It would help if you named one false prediction that my model of rapists as “Evil Mutants” makes.
This would require interpreting your “rapists are Evil Mutants” claim as about making falsifiable predictions, which would be unreasonable interpretation of your comments thus far. Instead “Rapists are Evil Mutants!” seems to be presented tautologically for the purpose of signalling your own strict virtue and social dominance within the role of moral arbiter.
We can arrive at a falsifiable interpretation if we interpret “Mutant” as an indicator that the labelled individual must be in someway genetically different from a ‘typical’ sample of the species homo sapiens sapiens—or even stretch it to mean that extreme environmental conditions have impacted it sufficiently that the individual can not be said to be exhibiting behaviors representative of its species. It is hopefully obvious to most that this makes “Rapists are Evil Mutants” both falsifiable and trivially false. This is particularly the case if we are using the rather general definition of ‘rape’ that MixedNuts prefers. (See, earlier mentions of strict consent standards and a rejection of the intuitive notions of what rape is.)
It is in fact the case that rape is bad. Violent stereotypical rape is bad. Other complicated things with insufficient quality or admissibility of consent that we call rape are also bad. Yet these are bad things that many or most actual humans would do in the right (or perhaps wrong) circumstances. Many of them are not even considered ‘evil’ by all cultures, much less as evidence of a bizarre deviancy.
We can arrive at a falsifiable interpretation if we interpret “Mutant” as an indicator that the labelled individual must be in someway genetically different from a ‘typical’ sample of the species homo sapiens sapiens—or even stretch it to mean that extreme environmental conditions have impacted it sufficiently that the individual can not be said to be exhibiting behaviors representative of its species. It is hopefully obvious to most that this makes “Rapists are Evil Mutants” both falsifiable and trivially false. This is particularly the case if we are using the rather general definition of ‘rape’ that MixedNuts prefers. (See, earlier mentions of strict consent standards and a rejection of the intuitive notions of what rape is.)
In fairness, that’s probably an overly narrow interpretation of their views. They don’t seem to believe rape is genetic, at least. It seems closer to “liberals” than “Jews”, in stereotype terms. That’s not to say it can’t produce inaccurate results, of course. Otherwise it wouldn’t be rational to avoid stereotyping.
That’s what I’m whining about. MugaSofer claims that I believe (something ey rephrases as) “rapists are Evil Mutants”, and that the essay we’re discussing is valuable because it’s evidence for the true claim “rapists are not Evil Mutants”. I’m trying to figure out what these claims mean. So far we have ruled out “rapists are genetically abnormal” (we agree this is untrue), “rapists hold true beliefs about morality but don’t care” (we agree this is true is this case), and “rapists rape due to choice, not just akrasia” (we also agree this is true in this case).
These beliefs all seem sane. (And thankyou for explaining.)
For future reference when making comments like this it may be worth making it clear that you do not in fact have the belief that your words literally attributing to yourself and are instead being misrepresented. I’m afraid the literal interpretation seemed to fit reasonably well so I did not immediately interpret it as a countersignal.
“rapists hold true beliefs about morality but don’t care” (we agree this is true is this case), and “rapists rape due to choice, not just akrasia” (we also agree this is true in this case).
That’s probably true for some rapists, sure, but it’s clearly not true for all of them. It’s generalizations that are the problem here.
Yeah, just talking about this guy. I gave examples of someone who sincerely believes marital rape is okay (falsifies “true beliefs”) and someone who immediately regrets raping and takes steps to avoid it (falsifies “choice, not akrasia”).
Well, I’m not sure how someone not raping falsifies choice, not akrasia. It just means they chose right. (And that they happened to beat akrasia.) Or do you mean it would invalidate your claim that most rapists have already made that choice?
The person with akrasia I mentioned rapes once (or, if sufficiently good at introspection, not at all), then stays well clear of any situations that would require them to exert willpower not to rape. This can be done by automatically learned aversion (“Holy crap I just raped someone” being a strong punishment), by turning oneself in, by getting therapy, by avoiding the context where they raped (such as being drunk), by avoiding all sexual activity in that context, by getting away from the kind of person one is likely to rape, etc.
Well, for one thing you seem to think that this particular rapist wrote this as part of a calculated ploy to reduce society’s defenses against him (and other rapists?) But I’m not sure how we could test that. By “Evil Mutants” I mean you’re using the neuroarchitecture that demonizes political opponents and Hated Enemies in general, if that clears anything up. I understand you’re pretty knowledgeable about rape; could you mention some predictions you don’t already know to be true? (Of course, I suspect some of your predictions regarding things you know about are wrong anyway because of poor data or whatever, but that’s harder to find and, y’know, rarer.)
you seem to think that this particular rapist wrote this as part of a calculated ploy to reduce society’s defenses against him (and other rapists?)
