Why do you find it beneficial to bring up implications about political and other charged issues, when discussing topics that are on LW’s discussion agenda?
I don’t think one should bring up such implications just for the hell of it, when they contribute nothing of substance. I also agree that among otherwise equally useful examples, one should use those that are least distracting and that minimize the danger of dissension. There’s a simple cost-benefit case there, which I don’t dispute. However, it seems to me that many relevant topics are impossible to discuss without bringing up such implications.
Take for example my original post that started this discussion. For anyone who strives to be less wrong about almost anything, one of the absolutely crucial questions is what confidence should be assigned to what the academic mainstream says, and in this regard, I consider the topic of the post extremely relevant for LW. (If you believe otherwise, I would be curious to see the argument why—and note that what I’m arguing now is independent of what you might think about the quality of its content.) Now, I think nobody could dispute that on many topics the academic opinion is biased to some extent due to political and ideological influences, so it’s important to be able to recognize and evaluate such situations. Moreover, as far as I see, this represents a peculiar class of bias that cannot be adequately illustrated and discussed without bringing up some concrete examples of biases due to ideological or political influences. So, how could one possibly approach this issue while strictly avoiding the mention of anything that’s ideologically charged at least by implication?
Yet some people apparently believe that this line of inquiry already goes too far towards dangerous and undesirable topics. If this belief is correct, in the sense that maintaining a high quality of discourse really demands such a severe restriction on permissible topics, then this, in my opinion, decisively defeats the idea of having a forum like LW, under any reasonable interpretation of its mission statement, vague as it is. It effectively implies that people are inherently incapable of rational discourse unless it’s stringently disciplined and focused on a narrow range of topics, the way expert technical forums are. Because this is definitely not the only example of how charged issues will inevitably be arrived upon by people discussing the general problems of sorting out truth from bias and nonsense.
There are also other important points here, on which I’ve already elaborated in my other comments, which all stem from the same fundamental observation, namely that those topics where one needs an extraordinary level of rationality to escape bias and delusion and often exactly those that are commonly a matter of impassioned and polarized opinion. In other words, general skills in rational thinking and overcoming bias are of little use if one will stick to technical topics in which experts already have sophisticated, so to say, application-specific techniques for eliminating bias and nonsense. (Which often work well—one can easily think of brilliant scientists and technical experts with outright delusional opinions outside of their narrow specialties—and when they don’t, the issue may well be impossible to analyze correctly without getting into charged topics.) But even if you disagree with my view expressed in this last paragraph, I think your question is adequately answered by the points I made before that.
So, how could one possibly approach this issue while strictly avoiding the mention of anything that’s ideologically charged at least by implication?
How about using an example from the past? A controversy that was ideologically charged at some point, but no longer inflames passions in the present? I’m not sure if there are such examples that would suit your purpose, but it seems worth looking into, if you hadn’t already.
Overall I don’t think we disagree much. We both think whether to bring up political implications is a matter of cost-benefit analysis and we seem to largely agree on what count as costs and what as benefits. I would just caution that we’re probably biased to over-estimate the net benefit of bringing up political implications since many of us feel strongly motivated to spread our favorite political ideas. (If you’re satisfied that you’ve already taken into account such biases, then that’s good enough for me.)
How about using an example from the past? A controversy that was ideologically charged at some point, but no longer inflames passions in the present?
Trouble is, the present system that produces reputable and accredited science and scholarship is a rather novel creation. Things worked very differently as recently as two or three generations ago, and I believe that an accurate general model for assessing its soundness on various issues necessarily has to incorporate judgments about some contemporary polarized and charged topics, which have no historical precedent that would be safely remote from present-day controversies. As Constant wrote in another reply to your above comment, modern science is so deeply intertwined with the modern system of government that it’s impossible to accurately analyze one without asking any questions about the other.
And to emphasize this important point again, I believe that coming up with such a model is a matter of supreme importance to anyone who wants to have correct views on almost any topic outside of one’s own narrow areas of expertise. Our society is historically unique in that we have these vast institutions whose mission is to produce and publish accurate insight on all imaginable topics, and for anyone intellectually curious, the skill of assessing the quality of their output is as important as recognizing edible from poisonous fruit for a forager.
I would just caution that we’re probably biased to over-estimate the net benefit of bringing up political implications since many of us feel strongly motivated to spread our favorite political ideas.
That is surely a valid concern, and I probably display this bias myself at least occasionally. Like most biases, however, it also has its mirror image, i.e. the bias to avoid questions for fear of stirring up controversy, which one should also watch for.
