This comment is interesting but needlessly long-winded.
In one sentence, did you mean something like “Status-based oppression and emotional violence will always exist and some group will always get the worst of it; therefore, we shouldn’t get worked up about the victims currently in the spotlight and shouldn’t waste community attention on their particular problems—but it’s impolite to just tell them to shut up and suffer quietly”?
If phrased like that, then yes, your post is already causing me a deep emotional disturbance.
(And you wonder why decent people don’t like reactionaries.)
Nope I take the argument further. You are about to experience more distress. What I’m saying is that we already ignore the suffering of those who suffer the most. What I’m saying is that magnitude or widespread nature of suffering has no strong consistent relation in itself to which group gets our public attention. I’m surprised you missed that.
I’m also saying that often the signalling and politics allegedly done to reduce the kind of “micro-suffering” of group X does nothing of the kind. At worst merely increasing their sensitivity to it making them miserable and resentful of other members of society, while propping up new structures of deprivilege for other groups. A clear utilitarian fail.
Having politics about such microaggression and privillige based suffering be acceptable means that the groups least capable of defending themselves with such politics will suffer at best just as much as before and simply have to pay the additional opportunity cost and at worst will suffer more. Having a taboo on such politics improves the position. It doesn’t seem obvious to me why should groups bad at politics be more deserving of suffering than groups good at politics? Why do you think the former are more numerous or more sensitive than the latter?
Recall that everyone is a member of many such classes and groups. Deep down this kind of attempt at justice in society is based on nothing more than might makes right powered by human intuitions based on sacredness and holier than thou signalling.
What I’m saying is that we already ignore the suffering of those who suffer the most.
Probably true, and possibly a tautology.
However, I think it’s the same fallacy as judging societies only by how the lowest status people are treated. It’s ignoring what happens to a large proportion, perhaps the majority of people.
Also, if better treatment can be figured out for some groups, then perhaps the knowledge can be applied to other suffering when it gets noticed. Life with people isn’t entirely zero-sum.
If you see life solely (or even merely primarily) in terms of status, as I believe Konkvistador does, then it is indeed a zero-sum game, since a person’s status is a relative ranking, and not an absolute measure (as contrasted with, say, top running speed).
Even if life is solely a zero-sum game, it would still be possible to narrow the status differences. It’s one thing to have most people think you’re funny-looking, and another to be at risk of being killed on sight.
That is true, but narrowing the status differences would severely penalize anyone whose status is higher than the minimum (or possibly only those with above-average status, depending on the scale you’re using). If we measure quality of life solely in terms of status, then such an action would be undesirable.
Granted, if we include other measures in our calculation, then it all depends on what weights we place on each measure, status included.
Again, as far as I understand, Konkvistador believes that humans are driven primarily by their desire to achieve a higher status, and that this is in fact one of our terminal goals. If we assume that this is true, then I believe my comments are correct.
Is that actually true, though ? Are humans driven primarily by their desire to achieve a higher status (in addition to the desires directly related to physical survival, of course) ? I don’t know, but maybe Konkvistador has some evidence for the proposition—assuming, of course, that I’m not misinterpreting his viewpoint.
Konkvistador believes that humans are driven primarily by their desire to achieve a higher status, and that this is in fact one of our terminal goals.
This needs to be consideredseparately as (1) a descriptive statement about actions (2) a descriptive statement about subjective experience (3) a normative statement about the utilitarian good. It seems much more accurate as (1) than (2) or (3), and I think Konkvistador means it as (1); meanwhile, statements about “quality of life” could mean (2) or (3) but not (1).
Yes, thank you. As far as I can tell, (1) and (2) are closest to the meaning I inferred. I understand that we can consider them separately, but IMO (2) implies (1).
If an agent seeks to maximize its sense of well-being (as it would reasonable to assume humans do), then we would expect the agent to take actions which it believes will achieve this effect. Its beliefs could be wrong, of course, but since the agent is descended from a long line of evolutionarily successful agents, we can expect it to be right a lot more often that it’s wrong.
Thus, if the agent’s sense of well-being can be accurately predicted as being proportional to its status (regardless of whether the agent itself is aware of this or not), then it would be reasonable to assume that the agent will take actions that, on average, lead to raising its status.
What I’m saying is that we already ignore the suffering of those who suffer the most… …I’m also saying that often the signalling and politics allegedly done to reduce the kind of “micro-suffering” of group X does nothing of the kind. At worst merely increasing their sensitivity to it making them miserable and resentful of other members of society, while propping up new structures of deprivilege for other groups… …Recall that everyone is a member of many such classes and groups. Deep down this kind of attempt at justice in society is based on nothing more than might makes right powered by human intuitions based on sacredness and holier than thou signalling.
