I think this is a very bad idea, considering the record of past discussions about sex, gender, and related matters on LW. I’ve seen quite a few of those, and almost inevitably, the result is either an awful death spiral or, in case someone tries injecting a serious dose of reality, quarrels and internet drama. If the recent discussions superficially look better than usual, this is only because nobody has bothered much with trying to steer them closer to reality, and the death spirals have been able to drift away happily and undisturbedly.
For whatever reason, this forum has shown to be incapable of conducting rational discussions about these topics. This is a sad verdict, but I’m afraid it’s realistic.
If discussion of a certain topic results in one sided and disproportionate unpleasantness, driving out certain folk, this is likely to affect a wide range of subjects, since one can usually infer that if someone is intolerant of belief X, he is intolerant of beliefs Y and Z. Intolerance usually reflects a belief system which is apt to have an official line on just about everything.
Since mentioning the most obvious and important example of such a belief system is apt to have adverse consequences, I will mention a substantially less important and less menacing example of such a belief system, that of the Ayn Rand institute.
I think it’s a bad idea to say this every time a new discussion about sex/gender comes up. If each time such a post is made, someone posts “there is no way this will go well” and everyone stops posting, then it is literally impossible for the conversation to go anywhere. I think it’s much more valuable to have bad posts if those enable good posts to also exist, instead of just having no posts on the topic.
At the very least, wait UNTIL the thread descends into shittiness, and then lock it, instead of preemptively banning on all conversation on a subject that is vitally important to the happiness of many.
I think it’s much more valuable to have bad posts if those enable good posts to also exist, instead of just having no posts on the topic.
I disagree with this assumption. Discussions can have a net negative contribution to knowledge and understanding even if all their parts aren’t uniformly negative. It seems to me that this is especially true on LW, since as long as there is no breakdown of discussion and everything looks nice and polite, people here tend to walk away believing that they’ve just participated in a sterling exercise in rationality and clear thinking, even if it’s actually been a bad death spiral. That’s my opinion, at least.
then WORK to make that not happen. Maybe you’re scared of being confrontational with people you think are wrong, because of lowered status or whatever, but if we’re trying to be rational in general, then we should try to come to a rational consensus on a topic that’s controversial, as WELL as all the easy topics you can be rational about. You can say you don’t think it’s worth your time to try and bring rationality to this area, but in that case you can just shut up and post in other discussions, at no cost to yourself.
but in that case you can just shut up and post in other discussions, at no cost to yourself.
The implications of this being done regularly are significant. In fact, that’s the core point Vladimir_M has made. I don’t think you have understood the issues even remotely or read Vladimir_M’s comments clearly.
Well, it’s not like I just showed up and started saying these things. I have written dozens, if not hundreds of comments in threads that dealt with these topics in the past, and I speak from experience. (In fact, before I understood the reality of the situation, I was even saying similar things myself to more experienced people who suggested that such topics are best avoided.) Unfortunately, it simply doesn’t work—you can either ignore the happy death spirals or try to inject some reality and almost inevitably cause bitter controversy and bad blood.
At the very least, wait UNTIL the thread descends into shittiness, and then lock it, instead of preemptively banning on all conversation on a subject that is vitally important to the happiness of many.
We don’t lock threads at all, as far as I’m aware. Delete them sure. Swear and abuse those who post them perhaps but never lock them.
That there are topics that LW cannot discuss productively, and that you regard it as somewhat dangerous to name these topics very directly, is one of your recurring themes. I’m curious: do you think there are any topics that produce high-quality discussions on LW, but that in society generally are as toxic (or if not as toxic just very toxic) as your unmentionable ones?
That there are topics that LW cannot discuss productively, and that you regard it as somewhat dangerous to name these topics very directly, is one of your recurring themes. I’m curious: do you think there are any topics that produce high-quality discussions on LW, but that in society generally are as toxic (or if not as toxic just very toxic) as your unmentionable ones?
Actually, in my opinion, LW is not at all bad when it comes to most topics that are impossible to discuss rationally almost anywhere else. The gender-related topics stand out as a particularly bad case of failure, but other than that, I can’t think of any examples that would make LW look bad in comparison with what happens elsewhere—and in many cases, it stands out as exceptionally good. (This is why I keep hanging out here, after all.)
