Well sure, but that doesn’t count because we’re pretty much all atheists here. Atheism is the default position in this social circle, and the only one which is really given respect.
I’m talking about criticisms of demographics and identities of non-marginalized groups that actually frequent Lesswrong.
If we’re allowed to discuss genetically mediated differences with respect to race and behavior, then we’re also allowed to discuss empirical studies of racism, its effects, which groups are demonstrated to engage in it, and how to avoid it if we so wish. If we’re allowed to empirically discuss findings about female hypergamy, we’re also allowed to discuss findings about male proclivities towards sexual and non-sexual violence.
But for all these things, there’s no point in discussing them in Main unless there’s an instrumental goal being serviced or a broader philosophical point being made about ideas...and even in Discussion, for any of this to deserve an upvote it would need to be really data driven and/or bringing attention to novel ideas rather than just storytelling, rhetoric, or the latest political drama.
Reactionary views, being obscure and meta-contrarian, have a natural edge in the “novel ideas” department, which is probably why it has come up so often here (and why there is a perception of LW as more right-wing than surveys show).
If we’re allowed to discuss genetically mediated differences with respect to race and behavior, then we’re also allowed to discuss empirical studies of racism, its effects, which groups are demonstrated to engage in it, and how to avoid it if we so wish. If we’re allowed to empirically discuss findings about female hypergamy, we’re also allowed to discuss findings about male proclivities towards sexual and non-sexual violence.
Speaking for myself, I would be happy to see a rational article discussing racism, sexism, violence, etc.
For example, I would be happy to see someone explaining feminism rationally, by which I mean: 1) not assuming that everyone already agrees with your whole teaching or they are a very bad person; 2) actually providing definitions of what is and what isn’t meant by the used terms in a way that really “carves reality at its joints” instead of torturing definitions to say what you want such as definining sexism as “doing X while male”; 3) focusing on those parts than can be reasonably defended and ignoring or even willing to criticize those part’s that can’t.
(What I hate is someone just throwing around an applause light and saying: “therefore you must agree with me or you are an evil person”. Or telling me to go and find a definition elsewhere without even giving me a pointer, when the problem is that almost everyone uses the word without defining it, or that there are different contradictory definitions. Etc.)
Some of my favorite feminist articles are the ones demonstrating actual statistical effects of irrational biases against women, such as http://www.catalyst.org/file/139/bottom%20line%202.pdf talking about women being undervalued as board members, or the ones talking about how gender blind audition processes result in far more women orchestra members.
That alone doesn’t imply agreement with any specific hypothesis about what exactly causes the prejudice, nor with any specific proposal how this should be fixed. That would require more bits of evidence.
In general, I support things that reduce that prejudice—such as the blind tests—where I see no negative side-effects. But I am cautious about proposals to fix it by reversing stupidity, typically by adding a random bonus to women (how exactly is it quantified?) or imposing quotas (what if in some specific situation X all women who applied for the job really were incompetent? just like in some other specific situation Y all men who applied could be incompetent).
Also, there are some Schelling-point concerns, e.g. once we accept it is okay to give bonuses on tests to different groups and to determine the given group and bonus by democratic vote or lobbying, it will become a new battlefield with effects similar to “democracy stops being fair once people discover they can vote themselves more money out of their neighbors’ pockets”. It would be nice to have some scientists discover that the appropriate bonus on tests is exactly 12.5 points, but it is more like real world to have politicians promising bonus 50 points to any group in exchange for their vote, of course each of them having “experts” to justify why this specific number is correct. -- And I would hate to have a choice between a political party that gives me −1000 points penalty and a political party that gives me +1000 points bonus, which I would consider also unfair, and in addition I might disagree with that party on some other topics. And given human nature, I would not be surprised inf those −1000 and +1000 parties become so popular among their voters that another party proposing to reset the bonuses back to 0 would simply have no chance.
One thing I would like to see—and haven’t—in regards to opposition to prejudice is work on how to become less prejudiced. That is, how to see the person in front of you accurately, even if you’ve spent a lot of time in an environment which trained you to have pre-set opinions about that person.
Information about an individual screens off information about the group. At least it should. Let’s assume partial success, which is better than nothing. So the key is to get information about the individual. I would just try talking to them.
