This was not about low representation being an argument for discrimination, this was about people in a field out and out admitting in huge numbers that they would blatantly discriminate against people hurting their careers because of political affiliation!
Worse they would hinder papers and research that carried ideas they don’t like for political reasons? Don’t you see how that disfigures our map of reality and turns out to be a mockery of what the scientific process should be?
And even if that would have been that argument, like it partially seems to be in say this NYT article describing the work of Dr. Haidt:
“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”
sigh
Naturally I do agree with you and in the commentary I did invoke an argument based partially on demographics that we may be similarly biased. I don’t expect there to be many conservatives on this site. I also don’t expect there being many women or poor or non-white people here either. And no fubarobfusco “non-white”, “woman” and “poor” are also not timeless or neutral.
What I do expect of people here is to work against biases against ideas that aren’t comfortable to groups they identify with!
I’m going to move my own argument out of the OP and into a separate post so people don’t confuse it with the point of the article and the primary takeaway that current socially psychology research is probably on average compromised by political bias leftward.
My argument was that similar demographics and status games here probably recreate the same problem. This compounds the progressive bias we inherit from academia.
This was not about low representation being an argument for discrimination, this was about people in a field out and out admitting in huge numbers that they would blatantly discriminate against people hurting their careers because of political affiliation!
If you want to get a job providing safety equipment for workplaces, you should probably not proclaim that you believe that workplaces are too safe. If you want to get a job as a doctor, you should probably not announce yourself as a believer in Christian Science and faith-healing. If you want to get a job as a Friendly AI researcher, you should probably not declare that you believe any AI that has been blessed by the Pope is assuredly friendly.
The common use of “conservatism” today proudly includes positions that are anti-science; as such, it is unsurprising that scientists might consider affiliation with that label to be evidence of incompetence, unseriousness, or opposition to their field. I do not see a need to introduce the hypothesis of “political bias leftward” when it is quite possible that t he scientists doing this so-called “bias” are merely taking the claimed beliefs of conservatives seriously.
The common use of “conservatism” today proudly includes positions that are anti-science
I could make the same case about “liberalism”. The difference being that since liberals have more influence in academia, they can actually force most scientists who disagree with them to keep quiet.
I want to see you do this, but unlike many things that people here are overly concerned about, this idea seems right at the heart of the mind-killing part of politics, so it would probably be best to do it outside of LessWrong.
Look at the discussion below this comment. Notice that the people trying to argue the liberal side aren’t even bothering to argue that their position is “true”, but merely that people should pretend it is for the sake of making people feel good. Call it what you want, it’s definitely anti-science.
You may note that in the thread you linked, there is a current unresolved disagreement LITERALLY BETWEEN YOU AND ME. This is clearly a problematic example when it comes to my own learning, and is the exact reason that I was interested in that example being moved outside of LessWrong; perhaps I should have additionally specified that the example would ideally come from outside of LessWrong.
My primary objection remains that it will be vastly more difficult for me to learn to identify the bias that you are indicating exists if your only examples of it appear to be personal attacks. I don’t mean to say that this is what your example is, obviously I only posted one or two comments out of dozens, but my silly little ape brain isn’t letting me consider your proposal objectively so I would like it if you could provide a different example.
I often agree with what are labeled as “liberal” positions on many issues. That doesn’t mean that anyone who identifies as “liberal” suddenly becomes a staunch friend and ally to me. When I personally am involved in a debate and do not feel that I am communicating my own point well, this is the most emotionally involved state that I regularly get into—I tend not to feel so strongly about debates between other people.
I certainly agree that I will have some degree of problems coping with a point that “attacks liberals,” but it seems like a pretty weird hypothesis to say that I will have an equal degree of difficulty seeing biases even in friends as I do in myself. Rational is far, right? And anything that involves me specifically puts me in near mode more than anything else possibly can.
