Well, that’s a danger, certainly. But it’s not our fated doom. As somebody once said, politics is an important domain to which we should individually apply our rationality. So, we ought to be aware of the danger of making public policy into a team sport. However, rationalists don’t have to ignore and avoid politics, but rather must try to look at it objectively. There are tools for this. Explicit models checked against historical data is a good start, as a way of making assumptions transparent.
In any case, to paraphrase Trotsky, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you. Politicians are the people who tell police and armies what to do. Governments can be benign or maybe not so benign. To ignore politics altogether would not be rational.
I am not saying we—as individuals, or as parts of groups elsewhere—should ignore politics. We should be skeptical of even our own conclusions, but we should try to do what we deem best. I am interested in politics.
I am strongly rejecting the following passage:
I agree with you that most politics is green-team-versus-blue-team, and for this reason politics is the mindkiller. But I’m under the impression that both support and opposition to SOPA come from people on both the left and the right.
because it is wrong. There is no bias fairy that comes and sprinkles magic Green-Blue dust over party labels. Absent additional evidence, my priors say that this sort of effect should appear with any group you identify with that might have “positions”.
I more weakly reject this kind of discussion here because it is likely to hijack more productive discussion, is likely to turn off those who have reached different conclusions (perhaps even honestly), and we don’t have good methods for dealing with the many biases that crop up here. I am strongly in favor of discussion of ways to combat those biases when we do consider these things in other environs, which we should of course be doing.
Certainly one valid (type of) response to the OP would be to explain why the proposed legislation wouldn’t harm the internet. (I’ve seen a few claims to that effect [elsewhere], but none that seemed well-informed or carefully reasoned.)
Or is ‘harming the internet’ too subjective|vague a notion to begin with? Perhaps that is worth discussing. Incidentally, it was part of my original thought that maybe somehow the net outcome of the SOPA regime could be positive, e.g. by spurring the development of a new censorship-proof distributed DNS infrastructure. But I didn’t know about any specific efforts in that direction, and also I mistrusted the idea as probably manifesting a ‘storytelling-fallacy’ approach to prediction. (I’m sure that’s been called something else on LW, but I don’t recall what.)
I agree that clear signs of political-mode thinking are on display here. In particular, I don’t trust the comments that appear to be motivated either by optimism (hope?) or by pessimism (despair?). I was and am looking for the kind of precise, epistemologically sound thinking about object-level phenomena that are so often exhibited by LW participants. I also thought that—assuming the new regime will create the sorts of practical problems all of us seem to suppose it will—people here might be especially aware of specific possibilities for solving them.
I’m not completely sure what you mean about the bias fairy sprinkling Green-Blue dust over party labels. Not that I object to the use of metaphor, it’s just I’m not sure what you are attributing to me. I think it’s completely plausible that I expressed myself in a confusing way, so I’m going to try again.
I think we both agree about the politics-is-the-mind-killer thing in principle. With that said, I’d suggest that politics exercises its mind killing power over some issues more than others, at any given time within a society. Some issues inflame political loyalties, but some do not. Race and sexuality are ideologically charged issues in the U.S. right now. But whether it’s raining outside is not. To use another example, there are differences of opinion regarding how often you need to change the oil in your car. It’s not an entirely subjective preference, either. Factual evidence regarding engine wear is important. But it’s not a politically charged issue, at least not yet.
I read the abstract and most of the text of the study you linked, but I think it explicitly applies particularly to opinions explicitly endorsed by a green-or-blue team. In other words, politically-charged issues.
Right now, I’m under the impression that copyright enforcement law simply is not a highly-charged partisan issue for the overwhelming majority of people in the United States. Neither is it a religious sectarian issue, or a regional issue, or a racial issue, or a sexual preference issue. These are the types of issues that inflame people’s emotions and kill their minds, at least for the great majority of the population. A few individuals may strongly identify as stamp collectors or wearers of corduroy pants, or fans of copyright law, but these would be outliers.
For most people, intellectual property law is only a mind killer in that it is so boring that it puts them to sleep.
I think it’s completely plausible that I expressed myself in a confusing way, so I’m going to try again.
You’re being very clear. “Politics” has several meanings, “related to governance,” and “related to group organization.” The reason governance-related issues are mindkilling is that they are so tied up in group organization and consequently individual identity.