I guess the failure of usual anti-prejudice techniques is assuming that all opinions about a group are wrong, i.e. not a valid Bayesian evidence. (Of course unless it is a positive opinion about a minority, in which case it hypocritically is okay.) They try to remove the participants’ opinion about a group in general; usually without any success.
I would rather assume that an opinion about the group may be correct, but still, any given individual may be different than the average or the stereotype of their group. Which can easily be demonstrated by letting participants talk about how they differ from the average or the stereotype of various groups they could be classified into. For example, unlike a typical man in my society, I have long hair, I don’t like beer, and I am not interested in watching sport on TV. At this moment, the idea of “the person is not the same as (my idea of) the group” is in near mode. The next step is getting enough specific information about the other person so that the general image of “a random member of group X” can be replaced with some other data. (Depends on situation; e.g. in a group of children I would give many yes/no questions such as “do you have a pet?” and let them raise their hands; and then also they would ask questions. Each bit of information that differs from the assumption, if noticed, could be useful.)
Of course the result could be that people change their opinion about this one specific person, and yet keep their prejudice about their group. Which is an acceptable result for me, but probably not acceptable for many other people. I would reason that a partial success which happens is much better than an idealistic solution that doesn’t happen; and that accepting one exception makes people more likely to accept another exception in the future, possibly weakening the prejudice. But on the other hand, if the original opinion about the average of the group was correct, then we have achieved the best possible result: we didn’t teach people bullshit (which could later backfire on us) and yet we taught them to perceive a person as an individual, different from the average of the group, which was the original goal.
Here’s some empirical research on the actual causes of the pay gap. Executive Summary: The majority of the burden of child rearing still falls on women, and this can be disruptive to their careers prospects, especially in high paying fields like law and bussiness management; childless women and women who work in jobs that allow for flexible hours earn incomes much closer to parity.
Side note: I can’t really tell, but some evidence suggests the total time spent on childcare has increased in the past 40-50 years. Now, when I look at people raised back then and try to adjust for the effects of leaded gasoline on the brain, they seem pretty much OK. So we should consider the possibility that we’re putting pointless pressure on mothers.
Who is the we there? I’m not declaiming responsibility, but interested in who these women feel is pressuring them. I’d wager it’s largely a status competition with other women.
As you said, “much closer to parity”. There are probably multiple causes, each responsible for a part of the effect. And as usual, the reality is not really convenient for any political side.
Agreed, but we devote plenty of time to criticizing it, don’t we? (Both reactionary criticism, and the more mainstream criticisms of the media/academia culture)
But the thing about the reactionary lens, especially Moldbug, is at the end of the day they side with the people in power. Moldbug even explicitly states as much. A central theme of his work is that we shouldn’t keep elevating the weaker and criticizing the stronger, thus creating endless revolution. “Formalism” essentially means “maintaining the status quo of the current power heirarchy”. The only exception to this is the Cathedral itself—because it is a power structure which is set up in such a way that it upsets existing heirarchies.
So the moldbug / reactionary ideology , at the core, is fundamentally opposed to carrying out the criticism which I just suggested against anyone who isn’t part of “the cathedral” which keeps shifting the status quo (hence the meta contrarianism). It is an ideology which only criticizes the social critics themselves, and seeks to return to the dominant paradigm as it was before the social critics entered the scene.
I’m saying we need more actual real contrarianism, not more meta contrarianism against the contrarians. It is useful to criticize things other than the Cathedral. I’m being a meta-meta-contrarian.
I’m saying we need actual real contrarianism, not meta contrarianism against the contrarians. I’m being a meta-meta-contrarian.
I think I’m a bit confused now.
Let’s say Cathedral is mainstream. Then Moldbug is a contrarian. Then Yvain’s anti-reactionary FAQ is contrarian against a contrarian. Are you saying we need more stuff like Yvain’s FAQ?
Or do you want some actual direct criticism of an existing power structure, maybe something along these lines?
We start with a base. You are saying this is the mainstream US which you understand to be conservative. So, level 0 -- US conservatives—mainstream.
Level 1 is the Cathedral which is contrarian to level 0 and which is US liberals or progressives.
Level 2 are the neo-reactionaries who are contrarian to level 1 (Cathedral)
Level 3 is Yvain’s FAQ which is contrarian to level 2 (Reactionaries).