One of my recurring themes is criticizing LW for failure to turn its formidable weapons of critical thinking against various high-status and officially accredited delusions and biases, its failure to recognize and criticize deep and systematic processes that generate and perpetuate bias and delusion in respectable and influential institutions and social circles, and also the occasional tendency to pride oneself on “rationality” demonstrated by rejecting low-status folkish delusions while blissfully falling in line with far more influential and dangerous high-status ones. However, outside of gender-related topics, when some concrete question is brought up where the mainstream respectable opinion is out of touch with reality, I usually can’t complain about the responses one gets here.
So on the whole, I would say that except for this particular failure, LW produces high-quality discussions on almost any topic that elicits interest among the participants. The problem with toxic topics in general is not that they would cause a breakdown of discourse here, but that the resulting discussions would reflect badly on the forum as an institution due to the very fact that they would have a closer grip on reality than the respectable opinion. So unfortunately we’re dealing with a lose-lose situation here—failing to recognize and straighten out issues where the respectable mainstream is delusional is by itself a bias and failure of rationality, but on the other hand, doing so would mean losing status in the eyes of the respectable mainstream. This, I think, has produced a tacit consensus that some especially charged topics are best not opened for fear of damaging the status of LW as an institution. Yet, regardless of that, except for the uniquely bad example of gender-related topics, insofar as any concrete controversial topics manage to elicit interest here, they are handled exceptionally well.
I don’t understand why this comment doesn’t have more upvotes.
It seems, on relationships at least, that LW resorts to a sort of phoney rationalism, where theory does a lot of the work, with very little recourse to evidence. Has anyone here ever linked to studies on the effects if marriage on happiness, productivity, etc.?
I don’t want to link inside LW, so here’s an example from outside of what I’m talking about; the apparant attempt to combine generalising from one example with deduction from first principles, and from this find a theory of relationships.
This is a shame, because I do think rationality has enourmously benefitted my current relationship. I just don’t think LW usefully discusses such things.
I don’t want to link inside LW, so here’s an example from outside of what I’m talking about; the apparant attempt to combine generalising from one example with deduction from first principles, and from this find a theory of relationships.
You’re pointing to Curi as an example of LW thought?!
nobody has bothered much with trying to steer [discussions] closer to reality
Feels like you have forbidden knowledge. Not coincidentally, I want to know what it is.
What is it roughly? That innate differences across the sexes play a strong role in causing statistically different mating behaviors to develop? That these differences end up somewhat resembling “females want high-value sex and a devoted father while males want sex and sexually faithful partners”? That females are often attracted to high value behavior (e.g. PUA stuff)? That many people have some, possibly very vague, estimate of how sexually valuable they are, and act upon this belief? Is there any way you can quench my curiosity? It seems obvious that if you answer in general terms you won’t offend anyone, as meta thought doesn’t really push the emotional buttons.
PS: It has been suggested that general statements can cause worse beliefs in a group, since they’re very simplified. But there should be some way of pointing to an area of the map without degrading that region of the map.
Feels like you have forbidden knowledge. Not coincidentally, I want to know what it is.
It goes something like “Do this… No, that is the opposite of what works, do this… No, you’re manipulative and it’s unethical to say that… No, saying that it is manipulative is crazy political indoctrination… People here are Pigs… No we’re not… Yes you are, manipulative pigs… that’s not what your mom said last night.” (And somehwere in there is HughRistik writing a massive treatise. If you want to get all the best of such conversations just read through this)
Feels like you have forbidden knowledge. Not coincidentally, I want to know what it is.
There is no forbidden knowledge involved. Just search for old LW discussions on these topics, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. And yes, often the problems revolve around issues such as those you’ve mentioned. (Though I wouldn’t really agree with the way you’ve worded most of them, and there are many additional issues that are also apt to cause problems when brought up.)
Analyzing and documenting all the sources of bias and discourse breakdown that appear when these topics are discussed would be a large and fascinating project in its own right. It’s an extremely incendiary mix of ideological preconceptions and biases, personal emotional investments, urges to switch from factual discussions to moral superiority contests, signaling-driven opinions, unwillingness to face ugly truths, and so on.
