Although you and Haidt may use different definition of “foundation”—since you explicitly provided neither, I don’t know. For you it may be “something that cannot be reduced to other values”, and for Haidt “something directly percieved emotionally”. In which case both of you could be right within your own definitions; “foundation” X has evolved as emotional heuristics for avoiding harm, but our emotions of X are not exactly emotions of harm-avoidance.
I don’t think that gets Haidt off the hook prescriptively, since when he defends non-harm foundations, he doesn’t do so by pointing to his emotions. And as I noted, it’s just fine as a descriptive theory.
. Their degree of “knowing” may be different—daughter may believe that mother’s boyfriend is going to rape her, based on his previous behavior; but mother may believe (strongly motivated cognition) that her daughter is exaggerating or lying, e.g. because she does not like her boyfriend, because she wants attention or revenge, because she is jealous, etc.
I’m not talking about any specific situation, where that indeed might happen. I’m talking about whether “When women have a succession of men coming through, their daughters will get raped” [emphasis in original]. That’s the claim that I object to. If P(abuse|boyfriend) were even 0.3, it would be harder for mothers to deny what’s going on, because their prior for it would be so much higher. When people see rape as rare, they are a lot less likely to believe any individual who claims to have been raped.
I believe the essence of the claim is not Brazil-specific. I don’t have a reference here; it was years ago when I participated in child abuse prevention. I remember the statistics of child abuse divided by type of abuse and gender of perpetrator. In most cases, the different type of abuse is about equally done by men and women; except in the “sexual abuse” category, majority of perpetrators were men. And we were explained that most people, when seeing this statistics, think that the given man is father (or other male relative), but that actually most often it is the mother’s boyfriend.
I think that’s actually very likely. But the question is not P(boyfriend|abuse), but P(abuse|boyfriend).
But you are quick to conclude that it’s “more likely that this is just the sort of rumor that the Catholic Church would want to spread”.
Another reason I don’t think much of Haidt’s non-data, which I couldn’t fit into the article, is that “street children”, by definition, don’t live in houses with their parents.
A logical conclusion… if you build your model on filtered evidence. And in the other thread, you defended this filtering! We should not discuss e.g. data on female sexual behavior on LW, because it might offend some women.
I didn’t propose not discussing data on female sexual behavior. I suggested not linking to a site which has nothing but bad things to say about people of color, which is really quite different. VDARE is a political site; they do sometimes post articles by real scientists, but they would be unlikely to do so if those articles contradicted their basic premise. I also noted that I was trying to avoid filtering, by actually having women and people of color on Less Wrong.
My article did link to a book which mentions womens’ boyfriends killing (but not, in the parts that I have read so far, raping) their infant children. So I’m certainly not opposed to data.
If I’d read only this article without any other context, I probably wouldn’t write the same kind of reaction. So I guess a large part of my comment was “object connotationally”.
I appreciate your concern for the community’s health. I did make one change to the article to remove a bit which
was more specifically political (a bit about the Catholic church), and I think it was an error to put that in there in the first place. I think you might be pattern matching my comments in the other thread, rather than reading them. The typical liberal thing to do is to oppose “racism” and “sexism” (rather than actually opposing racism and sexism), on emotional purity grounds. That’s because many liberals (as noted elsewhere) do think of these things in terms of purity instead of harm. That’s also why a lot of radical feminists (for instance) reject liberalism; because it’s focused on the symbol not the substance. But I don’t identify as a liberal. And I genuinely do believe that there’s a real harm to linking to sites like VDARE. It’s not political, for me, but moral. And if ethics is the mind-killer, well, we’ve got more serious problems.
And I genuinely do believe that there’s a real harm to linking to sites like VDARE.
There is, in my opinion, but a different kind of harm. Accusations of racism, whether based on fact or not, are contagious. Being social species, we cannot afford to ignore the questions of status.
That’s why I never call anyone a racist. We all fuck up and say racist things sometimes. But if we can’t call each other on it, we’ll never stop doing it. For a group of people who aim to be “Less Wrong” to say that we can’t call something racism because we’ve been too mind-killed, or because our status would suffer, would be sad indeed.
When you say “a different kind of harm”, can you be a bit more explicit?
Another reason I don’t think much of Haidt’s non-data, which I couldn’t fit into the article, is that “street children”, by definition, don’t live in houses with their parents<
I imagine Brazil “street children” occassionally return to the homes of their parents, but do not feel particularly wellcome, missed, or protected, so they spend most nights somewhere else.
If it helps, I have recently seen a TV document on Brazil. The document mentioned, that the major source of street children are the families, where widowed or divorced mother has a new partner. And that boyfriends / new husbands tend to discourage such mothers from taking care of their children, they rather want to have new on their own. Raping was not mentioned, but clearly Brazilian culture puts a surprisingly low emphasis on duty and responsibility of a mother to take care and protect their own kids.