So we are basically stacking levels where each level is explicitly opposed to the previous one and, obviously, all even layers are sympathetic to each other, as are all odd layers (I find the “meta-” terminology confusing since this word means other things to me, probably “anti-” would be better).
And what you want more of is level 1 stuff—basically left-liberal critique of whatever stands in the way of progress, preferably on steroids.
Do I understand you right?
EDIT: LOL, you simplified your post right along the lines I was extracting out of it...
I don’t mind hearing from any level, as long as things are well cited.
-I’ve sort of gotten bored with level 0, but that could change if I see a bunch of really well done level 0 content. I just don’t often see very many insightful things coming from this level.
-Level 2 holds my interest because it’s novel. When it’s well cited, it really holds my interest. However, it seldom is well cited. That’s okay though—the ideas are fun to play with.
-Level 1 is the level I agree with. However, because I’m very familiar with it and its supporting data, and I hate agreeing with things, it has to work a lot harder to hold my interest.
My perception is that level 2, for reasons described, gets more attention than it merits. The shock value, twisty narrative, and novelty of it make it more interesting to people like me, who like reading compelling arguments even if they don’t completely agree. However, it drives away people who are emotionally affected and/or perceive that have something to protect from what would happen if those viewpoints were to gain traction.
I was suggesting that maybe increasing good level one posts, which weren’t boring, echo-chamber-ish and obviously true to to most people on Lesswrong, would remedy this. (I’m taking the LW poll as indications that most LWers, like me, agree with Level 1)
Edit: Even layers are not necessarily sympathetic to each other, even if they are ideologically aligned. Mainstream conservatives would likely not be sympathetic to reactionary’s open racism/sexism etc, and the impression I get is that reactionaries think mainstream conservatives are fighting a losing battle and aren’t particularly bright. There’s really only one Odd Layer, practically speaking, since Yvain is the only person on hypothetical layer 3.
Hm. I understand you now. However I carve reality in a somewhat different way—we see joints in the territory in different places.
First I would set up level zero as reality, what actually exists now—all the current socio-econo-politco-etc. structures. And then one dimension by which you divide people/groups/movements would be by whether they are more or less content with the current reality or whether they want to radically change it.
Another dimension would be the individual vs. group/community/state spectrum, anarchists being on one end and fans of a totalitarian state on the other.
You can add more—say, egalitarianism vs.some sort of a caste system—as needed.
Getting back to your wishes, I think we have a bunch of socialists here who on a regular basis post critiques of the status quo from the left side (e.g. didn’t we have a debate about guaranteed basic income recently?). On the other hand they do lack in sexiness and edginess :-)
Getting back to your wishes, I think we have a bunch of socialists here who on a regular basis post critiques of the status quo from the left side (e.g. didn’t we have a debate about guaranteed basic income recently?).
I didn’t witness this debate, so maybe you’re right that the advocates for the guaranteed minimum income were in fact socialists. I’d like to note, though, that the idea of a guaranteed basic income has had some currency in libertarian circles as well, advocated by (among others) Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. So I wouldn’t take support for this policy as very strong evidence of a socialist political orientation.
Well, I mentioned socialists because a significant part of LW self-identifies as socialist (see Yvain’s surveys). That, of course, is a fuzzy term with many possible meanings.
But the survey didn’t just say “Socialist”, it said “Socialist, for example Scandinavian countries: socially permissive, high taxes, major redistribution of wealth”.
Hehe I’ll give you that coherently expressing edgy views is part of what keeps me reading despite fairly strong disagreement...outside view, that’s not actually a point in its favor, of course—as a general heuristic, the boring and conventional people are right and the edgy internet subculture is wrong, even if wrong in novel ways!
as a general heuristic, the boring and conventional people are right and the edgy internet subculture is wrong
I don’t think that’s a particularly useful heuristic. I’d like to offer a replacement: people who actually did something in reality or who point to something existing and working are right more often than people whose arguments are based on imagination and counterfactuals.
There’s lots of talk about religion which is almost the definition of a socially strong group.
Well sure, but that doesn’t count because we’re pretty much all atheists here. Atheism is the default position in this social circle, and the only one which is really given respect.
I’m talking about criticisms of demographics and identities of non-marginalized groups that actually frequent Lesswrong.