You are interpreting “Politics as mindkiller” to be referring only to governance (e.g. taxes, debt) and the issues that have become caught up in political conflict at the governance-related political levels (e.g. Christianity). What makes this issue mind-killing is not its enlisting individuals as members of “left” and “right” teams, since it doesn’t. This is not very important because people nonetheless identify personally with the issues implicated by SOPA—censorship, freedom, etc. It is a “political” issue (in the broader and important sense) for the same reason all “political” issues (in the restrictive, governance sense) are political issues. That’s what makes it mind killing.
I think we both agree about the politics-is-the-mind-killer thing in principle. With that said, I’d suggest that politics exercises its mind killing power over some issues more than others, at any given time within a society. Some issues inflame political loyalties, but some do not. Race and sexuality are ideologically charged issues in the U.S. right now...
Right now, I’m under the impression that copyright enforcement law simply is not a highly-charged partisan issue for the overwhelming majority of people in the United States...
For most people, intellectual property law is only a mind killer in that it is so boring that it puts them to sleep.
Specificity. You’re not only “on planet Earth,” you’re also in (specific country). Once likewise for city, etc. down to what you are sitting on.
You identify as an opponent of copyright law. That makes it a political issue for you. That most people in your city don’t identify with a side on the issue, or that few personally identify as proponents of the bill, doesn’t make it much less a matter of your identity.
If you were the only person on earth who had an intense hatred for four-letter acronyms (this would be especially odd because humans do weird things like this specifically to signify group membership), your mind would be killed when considering SOPA regardless of the contents of the bill.
Not as such. Rather, I’d like to be a proponent of optimal copyright law. A lot of fundamental law in America is expressed in very strong terms, evoking concepts like justice and freedom and unalienable rights. In contrast, the provision giving the new Congress the power to enact copyright laws is rather practical. The purpose of copyright is:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
So, it’s not that Authors and Inventors have a right given by God (or “Providence”), it’s that a government grant of a temporary monopoly is supposed to have practical effects—“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”
With that said, I’d suggest that politics exercises its mind killing power over some issues more than others, at any given time within a society. Some issues inflame political loyalties, but some do not.
ADBOC, a bit. I think that is accurate in terms of a description of society. I think it is misleading if you interpret it causally. Issues do not inflame political loyalties in an individual because the issues are possessed of some properties with respect to society. They inflame political loyalties in an individual because of attributes of that individual. A part of this may be an expectation that society at large cares about the issue (I think this is likely in some cases) but I don’t think that is essential—I expect that it applies to identification with any particular group that is likely to have a strong opinion on the topic.
Right now, I’m under the impression that copyright enforcement law simply is not a highly-charged partisan issue for the overwhelming majority of people in the United States.
Probably not. But I would say that it is absolutely a highly-charged (non-partisan, but that’s my point) issue for, say, the overwhelming majority of people on Slashdot or Reddit. Would you disagree?
Given our demographics, how do you think LW compares?
That’s interesting. I initially parsed “copyright enforcement law simply is not a highly-charged partisan issue for the overwhelming majority of people in the United States” as meaning that it’s almost universally agreed to be bad. That reading was reinforced by “A few individuals may strongly identify as[...] fans of copyright law” (if it had been “fans or opponents” maybe that would have straightened me out). I’m pretty sure that most people who have been directly affected by some kind of copyright enforcement mechanismor copyright enforcement law did not enjoy the experience, and I am sceptical that they are a tiny minority.
Of course, positions on copyright and its enforcement in general are entirely distinct from positions on SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, et al. (as evinced by the many anti-SOPA statements that begin with announcements of approval of copyright enforcement in general).
In any case, I quite agree—especially after seeing the development of this thread—with your main point that LW is part of the community in which strong opinions on the present topic are ubiquitous. (I don’t know about opinions on copyright and its enforcement in general.) But to be more precise, we are part of the community in which the opinion that SOPA is bad is ubiquitous—like many other opinions, such as that elaborate theological arguments are a waste of time. That isn’t enough to make it controversial, and that’s why I thought perhaps we could discuss it rationally. But of course we are afraid, and perhaps that fear is more salient and more immediate than the fear of various existential dangers and similarly scary things we discuss.
I’m happy to say I do not disagree with you about the prevailing opinions at Slashdot or Reddit. However, I don’t think that either Slashdot and Reddit now act as a strong political force. Perhaps they could or should be, but I don’t think they are in practice at all. Personally, I wish they were. But, it has been said, our kind cannot cooperate. I’d like to take this statement as a challenge, rather than as a law. I would suggest to you, and everyone else, that our kind must find a way to cooperate to some degree on many issues, including public policy issues. Not all political issues, but some.
