I think you are underestimating the share of metacontrarians probably disagree with many of them.
If they are contrarians for contrarianism’s sake, why would I take them into consideration? Those are the true dangerous ones: in most cases, those people are just autodidacts who when confronted with a true expert, have their theories pretty much discredited.
Take in mind, for instance, Yvain’s (who’s a student of Medicine) triumphant answers to Hanson on Medicine (so harsh that he regrets on his blog being so incisive), or Kalla724′s comment on cryonics which made many people lower their estimates of cryonics being of any worth. And that’s because true experts won’t take much of their time arguing with those people! It’s funny that Hanson himself sometimes complains of ‘rational folks’ being ignorant about Sociology, which he has a PhD in, or how much he changed his mind on the power of actual Economics after getting a degree on it.
Remember normal neurotypical humans, even very intelligent ones, don’t really take ideas that seriously. Ideas as tribal markers work just as well at 120 IQ points as they do at 80, its just that very few ideas can fill this role for both groups.
High-Iq circles are not monolithic: there are many groups they are be part of, on which different ideas would be ‘tribal markers’. And there are the people who are intelligent and are not even in high-Iq circles, due to having low income etc. And the analyses, controlled for many variables, many times show clear intellectual trends, turning the fact that people individually are biased not very relevant, really.
If they are contrarians for contrarianism’s sake, why would I take them into consideration?
I’m just informing you of your audience on LW! Not saying they are right. :)
But I am saying that intelligent people, like to show off their intelligence, this is very obvious on LessWrong. It is no less obvious when you pick up a newspaper or talk at the water cooler about politics. Intelligent people are contrarians. Having different opinions from less intelligent individuals is a great way to distinguish yourself form them. Intellectual fashion seems very much a real phenomena.
High-Iq circles are not monolithic: there are many groups they are be part of, on which different ideas would be ‘tribal markers’.
Actually they are. Nearly all of them are university educated or move in social circles among people who are, which is overseen my academia, which does have a left wing bias, because a left-wing bias is self-serving to them. If you check out the GSS you will see education strongly correlating with “leftist” views. Naturally not everyone with a university degree in the US agrees with the ethical consensus of academia, but not every member of the Communist party in the old USSR was a real communist either.
This reminds me if you made a anonymous poll of high IQ people living in the USSR in the 1920s, what do you think their position would on the future prospects of Bolshevik rule? Also what do you think of their policy opinions? The ignorant peasant of 1920s Russia had one great advantage over the well educated and on average much more intelligent teacher, engineer or student. Controlling for class, I’m still pretty sure that those of above average intelligence favoured the Bolsheviks in 1920s Russia compared to their dimmer fellow countrymen.
Smart people are smart enough to know what they need to say, which may or may not be the right answer.They answer and vote in a way that makes them feel morally superior, that makes them feel better than someone else so that they seem higher status. Stupid people just say whatever they happen to be familiar with, which may or may not be the right answer. In a traditional society the default answer has the advantage of being a tested answer. Such a society wasn’t designed, it grew.
This reminds me if you made a anonymous poll of high IQ people living in the USSR in the 1920s, what do you think their position would on the future prospects of Bolshevik rule? Also what do you think of their policy opinions? The ignorant peasant of 1920s Russia had one great advantage over the well educated and on average much more intelligent teacher, engineer or student. Controlling for class, I’m still pretty sure that those of above average intelligence favoured the Bolsheviks in 1920s Russia compared to their dimmer fellow countrymen.
Local coloring aside, intelligent people in the early twentieth century wanted modernization, morons wanted their country to be King Shit, and everyone wanted crass material wealth. Did the Bolsheviks not deliver? (This applies almost as well to most other major modernizing revolutions, now that I think of it.)
This reminds me if you made a anonymous poll of high IQ people living in the USSR in the 1920s, what do you think their position would on the future prospects of Bolshevik rule? Also what do you think of their policy opinions? The ignorant peasant of 1920s Russia had one great advantage over the well educated and on average much more intelligent teacher, engineer or student. Controlling for class, I’m still pretty sure that those of above average intelligence favoured the Bolsheviks in 1920s Russia compared to their dimmer fellow countrymen.
You have to consider the alternatives. I’ll take the Bolsheviks’ side over the Tsars any day.
I would take the Tsars any day and consider the choice obvious. You will need to actually argue that point because it is quite non-obvious. A mere assertion to the badness of the Tsar won’t make the millions deep piles of corpses left by Communism in the 20th century any smaller. Nor will it return to Russia the opportunity costs of ~80 years of command economy.
Let me rephrase: I’d rather live in Russia in 1934 than in Russia in 1904.
