Of Hatewatch targeting people who oppose immigration? You realize that’s one of their tags, right?
Yes, and I searched that tag before responding, and I didn’t find people listed for doing careful cost-benefit analyses. Instead, I saw neo-Nazis and “minutemen.”
Don’t it seem odd that the only dimension on which immigration is politically relevant is personal warmth towards Hispanics?
Don’t it seem odd that ain’t what I said?
As a policy decision, it has way more impacts than that.
Duh, but your question was whether or not politicians are conducting cost-benefit analyses to arrive at their positions. They aren’t. Republicans are busy trying to figure out how to get more of the hispanic vote without “alienating the base.” Do you think the base will be alienated out of a concern for carbon emissions?
I’ll ask once more for you to answer the question you keep refusing to answer: where is the failure of rationality in inferring that Bill is a racist? Why is it that true statements cannot serve as signals for the presence of false beliefs, or why is it that that rule, if sometimes sound, is not sound in this or similar cases?
I didn’t find people listed for doing careful cost-benefit analyses. Instead, I saw neo-Nazis and “minutemen.”
Did you seriously expect the SPLC to say “this guy is an evil racist who hates immigrants, but he brings up sound, quantitative points that we ought to consider”? To the best of my knowledge, there is no American Thilo Sarrazin. Peter Brimelow might be close (and the SPLC excoriates him accordingly), but I haven’t looked for or found anything carefully quantitative by Brimelow. Similarly, Steve Sailer is worth paying attention to, but calls for cost-benefit analyses rather than doing them himself (beyond back-of-the-envelope ones).
I’ll ask once more for you to answer the question you keep refusing to answer: where is the failure of rationality in inferring that Bill is a racist?
Thank you for repeating the question; that made it clearer what you were interested in.
In my opinion, strongly caring whether or not Bill is a racist is a mistake. There are reputational concerns about associating with racists, but I think it is poor epistemic hygiene to weight those concerns highly.
Even then, supposing it were important to care whether or not Bill was a racist, I think that most people overestimate the likelihood ratio of racism vs. non-racism upon hearing a politically incorrect comment.
This is a good place to start. If you have more time, chapter IX of Mysterious Stranger is also relevant.
That made him laugh again, and he said, “Yes, I was laughing at you, because, in fear of what others might report about you, you stoned the woman when your heart revolted at the act—but I was laughing at the others, too.”
“Why?”
“Because their case was yours.”
“How is that?”
“Well, there were sixty-eight people there, and sixty-two of them had no more desire to throw a stone than you had.”
“Satan!”
“Oh, it’s true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don’t dare to assert themselves. Think of it! One kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally helps in iniquities which revolt both of them. Speaking as an expert, I know that ninety-nine out of a hundred of your race were strongly against the killing of witches when that foolishness was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics in the long ago. And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart into the harrying of a witch. And yet apparently everybody hates witches and wants them killed. Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise—perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it—and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end.
Are you saying we should deliberately handicap our estimation of racism, because even people who disagree will go along with it?
I’m saying that the question of “Is Bill a racist?” has structural similarities to “Is Bill a witch?”, both in how the question is pursued and the social consequences of the conclusion, and that tacit support of the witch-hunting apparatus because of the of the social costs of not supporting (rather than because of a genuine dislike for witches) is a group failure mode that could be avoided by conscious acknowledgement of it being a group failure mode. Further, it seems to me that rationalists with an interest in epistemic rationality should make that investment in avoiding that failure mode.
So … you’re saying you’re worried that everyone will overreact to the correct estimate of racism, because they expect everyone else to and don’t want to be excluded? I suspect I still don’t understand, since that doesn’t really sound like an epistemic failure...
Mathematically speaking, not overreacting in estimating the racism of accused people is a weak evidence for being a racist.
Both a moderate non-racist and a moderate racist have a few reasons why we should not organize witch-hunts against people who said something that can be interpreted as racism. However, the moderate racist has one additional reason for not doing that: self-interest; because the next day it could be him.
(In a different context, people who speak about right for fair trial for people accused of terrorism, are suspect of being sympathetic to terrorism. In middle ages people who spoke against killing of heretics were suspect of heresy. Etc.)
The epistemic failure would be to assume that if X is evidence for Y, it must be an overwhelming evidence.
As in: “the only reason why anyone would care about X is because they are Y.” (Common subtrope: “If you are not a criminal, you have nothing to hide from the government.”)
Sure, overreaction would be an epistemic failure—if it were genuine. But the whole point of this idea is that it’s not. It’s faked, based on correctly realizing that not overreacting is dangerous.
That’s not to say it isn’t a failure mode, just not an epistemic one. In any case, I was just curious if I had missed some relevant epistemic failure. Tapping out, unless you think there is such an additional failure and I’m just an idiot.
