Gonna try a point-by-point version in case that’s clearer.
It isn’t clear to me what this error is meant to be. If it’s something like “thinking that there must be a definite objectively-correct division of all things into bleggs and rubes” then I agree that it’s an error but it’s an error already thoroughly covered by EY’s and SA’s posts linked to in the article itself, and in any case it doesn’t seem to me that the article is mostly concerned with making that point; rather, it presupposes it.
I know from conversations elsewhere that Zack is responding to the opposite error—the claim that because the usual rule for separating Bleggs from Rubes is pragmatically motivated, it has no implications for edge cases. If you’re making wrong guesses about what political position Zack is taking, you should really reconsider your claim that it’s obvious what his political position is. This needs to be generalized, because it’s obnoxious to have to bring in completely extraneous info about motives in order to figure out whether a post like this is political. Bothering to explain this at all feels a bit like giving in to extortion, and the fact that I expect this explanation to be necessary is a further update against continued substantive engagement on Lesswrong.
In any case, it seems to me that the main point of the linked article is not to correct some epistemic error, but to propose a particular position on the political issue it’s alluding to, and that most of the details of its allegory are chosen specifically to support that aim. [...] Constructing a hypothetical situation designed to match your view of a politically contentious question and drawing readers’ attention to that matchup is not “depoliticized” in any useful sense.
This seems like a proposal to cede an untenable amount of conversation territory. If a controversial political position becomes associated with a particular epistemic error, then discussing that specific error becomes off-limits here, or at least needs to be deprecated as political. I don’t know what that results in, but it’s not a Rationalist community.
I do in fact think that Zack’s purpose in posting the article here is probably at least in part to promote the political position for which the article is arguing, and that if that isn’t so—if Zack’s intention was simply to draw our attention to a well-executed bit of epistemology—then it is likely that Zack finds it well-executed partly because of finding it politically congenial. In that sense, I do think it’s probably a “political act”.
A clear implication of Something to Protect is that people can’t be Rationalists unless getting the right answer has some practical importance to them.
The rest of your comment seems to be making a substantially wrong guess about Zack’s position on gender in a way that—to me, since I know something about Zack’s position—is pretty strong evidence that Zack succeeded in stripping out the accidental specifics and focusing on the core epistemic question. The standard you’re actually holding Zack to is one where if you—perhaps knowing already that he has some thoughts on gender—can project a vaguely related politically motivated argument onto his post, then it’s disingenuous to say it’s nonpolitical.
(I’m responding to this after already reading and replying to your earlier comment. Apologies in advance if it turns out that I’d have done better with the other one if I’d read this first...)
I’ll begin at the end. ”… perhaps knowing already that he has some thoughts on gender”. What actually happened is that I started reading the article without noticing the website’s name, got a few paragraphs in and thought “ah, OK, so this is a fairly heavy-handed allegory for some trans-related thing”, finished reading it and was fairly unimpressed, then noticed the URL. As for the author, I didn’t actually realise that Zack was the author of the linked article until the discussion here was well underway.
I think we may disagree about what constitutes strong evidence of having successfully stripped out the accidental specifics. Suppose you decide to address some controversial question obliquely. Then there are three different ways in which a reader can come to a wrong opinion about your position on the controversial question. (1) You can detach what you’re writing from your actual position on the object-level issue successfully enough that a reasonable person would be unable to figure out what your position is. (2) You can write something aimed at conveying your actual position, but do it less than perfectly. (3) You can write something aimed at conveying your actual position, and do it well, but the reader can make mistakes, or lack relevant background knowledge, and come to a wrong conclusion. It seems like you’re assuming #1. I think #2 and #3 are at least as plausible.
(As to whether I have got Zack’s position substantially wrong, it’s certainly possible that I might have, by any or all of the three mechanisms in the last paragraph. I haven’t gone into much detail on what I think Zack’s position is so of course there are also possibilities 4 and 5: that I’ve understood it right but expressed that understanding badly, or that I’ve understood and expressed it OK but you’ve misunderstood what I wrote. If you think it would be helpful, then I can try to state more clearly what I think Zack’s position is and he can let us know how right or wrong I got it. My guess is that it wouldn’t be super-helpful, for what it’s worth.)
OK, now back to the start. My reply to your other comment addresses the first point (about what alleged error Zack is responding to) and I don’t think what you’ve said here changes what I want to say about that.
On the second point (ceding too much territory) I think you’re assuming I’m saying something I’m not, namely that nothing with political implications can ever be discussed here. I don’t think I said that; I don’t believe it; I don’t think anything I said either implies or presupposes it. What I do think is (1) that Zack’s article appears to me to be mostly about the politics despite what Zack calls its “deniable allegory”, (2) that linking mostly-political things from here ought to be done in a way that acknowledges their political-ness and clarifies how they’re intended to be relevant to LW, and (3) that (in my judgement, with which of course others may disagree) this particular article, if we abstract out the political application, isn’t very valuable as a discussion of epistemology in the abstract.
I’m not sure I’ve understood what point you’re making when you reference Something to Protect; I think that again you may be taking me to be saying something more negative than I thought I was saying. At any rate, I certainly neither think nor intended to suggest that we should only talk about things of no practical importance.
Gonna try a point-by-point version in case that’s clearer.
I know from conversations elsewhere that Zack is responding to the opposite error—the claim that because the usual rule for separating Bleggs from Rubes is pragmatically motivated, it has no implications for edge cases. If you’re making wrong guesses about what political position Zack is taking, you should really reconsider your claim that it’s obvious what his political position is. This needs to be generalized, because it’s obnoxious to have to bring in completely extraneous info about motives in order to figure out whether a post like this is political. Bothering to explain this at all feels a bit like giving in to extortion, and the fact that I expect this explanation to be necessary is a further update against continued substantive engagement on Lesswrong.
This seems like a proposal to cede an untenable amount of conversation territory. If a controversial political position becomes associated with a particular epistemic error, then discussing that specific error becomes off-limits here, or at least needs to be deprecated as political. I don’t know what that results in, but it’s not a Rationalist community.
A clear implication of Something to Protect is that people can’t be Rationalists unless getting the right answer has some practical importance to them.
The rest of your comment seems to be making a substantially wrong guess about Zack’s position on gender in a way that—to me, since I know something about Zack’s position—is pretty strong evidence that Zack succeeded in stripping out the accidental specifics and focusing on the core epistemic question. The standard you’re actually holding Zack to is one where if you—perhaps knowing already that he has some thoughts on gender—can project a vaguely related politically motivated argument onto his post, then it’s disingenuous to say it’s nonpolitical.
(I’m responding to this after already reading and replying to your earlier comment. Apologies in advance if it turns out that I’d have done better with the other one if I’d read this first...)
I’ll begin at the end. ”… perhaps knowing already that he has some thoughts on gender”. What actually happened is that I started reading the article without noticing the website’s name, got a few paragraphs in and thought “ah, OK, so this is a fairly heavy-handed allegory for some trans-related thing”, finished reading it and was fairly unimpressed, then noticed the URL. As for the author, I didn’t actually realise that Zack was the author of the linked article until the discussion here was well underway.
I think we may disagree about what constitutes strong evidence of having successfully stripped out the accidental specifics. Suppose you decide to address some controversial question obliquely. Then there are three different ways in which a reader can come to a wrong opinion about your position on the controversial question. (1) You can detach what you’re writing from your actual position on the object-level issue successfully enough that a reasonable person would be unable to figure out what your position is. (2) You can write something aimed at conveying your actual position, but do it less than perfectly. (3) You can write something aimed at conveying your actual position, and do it well, but the reader can make mistakes, or lack relevant background knowledge, and come to a wrong conclusion. It seems like you’re assuming #1. I think #2 and #3 are at least as plausible.
(As to whether I have got Zack’s position substantially wrong, it’s certainly possible that I might have, by any or all of the three mechanisms in the last paragraph. I haven’t gone into much detail on what I think Zack’s position is so of course there are also possibilities 4 and 5: that I’ve understood it right but expressed that understanding badly, or that I’ve understood and expressed it OK but you’ve misunderstood what I wrote. If you think it would be helpful, then I can try to state more clearly what I think Zack’s position is and he can let us know how right or wrong I got it. My guess is that it wouldn’t be super-helpful, for what it’s worth.)
OK, now back to the start. My reply to your other comment addresses the first point (about what alleged error Zack is responding to) and I don’t think what you’ve said here changes what I want to say about that.
On the second point (ceding too much territory) I think you’re assuming I’m saying something I’m not, namely that nothing with political implications can ever be discussed here. I don’t think I said that; I don’t believe it; I don’t think anything I said either implies or presupposes it. What I do think is (1) that Zack’s article appears to me to be mostly about the politics despite what Zack calls its “deniable allegory”, (2) that linking mostly-political things from here ought to be done in a way that acknowledges their political-ness and clarifies how they’re intended to be relevant to LW, and (3) that (in my judgement, with which of course others may disagree) this particular article, if we abstract out the political application, isn’t very valuable as a discussion of epistemology in the abstract.
I’m not sure I’ve understood what point you’re making when you reference Something to Protect; I think that again you may be taking me to be saying something more negative than I thought I was saying. At any rate, I certainly neither think nor intended to suggest that we should only talk about things of no practical importance.