If we’re allowed to discuss genetically mediated differences with respect to race and behavior, then we’re also allowed to discuss empirical studies of racism, its effects, which groups are demonstrated to engage in it, and how to avoid it if we so wish. If we’re allowed to empirically discuss findings about female hypergamy, we’re also allowed to discuss findings about male proclivities towards sexual and non-sexual violence.
But for all these things, there’s no point in discussing them in Main unless there’s an instrumental goal being serviced or a broader philosophical point being made about ideas...and even in Discussion, for any of this to deserve an upvote it would need to be really data driven and/or bringing attention to novel ideas rather than just storytelling, rhetoric, or the latest political drama.
Reactionary views, being obscure and meta-contrarian, have a natural edge in the “novel ideas” department, which is probably why it has come up so often here (and why there is a perception of LW as more right-wing than surveys show).
Speaking for myself, I would be happy to see a rational article discussing racism, sexism, violence, etc.
For example, I would be happy to see someone explaining feminism rationally, by which I mean: 1) not assuming that everyone already agrees with your whole teaching or they are a very bad person; 2) actually providing definitions of what is and what isn’t meant by the used terms in a way that really “carves reality at its joints” instead of torturing definitions to say what you want such as definining sexism as “doing X while male”; 3) focusing on those parts than can be reasonably defended and ignoring or even willing to criticize those part’s that can’t.
(What I hate is someone just throwing around an applause light and saying: “therefore you must agree with me or you are an evil person”. Or telling me to go and find a definition elsewhere without even giving me a pointer, when the problem is that almost everyone uses the word without defining it, or that there are different contradictory definitions. Etc.)
Some of my favorite feminist articles are the ones demonstrating actual statistical effects of irrational biases against women, such as http://www.catalyst.org/file/139/bottom%20line%202.pdf talking about women being undervalued as board members, or the ones talking about how gender blind audition processes result in far more women orchestra members.
For the record, I completely support anonymous evaluation of orchestra members, and many other professions. And students, etc.
This is how quickly I update in favor of feminism when presented rationally. :D
More meta: This is why I think this kind of debate is more meaningful.
Do the results of the blind tests give you some reason to think there might be harder-to-quantify irrational prejudice against women?
Yes.
That alone doesn’t imply agreement with any specific hypothesis about what exactly causes the prejudice, nor with any specific proposal how this should be fixed. That would require more bits of evidence.
In general, I support things that reduce that prejudice—such as the blind tests—where I see no negative side-effects. But I am cautious about proposals to fix it by reversing stupidity, typically by adding a random bonus to women (how exactly is it quantified?) or imposing quotas (what if in some specific situation X all women who applied for the job really were incompetent? just like in some other specific situation Y all men who applied could be incompetent).
Also, there are some Schelling-point concerns, e.g. once we accept it is okay to give bonuses on tests to different groups and to determine the given group and bonus by democratic vote or lobbying, it will become a new battlefield with effects similar to “democracy stops being fair once people discover they can vote themselves more money out of their neighbors’ pockets”. It would be nice to have some scientists discover that the appropriate bonus on tests is exactly 12.5 points, but it is more like real world to have politicians promising bonus 50 points to any group in exchange for their vote, of course each of them having “experts” to justify why this specific number is correct. -- And I would hate to have a choice between a political party that gives me −1000 points penalty and a political party that gives me +1000 points bonus, which I would consider also unfair, and in addition I might disagree with that party on some other topics. And given human nature, I would not be surprised inf those −1000 and +1000 parties become so popular among their voters that another party proposing to reset the bonuses back to 0 would simply have no chance.
One thing I would like to see—and haven’t—in regards to opposition to prejudice is work on how to become less prejudiced. That is, how to see the person in front of you accurately, even if you’ve spent a lot of time in an environment which trained you to have pre-set opinions about that person.
Information about an individual screens off information about the group. At least it should. Let’s assume partial success, which is better than nothing. So the key is to get information about the individual. I would just try talking to them.
I guess the failure of usual anti-prejudice techniques is assuming that all opinions about a group are wrong, i.e. not a valid Bayesian evidence. (Of course unless it is a positive opinion about a minority, in which case it hypocritically is okay.) They try to remove the participants’ opinion about a group in general; usually without any success.