Did you seriously expect the SPLC to say “this guy is an evil racist who hates immigrants, but he brings up sound, quantitative points that we ought to consider”?
No. What I don’t expect is for somebody who does decent work to end up on Hatewatch. Which is what you said I should expect. Which I don’t. Because I shouldn’t. Because the stuff about immigration which ends up on Hatewatch actually tends to be in the indefensible territory.
Thank you for repeating the question; that made it clearer what you were interested in.
Good, so we’ll be answering it!
In my opinion, strongly caring whether or not Bill is a racist is a mistake. There are reputational concerns about associating with racists, but I think it is poor epistemic hygiene to weight those concerns highly.
No, we’ll be saying it’s not worth answering. Well shit.
Yes, and I searched that tag before responding, and I didn’t find people listed for doing careful cost-benefit analyses. Instead, I saw neo-Nazis and “minutemen.”
Don’t it seem odd that ain’t what I said?
Duh, but your question was whether or not politicians are conducting cost-benefit analyses to arrive at their positions. They aren’t. Republicans are busy trying to figure out how to get more of the hispanic vote without “alienating the base.” Do you think the base will be alienated out of a concern for carbon emissions?
I’ll ask once more for you to answer the question you keep refusing to answer: where is the failure of rationality in inferring that Bill is a racist? Why is it that true statements cannot serve as signals for the presence of false beliefs, or why is it that that rule, if sometimes sound, is not sound in this or similar cases?
Edit: Whoa I needed to fix some grammar.
Did you seriously expect the SPLC to say “this guy is an evil racist who hates immigrants, but he brings up sound, quantitative points that we ought to consider”? To the best of my knowledge, there is no American Thilo Sarrazin. Peter Brimelow might be close (and the SPLC excoriates him accordingly), but I haven’t looked for or found anything carefully quantitative by Brimelow. Similarly, Steve Sailer is worth paying attention to, but calls for cost-benefit analyses rather than doing them himself (beyond back-of-the-envelope ones).
Thank you for repeating the question; that made it clearer what you were interested in.
In my opinion, strongly caring whether or not Bill is a racist is a mistake. There are reputational concerns about associating with racists, but I think it is poor epistemic hygiene to weight those concerns highly.
Even then, supposing it were important to care whether or not Bill was a racist, I think that most people overestimate the likelihood ratio of racism vs. non-racism upon hearing a politically incorrect comment.
I suspect most people do, in fact, weigh this too highly, but could you articulate why?
This is a good place to start. If you have more time, chapter IX of Mysterious Stranger is also relevant.
I’m … not entirely clear why that’s relevant.
Are you saying we should deliberately handicap our estimation of racism, because even people who disagree will go along with it?
I’m saying that the question of “Is Bill a racist?” has structural similarities to “Is Bill a witch?”, both in how the question is pursued and the social consequences of the conclusion, and that tacit support of the witch-hunting apparatus because of the of the social costs of not supporting (rather than because of a genuine dislike for witches) is a group failure mode that could be avoided by conscious acknowledgement of it being a group failure mode. Further, it seems to me that rationalists with an interest in epistemic rationality should make that investment in avoiding that failure mode.
So … you’re saying you’re worried that everyone will overreact to the correct estimate of racism, because they expect everyone else to and don’t want to be excluded? I suspect I still don’t understand, since that doesn’t really sound like an epistemic failure...
Mathematically speaking, not overreacting in estimating the racism of accused people is a weak evidence for being a racist.
Both a moderate non-racist and a moderate racist have a few reasons why we should not organize witch-hunts against people who said something that can be interpreted as racism. However, the moderate racist has one additional reason for not doing that: self-interest; because the next day it could be him.
(In a different context, people who speak about right for fair trial for people accused of terrorism, are suspect of being sympathetic to terrorism. In middle ages people who spoke against killing of heretics were suspect of heresy. Etc.)
Exactly. It doesn’t sound like an epistemic failure, because it is, in fact, true.
The epistemic failure would be to assume that if X is evidence for Y, it must be an overwhelming evidence.
As in: “the only reason why anyone would care about X is because they are Y.” (Common subtrope: “If you are not a criminal, you have nothing to hide from the government.”)
Sure, overreaction would be an epistemic failure—if it were genuine. But the whole point of this idea is that it’s not. It’s faked, based on correctly realizing that not overreacting is dangerous.
That’s not to say it isn’t a failure mode, just not an epistemic one. In any case, I was just curious if I had missed some relevant epistemic failure. Tapping out, unless you think there is such an additional failure and I’m just an idiot.
No. What I don’t expect is for somebody who does decent work to end up on Hatewatch. Which is what you said I should expect. Which I don’t. Because I shouldn’t. Because the stuff about immigration which ends up on Hatewatch actually tends to be in the indefensible territory.
Good, so we’ll be answering it!
No, we’ll be saying it’s not worth answering. Well shit.