I don’t think the core thesis is “the level of abuse in this community is substantially higher than in others”. Even if we (very generously) just assumed that the level of abuse in this community was lower than that in most places, these incidents would still be very important to bring up and address.
When an abuse of power arises the organisation/community in which it arises has roughly two possible approaches—clamping down on it or covering it up. The purpose of the first is to solve the problem, the purpose of the second is to maintain the reputation of the organisation. (How many of those catholic church child abuse stories were covered up because they were worried about the reputational damage to the church). By focusing on the relative abuse level it seem like you are seeing these stories (primarily) as an attack on the reputation of your tribe (“A blue abused someone? No he didn’t its Green propaganda!”). Does it matter whether the number of children abused in the catholic church was higher than the number abused outside it?
If that is the case, then there is nothing wrong with that emotional response. If you feel a sense of community with a group and you yourself have never experienced the problem, it can just feel like an attack on something you like. The journalist might even be motivated badly (eg. they think an editorial line against EA will go down well). But I still think its a fairly unhelpful response
Of course, one could argue that the position “Obviously deal with these issues, but also they are very rare and our tribe is actually super good” is perfectly logically consistent. And it is. But the language is doing extra work—by putting “us good” next too the issue it sounds like minimising or dismissing the issue. Put another way claims of “goodness” could be made in one post, and then left them out of the sex abuse discussion. The two are not very linked.
Does it matter whether the number of children abused in the catholic church was higher than the number abused outside it?
Yes, it does matter here, since base rates matter in general.
Honestly, one of my criticisms that I want to share as a post later on is that LW ignores the base rates and focuses too much on the inside view over the outside view, but in this case, it does matter here since the analogous claim would be that the church is uniquely bad at sexual assault, and if it turned out that it wasn’t uniquely bad, then it means we don’t have to panic.
That’s the importance of base rates: It gives you a solid number that is useful to compare against. Nothing is usually nearly as unprecedented or new as a first time person thinks.
The base-rates post sounds like an interesting one, I look forward to it. But, unless I am very confused, the base rates are only ever going to help answer questions like: “is this group of people better than society in general by metric X” (You can bring a choice Hollywood producer and Prince out as part of the control group). My point was that I think a more useful question might be something like “Why was the response to this specific incident inadequate?”.
I don’t think the core thesis is “the level of abuse in this community is substantially higher than in others”. Even if we (very generously) just assumed that the level of abuse in this community was lower than that in most places, these incidents would still be very important to bring up and address.
When an abuse of power arises the organisation/community in which it arises has roughly two possible approaches—clamping down on it or covering it up. The purpose of the first is to solve the problem, the purpose of the second is to maintain the reputation of the organisation. (How many of those catholic church child abuse stories were covered up because they were worried about the reputational damage to the church). By focusing on the relative abuse level it seem like you are seeing these stories (primarily) as an attack on the reputation of your tribe (“A blue abused someone? No he didn’t its Green propaganda!”). Does it matter whether the number of children abused in the catholic church was higher than the number abused outside it?
If that is the case, then there is nothing wrong with that emotional response. If you feel a sense of community with a group and you yourself have never experienced the problem, it can just feel like an attack on something you like. The journalist might even be motivated badly (eg. they think an editorial line against EA will go down well). But I still think its a fairly unhelpful response
Of course, one could argue that the position “Obviously deal with these issues, but also they are very rare and our tribe is actually super good” is perfectly logically consistent. And it is. But the language is doing extra work—by putting “us good” next too the issue it sounds like minimising or dismissing the issue. Put another way claims of “goodness” could be made in one post, and then left them out of the sex abuse discussion. The two are not very linked.
Yes, it does matter here, since base rates matter in general.
Honestly, one of my criticisms that I want to share as a post later on is that LW ignores the base rates and focuses too much on the inside view over the outside view, but in this case, it does matter here since the analogous claim would be that the church is uniquely bad at sexual assault, and if it turned out that it wasn’t uniquely bad, then it means we don’t have to panic.
That’s the importance of base rates: It gives you a solid number that is useful to compare against. Nothing is usually nearly as unprecedented or new as a first time person thinks.
The base-rates post sounds like an interesting one, I look forward to it. But, unless I am very confused, the base rates are only ever going to help answer questions like: “is this group of people better than society in general by metric X” (You can bring a choice Hollywood producer and Prince out as part of the control group). My point was that I think a more useful question might be something like “Why was the response to this specific incident inadequate?”.
That might be the problem here, since there seem to be two different conversations, going by the article:
Why was this incident not responded to accurately?
Is our group meaningfully worse or better, compared to normal society? And why is it worse or better?