it's unclear that this approach would indeed reduce rape in the end. While many Muslim women are raped in Muslim countries, there are unique reasons why some Muslim men might commit sexual violence and harassment. By some Muslim standards, Western women dress like "whores" and... (read more)

I'll like to start by backing up a bit and explaining why I brought up the example of Rotherham. You originally came here talking about your emphasis on preventing human suffering. Rotherham is a scary example of people being hurt, which was swept under the carpet. I think Rotherham is an important case study for progressives and feminists to address.

As you note, some immigrants come from cultures (usually Muslim cultures) with very sexist attitudes towards consent. Will they assimilate and change their attitudes? Well, first I want to register some skepti... (read more)

Thanks for providing the additional details, which I hadn't encountered. I don't think this corruption is mutually exclusive with the theory of political correctness. The Rotherham Scandal went back to 1997, involving 1,400+ victims. There are now 300 suspects (including some council members that you pointed out), and 30 council members knew. We not know the ethnicity of the council members who are suspects.

With such a long history and large number of victims, it doesn't seem very plausible that a top-down coverup to protect council member perpetrators is ... (read more)

That's correct; I will update my comment to be more explicit. Muslims have very different attitudes towards women and consent than Westerners.

If indeed the coverup of the ethnic dimension was directed by British politicians, we might ask, why were they trying to hide this? In a child sex abuse scandal involving actual politicians, it's clear why they would cover it up. But why were these particular crimes so politically inconvenient? It's clear why Pakistani council members wanted to hide it, but why did the other council members let them?

We are not privy to the exact nature of the institutional dysfunction at Rotherham. But it's clear that the problem was occurring at multiple levels. One of my... (read more)

(trigger warning for a bunch of things, including rape and torture)

The Rotherham scandal is very well-documented on Wikipedia. There have been multiple independent reports, and I recommend reading this summary of one of the reports by the Guardian. This event is a good case study because it is easily verifiable; it's not just right-wing sources and tabloids here.

What we know:

• Around 1,400 girls were sexually abused in Rotherham, many of them lower-class white girls, but also Pakistani girls
• Most of the perpetrators were Muslim Pakistani men, though it se

Scandinavia and the UK are relatively ethnically homogenous, high-trust, and productive populations. Socialized policies are going to work relatively better in these populations. Northwest European populations are not an appropriate reference class to generalize about the rest of the world, and they are often different even from other parts of Europe.

Socialized policies will have poorer results in more heterogenous populations. For example, imagine that a country has multiple tribes that don't like each other; they aren't going to like supporting each othe... (read more)

You yourself are unlikely to start the French Revolution, but somehow, well-intentioned people seem to get swept up in those movements. Even teachers, doctors, and charity workers can contribute to an ideological environment that goes wrong; this doesn't mean that they started it, or that they supported it every step of the way. But they were part of it.

The French Revolution and guillotines is indeed a rarer event. But if pathological altruism can result in such large disasters, then it's quite likely that it can also backfire in less spectacular ways that... (read more)

To some degree, the idea of a "Friendship and Science Party" has already been tried. The Mugwumps wanted to get scholars, scientists and learned people more involved in politics to improve its corrupt state. It sounds like a great idea on paper, but this is what happened:

So the Mugwumps believed that, by running a pipe from the limpid spring of academia to the dank sewer of American democracy, they could make the latter run clear again. What they might have considered, however, was that there was no valve in their pipe. Aiming to purify the Ame

There is historical precedent for groups advocating equality, altruism, and other humanitarian causes to do a lot of damage and start guillotining people. You would probably be horrified and step off the train before it got to that point. But it's important to understand the failure modes of egalitarian, altruistic movements.

The French Revolution, and Russian Revolution / Soviet Union ran into these failure modes where they started killing lots of people. After slavery was abolished in the US, around one quarter of the freed slaves died.

These events were ... (read more)

I agree that Japan has its own problems. No solutions are particularly good if they can't get their birth rates up. Singapore also has low birth rates. What problems are preventing high-IQ people from reproducing might be something that EAs should look into.

