the idea that IQ is general intelligence and the gap is genetic
It’s often a good idea to point directly to statements people have made. This is particularly true when the claim is about “LessWrong itself”. If an idea is common, one can surely find multiple people espousing or assuming it, and if the idea is part of the LW consensus, that would be reflected in comments to the cited sources.
If an idea is common, one can surely find multiple people espousing or assuming it, and if the idea is part of the LW consensus, that would be reflected in comments to the cited sources.
There is probably a difference in IQ between different groups with any significant historical causal relationship between the members. Race certainly qualifies. It would be astounding if some difference between the IQ of various races was not present. I don’t know or particularly care which groups are higher than other groups.
EDIT: If the meaning isn’t clear I was just reassuring lessdazed that lesswrong does, in fact, have examples of people accepting that prior to any observations of any race we should expect there to be some degree of genetically based IQ difference between races or genetically related populations. Since it was links to examples that were requested not examples themselves I fulfilled the technicality with a wry self-reference. This was not intended to offend anyone or suggest anything about anything anyone had said beyond answering lessdazed’s request.
I’m not sure that phrased that way that Jandila necessarily will disagree with you that much.
I’m curious which of the following statements you agree with and which Jandila agrees with:
It is likely that there are genes in the human gene pool which effectively code for tendencies in IQ and are not fixed throughout all humans, and where the non-fixed versions aren’t things that lead to what is normally classed as mental retardation or something similar.
It is likely that some of those genes either through causal historical issues, or random drift and founder effects are distributed through different human populations in different ways, where populations in question include various groups often classified as “ethnic” or “racial” groups.
There are groups in society which have been historically mistreated and may still be mistreated. This can lead to environmental impacts on IQ. Similarly, different cultures have different norms about learning, test-taking and child-raising that can with a decent probability impact IQ.
I suspect that both of you will agree on all three of those points. I suspect more disagreement is really occurring on how 2 and 3 interact implicitly. In particular, Jandila believes that the environmental issues likely swamp any genetic effect. Moreover, there’s an apparent disagreement in whether IQ is an effective proxy for the general notion of “intelligence”.
I’m also going to use this to interject from minor factual issue that may be relevant: In multiple cultures where there is a minority that has been historically persecuted, the minority does not do as well on many forms of tests. One example that will likely be not mindkilling for most English speakers are the Ainu in Japan. Why this pattern exists is a distinct issue but this data point does seem to be relevant.
I’m not sure that phrased that way that Jandila necessarily will disagree with you that much.
I disagree on the word ‘the’. It’s a surprisingly big deal—for me at least. It may be a disagreement that is significantly influenced by mere careless presentation of ideas but then I think details of communication are what Jandila’s comment was most criticized for by others too.
I haven’t looked closely with what Jandila has said beyond that which is quoted by lessdazed. I’m not especially interested in Stephanie Grace. I did follow the ‘Lynching’ link and learned all sorts of things about various forms of vigilante social sanction. Then some interesting facts about bitumen and pine tar (via the association with feathers).
Ah yes, that makes sense. I get the feeling that a lot of the arguments occurring here are over view clusters rather than actual views. No one for example has stated explicitly that the “racial group X” has more or less genetic intelligence in this thread, but given the discussion in the thread about Stephanie Grace and others it isn’t unreasonable to suspect that that’s only marginally below the surface.
No one for example has stated explicitly that the “racial group X” has more or less genetic intelligence in this thread
I’ve been told Jews are smarter on average than most races. But I was told that by Jews so it is conceivable that self serving bias could apply. I mention this because if what the pop-theory suggested was accurate (not something I would particularly support) it would be a case where environmental pressures and all sorts of discrimination of a specific group of people actually increased relative IQ.
Tangent: The data is actually about Ashkenazic Jews only. The result is consistent across a wide range of tests, including not just IQ but also Wonderlic and others. It is deeply unclear if this is due to environmental, genetic or other effects. There’s also been some suggestion that the Ashkenazic population for some reason has a lot of outliers that are what is actually causing the result. There’s a disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners who fit in that category. However, it is important to note that Ashkenazic Jews are one of the most widely studied groups in the world when it comes to genetics and so far no alleles that seem to have to do with intelligence have been discovered in the population.
