The reason I brought it up is that there is no default “do what the mainstream does” position there. The mainstream is religious and the helpless view would tell you to be religious, too.
Of course, but you can ask for the asymmetry between $yourcountry, USA, Germany, Italy, Japan and Israel (or whichever group of places you prefer). These places have wildly different attitudes to religion (or, well, at least they follow different religions, somewhat) with no-one being in a better position in terms of figuring out the right religion, so you can conclude that while some religion must be correct, we don’t know which one.
I don’t have much experience with deconversions, but even looking at personal stories posted on LW, they seem to rotate around doubting particular elements on the objective level, not on the “this belief is too weird” level.
Something something selection bias.
Anyway, I don’t know about religious deconversion, but I know I’ve had a lot of stupid political views that I’ve removed by using helpless view.
IIRC my brother deconverted via helpless view, but I might misremember. Either way, that would be n=1, so not that useful.
Well, yes, but “rationality” is not terribly well defined and is a whole another can of worms. In particular, I know how to measure IQ and I know how it’s distributed in populations and sub-groups. I do NOT know how to measure the degree of rationality and what’s happening with it in populations. That makes discussions of rationality as an empirical variable to be handwavy and… not stand on solid data ground.
I quite like Eliezer’s suggestion of using the question of MWI as a test for rationality, but I’m biased; I independently discovered it as a child. :P
First, signaling loyalty could be a perfectly rational thing to do. Second, there is the issue of the difference between signaling and true beliefs—signaling something other than what you believe is not uncommon.
The problem here is that there isn’t necessarily a difference between signaling and true beliefs. Imagine your outgroup saying the most ridiculous thing you can. That thing is likely a kind of signaling, but in some ways (not all, though) it acts like a belief.
You have priors, don’t you?
… I can sometimes for simplicity’s sake be modeled as having priors, but we’re all monkeys after all. But yeah, I know what you mean.
Presumably, quite strong priors about certain things?
Sure. But if I lived in a world where most people believed the holocaust is a hoax, or a world where it was controversial whether it was a hoax but the knowledge of the evidence was distributed in the same way as it is today, I’m pretty sure I would be a holocaust denier.
(Of course, in the second case the evidence in favor of the holocaust having happened would rapidly emerge, completely crush the deniers, and send us back to the current world, but we’re “preventing” this from happening, counterfactually.)
Anyway, this shows that a large part of my belief in the holocaust comes from the fact that everybody knows holocaust deniers are wrong. Sure, the evidence in favor of the holocaust is there, but I (assume I would have (I haven’t actually bothered checking what the deniers are saying)) no way of dealing the denier’s counterarguments, because I would have to dig through mountains of evidence every time.
(If holocaust deniers are actually trivial to disprove, replace them with some other conspiracy theory that’s trickier.)
How do you know who is who? And who gets to decide? If I am talking to someone, do I have to first have to classify her into enlightened or unenlightened?
Well, most of the time, you’re going to notice. Try talking politics with them; the enlightened ones are going to be curious, while the unenlightened ones are going to push specific things. Using the word ‘majoritarian’ for the helpless view might have made it unclear that in many cases, it’s a technique used by relatively few people. Or rather, most people only use it for subjects they aren’t interested in.
However, even if you can’t tell, most of the time it’s not going to matter. I mean, I’m not trying to teach lists of biases or debate techniques to every person you talk to.
That’s not a winning line of argument—it’s argument for popularity can be easily shut down by pointing out that a lot more smart people are not worried, and the helpless approach tells you not to pick fringe views.
Gates is one of the most famous people within tech, though. That’s not exactly fringe.
Actually, I just re-read your scenario. I had understood it as if Alice subscribed to the helpless view. I think that in this case, Bob is making the mistake of treating the helpless view as an absolute truth, rather than a convenient approximation.I wouldn’t dismiss entire communities based on weak helpless view knowledge; it would have to be either strong (i.e. many conspiracy theories) or independent view.
In the case described in the OP, we have strong independent view knowledge that the pseudoscience stuff is wrong.
The basic question is, how do you know? In particular, can you consistently judge the rationality of someone of noticeably higher IQ?