However, I don’t think that either Slashdot and Reddit now act as a strong political force. Perhaps they could or should, but I don’t think they do in practice at all. Personally, I wish they did.
I don’t disagree. I just dispute the relevance. Is your stipulation that it’s likely we are only mind-killed by our association with politically effective groups?
But, it has been said, our kind cannot cooperate. I’d like to take this statement as a challenge, rather than as a law.
I agree whole heartedly.
I would suggest to you, and everyone else, that our kind must find a way to cooperate to some degree on many issues, including public policy issues. Not all political issues, but some.
I agree, but we do that by tackling the mind killing, not by tackling the issues, and certainly not by thinking that the mind killing doesn’t apply to us, or to our pet issue—indeed, the fact that this is our pet issue makes us far more vulnerable.
Again, I’m certainly not saying “not at all,” I’m saying “not here, not like this.”
we do that by tackling the mind killing, not by tackling the issues[.]
At least, if ‘tackling the issues’ means ’coming to any kind of conclusion|decision as to what to think or even what to do. Obviously a rational approach is a prerequisite for that, but doesn’t replace it. I also agree in general with
the fact that this is our pet issue makes us far more vulnerable
but vulnerable to what in this case? Irrationally believing that SOPA would be a bad thing?
I can only speak for myself, of course. At one point, though dlthomas asked:
You self-identify as tech-savvy? You will be mind-killed just as surely on an issue like this.
I never got around to posting it, but I could have truthfully said that that I no longer consider myself to be tech-savvy. I was at one point, but what I once knew is now either forgotten or obsolete.
However, on closer introspection, I’d have to admit that I still am a bit biased towards what may be a “tech-savvy” view of the world. I hadn’t thought of it (and still don’t think of it) as a major part of my identity, but it may be all the more insidious for being unseen. So I must correct for that.
Now, I tentatively think that SOPA is probably bad public policy. This tentative opinion is supported by the fact (and it is a fact) that it is opposed by a great many learned people in many fields, particularly experts in American law, as well as internet technology.
However, before I turn my tentative opinion into a firm opinion, I will have to do a little homework by learning just a bit more about the issues in general, noting particularly the arguments supporting the view I’m leaning against. I don’t have all the time in the world, and I’m not planning to become an expert in copyright law, first amendment law, and the foundational technology supporting the internet any time soon. I don’t even plan to read the full text of the proposed legislation. However, my ignorance is a reason to be cautious, not bold, in my opinions.
(Parenthetically, as a U.S. citizen, I’d really like to think that my representatives in Congress would take as least as much trouble simply to understand the laws they enact.)
Thanks for answering. (Like the one-word one, this comment provides insight into nothing except my own state of mind, in which you are perfectly entitled to be uninterested.)
Well, that’s a danger, certainly. But it’s not our fated doom. As somebody once said, politics is an important domain to which we should individually apply our rationality. So, we ought to be aware of the danger of making public policy into a team sport. However, rationalists don’t have to ignore and avoid politics, but rather must try to look at it objectively. There are tools for this. Explicit models checked against historical data is a good start, as a way of making assumptions transparent.
In any case, to paraphrase Trotsky, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you. Politicians are the people who tell police and armies what to do. Governments can be benign or maybe not so benign. To ignore politics altogether would not be rational.
I am not saying we—as individuals, or as parts of groups elsewhere—should ignore politics. We should be skeptical of even our own conclusions, but we should try to do what we deem best. I am interested in politics.
I am strongly rejecting the following passage:
because it is wrong. There is no bias fairy that comes and sprinkles magic Green-Blue dust over party labels. Absent additional evidence, my priors say that this sort of effect should appear with any group you identify with that might have “positions”.
I more weakly reject this kind of discussion here because it is likely to hijack more productive discussion, is likely to turn off those who have reached different conclusions (perhaps even honestly), and we don’t have good methods for dealing with the many biases that crop up here. I am strongly in favor of discussion of ways to combat those biases when we do consider these things in other environs, which we should of course be doing.
Certainly one valid (type of) response to the OP would be to explain why the proposed legislation wouldn’t harm the internet. (I’ve seen a few claims to that effect [elsewhere], but none that seemed well-informed or carefully reasoned.)