I think that, for many centuries, the Ashkenazi environment rewarded establishing a rigid social structure that studies and followed strict rules (preventing assimilation), but selected very strongly for individuals that could step outside the status quo at the right time. I can see how that would lead to Nobel prize winners.
Given the time scale involved, it doesn’t seem like genetic selection could change more than how well you integrate successful memes. Some anecdotes from my own genealogy about relevant selection pressures:
Marriages were usually arranged by parents to get the best possible match. My great, great grandfather was wealthy for the village they were in. When he needed a husband for his daughter, he asked around for the most promising yeshiva student, and gave him a ten year stipend to continue study for marrying her (apparently the standard was more like 2 years).
When Poland got jumped, my grandparents ended up on the Soviet side of the line. My grandmother went back to the Nazi side twice to try to convince her friends and family that they had a better chance of surviving with the Soviets, but they didn’t want to leave the cities to go somewhere unknown. They were all trapped in the Ghetto system, and liquidated within four years.
My grandfather escaped the soviets twice—the first time, he noticed that his transport train was picking up stowaways who would jump off around curves (turned out they were farmers who lived near the tracks but not a station), and he just pretended to be one of them while everyone else stayed on the train to Siberia. The second time he drank all night with the guards, and convinced them that they would never get in trouble for letting him go to find his wife. Shortly after his third capture, Hitler double-crossed Stalin, and all the Poles were released to go fight the Germans. He always said that you need an escape plan for everything in life, and refused to enter any room with only one exit.
My grandfather escaped the soviets twice—the first time, he noticed that his transport train was picking up stowaways who would jump off around curves (turned out they were farmers who lived near the tracks but not a station), and he just pretended to be one of them while everyone else stayed on the train to Siberia. The second time he drank all night with the guards, and convinced them that they would never get in trouble for letting him go to find his wife. Shortly after his third capture, Hitler double-crossed Stalin, and all the Poles were released to go fight the Germans. He always said that you need an escape plan for everything in life, and refused to enter any room with only one exit.
He emigrated to Israel in 1948 with a wife, two kids, and no money. He worked as a day laborer, claiming various construction skills to whoever pulled up and asked. One time he claimed he was a plumber in the old country, and spent two days installing an outdoor toilet. He finally saved up enough to buy a small grocery, so that he could run his own business. He walked out back after buying the place to find—the outhouse he had built years before.
He was definitely a badass, but the cancer was pretty far along by the time I knew him and I didn’t speak Hebrew.
There’s also been some suggestion that the Ashkenazic population for some reason has a lot of outliers that are what is actually causing the result.
That does not seem to me a very plausible suggestion. Outliers could explain the Nobel prizes, but would not affect the mean, which is measured to be different. It is conceivable that some non-gaussian distribution would explain both, but larger populations that have been studied in more detail exhibit bell curves, or at least thin tails (ie, not affecting the mean).
However, it is important to note that Ashkenazic Jews are one of the most widely studied groups in the world when it comes to genetics and so far no alleles that seem to have to do with intelligence have been discovered in the population.
This fact alone leads me to think that the most parsimonious explanation is just that Ashkenazi Jews have a cultural tradition of scholarship, whereas public-school culture in the English-speaking world is often starkly anti-intellectual. If we’ve turned over the genetic rock and had a good look under it without finding anything interesting, we should update to think it more likely that the explanation is under a different rock.
Confused. Your link seems to go to this post itself.
In fact it goes specifically to the comment itself. And the comment itself contains an example of that which is required in such a link. Fancy that. ;)
Technically impressive. Unamusing given the serious nature of what is being discussed and the fairly obnoxious way this apparently expresses a point in a passive-aggressive way that is on the passive enough side that it isn’t fully clear what the point is. This damages the signal to noise ratio.
