My observations aren’t Randian in origin. At least, I haven’t read her books; I even somewhat disapprove of her, from what I know of her idiosyncrasies as a person.
I do think that this is an important topic for this group to consider, because the community is about rationality. My observation is that many commenters seem to not be realizing the proper role of empathy in our emotional spectrum, and are trying to extent their empathy to their broader environment in ways that don’t make sense.
Also, if my anti-empathy comment is being downvoted because it isn’t part of a group theme, then the pro-empathy comments should be downvoted as well, but they are not. This indicates that people vote based on what they agree with, whether it is in context or not—and not based on what is in context, and/or provides food for thought.
Also, if my anti-empathy comment is being downvoted because it isn’t part of a group theme, then the pro-empathy comments should be downvoted as well, but they are not.
This indicates you haven’t understood me: pro-empathy IS the theme here on Less Wrong. For a variety of reasons, this community tends to have ‘humanist goals’. This is considered to not be in conflict with rationality, because rationality is about achieving your goals, not choosing them. If you have a developed rational argument for why less charity would further humanist goals, there may be some interest, but much less interest if your argument seems based on a lack of humanist goals.
But the definition of “humanity” isn’t even coherent, and is actually incompatible with shades of gray that actually exist.
Until these fundamentals are thought out, there can be lots of hot air, but progress toward a goal cannot be made, as long as the goal is incoherent.
It seems to me that the type of humanism you’re talking about is based on an assumption that “other people are like me, and should therefore be just as valuable to me as I am”.
But other people, especially of different cultures and genetic heritage, have strikingly different values, strikingly different perceptions, different capacities to think, understand and create.
The differences are such that drawing the compassion line at the borders of the human race makes about as much sense as at any other arbitrary point in the biological spectrum.
I believe that, to be consistent in valuing empathy as a goal on its own, you have to have empathy with everything. I find that a laudable position. But the sad fact is, most of us here aren’t vegan, nor do even want to be. (I would be if most people were.)
People are selfish, and do not have empathy for everything. In fact, most people pretend to have empathy for the world as a whole, whereas in fact they only have empathy for the closest people around them, and perhaps not even them, when push comes to shove.
All that having been said, and the world being as selfish as it is, when you say that you’re a humanist, that you want to better the lot of other people, and that you contribute 50% of your income to charity (just as an example), you are basically saying that you’re a sucker, and that your empathic circuits are so out of control that you let other people exploit you.
Given that we are the way we are, I think a much more reasonable goal is to foster a world that shares our values, not to foster the existence of the arbitrary people who don’t share our values, but exist today.
People do to some extent vote based on what they agree with, and at least a few make no bones about that. But people also vote based on style. Based on if it feels like you are trying to learn and contribute to our learning or trying to appear superior and gain status. You look like the latter to me. And I think that you could be arguing the same things, in ways that are no less honest, and get positive karma if you just use different words.
I’m no Socrates, but focusing on style instead of essence is incorrect.
Some of the best lessons I’ve learned were from people who were using a very blunt style.
I am not trying to appear superior, nor to gain status. If I wanted that, I would not be using a style which I know is likely to antagonize. I use a blunt style at the expense of my status and for the benefit of the message, not the other way around.
You’re saying some things which I’ve considered attempting to say but have self-censored to some extent due to expecting negative karma. You aren’t necessarily saying them in exactly the way I would have tried to put it, and I don’t necessarily agree with everything you’ve been saying but I broadly agree and have been upvoting most of your recent posts.
I agree with much of what he seems trying to convey. However, in many cases, the style is far too reminiscent of political talking points. Bluntness is useful insofar as it simplifies a message to its essential meaning. Talking points corrupt that process by injecting emotional appeals and loaded terms.
Perhaps I would know better to avoid that if I was more exposed to US culture, but I am originally from Europe and I tend to abhor political wars for their vacuousness, so perhaps I’m using words in ways that reminisce of politics inadvertently.