While I don’t necessarily think the discussions about sex/gender/etc have been overall unproductive, I do think a lot of them end up qualifying as “talking about politics.” I don’t think it needs to be tabood completely, but I don’t think we need to encourage more of it.
However, I’ll also note that previous discussions were often specifically about PUA and/or feminism. More recent posts were about relationships without either of those topics directly connected, which may be way they had higher quality discussion. PUA/Feminism are inherently somewhat political, especially when they are viewed as opposites.
However, I’ll also note that previous discussions were often specifically about PUA and/or feminism. More recent posts were about relationships without either of those topics directly connected, which may be way they had higher quality discussion.
Trouble is, I can hardly see how these discussions can remain sufficiently close to reality without getting into issues where the problematic “PUA and/or feminism” stuff becomes relevant. In fact, from what I see, attempts to do so are one of the principal ways in which I observe the death spirals forming. People write things that are strong applause lights, including in response to each other, and this results in a happy death spiral whose drift away from reality could be stopped only by criticizing the assumptions behind these applause-lights assertions—but no such criticism is possible without bringing up relevant points that trigger the dreaded “PUA and/or feminism” mind-killers.
If nobody even attempts such criticism, what follows is something that may superficially look like a “higher quality discussion,” but is in fact a festival of applause lights and happy death spirals—and on the whole even worse than a quarrel, in which it’s at least clear that something’s gone badly wrong. In my honest opinion, this is in fact what has been happening.
If nobody even attempts such criticism, what follows is something that may superficially look like a “higher quality discussion,” but is in fact a festival of applause lights and happy death spirals—and on the whole even worse than a quarrel, in which it’s at least clear that something’s gone badly wrong. In my honest opinion, this is in fact what has been happening.
There was one case where a well meaning poster collated a conversation and posted it as “the lesswrong consensus” on online dating advice. That was… a less than ideal turn of events.
Yes, I think I know which thread you are talking about. It was one of my major disappointments here. That was, I think, the only time I saw a mass of LW participants approving and upvoting something that was an intellectual equivalent of healing crystals. (This is not a hyperbole—I really think that the intellectual failure was of a similar magnitude, insofar as such things can be meaningfully compared.) A few people’s attempts to bring some realistic perspective ended up creating a bitter controversy, and the crystal-healing-equivalent stuff was left with a respectable net positive vote.
The one I have in mind is this. This post and its comment thread, combined with the final net results of voting, in my opinion decisively refute the idea of any universally applicable “sanity waterline” that is supposedly higher on LW than elsewhere. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the collective failure of rational thinking demonstrated there was so severe that it might as well have been a happy and approving discussion of horoscopes, healing crystals, or the Mayan 2012 doomsday.
It is the prospect of such things starting to re-emerge on a regular and frequent basis that has motivated my reactions in this thread.
No, I wouldn’t say the group is representative, although on the other hand, it’s certainly not just a small fringe group either.
However, I don’t have in mind just people who actively contribute to such nonsense. Another problem is that similar intellectual failures about other topics would be (for the most part) correctly identified and criticized without causing bitter controversy and discourse breakdown, and a mass of other readers would also express correct judgment at least with upvotes and downvotes. So even the general passive approval is, in my opinion, indicative of bias, since such passive approval would certainly not be given to various other things that are not significantly worse by any reasonable standards.
Another bias that’s clearly visible is that when someone displays intellectual failures of similar magnitude in various other areas, this would be taken on LW as indicative of an irrational person who is altogether below the universal standards of rational thinking practiced here—whereas nothing similar occurs when it comes to these topics. Of course, I don’t think people should be written off as general intellectual failures just because they demonstrated irrationality about these topics, but it definitely should serve as a warning for those who sometimes do apply such standards in other situations.
PUA/Feminism are inherently somewhat political, especially when they are viewed as opposites.
Arguably, they aren’t opposites, because they have significant overlap on certain dimensions. I’ve argued that a lot of pickup techniques are actually compatible with feminist values.
Then there are folks who criticize both feminism and pickup for being overly pandering to women:
PUA theory takes the extreme position that men are usually to blame for lack of success with women. This of course complements the (radical) feminist view that men are inadequate. So PUAs are basically sympathizers with the feminist view that men are intrinsically lacking. And one side effect of this is that it translates into a somewhat hostile view that PUAs have towards “normal” guys, referring to them as “AFC” (Average Frustrated Chump).