(ETA: Ah, you made the comment in two edits so you’d know the comments permanent link. Clever.)
(ETA: In case it isn’t clear, the more controversial an issue the more reason to try not to be a dick if the conversation has a remote chance of being productive.)
Passive aggressive? Obnoxious? WHAT? I gave an example of the kind requested so that whatever conversation may be taking place wouldn’t be derailed by “Where are your links?” demands. It gives confirmation that people (or, technically, at least one person) understands basic probability and how to form priors. ie. There are differences in traits between different populations, IQ is a trait.
Obnoxious? WHAT? I gave an example of the kind requested
Downvoted—yes, obnoxious, because you could have just said “this comment here”, but you sought to amuse yourself by providing a link that leads back to itself and thus obfuscating, and when tensions are high, amusing yourself and not communicating clearly sends all the wrong signals that you are disrespecting the other person.
Passive aggressive? Obnoxious? WHAT? I gave an example of the kind so that whatever conversation wouldn’t be derailed by “Where are your links?” demands.
The implied point seems to be some sort of claim that the type of statement had not been made in the thread up to that point. Rather than asserting that explicitly or even just upvoting lessdazed’s remark you made it harder for people to wade through this conversation.
This is the second time you have leveled that charge at me inappropriately in the last few days.
Most humans will generally not be very good evaluators of whether their comments contribute well to signal/noise issues. So the assertion that they are inappropriate isn’t that helpful. Although the fact that your earlier comment where I did make that remark is currently at +2 tentatively suggests that more people than not disagree with my assessment in that context. In that context, it does strongly look like you were using inflammatory language whether or not you realized that it would be so.
I can only assume it is personal (and passive aggressive) because otherwise it makes no sense.
It isn’t personal. Until you pointed it out I didn’t even remember that my other comment in the context of the SMBC cartoon was to you. I suppose it could have been occurring in some sort of back of my mind, but I don’t think so. Also, I don’t think there’s anything that passive aggressive about those sorts of remarks, I’d consider my comments to be missing the “passive” bit and being pretty aggressive statements of noting when things are not helpful for rational discussion here.
But if you want even more blunt I can do so: You are coming across as a dick. Your earlier “pussy” remark made you come across as a sexist dick. When one is having a conversation about a controversial issue involving sex and gender issues it is generally a good idea to not come across as a sexist dick because it will a) emotionally inflame people who don’t agree with you and make them less likely to listen to you and b) turn away from Less Wrong people who might otherwise be interested in seeing what Less Wrong is about.
In general, calm interaction is better than hot interaction. Explicitly stated points are better than implicit and vague points. Polite statements are better than uncivil statements. I’ve been repeatedly tempted to go through most of this thread and just downvote everyone for making Less Wrong resemble the areas of the internet I try to avoid. It is very clear that the issues being touched on here are mindkillers for many people, and that the karma scores involved reflect to a large extent which mindkilled tribalistic groups happen to have more people around here not in any substantial way a reflection of the arguments (except to a very weak level). None of these are good things. You are, along with other people, acting in a way that makes these problems more, not less extreme. None of this is good if one is trying to actually have rational dialogue.
You are coming across as a dick. Your earlier “pussy” remark made you come across as a sexist dick.
It just occurred to me now and I don’t believe I missed the irony when reading the first time. I don’t want to imply I consider this to be particularly offensive (well, except the part where you called me a dick) but do you realize that you called me a dick both earlier (about something unrelated) and also here because I used a word for genitalia as a negative descriptor?