So? I’d rather live in 1984 Yugoslavia than 1954 America.
Technology matters. Economic growth matters. Given a large enough time gap Haiti today might be preferable to Japan in some past period.
Opportunity costs however are unfortunately mostly invisible. The relevant comparison you should be making is your best estimate of what 1934 Tsarist or at the very least non-Bolshevik Russia would be compared to the 1934 USSR. While we can’t do experiments we can look around the world for patters, not only did parliamentary capitalist democracies like West Germany seemed to outperform command economies, resulting in large disparities of living standards, but quasi-Fascist and authoritarian regimes that didn’t go for a planned economy did so as well (Franco’s Spain, Modern China, Singapore, 1980s South Korea, ect.).
Also let me ask you if you would prefer living in the Ukrainian SSR of 1930s or the Ukraine of 1900s? At the very least that disaster seems unlikely to have occurred under non-Bolshevik rule.
While we can’t do experiments we can look around the world for patters, not only did parliamentary capitalist democracies like West Germany seem to outperform command economies, resulting in large disparities of living standards, but quasi-Fascist and authoritarian regimes that didn’t go for a planned economy did so as well (Franco’s Spain, Modern China, Singapore, 1980s South Korea, ect.).
I found a document with some comparative historical GDP per capita data.
The following countries had a GDP per capita (measured in 1990 dollars) between $1000 and $2000 in 1913:
Country, 1913 GDP per capita, 1950 GDP per capita, growth factor (1950 gdp / 1913 gdp) Greece, 1621, 1951, 1.20 Portugal, 1354, 2132, 1.57 Bulgaria, 1498, 1651, 1.10 USSR, 1488, 2834, 1.90 Yugoslavia, 1029, 1546, 1.50 Colombia, 1236, 2089, 1.69 Venezuela, 1104, 7424, 6.72 (wow) Mexico, 1467, 2085, 1.42 Peru, 1037, 2263, 2.18 Japan, 1334, 1873, 1.40 Philippines, 1418, 1293, 0.91 South Africa, 1451, 2251, 1.55
So it looks like the U.S.S.R. didn’t do all that badly economically, considering that it was starting from a point that was, as Stalin put it, fifty years behind “the advanced countries”. (I don’t know how good the reference class I chose was; if you have objections, you’re probably right.)
I certainly agree that the Bolsheviks ended up with an absolutely horrible human rights record, though. There had been a history of famines in Russia caused by droughts and by wars, but yes, that particular disaster was indeed the direct result of Soviet policies.
I would be interested to know how you measure GDP in a place that didn’t have a market economy. Any Soviet economic figures from 1950 would be in Rubles. The official exchange rate was a bureaucratic fiction not tied to any market assessment of value. So how do you compare Rubles to dollars?
The linked-to data tables don’t have a lot of notes about their sources.
There are many clever ways to try to get a grip on a GDP; one method used these days in Africa and for North Korea (as well as to estimate corruption in official figures) is to measure energy usage or if that is too hard to estimate, simple night light emission via satellite. I believe the CIA used many different metrics in its various estimation.
If they are contrarians for contrarianism’s sake, why would I take them into consideration? Those are the true dangerous ones: in most cases, those people are just autodidacts who when confronted with a true expert, have their theories pretty much discredited.
Take in mind, for instance, Yvain’s (who’s a student of Medicine) triumphant answers to Hanson on Medicine (so harsh that he regrets on his blog being so incisive), or Kalla724′s comment on cryonics which made many people lower their estimates of cryonics being of any worth. And that’s because true experts won’t take much of their time arguing with those people! It’s funny that Hanson himself sometimes complains of ‘rational folks’ being ignorant about Sociology, which he has a PhD in, or how much he changed his mind on the power of actual Economics after getting a degree on it.
High-Iq circles are not monolithic: there are many groups they are be part of, on which different ideas would be ‘tribal markers’. And there are the people who are intelligent and are not even in high-Iq circles, due to having low income etc. And the analyses, controlled for many variables, many times show clear intellectual trends, turning the fact that people individually are biased not very relevant, really.
I’m just informing you of your audience on LW! Not saying they are right. :)
But I am saying that intelligent people, like to show off their intelligence, this is very obvious on LessWrong. It is no less obvious when you pick up a newspaper or talk at the water cooler about politics. Intelligent people are contrarians. Having different opinions from less intelligent individuals is a great way to distinguish yourself form them. Intellectual fashion seems very much a real phenomena.
Actually they are. Nearly all of them are university educated or move in social circles among people who are, which is overseen my academia, which does have a left wing bias, because a left-wing bias is self-serving to them. If you check out the GSS you will see education strongly correlating with “leftist” views. Naturally not everyone with a university degree in the US agrees with the ethical consensus of academia, but not every member of the Communist party in the old USSR was a real communist either.