I would rather assume that an opinion about the group may be correct, but still, any given individual may be different than the average or the stereotype of their group. Which can easily be demonstrated by letting participants talk about how they differ from the average or the stereotype of various groups they could be classified into. For example, unlike a typical man in my society, I have long hair, I don’t like beer, and I am not interested in watching sport on TV. At this moment, the idea of “the person is not the same as (my idea of) the group” is in near mode. The next step is getting enough specific information about the other person so that the general image of “a random member of group X” can be replaced with some other data. (Depends on situation; e.g. in a group of children I would give many yes/no questions such as “do you have a pet?” and let them raise their hands; and then also they would ask questions. Each bit of information that differs from the assumption, if noticed, could be useful.)
Of course the result could be that people change their opinion about this one specific person, and yet keep their prejudice about their group. Which is an acceptable result for me, but probably not acceptable for many other people. I would reason that a partial success which happens is much better than an idealistic solution that doesn’t happen; and that accepting one exception makes people more likely to accept another exception in the future, possibly weakening the prejudice. But on the other hand, if the original opinion about the average of the group was correct, then we have achieved the best possible result: we didn’t teach people bullshit (which could later backfire on us) and yet we taught them to perceive a person as an individual, different from the average of the group, which was the original goal.
Here’s some empirical research on the actual causes of the pay gap. Executive Summary: The majority of the burden of child rearing still falls on women, and this can be disruptive to their careers prospects, especially in high paying fields like law and bussiness management; childless women and women who work in jobs that allow for flexible hours earn incomes much closer to parity.
Side note: I can’t really tell, but some evidence suggests the total time spent on childcare has increased in the past 40-50 years. Now, when I look at people raised back then and try to adjust for the effects of leaded gasoline on the brain, they seem pretty much OK. So we should consider the possibility that we’re putting pointless pressure on mothers.
Who is the we there? I’m not declaiming responsibility, but interested in who these women feel is pressuring them. I’d wager it’s largely a status competition with other women.
As you said, “much closer to parity”. There are probably multiple causes, each responsible for a part of the effect. And as usual, the reality is not really convenient for any political side.
The Cathedral, to use Moldbug’s terminology, is certainly a non-marginalized group and LW is full of its adherents.
Agreed, but we devote plenty of time to criticizing it, don’t we? (Both reactionary criticism, and the more mainstream criticisms of the media/academia culture)
But the thing about the reactionary lens, especially Moldbug, is at the end of the day they side with the people in power. Moldbug even explicitly states as much. A central theme of his work is that we shouldn’t keep elevating the weaker and criticizing the stronger, thus creating endless revolution. “Formalism” essentially means “maintaining the status quo of the current power heirarchy”. The only exception to this is the Cathedral itself—because it is a power structure which is set up in such a way that it upsets existing heirarchies.
So the moldbug / reactionary ideology , at the core, is fundamentally opposed to carrying out the criticism which I just suggested against anyone who isn’t part of “the cathedral” which keeps shifting the status quo (hence the meta contrarianism). It is an ideology which only criticizes the social critics themselves, and seeks to return to the dominant paradigm as it was before the social critics entered the scene.
I’m saying we need more actual real contrarianism, not more meta contrarianism against the contrarians. It is useful to criticize things other than the Cathedral. I’m being a meta-meta-contrarian.
I think I’m a bit confused now.
Let’s say Cathedral is mainstream. Then Moldbug is a contrarian. Then Yvain’s anti-reactionary FAQ is contrarian against a contrarian. Are you saying we need more stuff like Yvain’s FAQ?
Or do you want some actual direct criticism of an existing power structure, maybe something along these lines?
So the contrarian food chain goes
Mainstream America (bulk of the American population)
-> radical egalitarian critique of mainstream america (feminists, anti-racists, the Left, moldbug’s “Cathedral”)
→ Reactionary critique of egalitarian movements (Moldbug, Manosphere, human biodiversity, Dark enlightenment)
→ Critique of Reactionary anti-egalitarian stances (Yvain, this post).
I’m advocating good old-fashioned contrarianism—stuff like radical egalitarianism, sex positivism, etc.
(No, obviously, not along those lines—but yes, that link is at the correct level of contrarianism.)
OK. Let me try to sort this out.