Not quite. I believe that the effect of the article is to reduce society’s defenses against that type of rapist, and that the author would still publish the article if he shared my belief about this. I think it’s unlikely that he has consciously thought about it, or that he would share my belief if he did. I believe that he did not decide to write the article in order to get this effect. I believe that the cause of this decision was cognitive dissonance between his beliefs “rape is bad” and “I’m a good person”, which led him to seek reassurance of the latter. I wouldn’t know what he believes was the cause; I doubt it’s “to make myself feel better” (or any other phrasing of what I think is the true cause).
By “Evil Mutants” I mean you’re using the neuroarchitecture that demonizes political opponents and Hated Enemies in general, if that clears anything up.
It’s not an answer I can use, as long as we don’t have an MRI handy. So we’ll have to settle for wrong predictions.
could you mention some predictions you don’t already know to be true
Rapists target victims who are easiest to rape and least likely to get the rapist in trouble. (pretty sure) I make no claim as to how much of that selection is conscious.
Visibly strong people are less likely to be raped. (somewhat confident)
People who display willingness to attract attention or to fight are less likely to be raped. (pretty sure, but I’m not sure I can honestly claim not to know this)
Disabled people are more likely to be raped. (somewhat confident)
Cognitively disabled people are more likely to be raped than people with other kinds of disabilities. (pretty sure)
Locked-up people get raped ten ways to Wednesday. Obviously I know about prison rape, but that covers nursing homes and long-stay psychiatric hospitals as well. (near certain)
Most behaviors commonly believed to increase risk of being raped in fact do so. Of course this is compatible with many other explanations. (pretty sure)
People who have personal harm to fear from reporting rape are more likely to be raped. This includes undocumented immigrants, sex workers on the job (major confounding here), trans people (also confounding, also I can’t claim I don’t know that), gay people where that’s illegal, and people in communities that disapprove of airing dirty laundry such as the kinky scene (confounding) and small religious communities. (pretty sure of the general idea)
Rapists target victims they find attractive (this should correlate with conventional attraction), but the effect is less strong than that of vulnerability. (somewhat confident)
Rapists are a little, but not a lot, more likely to commit non-sexual violence. (somewhat confident)
Active rapists have greater variance in status than non-rapists; they’re more likely to be either very high- or very low-status. (somewhat confident)
The smaller the social unit, the stronger the above effect is. (conditioning on it, pretty sure)
Medium- or high-status men who gain status become more likely to rape. (unsure)
Rape in a relationship (not necessarily one that’s supposed to include consensual sex), like other forms of abuse, is used as a punishment (by which I mean occurs more frequently after the abused has disobeyed, voluntarily or not, the abuser, but is unlikely to leave the relationship) if the rapist is male (near-certain) or female (somewhat confident).
Creepiness is correlated with rape in men (pretty sure) and in women (unsure).
Effects of situational partner availability (dispreferred gender, lower attractiveness, taboo pairings) are stronger for rape than for consensual sex if the rapist is male. (unsure)
Rape by men is strongly correlated with testosterone level. (somewhat confident)
Rape is strongly correlated with sexual jealousy. (somewhat confident)
Rapists are more likely to be friends with other rapists. (pretty sure)
Rapists are more likely to be friends with rapists with the same methods of operation (familiarity with the victim, use of violence, use of alcohol, use of other substances, criteria for choice of victims). (somewhat confident)
Rape is correlated with making rape jokes, mild disregard of consent (such as tickling protesting people), and what I’m going to call “comments on the victim’s behavior before and during the rape” when discussing rape cases, correcting for frequency of such behaviors in the social circle. (unsure)
Rape is negatively correlated with close relationships with known rape victims (of other perps, obviously). (somewhat confident)
If you ran that empathy study where people write “E” on their foreheads on men, they would be less empathetic primed with images of women than with images of men (pretty sure), and the effect would be stronger in active rapists of women than on non-rapists (conditioning on previous, pretty sure).
If you ran that study on women, they would be less empathetic primed with images of men than with images of women (somewhat confident), and the effect would be stronger in survivors of recent rape by a man than in non-survivors (conditioning on previous, somewhat confident).