Basically, game is all about YOU getting positive reinforcement from shitty women. Game is all about being an excellent dog, so that your master (bad women) throw you a bone for a well done job. You perform the trick, you get the cookie.
When I see gamers bragging about how they can trigger certain responses from women at will, I imagine dogs bragging that they can trigger sympathy from their master. I imagine a dog bragging to another dog “You know, I have this special expression I do, and the master always tears up when I do it and gives me a cookie! I control him, muahahah!”
Game teaches you how to overcome bad-women’s games and manipulations, instead of punishing them. Even if you do “succeed” in passing shitty behavior (assuming “game” is better than placebo) – what did you actually gain?! Didn’t you just positively reinforce that same shitty behavior in those types of women?
So what does game do? It just makes you a better pussy-beggar. It teaches you how to better do what shitty-women want you to do. It teaches you to reward bitchiness by dancing better to the song she sings.
Well, it’s my own verdict, with which you’re welcome to agree or disagree. But even without getting into any substantive issues from these discussions, consider this. In the past, these topics have many times led to a breakdown of rational discourse. If this no longer happens, what is the more plausible explanation: that LW has somehow suddenly and collectively figured out a way to discuss these topics rationally, or that people are simply tired of the same old unproductive clashes so that nobody even bothers to challenge the happy death spirals?
If any people think it’s the former, I’d really be curious about their hypotheses on what caused this sudden change for the better.
I wouldn’t want to point fingers at people this way even if we were talking about unambiguous and agreed-upon instances of errors, let alone in cases like this, where it would open whole cans of worms. It would look like I’m being confrontational against individuals, rather than pointing out a general problem.
On the other hand, I think it’s reasonable to ask my above question in this context. Given the previous history of discussions about this topic, what is the reason to consider the first explanation as more probable than the second? (And what would be the cause of the change assumed by the first one?)
In the past, these topics have many times led to a breakdown of rational discourse. If this no longer happens, what is the more plausible explanation: that LW has somehow suddenly and collectively figured out a way to discuss these topics rationally, or that people are simply tired of the same old unproductive clashes so that nobody even bothers to challenge the happy death spirals?
The third alternative is to try things differently. It’s not helpful to make no effort and then ask “Have things magically changed, or will this fail?”
I like to, when possible, jump on unsubstantiated accusations and ask for evidence, rather than argue about opinions. We can make progress by better applying the norm that accusations against people on LW need evidence and examples of at least possible wrongdoing.
what is the reason to consider the first explanation as more probable than the second?
If the first explanation is even fairly likely, it’s worth not suggesting suppressing a topic. Greater probability is not necessary.
A tub of bathwater so dirty it’s worth throwing out the baby?
Perhaps, if the baby is handed off to caring adopted parents and is freed from abusive, incompetent parents with dangerously substandard hygene practices.
(That’s how the metaphor would represent the case in which individuals were saved from learning false lessons about human relationships here and were redirected elsewhere to learn lessons that were more useful. Not necessarily a position I am taking myself today, just describing.)
In the sense that it is held by many who have expressed their verdict, declared their intent to avoid all future conversations on the topic then done so?
(I acknowledge ‘many’ as unsubstantiated, without caring enough to google for examples so acknowledge that those who haven’t seen said many may not take my word for it. I’d be confident with troll many at least. Maybe even lots.)
Interesting. I’ve seen some such discussions get quite bad but I’ve seen others where apparently calm rational discussion took place. It seems that sex and gender issues quickly move towards mind-killing territory but sits a bit further away than most issues normally thought of as mind-killing. So far the discussions in this thread seem well done and informative. I haven’t seen any strong evidence of any serious problems arising yet.
Trouble is, when evident mind-killing and breakdown of polite discourse occurs, it is the less bad failure mode. In that case, it is at least clear that something went wrong. The really bad failure mode is when the discussion resembles a rational discourse, but is actually a horrible happy death spiral. In such situations, the conclusions may seem rational and informative, but are in fact awfully remote from reality, or at best right in a stopped-clock sort of way—and the lack of discourse breakdown is interpreted as a successful exercise in rationality, whereas in fact it’s merely because nobody stepped in to spoil the fun by trying to draw it closer to reality. (The latter, of course, is likely to cause mind-killing and discourse breakdown, thus making the messenger look like the guilty party.)
