Do you predict, then, that if you put a person in a group where every other person disapproves more of attempts to dodge the question than to provide either answer, and makes this known,then they will never refuse to answer the question on its own terms?
Also, what makes you believe that providing an answer will lead to negative repercussions? I’ve participated in more discussions of this topic than I could reasonably hope to count, never refused to provide my own answer, and have never observed others to revise their behavior towards me as a result. I can imagine how it might have negative repercussions for a person to provide an answer, but I’ve never known it to happen to anyone to a significant enough degree that they’d notice. It’s possible that signaling accounts for some of these cases, but I think you’re generalizing your own attitude to the entire population in a situation where it really doesn’t apply.
I think you’re generalizing your own attitude to the entire population
Excuse me? The opposite is closer to the truth. I’ve realised that my own attitude to interpreting things primarily in the abstract isn’t universal. Even a minority of people who use verbal symbols primarily politically is enough to warrant caution.
Then I’ll ask again whether you predict that in a group where everyone else projected disapproval of attempts to dodge the question, nobody would refuse to answer the question on its own terms. This should not be that hard to test; with a few Less Wrong collaborators, we should at least be able to carry it out in online form.
You could certainly engineer a circumstance in which answering questions about hypothetical lose-lose scenarios is considered better than avoiding them, e.g. philosophical discussion of hypothetical lose-lose scenarios. However, your original post does not restrict itself to these scenarios, but generalises to everyone who doesn’t want to play that game, with no apparent understanding of the practical reasons people here are trying to explain to you for why people might very sensibly not want to play that game.
Not to speak for wedrifid, but I agree with their main point, and I would not predict this.
What I would predict is that fewer people in such a group would dodge the question (and those that did would dodge it less strenuously) than in a group where everyone projected disapproval of throwing people under trolleys.
I would further predict that the reduction in dodging (DR) would be proportional to how confident the subject was that the group really did disapprove more of dodging the question than of throwing people under trolleys… that is, that the group wasn’t lying, and that he wasn’t misinterpreting the group norm. Given that priors strongly suggest the opposite—that is, given that most groups are more opposed to throwing people under trolleys than avoiding a question—I would expect obtaining significant confidence to be nontrivial.
Relatedly, I predict that DR would be proportional to how certain the subject was that their answer would be kept confidential.
By the way, as long as we’re doing this exercise, I’d also predict that people who don’t dodge the question in normal settings, but rather claim they’d throw someone under the train, are more likely to be contrarian in general—that is, I’d expect that to correlate well with making other controversial claims. This is even more true for people who often bring up trolley problems in ordinary conversation.
I would further predict that the reduction in dodging (DR) would be proportional to how
confident the subject was that the group really did disapprove more of dodging the
question than of throwing people under trolleys…
Seriously? Well, sure. I for one would not dodge the question then, in case they would throw me under a trolley for it. :)
Do you predict, then, that if you put a person in a group where every other person disapproves more of attempts to dodge the question than to provide either answer, and makes this known, then they will never refuse to answer the question on its own terms?
I predict this will have a large effect on the number who refuse to answer the question, increasing with the closeness of the peer group and the level of disapproval. Enough to flip 75% nonresponse to 25% nonresponse or something like that.
Do you predict, then, that if you put a person in a group where every other person disapproves more of attempts to dodge the question than to provide either answer, and makes this known,then they will never refuse to answer the question on its own terms?
Also, what makes you believe that providing an answer will lead to negative repercussions? I’ve participated in more discussions of this topic than I could reasonably hope to count, never refused to provide my own answer, and have never observed others to revise their behavior towards me as a result. I can imagine how it might have negative repercussions for a person to provide an answer, but I’ve never known it to happen to anyone to a significant enough degree that they’d notice. It’s possible that signaling accounts for some of these cases, but I think you’re generalizing your own attitude to the entire population in a situation where it really doesn’t apply.
Excuse me? The opposite is closer to the truth. I’ve realised that my own attitude to interpreting things primarily in the abstract isn’t universal. Even a minority of people who use verbal symbols primarily politically is enough to warrant caution.
Then I’ll ask again whether you predict that in a group where everyone else projected disapproval of attempts to dodge the question, nobody would refuse to answer the question on its own terms. This should not be that hard to test; with a few Less Wrong collaborators, we should at least be able to carry it out in online form.
You could certainly engineer a circumstance in which answering questions about hypothetical lose-lose scenarios is considered better than avoiding them, e.g. philosophical discussion of hypothetical lose-lose scenarios. However, your original post does not restrict itself to these scenarios, but generalises to everyone who doesn’t want to play that game, with no apparent understanding of the practical reasons people here are trying to explain to you for why people might very sensibly not want to play that game.
Not to speak for wedrifid, but I agree with their main point, and I would not predict this.
What I would predict is that fewer people in such a group would dodge the question (and those that did would dodge it less strenuously) than in a group where everyone projected disapproval of throwing people under trolleys.
I would further predict that the reduction in dodging (DR) would be proportional to how confident the subject was that the group really did disapprove more of dodging the question than of throwing people under trolleys… that is, that the group wasn’t lying, and that he wasn’t misinterpreting the group norm. Given that priors strongly suggest the opposite—that is, given that most groups are more opposed to throwing people under trolleys than avoiding a question—I would expect obtaining significant confidence to be nontrivial.
Relatedly, I predict that DR would be proportional to how certain the subject was that their answer would be kept confidential.
By the way, as long as we’re doing this exercise, I’d also predict that people who don’t dodge the question in normal settings, but rather claim they’d throw someone under the train, are more likely to be contrarian in general—that is, I’d expect that to correlate well with making other controversial claims. This is even more true for people who often bring up trolley problems in ordinary conversation.
Seriously? Well, sure. I for one would not dodge the question then, in case they would throw me under a trolley for it. :)
I predict this will have a large effect on the number who refuse to answer the question, increasing with the closeness of the peer group and the level of disapproval. Enough to flip 75% nonresponse to 25% nonresponse or something like that.