NancyLebovitz comments on Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant

NancyLebovitz 5 Dec 2012 4:06 UTC
2 points
From the essay:

Or to put it more provocatively: The Aspier someone is, the more likely it is that he’ll be an eager utilitarian. (You probably know people like this. Anyone who self-identifies as a ‘utilitarian’ probably has Aspie tendencies — very fluent with abstract concepts, and very eager to apply them to all aspects of life.)

It might be possible to get some information about this from the survey.
- gwern 5 Dec 2012 20:41 UTC
  6 points
  Parent
  The utilitarian/autism-spectrum correlation may be true in the general population, but there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between self-reported AQ and consequentialism endorsement in the LW population (perhaps because the LW population is already self-selected for either being a consequentialist or coming up with good justifications for non-consequentialism):
```
R> lw <- read.csv("2012.csv")
R> lwa <- subset(lw, !is.na(AutismScore))
R> levels(lwa$MoralViews)
[1] " "                                     "Accept / lean toward consequentialism"
[3] "Accept / lean toward deontology"       "Accept / lean toward virtue ethics"
[5] "Other / no answer"
R> lwa <- subset(lwa, as.character(MoralViews) != " " & as.character(MoralViews) != "Other / no answer")
R> cor.test(lwa$AutismScore, as.integer(lwa$MoralViews))

    Pearson’s product-moment correlation

data:  lwa$AutismScore and as.integer(lwa$MoralViews)
t = 0.1663, df = 289, p-value = 0.868
alternative hypothesis: true correlation is not equal to 0
95 percent confidence interval:
 −0.1053  0.1246
sample estimates:
     cor
0.009783
```
  (A positive correlation suggests that higher autism scorers were a tad more likely to endorse a higher category, that is, deontology or virtue ethics.)
  - NancyLebovitz 5 Dec 2012 21:20 UTC
    2 points
    Parent
    Thank you for checking.