We start with a base. You are saying this is the mainstream US which you understand to be conservative. So, level 0 -- US conservatives—mainstream.
Level 1 is the Cathedral which is contrarian to level 0 and which is US liberals or progressives.
Level 2 are the neo-reactionaries who are contrarian to level 1 (Cathedral)
Level 3 is Yvain’s FAQ which is contrarian to level 2 (Reactionaries).
So we are basically stacking levels where each level is explicitly opposed to the previous one and, obviously, all even layers are sympathetic to each other, as are all odd layers (I find the “meta-” terminology confusing since this word means other things to me, probably “anti-” would be better).
And what you want more of is level 1 stuff—basically left-liberal critique of whatever stands in the way of progress, preferably on steroids.
Do I understand you right?
EDIT: LOL, you simplified your post right along the lines I was extracting out of it...
I don’t mind hearing from any level, as long as things are well cited.
-I’ve sort of gotten bored with level 0, but that could change if I see a bunch of really well done level 0 content. I just don’t often see very many insightful things coming from this level.
-Level 2 holds my interest because it’s novel. When it’s well cited, it really holds my interest. However, it seldom is well cited. That’s okay though—the ideas are fun to play with.
-Level 1 is the level I agree with. However, because I’m very familiar with it and its supporting data, and I hate agreeing with things, it has to work a lot harder to hold my interest.
My perception is that level 2, for reasons described, gets more attention than it merits. The shock value, twisty narrative, and novelty of it make it more interesting to people like me, who like reading compelling arguments even if they don’t completely agree. However, it drives away people who are emotionally affected and/or perceive that have something to protect from what would happen if those viewpoints were to gain traction.
I was suggesting that maybe increasing good level one posts, which weren’t boring, echo-chamber-ish and obviously true to to most people on Lesswrong, would remedy this. (I’m taking the LW poll as indications that most LWers, like me, agree with Level 1)
Edit: Even layers are not necessarily sympathetic to each other, even if they are ideologically aligned. Mainstream conservatives would likely not be sympathetic to reactionary’s open racism/sexism etc, and the impression I get is that reactionaries think mainstream conservatives are fighting a losing battle and aren’t particularly bright. There’s really only one Odd Layer, practically speaking, since Yvain is the only person on hypothetical layer 3.
Hm. I understand you now. However I carve reality in a somewhat different way—we see joints in the territory in different places.
First I would set up level zero as reality, what actually exists now—all the current socio-econo-politco-etc. structures. And then one dimension by which you divide people/groups/movements would be by whether they are more or less content with the current reality or whether they want to radically change it.
Another dimension would be the individual vs. group/community/state spectrum, anarchists being on one end and fans of a totalitarian state on the other.
You can add more—say, egalitarianism vs.some sort of a caste system—as needed.
Getting back to your wishes, I think we have a bunch of socialists here who on a regular basis post critiques of the status quo from the left side (e.g. didn’t we have a debate about guaranteed basic income recently?). On the other hand they do lack in sexiness and edginess :-)
I didn’t witness this debate, so maybe you’re right that the advocates for the guaranteed minimum income were in fact socialists. I’d like to note, though, that the idea of a guaranteed basic income has had some currency in libertarian circles as well, advocated by (among others) Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. So I wouldn’t take support for this policy as very strong evidence of a socialist political orientation.
Well, I mentioned socialists because a significant part of LW self-identifies as socialist (see Yvain’s surveys). That, of course, is a fuzzy term with many possible meanings.
But the survey didn’t just say “Socialist”, it said “Socialist, for example Scandinavian countries: socially permissive, high taxes, major redistribution of wealth”.
Hehe I’ll give you that coherently expressing edgy views is part of what keeps me reading despite fairly strong disagreement...outside view, that’s not actually a point in its favor, of course—as a general heuristic, the boring and conventional people are right and the edgy internet subculture is wrong, even if wrong in novel ways!
I don’t think that’s a particularly useful heuristic. I’d like to offer a replacement: people who actually did something in reality or who point to something existing and working are right more often than people whose arguments are based on imagination and counterfactuals.
Ah, sorry for the real time simplification! I realized I was writing spaghetti as soon as I looked it over.
Not a problem, untangling spaghetti (in limited amounts) is fun.