Mind-killed? Yes. I will have to deal with that, I want to deal with that, that’s why I asked for examples. But equally? No way.
If you want to get a job providing safety equipment for workplaces, you should probably not proclaim that you believe that workplaces are too safe.
It looks like here you have inadvertently provided a good argument for the opposite of what you wanted. Namely, what you write applies even if your belief that workplaces are too safe is correct. (Workplaces can certainly be too safe by any reasonable metric, at least in principle. Imagine if office workers were forced to wear helmets and knee pads just in case they might trip over while walking between the cubes. Then imagine a thriving industry of office helmets, an ever expanding bureaucracy for regulating and inspecting them—and august academic experts getting grants to study them and issue recommendations for their use.)
If your stated beliefs are misaligned with the institutional incentives in the business or bureaucracy in which you work, it will indeed be very bad for your career. And what reason do you have to believe that the institutional incentives in the contemporary academia are aligned with the truth on all (or even on most) ideologically charged matters?
It looks like here you have inadvertently provided a good argument for the opposite of what you wanted.
That’s odd, it looks to me as if you’re taking a rather loose analogy in a direction somewhere away from the topic. Getting back on topic:
My point was that “conservatism” isn’t a thing — it’s a label, and that people’s responses to that label have to do with what they take it as referring to.
It’s been noted elsethread that the survey has serious problems. One of them is that it doesn’t ask what the surveyed psychologists think they are talking about when they say “conservative”. If you ask someone, “What do you think about conservatives?” you will get different answers based not only on what that person’s values are, but what they think “conservative” means.
If scientists use “conservative” to mean “a person who values religious doctrine over scientific results”, then you are ill-advised to represent yourself as “conservative” when trying to get a job from a scientist. Especially if you don’t mean that when you say “conservative”!
Note the difference between “scientists use ‘conservative’ to mean ‘a person who values religious doctrine over science’” and “scientists think that conservatives value religious doctrine over science”. The latter implies that scientists are referring to an objective class of “conservatives” whereas the former considers that scientists may not be referring to the same set of people when they say “conservative” that someone else refers to by that word.
(@_@)
This was not about low representation being an argument for discrimination, this was about people in a field out and out admitting in huge numbers that they would blatantly discriminate against people hurting their careers because of political affiliation!
Worse they would hinder papers and research that carried ideas they don’t like for political reasons? Don’t you see how that disfigures our map of reality and turns out to be a mockery of what the scientific process should be?
And even if that would have been that argument, like it partially seems to be in say this NYT article describing the work of Dr. Haidt:
sigh
Naturally I do agree with you and in the commentary I did invoke an argument based partially on demographics that we may be similarly biased. I don’t expect there to be many conservatives on this site. I also don’t expect there being many women or poor or non-white people here either. And no fubarobfusco “non-white”, “woman” and “poor” are also not timeless or neutral.
What I do expect of people here is to work against biases against ideas that aren’t comfortable to groups they identify with!
I’m going to move my own argument out of the OP and into a separate post so people don’t confuse it with the point of the article and the primary takeaway that current socially psychology research is probably on average compromised by political bias leftward.
My argument was that similar demographics and status games here probably recreate the same problem. This compounds the progressive bias we inherit from academia.
If you want to get a job providing safety equipment for workplaces, you should probably not proclaim that you believe that workplaces are too safe. If you want to get a job as a doctor, you should probably not announce yourself as a believer in Christian Science and faith-healing. If you want to get a job as a Friendly AI researcher, you should probably not declare that you believe any AI that has been blessed by the Pope is assuredly friendly.
The common use of “conservatism” today proudly includes positions that are anti-science; as such, it is unsurprising that scientists might consider affiliation with that label to be evidence of incompetence, unseriousness, or opposition to their field. I do not see a need to introduce the hypothesis of “political bias leftward” when it is quite possible that t he scientists doing this so-called “bias” are merely taking the claimed beliefs of conservatives seriously.