I think so. I mean, it even had a Seer who hosted a reasonably popular event at the club, so… yeah. IQ high, rationality at different levels.
Also, ‘noticeably higher IQ’ is ambiguous. Do you mean ‘noticeably higher IQ’ than I have? Because it was just an ordinary high-IQ thing, not an extreme IQ thing, so it’s not like I was lower than the average of that place. I think its minimum IQ was lower than the LW average, but I might be mixing up some stuff.
so you can conclude that while some religion must be correct, we don’t know which one.
Sorry, under the helpless approach you cannot conclude anything, much less on the basis of something as complex as a cross-cultural comparative religion analysis. If you are helpless, you do what people around you do and think what people around you think. The end.
I quite like Eliezer’s suggestion of using the question of MWI as a test for rationality
Oh-oh. I’m failing this test hard.
Besides, are you quite sure that you want to make an untestable article of faith with zero practical consequences the criterion for rationality? X-/
But if I lived in a world where most people believed the holocaust is a hoax … I’m pretty sure I would be a holocaust denier.
That’s an argument against the helpless view, right? It sure looks this way.
Well, most of the time, you’re going to notice.
Well, yes, I’m going to notice and I generally have little trouble figuring out who’s stupid and who is smart. But that’s me and my personal opinion. You, on the other hand, are setting this up as a generally applicable rule. The problem is who decides. Let’s say I talk a bit to Charlie and decide that Charlie is stupid. Charlie, on the basis of the same conversation, decides that I’m stupid. Who’s right? I have my opinion, and Charlie has his opinion, and how do we resolve this without pulling out IQ tests and equivalents?
It’s essentially a power and control issue: who gets to separate people into elite and masses?
Do you mean ‘noticeably higher IQ’ than I have?
In your setup there is the Arbiter—in your case, yourself—who decides whether someone is smart (and so is allowed to use the independent approach) or stupid (and so must be limited to the helpless approach). This Arbiter has a certain level of IQ. Can the Arbiter judge the smartness/rationality of someone with noticeably higher IQ than the Arbiter himself?
Sorry, under the helpless approach you cannot conclude anything, much less on the basis of something as complex as a cross-cultural comparative religion analysis. If you are helpless, you do what people around you do and think what people around you think. The end.
It seems like we are thinking of two different views, then. Let’s keep the name ‘helpless view’ for mine and call yours ‘straw helpless view’.
The idea behind helpless view is that you’re very irrational in many ways. Which ways?
You’re biased in favor of your ingroups and your culture. This feels like your ingroups are universally correct from the inside, but you can tell that it is a bias from the fact that your outgroups act similarly confident.
You’re biased in favor of elegant convincing-sounding arguments rather than hard-to-understand data.
Your computational power is bounded, so you need to spend a lot of resources to understand things.
There are obviously more, but biases similar to those are the ones the helpless view is intended to fight.
The way it fights those arguments is by not allowing object-level arguments, arguments that favor your ingroups or your culture over others and things like that.
Instead, in helpless view, you focus on things like:
International mainstream consensus. (Things like cross-cultural analysis on opinions, what organizations like the UN say, etc.)
Expert opinions. (If the experts, preferably in your outgroup, agree that something is wrong, rule it out. Silence on the issue does not let you rule it out.)
Things that you are an expert on. (Looking things up on the web does not count as expert.)
What the government says.
(The media are intentionally excluded.)
Oh-oh. I’m failing this test hard.
evil grin
Besides, are you quite sure that you want to make an untestable article of faith with zero practical consequences the criterion for rationality? X-/
Nah, it was mostly meant as a semi-joke. I mean, I like the criterion, but my reasons for liking it are not exactly unbiased.
If I were to actually make a rationality test, I would probably look at the ingroups/outgroups of the people I make the test for, include a bunch of questions about facts where each there is a lot of ingroup/outgroup bias, and look at the answers to that.
That’s an argument against the helpless view, right? It sure looks this way.
Except that we live in the current world, not the counterfactual world, and in the current world the helpless view tells you not to believe conspiracy theories.