...“Mercer,” Rick said. “I am your friend,” the old man said. “But you must go on as if I did not exist. Can you understand that?” He spread empty hands. “No,” Rick said. “I can’t understand that. I need help.” “How can I save you,” the old man said, “if I can’t save myself?” He smiled. “Don’t you see? There is no salvation.”
“Then what’s this for?” Rick demanded. “What are you for?” “To show you,” Wilbur Mercer said, “that you aren’t alone. I am here with you and always will be. Go and do your task, even though you know it’s wrong.” “Why?” Rick said. “Why should I do it? I’ll quit my job and emigrate.” The old man said, “You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.” “That’s all you can tell me?” Rick said...
Okay, so… you’re going to argue that undersocialized straight white males in 1st world countries currently suffer the most? And what else? Because I already agree that they have it bad, and I can’t for the life of me think of any other oppressed group that is denied publicity.
Meanwhile, you’d seemingly like to deny the practical use of identity politics as self-defense for the “mainstream” cases like gender-based aggression—all for the greater good. Such a proposition indeed feels cruel and morally corrupt to me.
That strikes me as a remarkably uncharitable reading, and in any case a false one—the suffering of undersocialized straight white dudes gets plenty of public attention, albeit much of it in “point and laugh” form (cf. Big Bang Theory).
The most marginalized groups on the planet, almost by definition, are the ones you’ve never heard of. Take Burkina Faso for example—small West African country, #181 of 187 in Human Development Index, and the only reason I know I’ve read about it before is that the Wikipedia link’s purple instead of blue in my browser. #187, the absolute bottom of the barrel, is the Democratic Republic of the Congo: slightly better-known, but extremely underserved by Western media relative to the magnitude of all the bad shit going down there. The Second Congo War (1998 − 2003) was the single worst conflict by body count since World War II, but I couldn’t describe a single major news report on it that reached my ears.
And those are entire countries—if I wanted to dig up serious contemporary misery and oppression at the subculture level, I’m almost sure that the famous examples, while certainly terrible, wouldn’t be the worst I could find.
Okay, so… you’re going to argue that undersocialized straight white males in 1st world countries currently suffer the most?
Eh no. I’m saying we ignore the groups who suffer the most. Under-socialized white males have weak counter-cultures working in their favour. But generally I think you underestimate how much suffering say white people experience in places like South Africa what with the racially motivated farm murders and economic discrimination against them.
Because I already agree that they have it bad, and I can’t for the life of me think of any other oppressed group that is denied publicity.
That you can’t think of them is very weak evidence they aren’t there. May I remind you that if we where having this debate in the 1920s people might talk about women as such a group but not homosexuals. The thought wouldn’t even occur to them. Today you are shunned for questioning the thought.
I can give you many many examples but it will get me into trouble. One controversial example: Paedophiles who want to avoid having sex with children. Our society is not optimized to help them with that humanely at all. And it is the very social changes that we have experienced in the sexual marketplace of the past 50 years done supposedly to reduce suffering that have intensified pure hatred and paranoia towards them.
One controversial example: Paedophiles who want to avoid having sex with children. Our society is not optimized to help them with that humanely at all. And it is the very social changes that we have experienced in the sexual marketplace of the past 50 years done supposedly to reduce suffering that have intensified pure hatred and paranoia towards them.
This is, indeed, an excellent example of a place where the process has utterly failed to produce a humane and compassionate outcome.
But generally I think you underestimate how much suffering say white people experience in places like South Africa what with the racially motivated farm murders and economic discrimination against them.
As a white South African male, I think that if those are the sorts of articles that you’re relying on for a true idea of what goes on in this country, then you may be over-estimating it.
In short; South Africa is a country polarised into two groups, with all that that entails. Actually, there’s at least four groups (counting “foreigners” and the nearly extinct “Khoisan” as seperate groups), but two of those groups are loud enough to drown out all the others. For quite some time, one of those groups (those who were officially “white”) was dominant, despite the fact that said group was not numerically superior. However, one of the means of retaining said dominance was by providing substandard education to all other groups (along with pretty brutal repression, not being allowed to vote, and so on).