Yes, I did realize that. (Although note that I didn’t say you are a dick, I said you were coming across as a dick. These aren’t the same thing.) Two issues guided that word choice: First, it was an attempt (possibly a poor one) to speak in a language closer to the sort you were using so the point might come across better. Second, in this particular context, the relevant point is that in a highly male environment you were using a negative term for the genitalia of the other gender. That said, neither of these were probably very good arguments. While one could potentially argue that in our society “dick” is more gender neutral as an negative term than “pussy”, that argument seems to be more of a rationalization than a genuinely useful argument. I suspect that there may have also been some degree of priming occurring given that I had earlier today had a conversation with a female homo sapiens who expressed disinterest in Less Wrong because it “looked like a sausage-fest” (and also apparently that this thread as well as some of the other relationship related threads were “creepy”). Some amount of Phil Plait’s speech was also floating around. But even that is an explanation more than a good reason. So I’ll just say that I was aware of what I was doing, made a conscious decision to do so, but in retrospect had poor reasons for doing it.
It should also mention that judgement about whether something is subject to to Rule 1 interpretation should be particularly suspect. Recursive inclusiveness is implicit. For this reason It is also a charge nearly impossible to defend oneself from directly.
The implied point seems to be some sort of claim that the type of statement had not been made in the thread up to that point.
That wasn’t the point at all, as far as I can tell. The point seemed to be that wedrifid was volunteering to be a representative of the point of view in question (while engaging in some nonverbal humor of the sort that is only possible in online forums).
Your [wedrifid’s] earlier “pussy” remark made you come across as a sexist dick.
Did you forget to update on the new information that was provided?
That wasn’t the point at all, as far as I can tell.
Yes, I think reasonable individuals can read the statement differently. I suspect that my reading was on the more negative end of the spectrum, and I do have to wonder what primed me to think of it, and I don’t have a good explanation for that. That said, it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable interpretation. It seems that the difficulty of reading what other humans mean in a text medium is really quite difficult. While this is a known fact, I apparently don’t compensate for it as well as I should. That said, I suspect that I am very likely not the only person who read the comment in the way I read it.
Did you forget to update on the new information that was provided to you?
No. I did update, but see elsewhere in this subthread where I discussed the relevance of that remark.
I downvoted that comment for confusing levels, not for inappropriate language. Maybe other downvotes are attributable to that problem with it. Maybe upvotes are in spite of the language. Hard to tell.
That’s a good point. I’m making a bad assumption that other humans will focus on the same issues in a comment that I will especially when it is long and contains a variety of different points.
Note: JoshuaZ must have caught the comment before I removed the part replying to ‘signal to noise’ (and the second two quotes are selected from that part). While I would stand by everything I said there would accomplish anything useful. I did not wish to edit the history of the conversation to distort the flow or to leave the parent making no sense—more to prevent the conversation altogether.
You are coming across as a dick. Your earlier “pussy” remark made you come across as a sexist dick.
I had hoped the reply to you by komponisto would have resolved that feeling for you. It came with a wikipedia link!
I had hoped the reply to you by komponisto would have resolved that feeling for you. It came with a wikipedia link!
Komponisto’s comment there and the ensuing discussion was etymologically fascinating. I doubt the vast majority of readers were already aware of the relevant etymology (indeed, you were unaware of the etymology). Remember, rationalists should win. If something has a connotation that is likely to be extremely distracting and trigger strong emotional reactions, then using the excuse that a sufficiently intelligent, educated and rational reader would not have that reaction is not helpful.
I think, incidentally, that one of the issues that may be occurring in our disagreement of how your remarks contributed to the signal/noise is what constitutes signal and noise. In particular, it is possible that I’m using a broader notion of what information is being conveyed in some sense, so I consider emotional triggers to be noise even if they aren’t denotatively part of a message.
It’s not that it’s impossible that there are signficant gaps clustering around race (indeed, it seems pretty straightforward and established that this is the case)...the gap is genetic
That was describing the measured gap in which certain race clusters are measured at higher IQs than others.
wedrifid said:
It would be astounding if some difference between the IQ of various races was not present.
This is a point that I have made several times, but that does not qualify as a counterexample because it is not the claim that is supposedly consensus on LW.
I don’t know or particularly care which groups are higher than other groups.
One of the straw men in Jandila’s argument was that the specific measured gaps in IQ scores among racial groups was caused primarily by genetics (that is reading charitably, for a very plausible interpretation is that the supposed belief is that it is exclusively caused by genetics, which is just silly). As you claim not to know “which groups are higher than other groups,” you did not find an example supporting the argument.
