I strongly second this. Reading this post (especially the bit about Republicans) tends to make me think about how I feel about contemporary american politics, and I don’t want to use that part of my brain, it’s bug-ridden and unreliable.
Still, it’s a great post. I’ve often got annoyed at how discussions turned into debating who deserved the most pity, and at the tacit assumption that it is in any way related to who is right. I wish there was a good way of pointing that out that didn’t make me sound like one of Them, the Evil Oppressors.
Reading this post tends to make me think about how I feel about contemporary american politics, and I don’t want to use that part of my brain, it’s bug-ridden and unreliable.
I understand the sentiment, but if we’re trying to overcome our biases/be less wrong, perhaps this is exactly the sort of practice we need?
Obviously, this this may not be the main point of any post where this issue arises, but are there things posters might do to encourage people not to think about things in damaging or counterproductive ways? Would a
Warning: vaguely political topic ahead; please exercise extreme caution in forming opinions
This reminds me of an American student wanting to improve their French who travels to France and learns math, science, history, etc. etc. in the French language. You greatly improve your French ability, but at the expense of greatly increasing the difficulty with which you learn everything else. Still, many people make the tradeoff and find the experience extremely rewarding. However, they generally do this after a few years of studying French in an American classroom. You would not want to do it if you were not already highly confident in your mastery of French.
So, are we confident enough in our ability to overcome political bias to consider studying abroad?
The point that there are tradeoffs involved here is well-made; but it’s not like anyone’s actually suggesting immersion in political topics (well, at least I’m not).
I’m suggesting that maybe it might not be such a bad thing to throw some French phrases into our general curriculum every now and then, particularly if the ideas happen to be more naturally expressed in French than in English. I’m also wondering whether, if we were going to do that, there are things we can do to minimize the damage that speaking French does to the learning experience.
(That sound you hear in the background is a strained metaphor snapping. Sorry.)
(That sound you hear in the background is a strained metaphor snapping. Sorry.)
Actually I think you were doing quite well with it. Sadly, I’m about to break it on purpose. The trouble is that talking politics is worse than speaking French. If I speak a sentence in French which you do not understand, your verbal subroutines usually do not return bad data, they return “error” (In fact you may well commit a mind-projection fallacy and think that I am speaking gibberish. This is an interesting case of “how the algorithm feels from the inside” on which I may write later.) If I start talking about whether the Palestinians deserve their land, and you become politically involved, you do not return “error,” you return a somatic marker which feels from the inside like a fact about the world. Thus, unless we are extremely confident of our development as rationalists, talking about politics seems risky precisely because we may underestimate its effects on our understanding.
But this leaves rather open the question of how we are supposed to develop as rationalists in this regard. Is practice always too dangerous? Or is it just practicing in a public forum like a community blog? What if it were only a minimally controversial political topic? What if it were pitched explicitly as an “overcome politics as the mind killer” training exercise? Could that help?
I understand the sentiment, but if we’re trying to overcome our biases/be less wrong, perhaps this is exactly the sort of practice we need?
Maybe, but it doesn’t take a lot of effort to find political opinion (it takes more effort to avoid being exposed to it!).
On the other hand, talking too much about politics on Less Wrong is a serious risk for the community. I don’t want this to be a place where people can come comfortable in the opinion that most people will share your political views, where people congratulate each other for how rational they are for having the same opinions. So the less signaling about political affiliation of members, the better.
I strongly second this. Reading this post (especially the bit about Republicans) tends to make me think about how I feel about contemporary american politics, and I don’t want to use that part of my brain, it’s bug-ridden and unreliable.
Still, it’s a great post. I’ve often got annoyed at how discussions turned into debating who deserved the most pity, and at the tacit assumption that it is in any way related to who is right. I wish there was a good way of pointing that out that didn’t make me sound like one of Them, the Evil Oppressors.
I understand the sentiment, but if we’re trying to overcome our biases/be less wrong, perhaps this is exactly the sort of practice we need?
Obviously, this this may not be the main point of any post where this issue arises, but are there things posters might do to encourage people not to think about things in damaging or counterproductive ways? Would a
Warning: vaguely political topic ahead; please exercise extreme caution in forming opinions
notice serve any purpose?
This reminds me of an American student wanting to improve their French who travels to France and learns math, science, history, etc. etc. in the French language. You greatly improve your French ability, but at the expense of greatly increasing the difficulty with which you learn everything else. Still, many people make the tradeoff and find the experience extremely rewarding. However, they generally do this after a few years of studying French in an American classroom. You would not want to do it if you were not already highly confident in your mastery of French.
So, are we confident enough in our ability to overcome political bias to consider studying abroad?
The point that there are tradeoffs involved here is well-made; but it’s not like anyone’s actually suggesting immersion in political topics (well, at least I’m not).
I’m suggesting that maybe it might not be such a bad thing to throw some French phrases into our general curriculum every now and then, particularly if the ideas happen to be more naturally expressed in French than in English. I’m also wondering whether, if we were going to do that, there are things we can do to minimize the damage that speaking French does to the learning experience.
(That sound you hear in the background is a strained metaphor snapping. Sorry.)
Actually I think you were doing quite well with it. Sadly, I’m about to break it on purpose. The trouble is that talking politics is worse than speaking French. If I speak a sentence in French which you do not understand, your verbal subroutines usually do not return bad data, they return “error” (In fact you may well commit a mind-projection fallacy and think that I am speaking gibberish. This is an interesting case of “how the algorithm feels from the inside” on which I may write later.) If I start talking about whether the Palestinians deserve their land, and you become politically involved, you do not return “error,” you return a somatic marker which feels from the inside like a fact about the world. Thus, unless we are extremely confident of our development as rationalists, talking about politics seems risky precisely because we may underestimate its effects on our understanding.
Agreed. And maybe it’s not worth the risk.
But this leaves rather open the question of how we are supposed to develop as rationalists in this regard. Is practice always too dangerous? Or is it just practicing in a public forum like a community blog? What if it were only a minimally controversial political topic? What if it were pitched explicitly as an “overcome politics as the mind killer” training exercise? Could that help?
Maybe, but it doesn’t take a lot of effort to find political opinion (it takes more effort to avoid being exposed to it!).
On the other hand, talking too much about politics on Less Wrong is a serious risk for the community. I don’t want this to be a place where people can come comfortable in the opinion that most people will share your political views, where people congratulate each other for how rational they are for having the same opinions. So the less signaling about political affiliation of members, the better.