Hence the crystal healing analogy I made in another comment, which may sound extreme but is in fact, in my opinion, quite pertinent. In both cases, a volatile mix of biases, preconceptions, wishful thinking, etc. produces entirely spurious conclusions about how the world works and how to deal with it, which are then happily accepted in a self-congratulatory way, even though the process by which they were arrived at couldn’t stand up to any intellectual scrutiny.
I’ve seen some such discussions get quite bad but I’ve seen others where apparently calm rational discussion took place.
That’s my experience, too. I have seen progress being made in some of the discussions about gender, even though they can be frustrating. But perhaps I’m focusing on the exchanges that I was involved in.
That’s my experience, too. I have seen progress being made in some of the discussions about gender, even though they can be frustrating. But perhaps I’m focusing on the exchanges that I was involved in.
Also the topics you are interested in. Ethical issues related to gender are of particular interest to you so a conversation being derailed to ethical considerations are less pointless to you than to some.
I think this is a very bad idea, considering the record of past discussions about sex, gender, and related matters on LW. I’ve seen quite a few of those, and almost inevitably, the result is either an awful death spiral or, in case someone tries injecting a serious dose of reality, quarrels and internet drama. If the recent discussions superficially look better than usual, this is only because nobody has bothered much with trying to steer them closer to reality, and the death spirals have been able to drift away happily and undisturbedly.
For whatever reason, this forum has shown to be incapable of conducting rational discussions about these topics. This is a sad verdict, but I’m afraid it’s realistic.
Perhaps even more important than the ‘death spirals’ is that of a subject-limited evaporative cooling of beliefs.
Good point. I agree.
Why subject limited?
If discussion of a certain topic results in one sided and disproportionate unpleasantness, driving out certain folk, this is likely to affect a wide range of subjects, since one can usually infer that if someone is intolerant of belief X, he is intolerant of beliefs Y and Z. Intolerance usually reflects a belief system which is apt to have an official line on just about everything.
Since mentioning the most obvious and important example of such a belief system is apt to have adverse consequences, I will mention a substantially less important and less menacing example of such a belief system, that of the Ayn Rand institute.
Just the zoom setting. I wasn’t talking about plausible broad ramification—even though they obviously do exist.
Indeed.
I think it’s a bad idea to say this every time a new discussion about sex/gender comes up. If each time such a post is made, someone posts “there is no way this will go well” and everyone stops posting, then it is literally impossible for the conversation to go anywhere. I think it’s much more valuable to have bad posts if those enable good posts to also exist, instead of just having no posts on the topic.
At the very least, wait UNTIL the thread descends into shittiness, and then lock it, instead of preemptively banning on all conversation on a subject that is vitally important to the happiness of many.
I disagree with this assumption. Discussions can have a net negative contribution to knowledge and understanding even if all their parts aren’t uniformly negative. It seems to me that this is especially true on LW, since as long as there is no breakdown of discussion and everything looks nice and polite, people here tend to walk away believing that they’ve just participated in a sterling exercise in rationality and clear thinking, even if it’s actually been a bad death spiral. That’s my opinion, at least.
then WORK to make that not happen. Maybe you’re scared of being confrontational with people you think are wrong, because of lowered status or whatever, but if we’re trying to be rational in general, then we should try to come to a rational consensus on a topic that’s controversial, as WELL as all the easy topics you can be rational about. You can say you don’t think it’s worth your time to try and bring rationality to this area, but in that case you can just shut up and post in other discussions, at no cost to yourself.
The implications of this being done regularly are significant. In fact, that’s the core point Vladimir_M has made. I don’t think you have understood the issues even remotely or read Vladimir_M’s comments clearly.
Well, it’s not like I just showed up and started saying these things. I have written dozens, if not hundreds of comments in threads that dealt with these topics in the past, and I speak from experience. (In fact, before I understood the reality of the situation, I was even saying similar things myself to more experienced people who suggested that such topics are best avoided.) Unfortunately, it simply doesn’t work—you can either ignore the happy death spirals or try to inject some reality and almost inevitably cause bitter controversy and bad blood.