"How much immigration to allow" and "precisely what kind of people should we allow in" can be related, because the more immigration you allow, the less selective you are probably being, unless you have a long line of qualified applicants. Skepticism of open borders doesn't require b... (read more)

There are other countries with sound institutions, like Singapore and Japan, but I'm not so worried about them as I am about the West, because they have an eye towards self-preservation. For instance, both those countries have declining birth rates, but they protect their own rule of law (unlike the West), and have more cautious immigration policies that help avoid their population from being replaced by a foreign one (unlike the West). The West, unlike sensible Asian countries, is playing a dangerous game by treating its institutions in a cavalier way for... (read more)

To be clear, when I speak of defending the West, I am mostly thinking of defending the West against self-inflicted problems. Nobody is talking about "beating" the global south / east. If the West declines, then it won't be in a very good position to share anything with anyone.

It's not the preferences of the West that are inherently more valuable, it's the integrity of its institutions, such as rule of law, freedom of speech, etc... If the West declines, then it's going to have negative flow-through effects for the rest of the world.

No need for you to address any particular political point I'm making. For now, it is sufficient for me to suggest that reigning progressive ideas about politics are flawed and holding EAs back, without you committing to any particular alternative view.

I'm glad to hear that EAs are focusing more on movement-building and collaboration. I think there is a lot of value in eigenaltruism: being altruistic only towards other eigenaltruistic people who "pay it forward" (see Scott Aaronson's eigenmorality). Civilizations have been built with reciprocal al... (read more)

Part of the reason I wrote my critique is that I know that at least some EAs will learn something from it and update their thinking.

VoiceOfRa put very concisely what I think is a median EA view here, but the comment is so deeply nested that I’m afraid it might get buried: “Even if he values human lives terminally, a utilitarian should assign unequal instrumental value to different human lives and make decision based on the combination of both.”

I'll take your word that many EAs also think this way, but I don't really see it effecting the main charitable... (read more)

That would be another example of things which some EAs do, but which don't yet seem to percolate through to the public-facing parts of the movement. For example, valuing other EAs due to flow-though contradicts Singer's view, as far as I understand him:

Effective altruists do not discount suffering because it occurs far away or in another country or afflicts people of a different race or religion. They agree that the suffering of animals counts too and generally agree that we should not give less consideration to suffering just because the victim is not a member of our species.

I do believe that my comment accurately characterizes the large EA organizations like GiveWell and philosophers like Peter Singer. I do realize that EAs are smart people, and many individual EAs have other beliefs and engage in all sorts of research. For example, some EA are concerned about nuclear war with Russia, and today I discovered the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and the Global Priorities Project, which are outside of my critique. However, for now, Peter Singer, Give Well, Giving What We Can, and similar approaches are the most emblematic of E... (read more)

EAs might believe that, but that would be an example of their lack of knowledge of humanity and adoption of simplistic progressivism. Human traits for either altruism or accomplishment are not distributed evenly: people vary in clannishness, charity, civic-mindness, corruption, and IQ. It is most likely that differences between people explains why some groups have trouble building functional institutions and meeting their own needs.

Whether basic needs are met doesn't explain why some groups within Europe are so different from each other. Southern Europe a... (read more)

Effective Altruism is a well-intentioned but flawed philosophy. This is a critique of typical EA approaches, but it might not apply to all EAs, or to alternative EA approaches.

Edit: In a follow up comment, I clarify that this critique is primarily directed at GiveWell and Peter Singer's styles of EA, which are the dominant EA approaches, but are not universal.

• There is no good philosophical reason to hold EA's axiomatic style of utilitarianism. EA seems to value lives equally, but this is implausible from psychology (which values relatives and friends mor

I think your “mental muscle” analogy is interesting: you are suggesting that exercising mental grievance or ressentiment is unhealthy for relationships, and is part of why men red pill men have an “uphill battle.” You argue that love is incompatible with resentment. You also argue that certain terms “demonstrate” particular unhealthy and resentful mindsets, or lead to “objectification” which is tantamount to not viewing others as people.

I share your concern that some red pill men have toxic attitudes towards women which hamper their relationships. I disagr... (read more)

I liked your description of certain unconventional schools of thought as "tough-minded" and "creative." Tough-minded, creative thought processes will often involve concepts and metaphors that make people uncomfortable, including the people who think them up.

Sometimes, understanding the behavior of large groups of people involves concepts or metaphors that would be unhealthy to apply at the individual level. For instance, you can learn a lot about human behavior by thinking about game theory and the Prisoner's Dilemma. This does not mean... (read more)

While both the left and the right have their own forms of ideological conformity, the term "political correctness" is associated with left ideological conformity. There is a reason that ideological purges and struggle sessions throughout history are associated with the left. I realize that "political correctness" is a loaded term, but I agree with its connotations and I'm not interested in feigning neutrality.