I agree with your point entirely and hope my comment is not taken as support of whatever Jandila is saying. I meant only to give a prototypical example of what people (including myself) do actually say on the subject. As you no doubt picked up I was careful to avoid what would be an absurd claim—that genetics was the only factor and even the merely controversial claims about which way such genetic factors would be an influence.
I unequivocally affirm the use of my testimony about what credible lesswrongians have tended to say now or in the past as evidence in support of your argument. :)
Tangent: I’m actually not sure which way the intelligence difference would go between Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens. Michael Vassar actually boasts that he may have saved the world by convincing a genetic biologist to stop trying to go all “Jurassic Park” on Neanderthal DNA. After all they are an apex predator that have comparable intelligence to us and could plausibly be more intelligent in some aspects.
It’s often a good idea to point directly to statements people have made. This is particularly true when the claim is about “LessWrong itself”. If an idea is common, one can surely find multiple people espousing or assuming it, and if the idea is part of the LW consensus, that would be reflected in comments to the cited sources.
Ooh, here we go, I found one.
EDIT: If the meaning isn’t clear I was just reassuring lessdazed that lesswrong does, in fact, have examples of people accepting that prior to any observations of any race we should expect there to be some degree of genetically based IQ difference between races or genetically related populations. Since it was links to examples that were requested not examples themselves I fulfilled the technicality with a wry self-reference. This was not intended to offend anyone or suggest anything about anything anyone had said beyond answering lessdazed’s request.
I’m not sure that phrased that way that Jandila necessarily will disagree with you that much.
I’m curious which of the following statements you agree with and which Jandila agrees with:
It is likely that there are genes in the human gene pool which effectively code for tendencies in IQ and are not fixed throughout all humans, and where the non-fixed versions aren’t things that lead to what is normally classed as mental retardation or something similar.
It is likely that some of those genes either through causal historical issues, or random drift and founder effects are distributed through different human populations in different ways, where populations in question include various groups often classified as “ethnic” or “racial” groups.
There are groups in society which have been historically mistreated and may still be mistreated. This can lead to environmental impacts on IQ. Similarly, different cultures have different norms about learning, test-taking and child-raising that can with a decent probability impact IQ.
I suspect that both of you will agree on all three of those points. I suspect more disagreement is really occurring on how 2 and 3 interact implicitly. In particular, Jandila believes that the environmental issues likely swamp any genetic effect. Moreover, there’s an apparent disagreement in whether IQ is an effective proxy for the general notion of “intelligence”.
I’m also going to use this to interject from minor factual issue that may be relevant: In multiple cultures where there is a minority that has been historically persecuted, the minority does not do as well on many forms of tests. One example that will likely be not mindkilling for most English speakers are the Ainu in Japan. Why this pattern exists is a distinct issue but this data point does seem to be relevant.
I disagree on the word ‘the’. It’s a surprisingly big deal—for me at least. It may be a disagreement that is significantly influenced by mere careless presentation of ideas but then I think details of communication are what Jandila’s comment was most criticized for by others too.
I haven’t looked closely with what Jandila has said beyond that which is quoted by lessdazed. I’m not especially interested in Stephanie Grace. I did follow the ‘Lynching’ link and learned all sorts of things about various forms of vigilante social sanction. Then some interesting facts about bitumen and pine tar (via the association with feathers).
Sorry, which use of “the” are you referring to?
see
Ah yes, that makes sense. I get the feeling that a lot of the arguments occurring here are over view clusters rather than actual views. No one for example has stated explicitly that the “racial group X” has more or less genetic intelligence in this thread, but given the discussion in the thread about Stephanie Grace and others it isn’t unreasonable to suspect that that’s only marginally below the surface.
I’ve been told Jews are smarter on average than most races. But I was told that by Jews so it is conceivable that self serving bias could apply. I mention this because if what the pop-theory suggested was accurate (not something I would particularly support) it would be a case where environmental pressures and all sorts of discrimination of a specific group of people actually increased relative IQ.