Then, in 1994, everyone was allowed to vote. There was a sudden and very predictable change of government without most of the negative effects of actual revolution (we had very good leadership at a critical time). The trouble now is that, in the eyes of far too many people, there are stilltwo groups. If you listen to one side, then THEY robbed everyone during apartheid and refuse to help the people they once hurt; if you listen to the other side, then THEY are a bunch of violent, corrupt lunatics who will kill you as soon as you let your guard down for an instant. And both sides will gleefully report on any facts that appear to support their stance.
As a white South African male, I think that if those are the sorts of articles that you’re relying on for a true idea of what goes on in this country, then you may be over-estimating it.
Disagree, since the sources used for articles like the lined one seem reliable.
If anything I in think in general Western reports let alone regular Western ideas about life in South Africa are likely to be underestimating white South African suffering. In addition I would argue there are gains in signalling games for well off white South Africans to downplay the suffering of their group.
I do agree South Africa in general has been rather lucky but there is potential for major problems because white South Africans are a market dominant minority.
We have a clear example of what could have and still some day might happen in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
Disagree, since the sources used for articles like the lined one seem reliable.
I didn’t say that anything in the linked article was directly false—merely that the evidence is biased, having been picked out by one group, and therefore that it gives an overall false impression.
Consider, for example, from the article on farm murders:
in 2001 61% of farm attack victims were White, yet White people make up only 9,2% of the population.
I’m willing to believe that both of those statistics are correct, individually, but put together like that they present an incorrect impression. To obtain a correct impression, one needs to find the answer to this question: in 2001, what percentage of South African farmers were white?
Due to the aftereffects of Apartheid, I can say with extremely high probability that it’s higher than the 9.2% figure quoted; indeed, it would not surprise me to learn that it was more than 70% (which completely changes the significance of that first figure). Unfortunately, in a few minutes’ googling, I was unable to find any source for the figure in question (census data is supposed to be available, but not necessarily in an easily searched format).
As for BEE, it is (as I understand the original idea) an attempt to redress the “market dominant minority” problem without widespread suffering; yes, there is a certain amount of economic discrimination against me, but it’s not an impossible barrier to overcome. And it does continually reduce the potential for the major problems that you describe. (What it has become is in some cases different to what was intended—sometimes because of the greed of a few, the new “black elite” who have got rather rich by exploiting any loopholes they could find—sometimes because of poorly drafted legislation—but there are enough voices in parliament calling for the original idea to keep pulling it back on course). I suppose it could be seen as a sort of ‘social safety valve’, giving the less-dominant majority a way to achieve part of the market without pulling the whole market down and rebuilding it from scratch.
And I should add that there are people (I know of several) who would take every word of those articles and mutter darkly that “you don’t know the half of it”. I personally don’t always agree with them, but they are there (and may be suffering psychologically in ways that I hadn’t fully considered until now).
So, I’m not saying that there is no suffering. I’m just saying that I think that it might be over-presented in some places.
We have a clear example of what could have and still some day might happen in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
Yes, and Zimbabwe is very much in the public eye here. Enough people are looking at it, and comparing it to the current situation, that any attempt to start moving down that same path will be highlighted mercilessly, and shied away from (no-one wants to end up in Mugabe’s position, at least not as far as I can imagine). I’m not saying that we can’t end up in similar straits (though I consider it unlikely), but at the very least we’ll get there by a substantially different path.
Anecdote: I didn’t search as well as I should have because I had a weird emotional “what if some automated FBI filter flags me for googling ‘pedophilia’?” reaction—which also seems to be part of the problem.
So, literally an unknown unknown? This is a very empirical claim, and my prior on it is low. Unless such groups have unusual barriers placed against them socially and ideologically, you’d think that, over time, individuals in them would’ve made some effort to carve out a niche in identity politics.
I think you just aren’t getting it. Putting some effort towards carving a niche has bad returns for these groups. See paedophiles.
Because they lose the political battle their very efforts to organize along these lines are seen as more evidence at how dangerous and weird they are you instantly categorize them as deserving their fate.
Also to put it in familiar terms the false conspicuousness of members of the group experience may make such activism unthinkable for them. If there is no force that weakens or breaks down that memeplex the political war can’t get started.
And again! Why do you assume might makes right? Why do you assume that any group with a genuine grievance and suffering shall be victorious in the long run? What possible reason would you have for this in a non-caring non-Christian universe.
Okay, so… you’re going to argue that undersocialized straight white males in 1st world countries currently suffer the most? And what else? Because I already agree that they have it bad, and I can’t for the life of me think of any other oppressed group that is denied publicity.