We don’t lock threads at all, as far as I’m aware. Delete them sure. Swear and abuse those who post them perhaps but never lock them.
Bad idea. That’s never been worth it for any thread I’ve seen.
That there are topics that LW cannot discuss productively, and that you regard it as somewhat dangerous to name these topics very directly, is one of your recurring themes. I’m curious: do you think there are any topics that produce high-quality discussions on LW, but that in society generally are as toxic (or if not as toxic just very toxic) as your unmentionable ones?
Actually, in my opinion, LW is not at all bad when it comes to most topics that are impossible to discuss rationally almost anywhere else. The gender-related topics stand out as a particularly bad case of failure, but other than that, I can’t think of any examples that would make LW look bad in comparison with what happens elsewhere—and in many cases, it stands out as exceptionally good. (This is why I keep hanging out here, after all.)
One of my recurring themes is criticizing LW for failure to turn its formidable weapons of critical thinking against various high-status and officially accredited delusions and biases, its failure to recognize and criticize deep and systematic processes that generate and perpetuate bias and delusion in respectable and influential institutions and social circles, and also the occasional tendency to pride oneself on “rationality” demonstrated by rejecting low-status folkish delusions while blissfully falling in line with far more influential and dangerous high-status ones. However, outside of gender-related topics, when some concrete question is brought up where the mainstream respectable opinion is out of touch with reality, I usually can’t complain about the responses one gets here.
So on the whole, I would say that except for this particular failure, LW produces high-quality discussions on almost any topic that elicits interest among the participants. The problem with toxic topics in general is not that they would cause a breakdown of discourse here, but that the resulting discussions would reflect badly on the forum as an institution due to the very fact that they would have a closer grip on reality than the respectable opinion. So unfortunately we’re dealing with a lose-lose situation here—failing to recognize and straighten out issues where the respectable mainstream is delusional is by itself a bias and failure of rationality, but on the other hand, doing so would mean losing status in the eyes of the respectable mainstream. This, I think, has produced a tacit consensus that some especially charged topics are best not opened for fear of damaging the status of LW as an institution. Yet, regardless of that, except for the uniquely bad example of gender-related topics, insofar as any concrete controversial topics manage to elicit interest here, they are handled exceptionally well.
I don’t understand why this comment doesn’t have more upvotes.
It seems, on relationships at least, that LW resorts to a sort of phoney rationalism, where theory does a lot of the work, with very little recourse to evidence. Has anyone here ever linked to studies on the effects if marriage on happiness, productivity, etc.?
I don’t want to link inside LW, so here’s an example from outside of what I’m talking about; the apparant attempt to combine generalising from one example with deduction from first principles, and from this find a theory of relationships.
This is a shame, because I do think rationality has enourmously benefitted my current relationship. I just don’t think LW usefully discusses such things.
I think so, yes. I can’t offhand recall where...
You’re pointing to Curi as an example of LW thought?!
No, I’m pointing to an article by William Godwin, which Curi quoted, as an it is an example of the mistake LWers make.
Feels like you have forbidden knowledge. Not coincidentally, I want to know what it is.
What is it roughly? That innate differences across the sexes play a strong role in causing statistically different mating behaviors to develop? That these differences end up somewhat resembling “females want high-value sex and a devoted father while males want sex and sexually faithful partners”? That females are often attracted to high value behavior (e.g. PUA stuff)? That many people have some, possibly very vague, estimate of how sexually valuable they are, and act upon this belief? Is there any way you can quench my curiosity? It seems obvious that if you answer in general terms you won’t offend anyone, as meta thought doesn’t really push the emotional buttons.
PS: It has been suggested that general statements can cause worse beliefs in a group, since they’re very simplified. But there should be some way of pointing to an area of the map without degrading that region of the map.
It goes something like “Do this… No, that is the opposite of what works, do this… No, you’re manipulative and it’s unethical to say that… No, saying that it is manipulative is crazy political indoctrination… People here are Pigs… No we’re not… Yes you are, manipulative pigs… that’s not what your mom said last night.” (And somehwere in there is HughRistik writing a massive treatise. If you want to get all the best of such conversations just read through this)
There is no forbidden knowledge involved. Just search for old LW discussions on these topics, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. And yes, often the problems revolve around issues such as those you’ve mentioned. (Though I wouldn’t really agree with the way you’ve worded most of them, and there are many additional issues that are also apt to cause problems when brought up.)