Well, yes, I’m going to notice and I generally have little trouble figuring out who’s stupid and who is smart. But that’s me and my personal opinion. You, on the other hand, are setting this up as a generally applicable rule. The problem is who decides. Let’s say I talk a bit to Charlie and decide that Charlie is stupid. Charlie, on the basis of the same conversation, decides that I’m stupid. Who’s right? I have my opinion, and Charlie has his opinion, and how do we resolve this without pulling out IQ tests and equivalents?
It’s essentially a power and control issue: who gets to separate people into elite and masses?
I dunno.
For what purpose are you separating the people into elite and masses? If it’s just a question of who to share dangerous knowledge to, there’s the obvious possibility of just letting whoever wants to share said dangerous knowledge decide.
In your setup there is the Arbiter—in your case, yourself—who decides whether someone is smart (and so is allowed to use the independent approach) or stupid (and so must be limited to the helpless approach). This Arbiter has a certain level of IQ. Can the Arbiter judge the smartness/rationality of someone with noticeably higher IQ than the Arbiter himself?
I don’t know, because I have a really high IQ, so I don’t usually meet people with noticeably higher IQ. Do you have any examples of ultra-high-IQ people who write about controversial stuff?
Instead, in helpless view, you focus on things like: International mainstream consensus.
Hold on. I thought the helpless view was for the “dumb masses”. They are certainly not able to figure out what the “international mainstream consensus” is. Hell, even I have no idea what it is (or even what it means).
A simple example: Western democracy. What’s the “international mainstream consensus”? Assuming it exists, I would guess it says that the Western-style democracy needs a strong guiding hand lest it devolves into degeneracy and amoral chaos. And hey, if you ask the experts in your outgroup (!) they probably wouldn’t be great fans of the Western democracies, that’s why they are in the outgroup to start with.
I have a feeling you want the helpless view to cherry-pick the “right” advice from the confusing mess of the “international consensus” and various experts and government recommendations. I don’t see how this can work well.
in the current world the helpless view tells you not to believe conspiracy theories.
Heh. You know the definitions of a cult and a religion? A cult is a small unsuccessful religion. A religion is a large successful cult.
In exactly the same way what gets labeled a “conspiracy theory” is already a rejected view. If the mainstream believes in a conspiracy theory, it’s not called a “conspiracy theory”, it’s called a deep and insightful analysis. If you were to live in a culture where Holocaust denial was mainstream, it wouldn’t be called a conspiracy theory, it would be called “what all right-minded people believe”.
For what purpose are you separating the people into elite and masses?
For the purpose of promoting/recommending either the independent view or the helpless view.
Hold on. I thought the helpless view was for the “dumb masses”. They are certainly not able to figure out what the “international mainstream consensus” is. Hell, even I have no idea what it is (or even what it means).
The “dumb masses” here are not defined as being low-IQ, but just low-rationality. Low-IQ people would probably be better served just doing what people around them are doing (or maybe not; I’m not an expert in low-IQ people).
A simple example: Western democracy. What’s the “international mainstream consensus”?
Well, one of the first conclusions to draw with helpless view is “politics is too complicated to figure out”. I’m not sure I care that much about figuring out if democracy is good according to helpless view. The UN seems to like democracy, and I would count that as helpless-view evidence in favor of it.
I would guess it says that the Western-style democracy needs a strong guiding hand lest it devolves into degeneracy and amoral chaos.
I would guess that there is an ambiguously pro-democratic response. 48% of the world lives in democracies, and the places that aren’t democratic probably don’t agree as much on how to be un-democratic as the democratic places agree on how to be democratic.
For the purpose of promoting/recommending either the independent view or the helpless view.
Whoever does the promoting/recommending seems like a natural candidate, then.
Of course, but you can ask for the asymmetry between $yourcountry, USA, Germany, Italy, Japan and Israel (or whichever group of places you prefer). These places have wildly different attitudes to religion (or, well, at least they follow different religions, somewhat) with no-one being in a better position in terms of figuring out the right religion, so you can conclude that while some religion must be correct, we don’t know which one.
Something something selection bias.