Men who rape without use of violence are rougher when raping than when having consensual sex. (somewhat confident)
Male rapists are on median worse in bed (as judged by consensual sex partners) than non-rapists of similar sexual experience. (There’s a question of how to count the rapes toward sexual experience.) (unsure)
The kick of power (I don’t know if we know how to detect it, but it’s a clearly recognizable emotion) is stronger (in the same individual) when raping than when having consensual sex in male rapists of men (pretty sure), in male rapists of women (somewhat confident), and in female rapists (unsure).
On average, rapists seek the aforementioned feeling of status elevation more than non-rapists if male (somewhat confident) and if female (unsure).
You claim that I model rapists as Evil Mutants, but I don’t know what you mean by that. Can you name one false prediction of my model?
Edited; previous version was:
It would help if you named one false prediction that my model of rapists as “Evil Mutants” makes.
This would require interpreting your “rapists are Evil Mutants” claim as about making falsifiable predictions, which would be unreasonable interpretation of your comments thus far. Instead “Rapists are Evil Mutants!” seems to be presented tautologically for the purpose of signalling your own strict virtue and social dominance within the role of moral arbiter.
We can arrive at a falsifiable interpretation if we interpret “Mutant” as an indicator that the labelled individual must be in someway genetically different from a ‘typical’ sample of the species homo sapiens sapiens—or even stretch it to mean that extreme environmental conditions have impacted it sufficiently that the individual can not be said to be exhibiting behaviors representative of its species. It is hopefully obvious to most that this makes “Rapists are Evil Mutants” both falsifiable and trivially false. This is particularly the case if we are using the rather general definition of ‘rape’ that MixedNuts prefers. (See, earlier mentions of strict consent standards and a rejection of the intuitive notions of what rape is.)
It is in fact the case that rape is bad. Violent stereotypical rape is bad. Other complicated things with insufficient quality or admissibility of consent that we call rape are also bad. Yet these are bad things that many or most actual humans would do in the right (or perhaps wrong) circumstances. Many of them are not even considered ‘evil’ by all cultures, much less as evidence of a bizarre deviancy.
Your enemies are (probably) not innately evil.
In fairness, that’s probably an overly narrow interpretation of their views. They don’t seem to believe rape is genetic, at least. It seems closer to “liberals” than “Jews”, in stereotype terms. That’s not to say it can’t produce inaccurate results, of course. Otherwise it wouldn’t be rational to avoid stereotyping.
That’s what I’m whining about. MugaSofer claims that I believe (something ey rephrases as) “rapists are Evil Mutants”, and that the essay we’re discussing is valuable because it’s evidence for the true claim “rapists are not Evil Mutants”. I’m trying to figure out what these claims mean. So far we have ruled out “rapists are genetically abnormal” (we agree this is untrue), “rapists hold true beliefs about morality but don’t care” (we agree this is true is this case), and “rapists rape due to choice, not just akrasia” (we also agree this is true in this case).
These beliefs all seem sane. (And thankyou for explaining.)
For future reference when making comments like this it may be worth making it clear that you do not in fact have the belief that your words literally attributing to yourself and are instead being misrepresented. I’m afraid the literal interpretation seemed to fit reasonably well so I did not immediately interpret it as a countersignal.
That’s probably true for some rapists, sure, but it’s clearly not true for all of them. It’s generalizations that are the problem here.
Yeah, just talking about this guy. I gave examples of someone who sincerely believes marital rape is okay (falsifies “true beliefs”) and someone who immediately regrets raping and takes steps to avoid it (falsifies “choice, not akrasia”).
Well, I’m not sure how someone not raping falsifies choice, not akrasia. It just means they chose right. (And that they happened to beat akrasia.) Or do you mean it would invalidate your claim that most rapists have already made that choice?
The person with akrasia I mentioned rapes once (or, if sufficiently good at introspection, not at all), then stays well clear of any situations that would require them to exert willpower not to rape. This can be done by automatically learned aversion (“Holy crap I just raped someone” being a strong punishment), by turning oneself in, by getting therapy, by avoiding the context where they raped (such as being drunk), by avoiding all sexual activity in that context, by getting away from the kind of person one is likely to rape, etc.
Well, for one thing you seem to think that this particular rapist wrote this as part of a calculated ploy to reduce society’s defenses against him (and other rapists?) But I’m not sure how we could test that. By “Evil Mutants” I mean you’re using the neuroarchitecture that demonizes political opponents and Hated Enemies in general, if that clears anything up. I understand you’re pretty knowledgeable about rape; could you mention some predictions you don’t already know to be true? (Of course, I suspect some of your predictions regarding things you know about are wrong anyway because of poor data or whatever, but that’s harder to find and, y’know, rarer.)
