Absent specific, non-hypothetical examples and empirical evidence, I find this question hard to think or reason about. I have not noticed this problem myself, so I cannot recollect any such examples from my own experience.
I note this as another example of the “Politics is the Mind-Killer” is the Mind-Killer meta-problem. The point of the “Politics is the Mind-Killer” essay (and a correct one) is that we should avoid using tribal-loyalty triggering examples when discussing issues such as mathematics, cognitive biases, and logic that are not fundamentally about issues that touch on tribal identity. Triggering tribal loyalty unnecessarily is bad pedagogy.
However, “Politics is the Mind-Killer” is not a general excuse for avoiding discussion of politics or other matters that touch on tribal or personal identity when those matters are exactly the subject at hand. If rationality cannot come to epistemically correct and instrumentally useful results despite the blinders of tribal loyalty and personal identity, it is weak, impotent, and irrelevant.
The claim of this post is that people have cognitive biases based on personal identity that cause them to reach incorrect conclusions about the relative efficacy of different altruistic actions. If this group is truly rational, then we should be able to calmly discuss the actual issues and resolve them factually or at least work them down to the point where we realize some of us have different fundamental values. For instance, I would not expect us to resolve the question of whether to value future people equally with currently living people, but I would expect us to be able to make plausible estimates as to the number of QALYs (quality adjusted life years) per dollar of different interventions, or at the very least to figure out what information is missing and needs to be collected to answer the question. If we can’t do that, if we can’t even talk about that, then I have to question what the point of the entire LessWrong project actually is.
Absent specific, non-hypothetical examples and empirical evidence, I find this question hard to think or reason about. I have not noticed this problem myself, so I cannot recollect any such examples from my own experience.
I note this as another example of the “Politics is the Mind-Killer” is the Mind-Killer meta-problem. The point of the “Politics is the Mind-Killer” essay (and a correct one) is that we should avoid using tribal-loyalty triggering examples when discussing issues such as mathematics, cognitive biases, and logic that are not fundamentally about issues that touch on tribal identity. Triggering tribal loyalty unnecessarily is bad pedagogy.
However, “Politics is the Mind-Killer” is not a general excuse for avoiding discussion of politics or other matters that touch on tribal or personal identity when those matters are exactly the subject at hand. If rationality cannot come to epistemically correct and instrumentally useful results despite the blinders of tribal loyalty and personal identity, it is weak, impotent, and irrelevant.
The claim of this post is that people have cognitive biases based on personal identity that cause them to reach incorrect conclusions about the relative efficacy of different altruistic actions. If this group is truly rational, then we should be able to calmly discuss the actual issues and resolve them factually or at least work them down to the point where we realize some of us have different fundamental values. For instance, I would not expect us to resolve the question of whether to value future people equally with currently living people, but I would expect us to be able to make plausible estimates as to the number of QALYs (quality adjusted life years) per dollar of different interventions, or at the very least to figure out what information is missing and needs to be collected to answer the question. If we can’t do that, if we can’t even talk about that, then I have to question what the point of the entire LessWrong project actually is.