To remove the word “politics” from my description: You seem very sure of yourself, to the point where it seems you are not taking uncertainty into account where you should be. The views you express seem to be statements about the world, as if they were facts, when discussing things like utilitarian value of certain actions, when there are competing views on the topic, and you do a disservice to the discussion by failing to mention or explain why your opinions are better than the competing theories, or even acknowledging that they are opinions.
You don’t provide the evidence; you provide a statement of “fact” in isolation, sometimes going so far as to claim special knowledge and ask the audience to do things you know very well are not going to make for an easy or quick discussion (like, “Go spend a few years in Africa.”) I found that my alarms deactivated for your response to my comment that we think probabilistically, because the claims were testable and better labeled.
I was also moved by these concerns, and find comments sharing these general traits to degrade norms of discussion (e.g. clarity, use of evidence, distinguishing between normative and descriptive claims).
Thanks Matt. I generally try to take this role because I’m aware that the character traits that allow me to do this are somewhat rare, and that the role is valuable in balance.
I’m also aware of the need to improve my skills of getting the message across, but this takes time to develop.
There is some relevant discussion of the issue of how our empathy/instinctive moral reactions conflict with efficient markets in this interview with Hayek. The whole thing is worth watching but the most relevant part of the interview to this discussion starts at 45:25. Unfortunately Vimeo does not support links directly to a timestamp so you have to wait for the video to load before jumping to the relevant point.
ETA a particularly relevant quote:
But we are up against this very strong, and in a sense justified resistance of our instincts and that’s our whole problem. A society which is efficient cannot be just. And unfortunately a society which is not efficient cannot maintain the present population of the world. So I think our instincts will have to learn. We shall perhaps for generations still be fighting the problem and fluctuating from one position to the other.
I know exactly why the majority of people do not like the kind of relative status which a free competitive society produces. But every time they try to correct this they start on a course where to apply the same principle universally destroys the whole system.
Now I think that perhaps for the next 200 years we will be fluctuating from the one direction to the other. Trying to satisfy our feeling of justice, and leading away from efficiency, finding out that in trying to cure poverty we really increase poverty, then returning to the other system, a more effective system to abolish poverty, but on a more unjust principle. And how long it will have to last before we learn to discipline our feelings I can’t predict.
My observations aren’t Randian in origin. At least, I haven’t read her books; I even somewhat disapprove of her, from what I know of her idiosyncrasies as a person.
I do think that this is an important topic for this group to consider, because the community is about rationality. My observation is that many commenters seem to not be realizing the proper role of empathy in our emotional spectrum, and are trying to extent their empathy to their broader environment in ways that don’t make sense.
Also, if my anti-empathy comment is being downvoted because it isn’t part of a group theme, then the pro-empathy comments should be downvoted as well, but they are not. This indicates that people vote based on what they agree with, whether it is in context or not—and not based on what is in context, and/or provides food for thought.
This indicates you haven’t understood me: pro-empathy IS the theme here on Less Wrong. For a variety of reasons, this community tends to have ‘humanist goals’. This is considered to not be in conflict with rationality, because rationality is about achieving your goals, not choosing them. If you have a developed rational argument for why less charity would further humanist goals, there may be some interest, but much less interest if your argument seems based on a lack of humanist goals.
But the definition of “humanity” isn’t even coherent, and is actually incompatible with shades of gray that actually exist.
Until these fundamentals are thought out, there can be lots of hot air, but progress toward a goal cannot be made, as long as the goal is incoherent.
It seems to me that the type of humanism you’re talking about is based on an assumption that “other people are like me, and should therefore be just as valuable to me as I am”.
But other people, especially of different cultures and genetic heritage, have strikingly different values, strikingly different perceptions, different capacities to think, understand and create.
The differences are such that drawing the compassion line at the borders of the human race makes about as much sense as at any other arbitrary point in the biological spectrum.