Anyway, I don’t know about religious deconversion, but I know I’ve had a lot of stupid political views that I’ve removed by using helpless view.
IIRC my brother deconverted via helpless view, but I might misremember. Either way, that would be n=1, so not that useful.
I quite like Eliezer’s suggestion of using the question of MWI as a test for rationality, but I’m biased; I independently discovered it as a child. :P
The problem here is that there isn’t necessarily a difference between signaling and true beliefs. Imagine your outgroup saying the most ridiculous thing you can. That thing is likely a kind of signaling, but in some ways (not all, though) it acts like a belief.
… I can sometimes for simplicity’s sake be modeled as having priors, but we’re all monkeys after all. But yeah, I know what you mean.
Sure. But if I lived in a world where most people believed the holocaust is a hoax, or a world where it was controversial whether it was a hoax but the knowledge of the evidence was distributed in the same way as it is today, I’m pretty sure I would be a holocaust denier.
(Of course, in the second case the evidence in favor of the holocaust having happened would rapidly emerge, completely crush the deniers, and send us back to the current world, but we’re “preventing” this from happening, counterfactually.)
Anyway, this shows that a large part of my belief in the holocaust comes from the fact that everybody knows holocaust deniers are wrong. Sure, the evidence in favor of the holocaust is there, but I (assume I would have (I haven’t actually bothered checking what the deniers are saying)) no way of dealing the denier’s counterarguments, because I would have to dig through mountains of evidence every time.
(If holocaust deniers are actually trivial to disprove, replace them with some other conspiracy theory that’s trickier.)
Well, most of the time, you’re going to notice. Try talking politics with them; the enlightened ones are going to be curious, while the unenlightened ones are going to push specific things. Using the word ‘majoritarian’ for the helpless view might have made it unclear that in many cases, it’s a technique used by relatively few people. Or rather, most people only use it for subjects they aren’t interested in.
However, even if you can’t tell, most of the time it’s not going to matter. I mean, I’m not trying to teach lists of biases or debate techniques to every person you talk to.
Gates is one of the most famous people within tech, though. That’s not exactly fringe.
Actually, I just re-read your scenario. I had understood it as if Alice subscribed to the helpless view. I think that in this case, Bob is making the mistake of treating the helpless view as an absolute truth, rather than a convenient approximation.I wouldn’t dismiss entire communities based on weak helpless view knowledge; it would have to be either strong (i.e. many conspiracy theories) or independent view.
In the case described in the OP, we have strong independent view knowledge that the pseudoscience stuff is wrong.
I think so. I mean, it even had a Seer who hosted a reasonably popular event at the club, so… yeah. IQ high, rationality at different levels.
Also, ‘noticeably higher IQ’ is ambiguous. Do you mean ‘noticeably higher IQ’ than I have? Because it was just an ordinary high-IQ thing, not an extreme IQ thing, so it’s not like I was lower than the average of that place. I think its minimum IQ was lower than the LW average, but I might be mixing up some stuff.
Sorry, under the helpless approach you cannot conclude anything, much less on the basis of something as complex as a cross-cultural comparative religion analysis. If you are helpless, you do what people around you do and think what people around you think. The end.
Oh-oh. I’m failing this test hard.
Besides, are you quite sure that you want to make an untestable article of faith with zero practical consequences the criterion for rationality? X-/
That’s an argument against the helpless view, right? It sure looks this way.
Well, yes, I’m going to notice and I generally have little trouble figuring out who’s stupid and who is smart. But that’s me and my personal opinion. You, on the other hand, are setting this up as a generally applicable rule. The problem is who decides. Let’s say I talk a bit to Charlie and decide that Charlie is stupid. Charlie, on the basis of the same conversation, decides that I’m stupid. Who’s right? I have my opinion, and Charlie has his opinion, and how do we resolve this without pulling out IQ tests and equivalents?
It’s essentially a power and control issue: who gets to separate people into elite and masses?
In your setup there is the Arbiter—in your case, yourself—who decides whether someone is smart (and so is allowed to use the independent approach) or stupid (and so must be limited to the helpless approach). This Arbiter has a certain level of IQ. Can the Arbiter judge the smartness/rationality of someone with noticeably higher IQ than the Arbiter himself?
