I actually think it does follow. Understanding what people of different races experience is, apparently, a major cognitive blind spot. For instance, lots of people think that racism was a problem forty years ago, but isn’t a problem today. But what did people forty years ago think?
Sure,we’ve probably made progress since then. But if there is still widespread discrimination, would you notice? If you read the recent post from gwern on the psychology of power, you’ll notice that this is just another application of a common set of biases.
There is, of course, also the issue of women; someone else brought up Larry Summers. Having women involved makes teams more effective—that’s instrumental rationality right there. And, of course, we have a fair number of philosophical debates here. It’s well known that women have different philosophical intuitions than men. I would not be at all surprised to learn that the same is true of people of color. As Jef Raskin notes (in a completely different context), intuitive means familiar. Having had a different set of experiences would, of course, change what is familiar. To the extent that our debates rely on intuition, perhaps without our even noticing it, it’s extremely valuable to get a different perspective.
When you link to people like VDARE, you are sending a very strong signal that you would really rather not have people of color here. Nobody likes to be part of a community where their ethnicity or gender is a reason to dismiss them as just not that smart. And this is an especially rough burden on people who are more likely to dissent from the local consensus by reason of their differing intuitions and experiences.
If you really, instrumentally, care about having people of color read Less Wrong, and you really care about coming to the correct conclusions, you ought to do what you can to make this a less unpleasant space to be around. Otherwise, you’ll be excluding a bunch of interesting people and missing a bunch of useful data, and you’ll never even notice.
By the same logic, should we stop promoting atheism since it makes religious people uncomfortable, and religious people definitely bring different perspectives?
The history is, of course, a bit different there. And religion is a matter of belief, rather than something immutable.
Finally, I am bothered by some of the discourse around religion—the sort that is merely racism by another name. I am aware of the standard arguments for the unique awfulness of Islam, but they seem to me to be related to the fundamental attribution error. The reasonable argument against religion is error theory. The rest is a waste of time.
1) People of different races provide different perspectives so we shouldn’t make them feel excluded.
Well, religious people also provide different perspectives, and this effect is much stronger for religion.
We can’t avoid the perspective of religious people, because they are the vast majority of the world. So there is no special need to make them feel welcome (nor is there a special need to make them feel unwelcome). Also, if we look at this in terms of networks of evidence, the rationality node screens off everything from religion, which is not at all true of the perspectives of women and people of color.
2) Not making people feel bad is intrinsically valuable.
This applies equally to religious people.
Have you read the comments to this? This is where the history and state of the world come in. If you are a religious person, and you are bothered by Less Wrong, hey, there’s very nearly the entire rest of the world for you to feel comfortable in. But if you are a woman and you are bothered, where can you go? There is no place on earth free of sexism.
Also, of course, some religious people are offended by the very existence of atheists who are vocal about their beliefs. It is, of course, hard to get them to admit this—usually, it is framed in terms of “tone”. But “tone” is a function of the listener as much as the speaker, and when someone’s views are being attacked, they are more likely to hear the tone of the argument as angry. Similarly, it can be hard to hear the difference between “You’re wrong”, and “You’re an idiot.”
I do think that the comments on Less Wrong sometimes go out of their way to attack religious people, and I do think that this is an error. But I don’t think you could have Less Wrong without having a population of vocal atheists. We could, however, do entirely without the vocal racism.
We can’t avoid the perspective of religious people, because they are the vast majority of the world.
Well, LW has done a remarkably good job of it.
Have you read the comments to this? This is where the history and state of the world come in. If you are a religious person, and you are bothered by Less Wrong, hey, there’s very nearly the entire rest of the world for you to feel comfortable in. But if you are a woman and you are bothered, where can you go?
Just about anywhere else given the prevalence of PC in our culture.
I actually think it does follow. Understanding what people of different races experience is, apparently, a major cognitive blind spot. For instance, lots of people think that racism was a problem forty years ago, but isn’t a problem today. But what did people forty years ago think?
“[I]n mid-August 1969, forty-four percent of whites told a Newsweek/Gallup National Opinion Survey that blacks had a better chance than they did to get a good paying job—two times as many as said they would have a worse chance?.
Sure,we’ve probably made progress since then. But if there is still widespread discrimination, would you notice? If you read the recent post from gwern on the psychology of power, you’ll notice that this is just another application of a common set of biases.
There is, of course, also the issue of women; someone else brought up Larry Summers. Having women involved makes teams more effective—that’s instrumental rationality right there. And, of course, we have a fair number of philosophical debates here. It’s well known that women have different philosophical intuitions than men. I would not be at all surprised to learn that the same is true of people of color. As Jef Raskin notes (in a completely different context), intuitive means familiar. Having had a different set of experiences would, of course, change what is familiar. To the extent that our debates rely on intuition, perhaps without our even noticing it, it’s extremely valuable to get a different perspective.
When you link to people like VDARE, you are sending a very strong signal that you would really rather not have people of color here. Nobody likes to be part of a community where their ethnicity or gender is a reason to dismiss them as just not that smart. And this is an especially rough burden on people who are more likely to dissent from the local consensus by reason of their differing intuitions and experiences.
If you really, instrumentally, care about having people of color read Less Wrong, and you really care about coming to the correct conclusions, you ought to do what you can to make this a less unpleasant space to be around. Otherwise, you’ll be excluding a bunch of interesting people and missing a bunch of useful data, and you’ll never even notice.
I will consider your post.
By the same logic, should we stop promoting atheism since it makes religious people uncomfortable, and religious people definitely bring different perspectives?
The history is, of course, a bit different there. And religion is a matter of belief, rather than something immutable.
Finally, I am bothered by some of the discourse around religion—the sort that is merely racism by another name. I am aware of the standard arguments for the unique awfulness of Islam, but they seem to me to be related to the fundamental attribution error. The reasonable argument against religion is error theory. The rest is a waste of time.
I don’t see what either of those have to do with your stated reasons.
Near as I can tell your arguments are:
1) People of different races provide different perspectives so we shouldn’t make them feel excluded.
Well, religious people also provide different perspectives, and this effect is much stronger for religion.
2) Not making people feel bad is intrinsically valuable.
This applies equally to religious people.
We can’t avoid the perspective of religious people, because they are the vast majority of the world. So there is no special need to make them feel welcome (nor is there a special need to make them feel unwelcome). Also, if we look at this in terms of networks of evidence, the rationality node screens off everything from religion, which is not at all true of the perspectives of women and people of color.
Have you read the comments to this? This is where the history and state of the world come in. If you are a religious person, and you are bothered by Less Wrong, hey, there’s very nearly the entire rest of the world for you to feel comfortable in. But if you are a woman and you are bothered, where can you go? There is no place on earth free of sexism.
Also, of course, some religious people are offended by the very existence of atheists who are vocal about their beliefs. It is, of course, hard to get them to admit this—usually, it is framed in terms of “tone”. But “tone” is a function of the listener as much as the speaker, and when someone’s views are being attacked, they are more likely to hear the tone of the argument as angry. Similarly, it can be hard to hear the difference between “You’re wrong”, and “You’re an idiot.”
I do think that the comments on Less Wrong sometimes go out of their way to attack religious people, and I do think that this is an error. But I don’t think you could have Less Wrong without having a population of vocal atheists. We could, however, do entirely without the vocal racism.
Well, LW has done a remarkably good job of it.
Just about anywhere else given the prevalence of PC in our culture.
If the prevalence of PC were actually sufficient for women to feel comfortable, we wouldn’t have blogs like this.