I believe that, to be consistent in valuing empathy as a goal on its own, you have to have empathy with everything. I find that a laudable position. But the sad fact is, most of us here aren’t vegan, nor do even want to be. (I would be if most people were.)
People are selfish, and do not have empathy for everything. In fact, most people pretend to have empathy for the world as a whole, whereas in fact they only have empathy for the closest people around them, and perhaps not even them, when push comes to shove.
All that having been said, and the world being as selfish as it is, when you say that you’re a humanist, that you want to better the lot of other people, and that you contribute 50% of your income to charity (just as an example), you are basically saying that you’re a sucker, and that your empathic circuits are so out of control that you let other people exploit you.
Given that we are the way we are, I think a much more reasonable goal is to foster a world that shares our values, not to foster the existence of the arbitrary people who don’t share our values, but exist today.
People do to some extent vote based on what they agree with, and at least a few make no bones about that. But people also vote based on style. Based on if it feels like you are trying to learn and contribute to our learning or trying to appear superior and gain status. You look like the latter to me. And I think that you could be arguing the same things, in ways that are no less honest, and get positive karma if you just use different words.
I hear Socrates wasn’t popular either.
I’m no Socrates, but focusing on style instead of essence is incorrect.
Some of the best lessons I’ve learned were from people who were using a very blunt style.
I am not trying to appear superior, nor to gain status. If I wanted that, I would not be using a style which I know is likely to antagonize. I use a blunt style at the expense of my status and for the benefit of the message, not the other way around.
You’re saying some things which I’ve considered attempting to say but have self-censored to some extent due to expecting negative karma. You aren’t necessarily saying them in exactly the way I would have tried to put it, and I don’t necessarily agree with everything you’ve been saying but I broadly agree and have been upvoting most of your recent posts.
I agree with much of what he seems trying to convey. However, in many cases, the style is far too reminiscent of political talking points. Bluntness is useful insofar as it simplifies a message to its essential meaning. Talking points corrupt that process by injecting emotional appeals and loaded terms.
Perhaps I would know better to avoid that if I was more exposed to US culture, but I am originally from Europe and I tend to abhor political wars for their vacuousness, so perhaps I’m using words in ways that reminisce of politics inadvertently.
To remove the word “politics” from my description: You seem very sure of yourself, to the point where it seems you are not taking uncertainty into account where you should be. The views you express seem to be statements about the world, as if they were facts, when discussing things like utilitarian value of certain actions, when there are competing views on the topic, and you do a disservice to the discussion by failing to mention or explain why your opinions are better than the competing theories, or even acknowledging that they are opinions.
You don’t provide the evidence; you provide a statement of “fact” in isolation, sometimes going so far as to claim special knowledge and ask the audience to do things you know very well are not going to make for an easy or quick discussion (like, “Go spend a few years in Africa.”) I found that my alarms deactivated for your response to my comment that we think probabilistically, because the claims were testable and better labeled.
Points taken, thank you.
I was also moved by these concerns, and find comments sharing these general traits to degrade norms of discussion (e.g. clarity, use of evidence, distinguishing between normative and descriptive claims).
Perhaps we need a post setting out these norms clearly, so we can point newcomers to it?
I would very much welcome “a brief guide on how to get taken seriously by the LW community.”
A wiki entry would probably be the appropriate solution.
As with most things, it should probably be a top-level article first and a wiki entry second...
Thanks Matt. I generally try to take this role because I’m aware that the character traits that allow me to do this are somewhat rare, and that the role is valuable in balance.
I’m also aware of the need to improve my skills of getting the message across, but this takes time to develop.
There is some relevant discussion of the issue of how our empathy/instinctive moral reactions conflict with efficient markets in this interview with Hayek. The whole thing is worth watching but the most relevant part of the interview to this discussion starts at 45:25. Unfortunately Vimeo does not support links directly to a timestamp so you have to wait for the video to load before jumping to the relevant point.
ETA a particularly relevant quote: