I completely agree: the fact that something isn’t simple and one-dimensional and perfectly unambiguous doesn’t make it completely unreal or completely useless. So, for the avoidance of doubt, if anyone says “intelligence is multidimensional and hard to measure and culturally loaded; therefore there is no such thing as intelligence” and means the Stupidest Possible Thing by that last bit rather than something subtler, then I think they’re wrong.
Incidentally, so far I think everything I have posted in this discussion has been downvoted exactly twice. I guess one is Eugine/Azathoth/VoiceOfRa; would anyone like to lay claim to the second lot? I’m curious in particular, about whether there’s any information in the downvotes beyond what I already have from Zoltan’s disagreement with me plus the fact that, duh, I’m posting non-neoreactionary opinions in a discussion of race and intelligence, so of course VoiceOfRa is going to downvote me. So: if you’re reading this and downvoted me for a reason other than seeing me as a sociopolitical enemy, you can probably improve the effectiveness of your downvote by telling me why you gave it. Thank you.
A little. At this point I’m at least 99% confident VoR is the same person flouting the ban again. I’ve not had a lot of downvotes on ancient comments lately, though, so I think he’s being a bit better behaved than in the past. (Though I find the downvote-for-political-disagreement strategy rude, and I don’t think it’s just because the practitioners I’ve noticed all have politics quite different from mine.)
For what its worth, I have not downvoted any of your posts. Although we seem to be on opposite sides of this debate, I appreciate the thoughtful disagreement my post has received..
And for what it’s worth, I thought you probably hadn’t. (Indiscriminate downvoting doesn’t tend to go hand in hand with reasoned and reasonable disagreement.)
I am skeptical that you would be more likely to leave if someone told you “I am downvoting you to get you to leave”. So if someone wants to drive you out for holding the wrong opinions, telling you why he gave it to you will not, in fact, improve its effectiveness.
Yes, that’s true. I was thinking of people who were downvoting in the hope of improving the content they see on LW rather than to get rid of me personally. But I would expect people aiming for the latter to be in the “seeing me as a sociopolitical enemy” category, and those weren’t the people I was addressing.
I completely agree: the fact that something isn’t simple and one-dimensional and perfectly unambiguous doesn’t make it completely unreal or completely useless. So, for the avoidance of doubt, if anyone says “intelligence is multidimensional and hard to measure and culturally loaded; therefore there is no such thing as intelligence” and means the Stupidest Possible Thing by that last bit rather than something subtler, then I think they’re wrong.
Incidentally, so far I think everything I have posted in this discussion has been downvoted exactly twice. I guess one is Eugine/Azathoth/VoiceOfRa; would anyone like to lay claim to the second lot? I’m curious in particular, about whether there’s any information in the downvotes beyond what I already have from Zoltan’s disagreement with me plus the fact that, duh, I’m posting non-neoreactionary opinions in a discussion of race and intelligence, so of course VoiceOfRa is going to downvote me. So: if you’re reading this and downvoted me for a reason other than seeing me as a sociopolitical enemy, you can probably improve the effectiveness of your downvote by telling me why you gave it. Thank you.
I had suddenly the same suspicion about VoR today, in a spontaneous way; has there been previous discussion of this conjecture that I missed?
A little. At this point I’m at least 99% confident VoR is the same person flouting the ban again. I’ve not had a lot of downvotes on ancient comments lately, though, so I think he’s being a bit better behaved than in the past. (Though I find the downvote-for-political-disagreement strategy rude, and I don’t think it’s just because the practitioners I’ve noticed all have politics quite different from mine.)
For what its worth, I have not downvoted any of your posts. Although we seem to be on opposite sides of this debate, I appreciate the thoughtful disagreement my post has received..
And for what it’s worth, I thought you probably hadn’t. (Indiscriminate downvoting doesn’t tend to go hand in hand with reasoned and reasonable disagreement.)
I am skeptical that you would be more likely to leave if someone told you “I am downvoting you to get you to leave”. So if someone wants to drive you out for holding the wrong opinions, telling you why he gave it to you will not, in fact, improve its effectiveness.
Yes, that’s true. I was thinking of people who were downvoting in the hope of improving the content they see on LW rather than to get rid of me personally. But I would expect people aiming for the latter to be in the “seeing me as a sociopolitical enemy” category, and those weren’t the people I was addressing.