Or is ‘harming the internet’ too subjective|vague a notion to begin with? Perhaps that is worth discussing. Incidentally, it was part of my original thought that maybe somehow the net outcome of the SOPA regime could be positive, e.g. by spurring the development of a new censorship-proof distributed DNS infrastructure. But I didn’t know about any specific efforts in that direction, and also I mistrusted the idea as probably manifesting a ‘storytelling-fallacy’ approach to prediction. (I’m sure that’s been called something else on LW, but I don’t recall what.)
I agree that clear signs of political-mode thinking are on display here. In particular, I don’t trust the comments that appear to be motivated either by optimism (hope?) or by pessimism (despair?). I was and am looking for the kind of precise, epistemologically sound thinking about object-level phenomena that are so often exhibited by LW participants. I also thought that—assuming the new regime will create the sorts of practical problems all of us seem to suppose it will—people here might be especially aware of specific possibilities for solving them.
I’m not completely sure what you mean about the bias fairy sprinkling Green-Blue dust over party labels. Not that I object to the use of metaphor, it’s just I’m not sure what you are attributing to me. I think it’s completely plausible that I expressed myself in a confusing way, so I’m going to try again.
I think we both agree about the politics-is-the-mind-killer thing in principle. With that said, I’d suggest that politics exercises its mind killing power over some issues more than others, at any given time within a society. Some issues inflame political loyalties, but some do not. Race and sexuality are ideologically charged issues in the U.S. right now. But whether it’s raining outside is not. To use another example, there are differences of opinion regarding how often you need to change the oil in your car. It’s not an entirely subjective preference, either. Factual evidence regarding engine wear is important. But it’s not a politically charged issue, at least not yet.
I read the abstract and most of the text of the study you linked, but I think it explicitly applies particularly to opinions explicitly endorsed by a green-or-blue team. In other words, politically-charged issues.
Right now, I’m under the impression that copyright enforcement law simply is not a highly-charged partisan issue for the overwhelming majority of people in the United States. Neither is it a religious sectarian issue, or a regional issue, or a racial issue, or a sexual preference issue. These are the types of issues that inflame people’s emotions and kill their minds, at least for the great majority of the population. A few individuals may strongly identify as stamp collectors or wearers of corduroy pants, or fans of copyright law, but these would be outliers.
For most people, intellectual property law is only a mind killer in that it is so boring that it puts them to sleep.
You’re being very clear. “Politics” has several meanings, “related to governance,” and “related to group organization.” The reason governance-related issues are mindkilling is that they are so tied up in group organization and consequently individual identity.
You are interpreting “Politics as mindkiller” to be referring only to governance (e.g. taxes, debt) and the issues that have become caught up in political conflict at the governance-related political levels (e.g. Christianity). What makes this issue mind-killing is not its enlisting individuals as members of “left” and “right” teams, since it doesn’t. This is not very important because people nonetheless identify personally with the issues implicated by SOPA—censorship, freedom, etc. It is a “political” issue (in the broader and important sense) for the same reason all “political” issues (in the restrictive, governance sense) are political issues. That’s what makes it mind killing.
Specificity. You’re not only “on planet Earth,” you’re also in (specific country). Once likewise for city, etc. down to what you are sitting on.
You identify as an opponent of copyright law. That makes it a political issue for you. That most people in your city don’t identify with a side on the issue, or that few personally identify as proponents of the bill, doesn’t make it much less a matter of your identity.
If you were the only person on earth who had an intense hatred for four-letter acronyms (this would be especially odd because humans do weird things like this specifically to signify group membership), your mind would be killed when considering SOPA regardless of the contents of the bill.
Not as such. Rather, I’d like to be a proponent of optimal copyright law. A lot of fundamental law in America is expressed in very strong terms, evoking concepts like justice and freedom and unalienable rights. In contrast, the provision giving the new Congress the power to enact copyright laws is rather practical. The purpose of copyright is:
So, it’s not that Authors and Inventors have a right given by God (or “Providence”), it’s that a government grant of a temporary monopoly is supposed to have practical effects—“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”
This calls for cost-benefit analysis.
ADBOC, a bit. I think that is accurate in terms of a description of society. I think it is misleading if you interpret it causally. Issues do not inflame political loyalties in an individual because the issues are possessed of some properties with respect to society. They inflame political loyalties in an individual because of attributes of that individual. A part of this may be an expectation that society at large cares about the issue (I think this is likely in some cases) but I don’t think that is essential—I expect that it applies to identification with any particular group that is likely to have a strong opinion on the topic.