I could make the same case about “liberalism”. The difference being that since liberals have more influence in academia, they can actually force most scientists who disagree with them to keep quiet.
I want to see you do this, but unlike many things that people here are overly concerned about, this idea seems right at the heart of the mind-killing part of politics, so it would probably be best to do it outside of LessWrong.
Look at the discussion below this comment. Notice that the people trying to argue the liberal side aren’t even bothering to argue that their position is “true”, but merely that people should pretend it is for the sake of making people feel good. Call it what you want, it’s definitely anti-science.
You may note that in the thread you linked, there is a current unresolved disagreement LITERALLY BETWEEN YOU AND ME. This is clearly a problematic example when it comes to my own learning, and is the exact reason that I was interested in that example being moved outside of LessWrong; perhaps I should have additionally specified that the example would ideally come from outside of LessWrong.
Yes, and do you disagree with the characterization of the argument I gave above?
At least in part.
My primary objection remains that it will be vastly more difficult for me to learn to identify the bias that you are indicating exists if your only examples of it appear to be personal attacks. I don’t mean to say that this is what your example is, obviously I only posted one or two comments out of dozens, but my silly little ape brain isn’t letting me consider your proposal objectively so I would like it if you could provide a different example.
Given that you seem to be a liberal, what makes you think you won’t be equally mind-killed by the other examples?
I often agree with what are labeled as “liberal” positions on many issues. That doesn’t mean that anyone who identifies as “liberal” suddenly becomes a staunch friend and ally to me. When I personally am involved in a debate and do not feel that I am communicating my own point well, this is the most emotionally involved state that I regularly get into—I tend not to feel so strongly about debates between other people.
I certainly agree that I will have some degree of problems coping with a point that “attacks liberals,” but it seems like a pretty weird hypothesis to say that I will have an equal degree of difficulty seeing biases even in friends as I do in myself. Rational is far, right? And anything that involves me specifically puts me in near mode more than anything else possibly can.
Mind-killed? Yes. I will have to deal with that, I want to deal with that, that’s why I asked for examples. But equally? No way.
It looks like here you have inadvertently provided a good argument for the opposite of what you wanted. Namely, what you write applies even if your belief that workplaces are too safe is correct. (Workplaces can certainly be too safe by any reasonable metric, at least in principle. Imagine if office workers were forced to wear helmets and knee pads just in case they might trip over while walking between the cubes. Then imagine a thriving industry of office helmets, an ever expanding bureaucracy for regulating and inspecting them—and august academic experts getting grants to study them and issue recommendations for their use.)
If your stated beliefs are misaligned with the institutional incentives in the business or bureaucracy in which you work, it will indeed be very bad for your career. And what reason do you have to believe that the institutional incentives in the contemporary academia are aligned with the truth on all (or even on most) ideologically charged matters?
That’s odd, it looks to me as if you’re taking a rather loose analogy in a direction somewhere away from the topic. Getting back on topic:
My point was that “conservatism” isn’t a thing — it’s a label, and that people’s responses to that label have to do with what they take it as referring to.
It’s been noted elsethread that the survey has serious problems. One of them is that it doesn’t ask what the surveyed psychologists think they are talking about when they say “conservative”. If you ask someone, “What do you think about conservatives?” you will get different answers based not only on what that person’s values are, but what they think “conservative” means.
If scientists use “conservative” to mean “a person who values religious doctrine over scientific results”, then you are ill-advised to represent yourself as “conservative” when trying to get a job from a scientist. Especially if you don’t mean that when you say “conservative”!
Note the difference between “scientists use ‘conservative’ to mean ‘a person who values religious doctrine over science’” and “scientists think that conservatives value religious doctrine over science”. The latter implies that scientists are referring to an objective class of “conservatives” whereas the former considers that scientists may not be referring to the same set of people when they say “conservative” that someone else refers to by that word.
I think we have a problem of sneaking in connotations here.