This reminds me if you made a anonymous poll of high IQ people living in the USSR in the 1920s, what do you think their position would on the future prospects of Bolshevik rule? Also what do you think of their policy opinions? The ignorant peasant of 1920s Russia had one great advantage over the well educated and on average much more intelligent teacher, engineer or student. Controlling for class, I’m still pretty sure that those of above average intelligence favoured the Bolsheviks in 1920s Russia compared to their dimmer fellow countrymen.
Smart people are smart enough to know what they need to say, which may or may not be the right answer. They answer and vote in a way that makes them feel morally superior, that makes them feel better than someone else so that they seem higher status. Stupid people just say whatever they happen to be familiar with, which may or may not be the right answer. In a traditional society the default answer has the advantage of being a tested answer. Such a society wasn’t designed, it grew.
Local coloring aside, intelligent people in the early twentieth century wanted modernization, morons wanted their country to be King Shit, and everyone wanted crass material wealth. Did the Bolsheviks not deliver? (This applies almost as well to most other major modernizing revolutions, now that I think of it.)
You have to consider the alternatives. I’ll take the Bolsheviks’ side over the Tsars any day.
I would take the Tsars any day and consider the choice obvious. You will need to actually argue that point because it is quite non-obvious. A mere assertion to the badness of the Tsar won’t make the millions deep piles of corpses left by Communism in the 20th century any smaller. Nor will it return to Russia the opportunity costs of ~80 years of command economy.
Let me rephrase: I’d rather live in Russia in 1934 than in Russia in 1904.
So? I’d rather live in 1984 Yugoslavia than 1954 America.
Technology matters. Economic growth matters. Given a large enough time gap Haiti today might be preferable to Japan in some past period.
Opportunity costs however are unfortunately mostly invisible. The relevant comparison you should be making is your best estimate of what 1934 Tsarist or at the very least non-Bolshevik Russia would be compared to the 1934 USSR. While we can’t do experiments we can look around the world for patters, not only did parliamentary capitalist democracies like West Germany seemed to outperform command economies, resulting in large disparities of living standards, but quasi-Fascist and authoritarian regimes that didn’t go for a planned economy did so as well (Franco’s Spain, Modern China, Singapore, 1980s South Korea, ect.).
Also let me ask you if you would prefer living in the Ukrainian SSR of 1930s or the Ukraine of 1900s? At the very least that disaster seems unlikely to have occurred under non-Bolshevik rule.
I found a document with some comparative historical GDP per capita data.
The following countries had a GDP per capita (measured in 1990 dollars) between $1000 and $2000 in 1913:
Country, 1913 GDP per capita, 1950 GDP per capita, growth factor (1950 gdp / 1913 gdp)
Greece, 1621, 1951, 1.20
Portugal, 1354, 2132, 1.57
Bulgaria, 1498, 1651, 1.10
USSR, 1488, 2834, 1.90
Yugoslavia, 1029, 1546, 1.50
Colombia, 1236, 2089, 1.69
Venezuela, 1104, 7424, 6.72 (wow)
Mexico, 1467, 2085, 1.42
Peru, 1037, 2263, 2.18
Japan, 1334, 1873, 1.40
Philippines, 1418, 1293, 0.91
South Africa, 1451, 2251, 1.55
So it looks like the U.S.S.R. didn’t do all that badly economically, considering that it was starting from a point that was, as Stalin put it, fifty years behind “the advanced countries”. (I don’t know how good the reference class I chose was; if you have objections, you’re probably right.)
Incidentally, Venezuela’s rapid growth in GDP per capita during this period seems to be the result of successfully exploiting oil reserves.
I certainly agree that the Bolsheviks ended up with an absolutely horrible human rights record, though. There had been a history of famines in Russia caused by droughts and by wars, but yes, that particular disaster was indeed the direct result of Soviet policies.
I would be interested to know how you measure GDP in a place that didn’t have a market economy. Any Soviet economic figures from 1950 would be in Rubles. The official exchange rate was a bureaucratic fiction not tied to any market assessment of value. So how do you compare Rubles to dollars?
The linked-to data tables don’t have a lot of notes about their sources.
There are many clever ways to try to get a grip on a GDP; one method used these days in Africa and for North Korea (as well as to estimate corruption in official figures) is to measure energy usage or if that is too hard to estimate, simple night light emission via satellite. I believe the CIA used many different metrics in its various estimation.
Apparently, it’s hard.
I don’t know where Angus Maddison got his data either, but he was apparently the leading expert on this sort of thing...