Consider the context of this debate. Are you really sure (mostly) white (mostly) heterosexual (mostly) middle class women are really the most depriviliged group present on LessWrong?
Yet clearly they are the ones with the most explicit political activism and seem to be winning the popularity contest here. See any kind of controversy over sex/romance/gender/PUA we’ve had over the past oh… 5 years?
That is the interpretation I made, as well, but perhaps I was mistaken ? I upvoted your comment primarily because I want Konkvistador to clarify whether this interpretation is correct.
This comment is interesting but needlessly long-winded.
In one sentence, did you mean something like “Status-based oppression and emotional violence will always exist and some group will always get the worst of it; therefore, we shouldn’t get worked up about the victims currently in the spotlight and shouldn’t waste community attention on their particular problems—but it’s impolite to just tell them to shut up and suffer quietly”?
If phrased like that, then yes, your post is already causing me a deep emotional disturbance.
(And you wonder why decent people don’t like reactionaries.)
Nope I take the argument further. You are about to experience more distress. What I’m saying is that we already ignore the suffering of those who suffer the most. What I’m saying is that magnitude or widespread nature of suffering has no strong consistent relation in itself to which group gets our public attention. I’m surprised you missed that.
I’m also saying that often the signalling and politics allegedly done to reduce the kind of “micro-suffering” of group X does nothing of the kind. At worst merely increasing their sensitivity to it making them miserable and resentful of other members of society, while propping up new structures of deprivilege for other groups. A clear utilitarian fail.
Having politics about such microaggression and privillige based suffering be acceptable means that the groups least capable of defending themselves with such politics will suffer at best just as much as before and simply have to pay the additional opportunity cost and at worst will suffer more. Having a taboo on such politics improves the position. It doesn’t seem obvious to me why should groups bad at politics be more deserving of suffering than groups good at politics? Why do you think the former are more numerous or more sensitive than the latter?
Recall that everyone is a member of many such classes and groups. Deep down this kind of attempt at justice in society is based on nothing more than might makes right powered by human intuitions based on sacredness and holier than thou signalling.
Probably true, and possibly a tautology.
However, I think it’s the same fallacy as judging societies only by how the lowest status people are treated. It’s ignoring what happens to a large proportion, perhaps the majority of people.
Also, if better treatment can be figured out for some groups, then perhaps the knowledge can be applied to other suffering when it gets noticed. Life with people isn’t entirely zero-sum.
If you see life solely (or even merely primarily) in terms of status, as I believe Konkvistador does, then it is indeed a zero-sum game, since a person’s status is a relative ranking, and not an absolute measure (as contrasted with, say, top running speed).
Even if life is solely a zero-sum game, it would still be possible to narrow the status differences. It’s one thing to have most people think you’re funny-looking, and another to be at risk of being killed on sight.
That is true, but narrowing the status differences would severely penalize anyone whose status is higher than the minimum (or possibly only those with above-average status, depending on the scale you’re using). If we measure quality of life solely in terms of status, then such an action would be undesirable.
Granted, if we include other measures in our calculation, then it all depends on what weights we place on each measure, status included.
It also depends on just how much narrowing we’re doing. I think that eliminating “able to literally get away with murder” wouldn’t be a great loss.
Is there a reason we might want to do this? It feels like your comments in this thread unjustifiably privilege this model.
Again, as far as I understand, Konkvistador believes that humans are driven primarily by their desire to achieve a higher status, and that this is in fact one of our terminal goals. If we assume that this is true, then I believe my comments are correct.
Is that actually true, though ? Are humans driven primarily by their desire to achieve a higher status (in addition to the desires directly related to physical survival, of course) ? I don’t know, but maybe Konkvistador has some evidence for the proposition—assuming, of course, that I’m not misinterpreting his viewpoint.
This needs to be considered separately as (1) a descriptive statement about actions (2) a descriptive statement about subjective experience (3) a normative statement about the utilitarian good. It seems much more accurate as (1) than (2) or (3), and I think Konkvistador means it as (1); meanwhile, statements about “quality of life” could mean (2) or (3) but not (1).
I don’t understand what (1) means, can you explain ?
The three interpretations I mean are:
(1) People’s behavior is accurately predicted by modeling them as status-maximizing agents.
(2) People’s subjective experience of well-being is accurately predicted by modeling it as proportional to status.
(3) A person is well-off, in the sense that an altruist should care about, in proportion to their status.
Is that clearer?
Yes, thank you. As far as I can tell, (1) and (2) are closest to the meaning I inferred. I understand that we can consider them separately, but IMO (2) implies (1).