Analyzing and documenting all the sources of bias and discourse breakdown that appear when these topics are discussed would be a large and fascinating project in its own right. It’s an extremely incendiary mix of ideological preconceptions and biases, personal emotional investments, urges to switch from factual discussions to moral superiority contests, signaling-driven opinions, unwillingness to face ugly truths, and so on.
Look for where people are told not to do or think things because they are evil or manipulative rather than wrong or ineffectual.
Look for people inveighing against supposedly commonly held beliefs or behaviors without citing actual examples of offenses.
While I don’t necessarily think the discussions about sex/gender/etc have been overall unproductive, I do think a lot of them end up qualifying as “talking about politics.” I don’t think it needs to be tabood completely, but I don’t think we need to encourage more of it.
However, I’ll also note that previous discussions were often specifically about PUA and/or feminism. More recent posts were about relationships without either of those topics directly connected, which may be way they had higher quality discussion. PUA/Feminism are inherently somewhat political, especially when they are viewed as opposites.
Trouble is, I can hardly see how these discussions can remain sufficiently close to reality without getting into issues where the problematic “PUA and/or feminism” stuff becomes relevant. In fact, from what I see, attempts to do so are one of the principal ways in which I observe the death spirals forming. People write things that are strong applause lights, including in response to each other, and this results in a happy death spiral whose drift away from reality could be stopped only by criticizing the assumptions behind these applause-lights assertions—but no such criticism is possible without bringing up relevant points that trigger the dreaded “PUA and/or feminism” mind-killers.
If nobody even attempts such criticism, what follows is something that may superficially look like a “higher quality discussion,” but is in fact a festival of applause lights and happy death spirals—and on the whole even worse than a quarrel, in which it’s at least clear that something’s gone badly wrong. In my honest opinion, this is in fact what has been happening.
There was one case where a well meaning poster collated a conversation and posted it as “the lesswrong consensus” on online dating advice. That was… a less than ideal turn of events.
Yes, I think I know which thread you are talking about. It was one of my major disappointments here. That was, I think, the only time I saw a mass of LW participants approving and upvoting something that was an intellectual equivalent of healing crystals. (This is not a hyperbole—I really think that the intellectual failure was of a similar magnitude, insofar as such things can be meaningfully compared.) A few people’s attempts to bring some realistic perspective ended up creating a bitter controversy, and the crystal-healing-equivalent stuff was left with a respectable net positive vote.
Which one was that? (Vague recollection of having seen that, and maybe even commented, but can’t recall the exact thread right now.)
The one I have in mind is this. This post and its comment thread, combined with the final net results of voting, in my opinion decisively refute the idea of any universally applicable “sanity waterline” that is supposedly higher on LW than elsewhere. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the collective failure of rational thinking demonstrated there was so severe that it might as well have been a happy and approving discussion of horoscopes, healing crystals, or the Mayan 2012 doomsday.
It is the prospect of such things starting to re-emerge on a regular and frequent basis that has motivated my reactions in this thread.
Is the group reading and responding to these relationship posts representative of Less Wrong? I just skip over them.
No, I wouldn’t say the group is representative, although on the other hand, it’s certainly not just a small fringe group either.
However, I don’t have in mind just people who actively contribute to such nonsense. Another problem is that similar intellectual failures about other topics would be (for the most part) correctly identified and criticized without causing bitter controversy and discourse breakdown, and a mass of other readers would also express correct judgment at least with upvotes and downvotes. So even the general passive approval is, in my opinion, indicative of bias, since such passive approval would certainly not be given to various other things that are not significantly worse by any reasonable standards.
Another bias that’s clearly visible is that when someone displays intellectual failures of similar magnitude in various other areas, this would be taken on LW as indicative of an irrational person who is altogether below the universal standards of rational thinking practiced here—whereas nothing similar occurs when it comes to these topics. Of course, I don’t think people should be written off as general intellectual failures just because they demonstrated irrationality about these topics, but it definitely should serve as a warning for those who sometimes do apply such standards in other situations.