After contradicting novalis (for searching ways how to dissmiss the data), I will now say something in his support. I thing there is still too long a step from situations, where women do not live in celibacy after leaving (or burrying) their first partner, to situations, when they fail to protect their children. I think the point is addressed by having a social moral norm, that women should protect their kids no matter what, rather than having a moral norm, that women should not have new sexual adventures after leaving the first partner. So the “avoiding harm / provide care” value is sufficient, you do not need purity and sanctity and whatever…
Or is it actualy the sanctity of motherhood I am trying to advocate ??? Perhaps the confusion is the terminology. After reading several specific examples from the book, we would understand better what the author means by “harm/caring, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity/disgust”. So far, I did not read the book, nor did the author of this blogpost.
After contradicting novalis (for searching ways how to dismiss the data)
I was actually searching for data either way—if it’s true, I want to believe it’s true, and if it’s false, I want to believe it’s false. I searched for papers on Google Scholar, and I couldn’t find any. I want to find some, because I want to actually know the truth.
I don’t think that gets Haidt off the hook prescriptively, since when he defends non-harm foundations, he doesn’t do so by pointing to his emotions. And as I noted, it’s just fine as a descriptive theory.
I’m not talking about any specific situation, where that indeed might happen. I’m talking about whether “When women have a succession of men coming through, their daughters will get raped” [emphasis in original]. That’s the claim that I object to. If P(abuse|boyfriend) were even 0.3, it would be harder for mothers to deny what’s going on, because their prior for it would be so much higher. When people see rape as rare, they are a lot less likely to believe any individual who claims to have been raped.
I think that’s actually very likely. But the question is not P(boyfriend|abuse), but P(abuse|boyfriend).
Another reason I don’t think much of Haidt’s non-data, which I couldn’t fit into the article, is that “street children”, by definition, don’t live in houses with their parents.
I didn’t propose not discussing data on female sexual behavior. I suggested not linking to a site which has nothing but bad things to say about people of color, which is really quite different. VDARE is a political site; they do sometimes post articles by real scientists, but they would be unlikely to do so if those articles contradicted their basic premise. I also noted that I was trying to avoid filtering, by actually having women and people of color on Less Wrong.
My article did link to a book which mentions womens’ boyfriends killing (but not, in the parts that I have read so far, raping) their infant children. So I’m certainly not opposed to data.
I appreciate your concern for the community’s health. I did make one change to the article to remove a bit which was more specifically political (a bit about the Catholic church), and I think it was an error to put that in there in the first place. I think you might be pattern matching my comments in the other thread, rather than reading them. The typical liberal thing to do is to oppose “racism” and “sexism” (rather than actually opposing racism and sexism), on emotional purity grounds. That’s because many liberals (as noted elsewhere) do think of these things in terms of purity instead of harm. That’s also why a lot of radical feminists (for instance) reject liberalism; because it’s focused on the symbol not the substance. But I don’t identify as a liberal. And I genuinely do believe that there’s a real harm to linking to sites like VDARE. It’s not political, for me, but moral. And if ethics is the mind-killer, well, we’ve got more serious problems.
There is, in my opinion, but a different kind of harm. Accusations of racism, whether based on fact or not, are contagious. Being social species, we cannot afford to ignore the questions of status.
That’s why I never call anyone a racist. We all fuck up and say racist things sometimes. But if we can’t call each other on it, we’ll never stop doing it. For a group of people who aim to be “Less Wrong” to say that we can’t call something racism because we’ve been too mind-killed, or because our status would suffer, would be sad indeed.
When you say “a different kind of harm”, can you be a bit more explicit?
I imagine Brazil “street children” occassionally return to the homes of their parents, but do not feel particularly wellcome, missed, or protected, so they spend most nights somewhere else.
If it helps, I have recently seen a TV document on Brazil. The document mentioned, that the major source of street children are the families, where widowed or divorced mother has a new partner. And that boyfriends / new husbands tend to discourage such mothers from taking care of their children, they rather want to have new on their own. Raping was not mentioned, but clearly Brazilian culture puts a surprisingly low emphasis on duty and responsibility of a mother to take care and protect their own kids.
After contradicting novalis (for searching ways how to dissmiss the data), I will now say something in his support. I thing there is still too long a step from situations, where women do not live in celibacy after leaving (or burrying) their first partner, to situations, when they fail to protect their children. I think the point is addressed by having a social moral norm, that women should protect their kids no matter what, rather than having a moral norm, that women should not have new sexual adventures after leaving the first partner. So the “avoiding harm / provide care” value is sufficient, you do not need purity and sanctity and whatever…
Or is it actualy the sanctity of motherhood I am trying to advocate ??? Perhaps the confusion is the terminology. After reading several specific examples from the book, we would understand better what the author means by “harm/caring, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity/disgust”. So far, I did not read the book, nor did the author of this blogpost.
After contradicting novalis (for searching ways how to dismiss the data)
I was actually searching for data either way—if it’s true, I want to believe it’s true, and if it’s false, I want to believe it’s false. I searched for papers on Google Scholar, and I couldn’t find any. I want to find some, because I want to actually know the truth.