If an agent seeks to maximize its sense of well-being (as it would reasonable to assume humans do), then we would expect the agent to take actions which it believes will achieve this effect. Its beliefs could be wrong, of course, but since the agent is descended from a long line of evolutionarily successful agents, we can expect it to be right a lot more often that it’s wrong.
Thus, if the agent’s sense of well-being can be accurately predicted as being proportional to its status (regardless of whether the agent itself is aware of this or not), then it would be reasonable to assume that the agent will take actions that, on average, lead to raising its status.
Consider this explanation, too.
...“Mercer,” Rick said.
“I am your friend,” the old man said. “But you must go on as if I did not exist. Can you understand that?” He spread empty hands.
“No,” Rick said. “I can’t understand that. I need help.”
“How can I save you,” the old man said, “if I can’t save myself?” He smiled. “Don’t you see? There is no salvation.” “Then what’s this for?” Rick demanded. “What are you for?”
“To show you,” Wilbur Mercer said, “that you aren’t alone. I am here with you and always will be. Go and do your task, even though you know it’s wrong.”
“Why?” Rick said. “Why should I do it? I’ll quit my job and emigrate.”
The old man said, “You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”
“That’s all you can tell me?” Rick said...
(-Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
Okay, so… you’re going to argue that undersocialized straight white males in 1st world countries currently suffer the most? And what else? Because I already agree that they have it bad, and I can’t for the life of me think of any other oppressed group that is denied publicity.
Meanwhile, you’d seemingly like to deny the practical use of identity politics as self-defense for the “mainstream” cases like gender-based aggression—all for the greater good. Such a proposition indeed feels cruel and morally corrupt to me.
That strikes me as a remarkably uncharitable reading, and in any case a false one—the suffering of undersocialized straight white dudes gets plenty of public attention, albeit much of it in “point and laugh” form (cf. Big Bang Theory).
The most marginalized groups on the planet, almost by definition, are the ones you’ve never heard of. Take Burkina Faso for example—small West African country, #181 of 187 in Human Development Index, and the only reason I know I’ve read about it before is that the Wikipedia link’s purple instead of blue in my browser. #187, the absolute bottom of the barrel, is the Democratic Republic of the Congo: slightly better-known, but extremely underserved by Western media relative to the magnitude of all the bad shit going down there. The Second Congo War (1998 − 2003) was the single worst conflict by body count since World War II, but I couldn’t describe a single major news report on it that reached my ears.
And those are entire countries—if I wanted to dig up serious contemporary misery and oppression at the subculture level, I’m almost sure that the famous examples, while certainly terrible, wouldn’t be the worst I could find.
Eh no. I’m saying we ignore the groups who suffer the most. Under-socialized white males have weak counter-cultures working in their favour. But generally I think you underestimate how much suffering say white people experience in places like South Africa what with the racially motivated farm murders and economic discrimination against them.
That you can’t think of them is very weak evidence they aren’t there. May I remind you that if we where having this debate in the 1920s people might talk about women as such a group but not homosexuals. The thought wouldn’t even occur to them. Today you are shunned for questioning the thought.
I can give you many many examples but it will get me into trouble. One controversial example: Paedophiles who want to avoid having sex with children. Our society is not optimized to help them with that humanely at all. And it is the very social changes that we have experienced in the sexual marketplace of the past 50 years done supposedly to reduce suffering that have intensified pure hatred and paranoia towards them.
This is, indeed, an excellent example of a place where the process has utterly failed to produce a humane and compassionate outcome.
As a white South African male, I think that if those are the sorts of articles that you’re relying on for a true idea of what goes on in this country, then you may be over-estimating it.
In short; South Africa is a country polarised into two groups, with all that that entails. Actually, there’s at least four groups (counting “foreigners” and the nearly extinct “Khoisan” as seperate groups), but two of those groups are loud enough to drown out all the others. For quite some time, one of those groups (those who were officially “white”) was dominant, despite the fact that said group was not numerically superior. However, one of the means of retaining said dominance was by providing substandard education to all other groups (along with pretty brutal repression, not being allowed to vote, and so on).
Then, in 1994, everyone was allowed to vote. There was a sudden and very predictable change of government without most of the negative effects of actual revolution (we had very good leadership at a critical time). The trouble now is that, in the eyes of far too many people, there are still two groups. If you listen to one side, then THEY robbed everyone during apartheid and refuse to help the people they once hurt; if you listen to the other side, then THEY are a bunch of violent, corrupt lunatics who will kill you as soon as you let your guard down for an instant. And both sides will gleefully report on any facts that appear to support their stance.