It seems like we are thinking of two different views, then. Let’s keep the name ‘helpless view’ for mine and call yours ‘straw helpless view’.
The idea behind helpless view is that you’re very irrational in many ways. Which ways?
You’re biased in favor of your ingroups and your culture. This feels like your ingroups are universally correct from the inside, but you can tell that it is a bias from the fact that your outgroups act similarly confident.
You’re biased in favor of elegant convincing-sounding arguments rather than hard-to-understand data.
Your computational power is bounded, so you need to spend a lot of resources to understand things.
Mount Stupid
There are obviously more, but biases similar to those are the ones the helpless view is intended to fight.
The way it fights those arguments is by not allowing object-level arguments, arguments that favor your ingroups or your culture over others and things like that.
Instead, in helpless view, you focus on things like:
International mainstream consensus. (Things like cross-cultural analysis on opinions, what organizations like the UN say, etc.)
Expert opinions. (If the experts, preferably in your outgroup, agree that something is wrong, rule it out. Silence on the issue does not let you rule it out.)
Things that you are an expert on. (Looking things up on the web does not count as expert.)
What the government says.
(The media are intentionally excluded.)
evil grin
Nah, it was mostly meant as a semi-joke. I mean, I like the criterion, but my reasons for liking it are not exactly unbiased.
If I were to actually make a rationality test, I would probably look at the ingroups/outgroups of the people I make the test for, include a bunch of questions about facts where each there is a lot of ingroup/outgroup bias, and look at the answers to that.
Except that we live in the current world, not the counterfactual world, and in the current world the helpless view tells you not to believe conspiracy theories.
I dunno.
For what purpose are you separating the people into elite and masses? If it’s just a question of who to share dangerous knowledge to, there’s the obvious possibility of just letting whoever wants to share said dangerous knowledge decide.
I don’t know, because I have a really high IQ, so I don’t usually meet people with noticeably higher IQ. Do you have any examples of ultra-high-IQ people who write about controversial stuff?
Hold on. I thought the helpless view was for the “dumb masses”. They are certainly not able to figure out what the “international mainstream consensus” is. Hell, even I have no idea what it is (or even what it means).
A simple example: Western democracy. What’s the “international mainstream consensus”? Assuming it exists, I would guess it says that the Western-style democracy needs a strong guiding hand lest it devolves into degeneracy and amoral chaos. And hey, if you ask the experts in your outgroup (!) they probably wouldn’t be great fans of the Western democracies, that’s why they are in the outgroup to start with.
I have a feeling you want the helpless view to cherry-pick the “right” advice from the confusing mess of the “international consensus” and various experts and government recommendations. I don’t see how this can work well.
Heh. You know the definitions of a cult and a religion? A cult is a small unsuccessful religion. A religion is a large successful cult.
In exactly the same way what gets labeled a “conspiracy theory” is already a rejected view. If the mainstream believes in a conspiracy theory, it’s not called a “conspiracy theory”, it’s called a deep and insightful analysis. If you were to live in a culture where Holocaust denial was mainstream, it wouldn’t be called a conspiracy theory, it would be called “what all right-minded people believe”.
For the purpose of promoting/recommending either the independent view or the helpless view.
By the way, you asked for a helpless-view deconversion. TomSka just posted one, so...
The “dumb masses” here are not defined as being low-IQ, but just low-rationality. Low-IQ people would probably be better served just doing what people around them are doing (or maybe not; I’m not an expert in low-IQ people).
Well, one of the first conclusions to draw with helpless view is “politics is too complicated to figure out”. I’m not sure I care that much about figuring out if democracy is good according to helpless view. The UN seems to like democracy, and I would count that as helpless-view evidence in favor of it.
I would guess that there is an ambiguously pro-democratic response. 48% of the world lives in democracies, and the places that aren’t democratic probably don’t agree as much on how to be un-democratic as the democratic places agree on how to be democratic.
Whoever does the promoting/recommending seems like a natural candidate, then.