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Arguably, they aren’t opposites, because they have significant overlap on certain dimensions. I’ve argued that a lot of pickup techniques are actually compatible with feminist values.
Then there are folks who criticize both feminism and pickup for being overly pandering to women:
http://lifestylejourney.blogspot.com/2010/02/pua-scam.html
http://aleknovy.com/2011/07/18/the-anti-game-method-if-you-hate-game-and-find-it-incompatible-with-mra-and-matriarchy-fighting/
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Well, it’s my own verdict, with which you’re welcome to agree or disagree. But even without getting into any substantive issues from these discussions, consider this. In the past, these topics have many times led to a breakdown of rational discourse. If this no longer happens, what is the more plausible explanation: that LW has somehow suddenly and collectively figured out a way to discuss these topics rationally, or that people are simply tired of the same old unproductive clashes so that nobody even bothers to challenge the happy death spirals?
If any people think it’s the former, I’d really be curious about their hypotheses on what caused this sudden change for the better.
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I wouldn’t want to point fingers at people this way even if we were talking about unambiguous and agreed-upon instances of errors, let alone in cases like this, where it would open whole cans of worms. It would look like I’m being confrontational against individuals, rather than pointing out a general problem.
On the other hand, I think it’s reasonable to ask my above question in this context. Given the previous history of discussions about this topic, what is the reason to consider the first explanation as more probable than the second? (And what would be the cause of the change assumed by the first one?)
The third alternative is to try things differently. It’s not helpful to make no effort and then ask “Have things magically changed, or will this fail?”
I like to, when possible, jump on unsubstantiated accusations and ask for evidence, rather than argue about opinions. We can make progress by better applying the norm that accusations against people on LW need evidence and examples of at least possible wrongdoing.
If the first explanation is even fairly likely, it’s worth not suggesting suppressing a topic. Greater probability is not necessary.
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Perhaps, if the baby is handed off to caring adopted parents and is freed from abusive, incompetent parents with dangerously substandard hygene practices.
(That’s how the metaphor would represent the case in which individuals were saved from learning false lessons about human relationships here and were redirected elsewhere to learn lessons that were more useful. Not necessarily a position I am taking myself today, just describing.)
Let’s wait and see.
In the sense that it is held by many who have expressed their verdict, declared their intent to avoid all future conversations on the topic then done so?
(I acknowledge ‘many’ as unsubstantiated, without caring enough to google for examples so acknowledge that those who haven’t seen said many may not take my word for it. I’d be confident with troll many at least. Maybe even lots.)
Interesting. I’ve seen some such discussions get quite bad but I’ve seen others where apparently calm rational discussion took place. It seems that sex and gender issues quickly move towards mind-killing territory but sits a bit further away than most issues normally thought of as mind-killing. So far the discussions in this thread seem well done and informative. I haven’t seen any strong evidence of any serious problems arising yet.
Trouble is, when evident mind-killing and breakdown of polite discourse occurs, it is the less bad failure mode. In that case, it is at least clear that something went wrong. The really bad failure mode is when the discussion resembles a rational discourse, but is actually a horrible happy death spiral. In such situations, the conclusions may seem rational and informative, but are in fact awfully remote from reality, or at best right in a stopped-clock sort of way—and the lack of discourse breakdown is interpreted as a successful exercise in rationality, whereas in fact it’s merely because nobody stepped in to spoil the fun by trying to draw it closer to reality. (The latter, of course, is likely to cause mind-killing and discourse breakdown, thus making the messenger look like the guilty party.)
Hence the crystal healing analogy I made in another comment, which may sound extreme but is in fact, in my opinion, quite pertinent. In both cases, a volatile mix of biases, preconceptions, wishful thinking, etc. produces entirely spurious conclusions about how the world works and how to deal with it, which are then happily accepted in a self-congratulatory way, even though the process by which they were arrived at couldn’t stand up to any intellectual scrutiny.
That’s my experience, too. I have seen progress being made in some of the discussions about gender, even though they can be frustrating. But perhaps I’m focusing on the exchanges that I was involved in.
Also the topics you are interested in. Ethical issues related to gender are of particular interest to you so a conversation being derailed to ethical considerations are less pointless to you than to some.
Let the pissing contest begin!