Disagree, since the sources used for articles like the lined one seem reliable.
If anything I in think in general Western reports let alone regular Western ideas about life in South Africa are likely to be underestimating white South African suffering. In addition I would argue there are gains in signalling games for well off white South Africans to downplay the suffering of their group.
I do agree South Africa in general has been rather lucky but there is potential for major problems because white South Africans are a market dominant minority.
We have a clear example of what could have and still some day might happen in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
I didn’t say that anything in the linked article was directly false—merely that the evidence is biased, having been picked out by one group, and therefore that it gives an overall false impression.
Consider, for example, from the article on farm murders:
I’m willing to believe that both of those statistics are correct, individually, but put together like that they present an incorrect impression. To obtain a correct impression, one needs to find the answer to this question: in 2001, what percentage of South African farmers were white?
Due to the aftereffects of Apartheid, I can say with extremely high probability that it’s higher than the 9.2% figure quoted; indeed, it would not surprise me to learn that it was more than 70% (which completely changes the significance of that first figure). Unfortunately, in a few minutes’ googling, I was unable to find any source for the figure in question (census data is supposed to be available, but not necessarily in an easily searched format).
As for BEE, it is (as I understand the original idea) an attempt to redress the “market dominant minority” problem without widespread suffering; yes, there is a certain amount of economic discrimination against me, but it’s not an impossible barrier to overcome. And it does continually reduce the potential for the major problems that you describe. (What it has become is in some cases different to what was intended—sometimes because of the greed of a few, the new “black elite” who have got rather rich by exploiting any loopholes they could find—sometimes because of poorly drafted legislation—but there are enough voices in parliament calling for the original idea to keep pulling it back on course). I suppose it could be seen as a sort of ‘social safety valve’, giving the less-dominant majority a way to achieve part of the market without pulling the whole market down and rebuilding it from scratch.
And I should add that there are people (I know of several) who would take every word of those articles and mutter darkly that “you don’t know the half of it”. I personally don’t always agree with them, but they are there (and may be suffering psychologically in ways that I hadn’t fully considered until now).
So, I’m not saying that there is no suffering. I’m just saying that I think that it might be over-presented in some places.
Yes, and Zimbabwe is very much in the public eye here. Enough people are looking at it, and comparing it to the current situation, that any attempt to start moving down that same path will be highlighted mercilessly, and shied away from (no-one wants to end up in Mugabe’s position, at least not as far as I can imagine). I’m not saying that we can’t end up in similar straits (though I consider it unlikely), but at the very least we’ll get there by a substantially different path.
On further reflection regarding the pedophile example:
How many studies are you aware of that research the neurobiological origins of homosexuality? sociopathy? schizophrenia? ADHD? autism?
Now, how many studies are you aware of that research the neurobiological origins of pedophilia?
Googling those terms found a few, though most of them seem pretty tentative right now.
Thanks!
Anecdote: I didn’t search as well as I should have because I had a weird emotional “what if some automated FBI filter flags me for googling ‘pedophilia’?” reaction—which also seems to be part of the problem.
I agree with your last paragraph.
So, literally an unknown unknown? This is a very empirical claim, and my prior on it is low. Unless such groups have unusual barriers placed against them socially and ideologically, you’d think that, over time, individuals in them would’ve made some effort to carve out a niche in identity politics.
I think you just aren’t getting it. Putting some effort towards carving a niche has bad returns for these groups. See paedophiles.
Because they lose the political battle their very efforts to organize along these lines are seen as more evidence at how dangerous and weird they are you instantly categorize them as deserving their fate.
Also to put it in familiar terms the false conspicuousness of members of the group experience may make such activism unthinkable for them. If there is no force that weakens or breaks down that memeplex the political war can’t get started.
And again! Why do you assume might makes right? Why do you assume that any group with a genuine grievance and suffering shall be victorious in the long run? What possible reason would you have for this in a non-caring non-Christian universe.
Consider the context of this debate. Are you really sure (mostly) white (mostly) heterosexual (mostly) middle class women are really the most depriviliged group present on LessWrong?
Yet clearly they are the ones with the most explicit political activism and seem to be winning the popularity contest here. See any kind of controversy over sex/romance/gender/PUA we’ve had over the past oh… 5 years?
That is the interpretation I made, as well, but perhaps I was mistaken ? I upvoted your comment primarily because I want Konkvistador to clarify whether this interpretation is correct.