Not quite. I believe that the effect of the article is to reduce society’s defenses against that type of rapist, and that the author would still publish the article if he shared my belief about this. I think it’s unlikely that he has consciously thought about it, or that he would share my belief if he did. I believe that he did not decide to write the article in order to get this effect. I believe that the cause of this decision was cognitive dissonance between his beliefs “rape is bad” and “I’m a good person”, which led him to seek reassurance of the latter. I wouldn’t know what he believes was the cause; I doubt it’s “to make myself feel better” (or any other phrasing of what I think is the true cause).
It’s not an answer I can use, as long as we don’t have an MRI handy. So we’ll have to settle for wrong predictions.
Rapists target victims who are easiest to rape and least likely to get the rapist in trouble. (pretty sure) I make no claim as to how much of that selection is conscious.
Visibly strong people are less likely to be raped. (somewhat confident)
People who display willingness to attract attention or to fight are less likely to be raped. (pretty sure, but I’m not sure I can honestly claim not to know this)
Disabled people are more likely to be raped. (somewhat confident)
Cognitively disabled people are more likely to be raped than people with other kinds of disabilities. (pretty sure)
Locked-up people get raped ten ways to Wednesday. Obviously I know about prison rape, but that covers nursing homes and long-stay psychiatric hospitals as well. (near certain)
Most behaviors commonly believed to increase risk of being raped in fact do so. Of course this is compatible with many other explanations. (pretty sure)
People who have personal harm to fear from reporting rape are more likely to be raped. This includes undocumented immigrants, sex workers on the job (major confounding here), trans people (also confounding, also I can’t claim I don’t know that), gay people where that’s illegal, and people in communities that disapprove of airing dirty laundry such as the kinky scene (confounding) and small religious communities. (pretty sure of the general idea)
Rapists target victims they find attractive (this should correlate with conventional attraction), but the effect is less strong than that of vulnerability. (somewhat confident)
Rapists are a little, but not a lot, more likely to commit non-sexual violence. (somewhat confident)
Active rapists have greater variance in status than non-rapists; they’re more likely to be either very high- or very low-status. (somewhat confident)
The smaller the social unit, the stronger the above effect is. (conditioning on it, pretty sure)
Medium- or high-status men who gain status become more likely to rape. (unsure)
Rape in a relationship (not necessarily one that’s supposed to include consensual sex), like other forms of abuse, is used as a punishment (by which I mean occurs more frequently after the abused has disobeyed, voluntarily or not, the abuser, but is unlikely to leave the relationship) if the rapist is male (near-certain) or female (somewhat confident).
Creepiness is correlated with rape in men (pretty sure) and in women (unsure).
Effects of situational partner availability (dispreferred gender, lower attractiveness, taboo pairings) are stronger for rape than for consensual sex if the rapist is male. (unsure)
Rape by men is strongly correlated with testosterone level. (somewhat confident)
Rape is strongly correlated with sexual jealousy. (somewhat confident)
Rapists are more likely to be friends with other rapists. (pretty sure)
Rapists are more likely to be friends with rapists with the same methods of operation (familiarity with the victim, use of violence, use of alcohol, use of other substances, criteria for choice of victims). (somewhat confident)
Rape is correlated with making rape jokes, mild disregard of consent (such as tickling protesting people), and what I’m going to call “comments on the victim’s behavior before and during the rape” when discussing rape cases, correcting for frequency of such behaviors in the social circle. (unsure)
Rape is negatively correlated with close relationships with known rape victims (of other perps, obviously). (somewhat confident)
If you ran that empathy study where people write “E” on their foreheads on men, they would be less empathetic primed with images of women than with images of men (pretty sure), and the effect would be stronger in active rapists of women than on non-rapists (conditioning on previous, pretty sure).
If you ran that study on women, they would be less empathetic primed with images of men than with images of women (somewhat confident), and the effect would be stronger in survivors of recent rape by a man than in non-survivors (conditioning on previous, somewhat confident).
Men who rape without use of violence are rougher when raping than when having consensual sex. (somewhat confident)
Male rapists are on median worse in bed (as judged by consensual sex partners) than non-rapists of similar sexual experience. (There’s a question of how to count the rapes toward sexual experience.) (unsure)
The kick of power (I don’t know if we know how to detect it, but it’s a clearly recognizable emotion) is stronger (in the same individual) when raping than when having consensual sex in male rapists of men (pretty sure), in male rapists of women (somewhat confident), and in female rapists (unsure).
On average, rapists seek the aforementioned feeling of status elevation more than non-rapists if male (somewhat confident) and if female (unsure).
Any disagreements? Any sources for resolution?