Tangent: The data is actually about Ashkenazic Jews only. The result is consistent across a wide range of tests, including not just IQ but also Wonderlic and others. It is deeply unclear if this is due to environmental, genetic or other effects. There’s also been some suggestion that the Ashkenazic population for some reason has a lot of outliers that are what is actually causing the result. There’s a disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners who fit in that category. However, it is important to note that Ashkenazic Jews are one of the most widely studied groups in the world when it comes to genetics and so far no alleles that seem to have to do with intelligence have been discovered in the population.
I think that, for many centuries, the Ashkenazi environment rewarded establishing a rigid social structure that studies and followed strict rules (preventing assimilation), but selected very strongly for individuals that could step outside the status quo at the right time. I can see how that would lead to Nobel prize winners.
Given the time scale involved, it doesn’t seem like genetic selection could change more than how well you integrate successful memes. Some anecdotes from my own genealogy about relevant selection pressures:
Marriages were usually arranged by parents to get the best possible match. My great, great grandfather was wealthy for the village they were in. When he needed a husband for his daughter, he asked around for the most promising yeshiva student, and gave him a ten year stipend to continue study for marrying her (apparently the standard was more like 2 years).
When Poland got jumped, my grandparents ended up on the Soviet side of the line. My grandmother went back to the Nazi side twice to try to convince her friends and family that they had a better chance of surviving with the Soviets, but they didn’t want to leave the cities to go somewhere unknown. They were all trapped in the Ghetto system, and liquidated within four years.
My grandfather escaped the soviets twice—the first time, he noticed that his transport train was picking up stowaways who would jump off around curves (turned out they were farmers who lived near the tracks but not a station), and he just pretended to be one of them while everyone else stayed on the train to Siberia. The second time he drank all night with the guards, and convinced them that they would never get in trouble for letting him go to find his wife. Shortly after his third capture, Hitler double-crossed Stalin, and all the Poles were released to go fight the Germans. He always said that you need an escape plan for everything in life, and refused to enter any room with only one exit.
Your grandfather sounds like a badass.
He emigrated to Israel in 1948 with a wife, two kids, and no money. He worked as a day laborer, claiming various construction skills to whoever pulled up and asked. One time he claimed he was a plumber in the old country, and spent two days installing an outdoor toilet. He finally saved up enough to buy a small grocery, so that he could run his own business. He walked out back after buying the place to find—the outhouse he had built years before.
He was definitely a badass, but the cancer was pretty far along by the time I knew him and I didn’t speak Hebrew.
That does not seem to me a very plausible suggestion. Outliers could explain the Nobel prizes, but would not affect the mean, which is measured to be different. It is conceivable that some non-gaussian distribution would explain both, but larger populations that have been studied in more detail exhibit bell curves, or at least thin tails (ie, not affecting the mean).
This fact alone leads me to think that the most parsimonious explanation is just that Ashkenazi Jews have a cultural tradition of scholarship, whereas public-school culture in the English-speaking world is often starkly anti-intellectual. If we’ve turned over the genetic rock and had a good look under it without finding anything interesting, we should update to think it more likely that the explanation is under a different rock.
Confused. Your link seems to go to this post itself.
In fact it goes specifically to the comment itself. And the comment itself contains an example of that which is required in such a link. Fancy that. ;)
Technically impressive. Unamusing given the serious nature of what is being discussed and the fairly obnoxious way this apparently expresses a point in a passive-aggressive way that is on the passive enough side that it isn’t fully clear what the point is. This damages the signal to noise ratio.
(ETA: Ah, you made the comment in two edits so you’d know the comments permanent link. Clever.)
(ETA: In case it isn’t clear, the more controversial an issue the more reason to try not to be a dick if the conversation has a remote chance of being productive.)