As for Scott, I cannot comment on that particular case, but him as a leader of NRx wouldn't make sense anyway because he isn't right-leaning enough.

That's Foucault's theory, but Rictor Norton's book I linked to convincingly debunks Foucault as ideological and ahistorical. Quoting an excerpt, here are historical cases of unmarried men going for each other instead of marriage and children:

In between these two extremes of lust and idealism we find a sense of identity based upon ordinary and unremarkable same-sex love. The records of the Inquisition in Spain, Portugal and Brazil; the police archives of early eighteenth-century Paris; the records of the Officers of the Night of sixteenth-century Venice –

Gay historian Rictor Norton vehemently disagrees with the notion that gay identities are recent. Here is his basic position:

• Gay identities have existing for a long time, not just recognition of gay behaviors
• Recent conceptions of homosexuality are politicized, but this does not mean that concepts of homosexuality are new
• The politicization of modern gay politics, combined with poor record-keeping and past suppression, erases the history of gay identities and cultures.

He takes a position against social constructionism:

It is very easy for historians to

I think many people would have loved to see a response by Moldbug, and found his response disappointing. My guess is that Moldbug felt that his writings already answered a lot of Scott's objections, or that Scott's approach wasn't fair. And Moldbug isn't the same thing as neoreaction; there were other responses by neoreactionaries to Scott's FAQ.

The FAQ nails neoreaction on a lot of object-related issues, and it has some good philosophical objections. But it doesn't do a good job of showing the object-related issues that neoreaction got right, and it does... (read more)

Another piece of the rationalist diaspora is neoreaction. They left LW because it wasn't a good place for talking about anything politically incorrect, an ever expanding set. LW's "politics is the mindkiller" attitude was good for social cohesion, but bad for epistemic rationality, because so many of our priors are corrupted by politics and yesterday's equivalent of social justice warriors.

Neoreaction is free of political correctness and progressive moral signaling, and it takes into account history and historical beliefs when forming priors abo... (read more)

I think most of this discussion just boils down into a difference of values. You suggest that donating to the world's poorest people seems like to way to increase net utility, but this depends on a utility function and moral framework that I am questioning. I have alluded to at least two objections, which is that this outlook seems too near-mode, and it assumes that people should be weighted the same. I agree with you that getting into a deeper discussion of values would not be fruitful.

Your model is interesting, but it still looks like it weights utility ... (read more)

My intuition is that if you want to see more good stuff happen, then maybe we should be giving some resources to the kinds of people who have made good stuff happen historically, and make sure we are getting a return on investment. I do not think all these people are located in the Bay Area, and my previous post does suggest trying to find poor people who are likely to be highly productive.

What sort of thing would you consider "good moral arguments"? What makes something "politicized"?

All moral arguments are either politicized or have the potential to be.

My impression is that EA assumes a utilitarian framework which weights people the same and operates mostly in near-mode. EA towards the third world has never been shown to be morally superior to advancing science, medicine, technology, X-risk reduction, or investing the money until better opportunities emerge.

Better moral arguments would involve taking a broader look ... (read more)

Finally someone else who is thinking like an investor. See my longer comment below for more along this line of thought.

The other advantage of investing is that you have a degree of self-insurance against adverse events. This will help you and your family avoid falling on social safety nets (which could be seen as "negative EA"). Typically EA starts by thinking about foreign countries, but perhaps EA should start at home and move outward.

Additionally, investing and waiting helps deal with the problem of values. Right now, EA suffers from a lack of... (read more)

This post has some faults, but it correctly points out the narrowness of currently EA thinking.

The problem with effective altruism is that it depends on values, and values are hard. Values are also notoriously gameable by politics. Currently, EA is Afrocentric and only effective for a very narrow value system.

EA is focused on saving the max number of lives in the present, or giving directly to the poorest areas. This approach is beneficial for those people, but it's not clear that this approach has a large impact on the future of humanity. It also seems ve... (read more)

Btw, "you" was "general you", not you personally, and mine was trying to piggyback. Post edited to clarify.

Note to all rationalists:

Politics has already slashed your tires.

Politics has already pwned your brain.

Politics has already smashed the Overton Window.

Politics has already kicked over your Schelling fence.

Politics has already planted weeds in your garden.

What are you going to do about it?