Is it me or neither the article nor the comments actually address the elephant in the room?
The social justice movement, as aptly said at the end of the article, is a profoundly rational, radically rational movement. Overcoming bias is a strong goal in SJ.
But the SJM faces a huge, cohrent mass of unconsciously biased people and most people in the SJM aren’t prepared as LWer could be to address the question of bias on an intellectual level. Which means that the mass of morons they face usually feel free to ridicule their vision of bias, labelling as either naive or deluded their clarity of vision.
So, the SJM is smack in the middle of Socrate’s cavern allegory. They label the shadows as shadows and people complain and react with violence (verbal or physical).
Which means that when someone in the SJM says “rationalism is bad”, us radical rationlist should automatically translate it as “the moronic attitude against overcoming bias that I face and is labelled by morons as rationalism is bad”.
Well, they’re rhetoric argues we should completely eliminate priors. Since that’s impossible (in fact incoherent) in practice they wind up making an exception for priors that look as little like priors as possible.
Not every attempt to overcome irrationality is necessarily rational. People love to “revert stupidity”. It is easier than doing their own research.
Even for a good cause, people are likely to exaggerate, because it signals their loyalty to the group. So if the society, for whatever reasons, believes that two plus two equals five, and someone says “actually, it’s four” and they become popular for saying so, immediately someone else with cry “actually, it’s three” and a lot of people will join them because they only see the pattern that the smaller number is considered more cool. Soon, someone will say “it’s zero”, and someone else will say “minus infinity”, and then perhaps the popular opinion will conclude that the minus infinity is too extreme, but the zero is probably just right.
Also there is this “motte and bailey” strategy, where among the more critically thinking people the defended version is “two plus two is less than five”—which mathematicians will admit is true, -- but among their own the battle cry is “zero! zero! zero!”. Backpedalling to “less then five” whenever necessary. (Something like people saying “feminism is simply the belief that woman are also people”, and then posting “#killallmen” on Twitter.)
Maybe you have experience with other people, but the SJ*s I have seen or read about, usually:
demand the disagreeing information to be suppressed;
believe they are “on the right side of history”, so even when they are technically wrong, they are still “right” in larger context and that’s all that matters;
have no sense of proportion and react disproportionally on every microaggression (however their own aggressions are perfectly okay; for example using a wrong pronoun or refusing to have sex with a trans person is a horrible bigotry, but having a person fired from their job because of something they said on twitter is fun);
require their members to toe the line and call out any deviance from the group norms;
insists that their various “oppression studies” are scientific and should be taught at universities, but then throw a hissy fit whenever someone tries to approach them skeptically (as should be the norm in science);
change definition of existing words to win arguments (every “X” becomes “X, but only when a white male does it”);
are unable to see individual differences and nuance (e.g. keep insisting that a starving homeless white guy is more privileged than Michelle Obama);
believe that they are the only smart and good people, so if someone refuses to join them, they must be stupid or evil.
The social justice movement, as aptly said at the end of the article, is a profoundly rational, radically rational movement.
For which value of the word “rational”?
Overcoming bias is a strong goal in SJ.
Nope. Reallocating power between social groups is a strong goal in SJ. Egalitarianism is not the same thing as overcoming bias. Besides, by “bias” LW means things like bugs in mental processing and SJ means things like harmful stereotypes. They are not at all the same.
the mass of morons they face
That’s the same mass of morons that everyone faces, right?
Which means that when someone in the SJM says “rationalism is bad”, us radical rationlist should automatically translate it as “the moronic attitude against overcoming bias that I face and is labelled by morons as rationalism is bad”.
Ah, good old doublethink. “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength”.
For a Bayesian rationality which doesn’t allow you to use previously computed priors. This is equivalent to ordinary Bayesianism, as long as you have unlimited memory and computational power.
Where do you think priors come from? Okay, some come from your evolutionary heritage. But most come from experience. If you save all your experiences, you can always recompute all your priors from scratch, given enough time.
Clearly in social justice theory, you’re not allowed to use priors, because priors are prejudice. But nothing says you’re not allowed to examine all your past experience during each encounter, and reconstruct those same priors.
Technically, the priors are the sum of the previously available information relevant to the topic.
you can always recompute all your priors from scratch
No, I can’t. I’m human. What you are saying is theoretically possible in the sense that a full AIXI machine is theoretically possible, but I fail to see any relevance to real life.
Clearly in social justice theory, you’re not allowed to use priors
On the contrary, you are expected to use very strong priors, it’s just that they have to be particular priors and derive not necessarily from previous information but rather from what you ought to believe. I haven’t noticed SJ being particularly interested in evidence.