Passive aggressive? Obnoxious? WHAT? I gave an example of the kind requested so that whatever conversation may be taking place wouldn’t be derailed by “Where are your links?” demands. It gives confirmation that people (or, technically, at least one person) understands basic probability and how to form priors. ie. There are differences in traits between different populations, IQ is a trait.
Downvoted—yes, obnoxious, because you could have just said “this comment here”, but you sought to amuse yourself by providing a link that leads back to itself and thus obfuscating, and when tensions are high, amusing yourself and not communicating clearly sends all the wrong signals that you are disrespecting the other person.
A contrary view: I’m broadly in favor of people amusing themselves.
The implied point seems to be some sort of claim that the type of statement had not been made in the thread up to that point. Rather than asserting that explicitly or even just upvoting lessdazed’s remark you made it harder for people to wade through this conversation.
Most humans will generally not be very good evaluators of whether their comments contribute well to signal/noise issues. So the assertion that they are inappropriate isn’t that helpful. Although the fact that your earlier comment where I did make that remark is currently at +2 tentatively suggests that more people than not disagree with my assessment in that context. In that context, it does strongly look like you were using inflammatory language whether or not you realized that it would be so.
It isn’t personal. Until you pointed it out I didn’t even remember that my other comment in the context of the SMBC cartoon was to you. I suppose it could have been occurring in some sort of back of my mind, but I don’t think so. Also, I don’t think there’s anything that passive aggressive about those sorts of remarks, I’d consider my comments to be missing the “passive” bit and being pretty aggressive statements of noting when things are not helpful for rational discussion here.
But if you want even more blunt I can do so: You are coming across as a dick. Your earlier “pussy” remark made you come across as a sexist dick. When one is having a conversation about a controversial issue involving sex and gender issues it is generally a good idea to not come across as a sexist dick because it will a) emotionally inflame people who don’t agree with you and make them less likely to listen to you and b) turn away from Less Wrong people who might otherwise be interested in seeing what Less Wrong is about.
In general, calm interaction is better than hot interaction. Explicitly stated points are better than implicit and vague points. Polite statements are better than uncivil statements. I’ve been repeatedly tempted to go through most of this thread and just downvote everyone for making Less Wrong resemble the areas of the internet I try to avoid. It is very clear that the issues being touched on here are mindkillers for many people, and that the karma scores involved reflect to a large extent which mindkilled tribalistic groups happen to have more people around here not in any substantial way a reflection of the arguments (except to a very weak level). None of these are good things. You are, along with other people, acting in a way that makes these problems more, not less extreme. None of this is good if one is trying to actually have rational dialogue.
It just occurred to me now and I don’t believe I missed the irony when reading the first time. I don’t want to imply I consider this to be particularly offensive (well, except the part where you called me a dick) but do you realize that you called me a dick both earlier (about something unrelated) and also here because I used a word for genitalia as a negative descriptor?
Yes, I did realize that. (Although note that I didn’t say you are a dick, I said you were coming across as a dick. These aren’t the same thing.) Two issues guided that word choice: First, it was an attempt (possibly a poor one) to speak in a language closer to the sort you were using so the point might come across better. Second, in this particular context, the relevant point is that in a highly male environment you were using a negative term for the genitalia of the other gender. That said, neither of these were probably very good arguments. While one could potentially argue that in our society “dick” is more gender neutral as an negative term than “pussy”, that argument seems to be more of a rationalization than a genuinely useful argument. I suspect that there may have also been some degree of priming occurring given that I had earlier today had a conversation with a female homo sapiens who expressed disinterest in Less Wrong because it “looked like a sausage-fest” (and also apparently that this thread as well as some of the other relationship related threads were “creepy”). Some amount of Phil Plait’s speech was also floating around. But even that is an explanation more than a good reason. So I’ll just say that I was aware of what I was doing, made a conscious decision to do so, but in retrospect had poor reasons for doing it.
Given that wedrifid said this less than a day ago:
That’s priming.
Rule 1 was incomplete. Judgments that things are of equal value are obviously suspect as well.