Probably not. But I would say that it is absolutely a highly-charged (non-partisan, but that’s my point) issue for, say, the overwhelming majority of people on Slashdot or Reddit. Would you disagree?
Given our demographics, how do you think LW compares?
That’s interesting. I initially parsed “copyright enforcement law simply is not a highly-charged partisan issue for the overwhelming majority of people in the United States” as meaning that it’s almost universally agreed to be bad. That reading was reinforced by “A few individuals may strongly identify as[...] fans of copyright law” (if it had been “fans or opponents” maybe that would have straightened me out). I’m pretty sure that most people who have been directly affected by some kind of copyright enforcement mechanism or copyright enforcement law did not enjoy the experience, and I am sceptical that they are a tiny minority.
Of course, positions on copyright and its enforcement in general are entirely distinct from positions on SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, et al. (as evinced by the many anti-SOPA statements that begin with announcements of approval of copyright enforcement in general).
In any case, I quite agree—especially after seeing the development of this thread—with your main point that LW is part of the community in which strong opinions on the present topic are ubiquitous. (I don’t know about opinions on copyright and its enforcement in general.) But to be more precise, we are part of the community in which the opinion that SOPA is bad is ubiquitous—like many other opinions, such as that elaborate theological arguments are a waste of time. That isn’t enough to make it controversial, and that’s why I thought perhaps we could discuss it rationally. But of course we are afraid, and perhaps that fear is more salient and more immediate than the fear of various existential dangers and similarly scary things we discuss.
I’m happy to say I do not disagree with you about the prevailing opinions at Slashdot or Reddit. However, I don’t think that either Slashdot and Reddit now act as a strong political force. Perhaps they could or should be, but I don’t think they are in practice at all. Personally, I wish they were. But, it has been said, our kind cannot cooperate. I’d like to take this statement as a challenge, rather than as a law. I would suggest to you, and everyone else, that our kind must find a way to cooperate to some degree on many issues, including public policy issues. Not all political issues, but some.
I don’t disagree. I just dispute the relevance. Is your stipulation that it’s likely we are only mind-killed by our association with politically effective groups?
I agree whole heartedly.
I agree, but we do that by tackling the mind killing, not by tackling the issues, and certainly not by thinking that the mind killing doesn’t apply to us, or to our pet issue—indeed, the fact that this is our pet issue makes us far more vulnerable.
Again, I’m certainly not saying “not at all,” I’m saying “not here, not like this.”
I find this argument persuasive. You have changed my mind.
Huh. I agree with both of you, up to
At least, if ‘tackling the issues’ means ’coming to any kind of conclusion|decision as to what to think or even what to do. Obviously a rational approach is a prerequisite for that, but doesn’t replace it. I also agree in general with
but vulnerable to what in this case? Irrationally believing that SOPA would be a bad thing?
I can only speak for myself, of course. At one point, though dlthomas asked:
I never got around to posting it, but I could have truthfully said that that I no longer consider myself to be tech-savvy. I was at one point, but what I once knew is now either forgotten or obsolete.
However, on closer introspection, I’d have to admit that I still am a bit biased towards what may be a “tech-savvy” view of the world. I hadn’t thought of it (and still don’t think of it) as a major part of my identity, but it may be all the more insidious for being unseen. So I must correct for that.
Now, I tentatively think that SOPA is probably bad public policy. This tentative opinion is supported by the fact (and it is a fact) that it is opposed by a great many learned people in many fields, particularly experts in American law, as well as internet technology.
However, before I turn my tentative opinion into a firm opinion, I will have to do a little homework by learning just a bit more about the issues in general, noting particularly the arguments supporting the view I’m leaning against. I don’t have all the time in the world, and I’m not planning to become an expert in copyright law, first amendment law, and the foundational technology supporting the internet any time soon. I don’t even plan to read the full text of the proposed legislation. However, my ignorance is a reason to be cautious, not bold, in my opinions.
(Parenthetically, as a U.S. citizen, I’d really like to think that my representatives in Congress would take as least as much trouble simply to understand the laws they enact.)
Or rather, it seems, to quote J.B. Priestley. See Michael Pollak’s comment on this blog post.
Exactly.
Why downvoted? Vacuousness? (Sometimes when I really like a comment, I don’t feel satisfied by just upvoting it.)
Yes. Please make substantive comments. (And please don’t make me start another discussion about this.)
Thanks for answering. (Like the one-word one, this comment provides insight into nothing except my own state of mind, in which you are perfectly entitled to be uninterested.)