Is it me or neither the article nor the comments actually address the elephant in the room?
The social justice movement, as aptly said at the end of the article, is a profoundly rational, radically rational movement. Overcoming bias is a strong goal in SJ.
But the SJM faces a huge, cohrent mass of unconsciously biased people and most people in the SJM aren’t prepared as LWer could be to address the question of bias on an intellectual level. Which means that the mass of morons they face usually feel free to ridicule their vision of bias, labelling as either naive or deluded their clarity of vision.
So, the SJM is smack in the middle of Socrate’s cavern allegory. They label the shadows as shadows and people complain and react with violence (verbal or physical).
Which means that when someone in the SJM says “rationalism is bad”, us radical rationlist should automatically translate it as “the moronic attitude against overcoming bias that I face and is labelled by morons as rationalism is bad”.
Except that what they mean by “bias” is much closer to what LW means by “priors” than what we mean by “bias”.
That’s a great point.
(Also, by “overcoming” they often mean “replacing with our priors”, which are full of zeroes and ones.)
Well, they’re rhetoric argues we should completely eliminate priors. Since that’s impossible (in fact incoherent) in practice they wind up making an exception for priors that look as little like priors as possible.
Not every attempt to overcome irrationality is necessarily rational. People love to “revert stupidity”. It is easier than doing their own research.
Even for a good cause, people are likely to exaggerate, because it signals their loyalty to the group. So if the society, for whatever reasons, believes that two plus two equals five, and someone says “actually, it’s four” and they become popular for saying so, immediately someone else with cry “actually, it’s three” and a lot of people will join them because they only see the pattern that the smaller number is considered more cool. Soon, someone will say “it’s zero”, and someone else will say “minus infinity”, and then perhaps the popular opinion will conclude that the minus infinity is too extreme, but the zero is probably just right.
Also there is this “motte and bailey” strategy, where among the more critically thinking people the defended version is “two plus two is less than five”—which mathematicians will admit is true, -- but among their own the battle cry is “zero! zero! zero!”. Backpedalling to “less then five” whenever necessary. (Something like people saying “feminism is simply the belief that woman are also people”, and then posting “#killallmen” on Twitter.)
Maybe you have experience with other people, but the SJ*s I have seen or read about, usually:
demand the disagreeing information to be suppressed;
believe they are “on the right side of history”, so even when they are technically wrong, they are still “right” in larger context and that’s all that matters;
have no sense of proportion and react disproportionally on every microaggression (however their own aggressions are perfectly okay; for example using a wrong pronoun or refusing to have sex with a trans person is a horrible bigotry, but having a person fired from their job because of something they said on twitter is fun);
require their members to toe the line and call out any deviance from the group norms;
insists that their various “oppression studies” are scientific and should be taught at universities, but then throw a hissy fit whenever someone tries to approach them skeptically (as should be the norm in science);
change definition of existing words to win arguments (every “X” becomes “X, but only when a white male does it”);
are unable to see individual differences and nuance (e.g. keep insisting that a starving homeless white guy is more privileged than Michelle Obama);
believe that they are the only smart and good people, so if someone refuses to join them, they must be stupid or evil.
Note that I have just listed the psychological criteria of cultish mind control here.
For which value of the word “rational”?
Nope. Reallocating power between social groups is a strong goal in SJ. Egalitarianism is not the same thing as overcoming bias. Besides, by “bias” LW means things like bugs in mental processing and SJ means things like harmful stereotypes. They are not at all the same.
That’s the same mass of morons that everyone faces, right?
Ah, good old doublethink. “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength”.
For a Bayesian rationality which doesn’t allow you to use previously computed priors. This is equivalent to ordinary Bayesianism, as long as you have unlimited memory and computational power.
Whaaaat?
Does not compute.
Where do you think priors come from? Okay, some come from your evolutionary heritage. But most come from experience. If you save all your experiences, you can always recompute all your priors from scratch, given enough time.
Clearly in social justice theory, you’re not allowed to use priors, because priors are prejudice. But nothing says you’re not allowed to examine all your past experience during each encounter, and reconstruct those same priors.
Technically, the priors are the sum of the previously available information relevant to the topic.
No, I can’t. I’m human. What you are saying is theoretically possible in the sense that a full AIXI machine is theoretically possible, but I fail to see any relevance to real life.
On the contrary, you are expected to use very strong priors, it’s just that they have to be particular priors and derive not necessarily from previous information but rather from what you ought to believe. I haven’t noticed SJ being particularly interested in evidence.
That wouldn’t statisfy them, since the recomputed priors would be the same as the “racist” priors they want to get rid off.