It should also mention that judgement about whether something is subject to to Rule 1 interpretation should be particularly suspect. Recursive inclusiveness is implicit. For this reason It is also a charge nearly impossible to defend oneself from directly.
If “pussy” is a sexist slur, isn’t “dick”, also?
It should be, but compared to women, most men are relatively less offended at the slur. Double standards; go figure.
That wasn’t the point at all, as far as I can tell. The point seemed to be that wedrifid was volunteering to be a representative of the point of view in question (while engaging in some nonverbal humor of the sort that is only possible in online forums).
Did you forget to update on the new information that was provided?
EDIT: I seem to have missed this.
Yes, I think reasonable individuals can read the statement differently. I suspect that my reading was on the more negative end of the spectrum, and I do have to wonder what primed me to think of it, and I don’t have a good explanation for that. That said, it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable interpretation. It seems that the difficulty of reading what other humans mean in a text medium is really quite difficult. While this is a known fact, I apparently don’t compensate for it as well as I should. That said, I suspect that I am very likely not the only person who read the comment in the way I read it.
No. I did update, but see elsewhere in this subthread where I discussed the relevance of that remark.
I downvoted that comment for confusing levels, not for inappropriate language. Maybe other downvotes are attributable to that problem with it. Maybe upvotes are in spite of the language. Hard to tell.
That’s a good point. I’m making a bad assumption that other humans will focus on the same issues in a comment that I will especially when it is long and contains a variety of different points.
Note: JoshuaZ must have caught the comment before I removed the part replying to ‘signal to noise’ (and the second two quotes are selected from that part). While I would stand by everything I said there would accomplish anything useful. I did not wish to edit the history of the conversation to distort the flow or to leave the parent making no sense—more to prevent the conversation altogether.
I had hoped the reply to you by komponisto would have resolved that feeling for you. It came with a wikipedia link!
Komponisto’s comment there and the ensuing discussion was etymologically fascinating. I doubt the vast majority of readers were already aware of the relevant etymology (indeed, you were unaware of the etymology). Remember, rationalists should win. If something has a connotation that is likely to be extremely distracting and trigger strong emotional reactions, then using the excuse that a sufficiently intelligent, educated and rational reader would not have that reaction is not helpful.
I think, incidentally, that one of the issues that may be occurring in our disagreement of how your remarks contributed to the signal/noise is what constitutes signal and noise. In particular, it is possible that I’m using a broader notion of what information is being conveyed in some sense, so I consider emotional triggers to be noise even if they aren’t denotatively part of a message.
Reasonable expressions of genuine confusion should not be downvoted.
Jandila said:
That was describing the measured gap in which certain race clusters are measured at higher IQs than others.
wedrifid said:
This is a point that I have made several times, but that does not qualify as a counterexample because it is not the claim that is supposedly consensus on LW.
One of the straw men in Jandila’s argument was that the specific measured gaps in IQ scores among racial groups was caused primarily by genetics (that is reading charitably, for a very plausible interpretation is that the supposed belief is that it is exclusively caused by genetics, which is just silly). As you claim not to know “which groups are higher than other groups,” you did not find an example supporting the argument.
I agree with your point entirely and hope my comment is not taken as support of whatever Jandila is saying. I meant only to give a prototypical example of what people (including myself) do actually say on the subject. As you no doubt picked up I was careful to avoid what would be an absurd claim—that genetics was the only factor and even the merely controversial claims about which way such genetic factors would be an influence.
I unequivocally affirm the use of my testimony about what credible lesswrongians have tended to say now or in the past as evidence in support of your argument. :)
Tangent: I’m actually not sure which way the intelligence difference would go between Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens. Michael Vassar actually boasts that he may have saved the world by convincing a genetic biologist to stop trying to go all “Jurassic Park” on Neanderthal DNA. After all they are an apex predator that have comparable intelligence to us and could plausibly be more intelligent in some aspects.
I’ve said the same.
Or which group would have more deviation from its mean.
I applaud you on your sanity.
That’s probably a more interesting question—and perhaps even harder to filter out from environmental influences.