What changed? Surely if “cognitively useful categories should carve reality at the joints, and dolphins being fish doesn’t do that” was good philosophy in 2008, it should still be good philosophy in 2021?
Scott Alexander’s essay uses the example of fish versus whales to argue that transgender people should be classified by whatever sex they claim to be rather than classified by biological sex. This essay came out after 2008 and before 2021. And Scott Alexander is about as influential here as Yudkowsky.
In other words, what changed is that asserting that it makes sense to classify dolphins as fish is now something you need to assert for political purposes.
Edit: I missed the reference to gender issues. But I think it may explain why Yudkowsky and rationalists in general have changed their mind, regardless of why anyone in particular here has.
Your comment seems to me to assume that Scott thinks there would be nothing very wrong with a definition of “fish” that included whales only because that’s something he has to think in order to remain consistent while classifying transgender people the way they feel they should be classified.
I don’t think it’s at all obvious that that’s so.
(Similarly, one could postulate that Zack thinks there would be something very wrong with such a definition of “fish” only because that’s something he has to think in order to remain consistent while insisting that transgender people should be classified according to attributes like anatomy, chromosomes, etc.
I don’t think that’s obviously so, either.)
Either of those things could be true. Both of them could be true, for that matter. Or neither. But I think that in order for “rationalists as a group have changed their minds on this for political reasons” to be a better analysis than “rationalists as a group have changed their minds on this because they found Scott’s arguments about King Solomon and the like convincing”, there needs to be some good reason to think that Scott’s arguments are bad enough that rationalists couldn’t be convinced by them without political motivation, or that Scott’s arguments were clearly made in bad faith, or something of the kind.
(Note: my description of Scott’s and Zack’s positions is brief and necessarily sketchy. E.g., Scott is writing about whether it’s OK to define a word that groups what-we-call-fish together with whales and dolphins; Zack is more interested in whether it would be OK to use the specific word “fish” that way, given how it is already used; it’s not clear which question Soares is really debating, given that the whole thing is shitposting anyway. Some of the gender-political issues for which this serves as an analogy match up pretty well with one of those, some not so much. Anyway, please do not take any of the above as a serious attempt to describe either Scott’s or Zack’s exact position.)
Your comment seems to me to assume that Scott thinks there would be nothing very wrong with a definition of “fish” that included whales only because that’s something he has to think in order to remain consistent while classifying transgender people the way they feel they should be classified.
Believing things for multiple reasons is a thing (despite the LW idea of a true rejection, as if people only have one reason for everything). Moreover, people aren’t perfectly rational machines, and motivated reasoning is a thing. I certainly think that needing to believe it for the sake of transgendered people is a large component of why he believes it, and that he probably wouldn’t otherwise believe it, even if it’s not the only reason why.
I agree: one can have multiple reasons for having (or professing) a belief. For that reason, to me saying “X believes Y because Z” (where Z is a disreputable reason and one would otherwise assume something less disreputable) is rather uninteresting if not accompanied by actual evidence that the other less-disreputable reasons aren’t sufficient explanation for X to believe Y.
In the present case, Scott is known to be a good thinker, and has given (not particularly disreputable) reasons for believing Y; rationalists on the whole are also pretty good thinkers (Nate and Eliezer included); if you think their opinions on this point are mostly the result of political prejudice, you’re entitled to think that but I don’t see any good reason to agree.
Scott Alexander’s essay uses the example of fish versus whales to argue that transgender people should be classified by whatever sex they claim to be rather than classified by biological sex. This essay came out after 2008 and before 2021. And Scott Alexander is about as influential here as Yudkowsky.
In other words, what changed is that asserting that it makes sense to classify dolphins as fish is now something you need to assert for political purposes.
Edit: I missed the reference to gender issues. But I think it may explain why Yudkowsky and rationalists in general have changed their mind, regardless of why anyone in particular here has.
Your comment seems to me to assume that Scott thinks there would be nothing very wrong with a definition of “fish” that included whales only because that’s something he has to think in order to remain consistent while classifying transgender people the way they feel they should be classified.
I don’t think it’s at all obvious that that’s so.
(Similarly, one could postulate that Zack thinks there would be something very wrong with such a definition of “fish” only because that’s something he has to think in order to remain consistent while insisting that transgender people should be classified according to attributes like anatomy, chromosomes, etc.
I don’t think that’s obviously so, either.)
Either of those things could be true. Both of them could be true, for that matter. Or neither. But I think that in order for “rationalists as a group have changed their minds on this for political reasons” to be a better analysis than “rationalists as a group have changed their minds on this because they found Scott’s arguments about King Solomon and the like convincing”, there needs to be some good reason to think that Scott’s arguments are bad enough that rationalists couldn’t be convinced by them without political motivation, or that Scott’s arguments were clearly made in bad faith, or something of the kind.
(Note: my description of Scott’s and Zack’s positions is brief and necessarily sketchy. E.g., Scott is writing about whether it’s OK to define a word that groups what-we-call-fish together with whales and dolphins; Zack is more interested in whether it would be OK to use the specific word “fish” that way, given how it is already used; it’s not clear which question Soares is really debating, given that the whole thing is shitposting anyway. Some of the gender-political issues for which this serves as an analogy match up pretty well with one of those, some not so much. Anyway, please do not take any of the above as a serious attempt to describe either Scott’s or Zack’s exact position.)
Believing things for multiple reasons is a thing (despite the LW idea of a true rejection, as if people only have one reason for everything). Moreover, people aren’t perfectly rational machines, and motivated reasoning is a thing. I certainly think that needing to believe it for the sake of transgendered people is a large component of why he believes it, and that he probably wouldn’t otherwise believe it, even if it’s not the only reason why.
I agree: one can have multiple reasons for having (or professing) a belief. For that reason, to me saying “X believes Y because Z” (where Z is a disreputable reason and one would otherwise assume something less disreputable) is rather uninteresting if not accompanied by actual evidence that the other less-disreputable reasons aren’t sufficient explanation for X to believe Y.
In the present case, Scott is known to be a good thinker, and has given (not particularly disreputable) reasons for believing Y; rationalists on the whole are also pretty good thinkers (Nate and Eliezer included); if you think their opinions on this point are mostly the result of political prejudice, you’re entitled to think that but I don’t see any good reason to agree.