This is not only because excessive caution means avoiding topics that would in fact be worth pursuing, but also because of a more subtle problem. Namely, the set of all questions relevant for a topic may include some safe and innocent ones alongside other more polarizing and charged ones. Deciding to include only the former into one’s assessment and ignoring the latter for fear of controversy may in fact fatally bias one’s final conclusions. I have seen instances of posts and articles on LW that, in my opinion, suffer from this exact problem.
Wei_Dai:
I don’t think one should bring up such implications just for the hell of it, when they contribute nothing of substance. I also agree that among otherwise equally useful examples, one should use those that are least distracting and that minimize the danger of dissension. There’s a simple cost-benefit case there, which I don’t dispute. However, it seems to me that many relevant topics are impossible to discuss without bringing up such implications.
Take for example my original post that started this discussion. For anyone who strives to be less wrong about almost anything, one of the absolutely crucial questions is what confidence should be assigned to what the academic mainstream says, and in this regard, I consider the topic of the post extremely relevant for LW. (If you believe otherwise, I would be curious to see the argument why—and note that what I’m arguing now is independent of what you might think about the quality of its content.) Now, I think nobody could dispute that on many topics the academic opinion is biased to some extent due to political and ideological influences, so it’s important to be able to recognize and evaluate such situations. Moreover, as far as I see, this represents a peculiar class of bias that cannot be adequately illustrated and discussed without bringing up some concrete examples of biases due to ideological or political influences. So, how could one possibly approach this issue while strictly avoiding the mention of anything that’s ideologically charged at least by implication?
Yet some people apparently believe that this line of inquiry already goes too far towards dangerous and undesirable topics. If this belief is correct, in the sense that maintaining a high quality of discourse really demands such a severe restriction on permissible topics, then this, in my opinion, decisively defeats the idea of having a forum like LW, under any reasonable interpretation of its mission statement, vague as it is. It effectively implies that people are inherently incapable of rational discourse unless it’s stringently disciplined and focused on a narrow range of topics, the way expert technical forums are. Because this is definitely not the only example of how charged issues will inevitably be arrived upon by people discussing the general problems of sorting out truth from bias and nonsense.
There are also other important points here, on which I’ve already elaborated in my other comments, which all stem from the same fundamental observation, namely that those topics where one needs an extraordinary level of rationality to escape bias and delusion and often exactly those that are commonly a matter of impassioned and polarized opinion. In other words, general skills in rational thinking and overcoming bias are of little use if one will stick to technical topics in which experts already have sophisticated, so to say, application-specific techniques for eliminating bias and nonsense. (Which often work well—one can easily think of brilliant scientists and technical experts with outright delusional opinions outside of their narrow specialties—and when they don’t, the issue may well be impossible to analyze correctly without getting into charged topics.) But even if you disagree with my view expressed in this last paragraph, I think your question is adequately answered by the points I made before that.
How about using an example from the past? A controversy that was ideologically charged at some point, but no longer inflames passions in the present? I’m not sure if there are such examples that would suit your purpose, but it seems worth looking into, if you hadn’t already.
Overall I don’t think we disagree much. We both think whether to bring up political implications is a matter of cost-benefit analysis and we seem to largely agree on what count as costs and what as benefits. I would just caution that we’re probably biased to over-estimate the net benefit of bringing up political implications since many of us feel strongly motivated to spread our favorite political ideas. (If you’re satisfied that you’ve already taken into account such biases, then that’s good enough for me.)
Wei_Dai:
Trouble is, the present system that produces reputable and accredited science and scholarship is a rather novel creation. Things worked very differently as recently as two or three generations ago, and I believe that an accurate general model for assessing its soundness on various issues necessarily has to incorporate judgments about some contemporary polarized and charged topics, which have no historical precedent that would be safely remote from present-day controversies. As Constant wrote in another reply to your above comment, modern science is so deeply intertwined with the modern system of government that it’s impossible to accurately analyze one without asking any questions about the other.
And to emphasize this important point again, I believe that coming up with such a model is a matter of supreme importance to anyone who wants to have correct views on almost any topic outside of one’s own narrow areas of expertise. Our society is historically unique in that we have these vast institutions whose mission is to produce and publish accurate insight on all imaginable topics, and for anyone intellectually curious, the skill of assessing the quality of their output is as important as recognizing edible from poisonous fruit for a forager.
That is surely a valid concern, and I probably display this bias myself at least occasionally. Like most biases, however, it also has its mirror image, i.e. the bias to avoid questions for fear of stirring up controversy, which one should also watch for.
This is not only because excessive caution means avoiding topics that would in fact be worth pursuing, but also because of a more subtle problem. Namely, the set of all questions relevant for a topic may include some safe and innocent ones alongside other more polarizing and charged ones. Deciding to include only the former into one’s assessment and ignoring the latter for fear of controversy may in fact fatally bias one’s final conclusions. I have seen instances of posts and articles on LW that, in my opinion, suffer from this exact problem.