There are real life examples where reality has turned out to be the “least convenient of possible worlds”. I have spent many hours arguing with people who insist that there are no significant gender differences (beyond the obvious), and are convinced that to assert otherwise is morally reprehensible.
They have spent so long arguing that such differences do not exist, and this is the reason that sexism is wrong, that their morality just can’t cope with a world in which this turns out not to be true. There are many similar politically charged issues—Pinker discusses quite a few in the Blank Slate—where people aren’t wiling to listen to arguments about factual issues because they believe they have moral consequences.
The problem, of course—and I realise this is the main point of this post—is that if your morality is contingent on empirical issues where you might turn out to be wrong, you have to accept the consequences. If you believe that sexism is wrong because there are no heritable gender differences, you have to be willing to accept that if these differences do turn out to exist then you’ll say sexism is ok.
This is probably a test you should apply to all of your moral beliefs—if it just so happens that I’m wrong about the factual issue on which I’m basing my belief is wrong, will really I be willing to change my mind?
To do that would require that “all possible worlds that contain me” be a coherent concept. What does it mean, to identify as “me” some agent in a world very different from our own?
I think that it is not. All possible worlds include worlds where every tuesday the first person you meet in a crowded place just happens to attack you. That would lead to a personal moral code of stabbing the first person you meet on tuesday.
I think we can only have a moral code that works on most worlds at best
You could have a personal moral code of stabbing anyone who you’re 90% certain would otherwise attack you. In a universe where the first person you meet on Tuesday always tries to kill you, you would quickly start stabbing them first. In other worlds, you would not.
I think we can only have a moral code that works on most worlds at best
That doesn’t follow from your logic. There could be multiple functions of maximal expectd utility. Or more fundamentally, how you sum over possible words reflects your prior anthropic biases (which worlds you think are most likely), which is sadly a completely arbitrary choice.
I took “all possible worlds that contain me” to mean all worlds where history went the same until my birth. Any world where significant things went differently would have led a different sperm to create a different person than him. That is, they should be reasonably similar but can still include diverse outcomes from for example nuclear war where Pr0methean is living in post-apocalyptic fallout to a USSR-US alliance leading to a fascist authoritarian government in your country to choice.
I did in fact assume that worlds more similar to our current one would make up the majority [or at least the plurality] in that case. Was I wrong to assume that?
Edit: thinking about it now, the plurality was post-hoc rationalisation, so ignore it. On a side note, how do I do strikethrough text?
There should be a button with that appearance in the lower right-hand corner of your comments, which brings up a tooltip labeled “retract” when you mouse over it. Using it will strikethrough the entire text of your post, which ’round these parts is shorthand for “I, the author, no longer endorse this comment”. Using it for a second time will delete your post, unless there are responses to it.
There isn’t any way to strikethrough portions of a post with LW’s markup. Or at least I wasn’t able to find one the last time I looked into this. The usual Markdown syntax is disabled here, probably to reserve the look for the retract option.
The usual Markdown syntax is disabled here, probably to reserve the look for the retract option.
The causality is unlikely. There was never strikethrough syntax here and the retract option was not conceived until years after the creation of the forum (and syntax choices).
I don’t think that what I’m about to say actually applies, but you know what I find most annoying in the world?
Well, I’ll give an example:
We were in gym class and the teacher was explaining discus and he told us that the boys’ discuses weighed 1 kilogram and the girls’ discuses weighed 750 grams. And then this one girl in my class goes, “Why is the girls’ discus lighter?” And she knows what the teacher is going to say so she goes, “Don’t say it, it’s sexist.”
IT’S NOT SEXIST!!!
In reality, boys ARE stronger than girls! And admitting to that is not being sexist, it’s being truthful!
Being sexist would be saying that ALL girls are NOT ALLOWED to throw 1 kilogram discuses because they’ll damage they’re delicate bodies.
NEVER be afraid to say that something’s true JUST because it’s SOMETHING-IST! It’s NOT unless it’s DISCRIMINITORY!!!
Sorry for all the yelling, I’m very passionate about this, and thanks for listening to my rant . . .
If you want to emphasize something without resorting to capslock, put asterisks on either side. The “show help” button (on the right when you’re about to post) explains all the options.
People sometimes find comments using ALL CAPS for emphasis unpleasant to read. I think that you may be annoying people with this behavior—I wanted to let you know in case this wasn’t your intention.
I think that upvoting simple “Thanks” comments is sometimes beneficial—courtesy can be helpful in maintaining useful dialogue between people who have very different beliefs prior to the discussion.
ETA: Yes, I will downvote such comments if they get too much karma—my note above mostly extends to a point or two.
I think it’s worthwhile, at this point, to define exactly what one means by ‘sexist’. According to Wiktionary, it means (as a noun):
A person who discriminates on grounds of sex; someone who practises sexism.
And as an adjective:
Unfairly discriminatory against one sex in favour of the other.
Now, looking at ‘discriminate’, we have two definitions:
(intransitive) To make distinctions.
And:
(intransitive, construed with against) To make decisions based on prejudice.
This definition leaves it a little unclear as to whether describing any differences between genders (including the obvious ones) is sexist, or whether only describing discriminatory differences between genders is sexist. Personally, I had always assumed that any difference counted as sexist, but only discriminatory differences counted as bad things to say; that is, that saying that boys are on average stronger than girls is both true and sexist.
From your post, I think that you are using a different definition of ‘sexist’, where only the discriminatory uses are considered valid examples.
There are real life examples where reality has turned out to be the “least convenient of possible worlds”. I have spent many hours arguing with people who insist that there are no significant gender differences (beyond the obvious), and are convinced that to assert otherwise is morally reprehensible.
They have spent so long arguing that such differences do not exist, and this is the reason that sexism is wrong, that their morality just can’t cope with a world in which this turns out not to be true. There are many similar politically charged issues—Pinker discusses quite a few in the Blank Slate—where people aren’t wiling to listen to arguments about factual issues because they believe they have moral consequences.
The problem, of course—and I realise this is the main point of this post—is that if your morality is contingent on empirical issues where you might turn out to be wrong, you have to accept the consequences. If you believe that sexism is wrong because there are no heritable gender differences, you have to be willing to accept that if these differences do turn out to exist then you’ll say sexism is ok.
This is probably a test you should apply to all of your moral beliefs—if it just so happens that I’m wrong about the factual issue on which I’m basing my belief is wrong, will really I be willing to change my mind?
That raises an interesting question: is it possible to base a moral code only on what’s true in all possible worlds that contain me?
To do that would require that “all possible worlds that contain me” be a coherent concept. What does it mean, to identify as “me” some agent in a world very different from our own?
I think that it is not. All possible worlds include worlds where every tuesday the first person you meet in a crowded place just happens to attack you. That would lead to a personal moral code of stabbing the first person you meet on tuesday.
I think we can only have a moral code that works on most worlds at best
You could have a personal moral code of stabbing anyone who you’re 90% certain would otherwise attack you. In a universe where the first person you meet on Tuesday always tries to kill you, you would quickly start stabbing them first. In other worlds, you would not.
That doesn’t follow from your logic. There could be multiple functions of maximal expectd utility. Or more fundamentally, how you sum over possible words reflects your prior anthropic biases (which worlds you think are most likely), which is sadly a completely arbitrary choice.
I took “all possible worlds that contain me” to mean all worlds where history went the same until my birth. Any world where significant things went differently would have led a different sperm to create a different person than him. That is, they should be reasonably similar but can still include diverse outcomes from for example nuclear war where Pr0methean is living in post-apocalyptic fallout to a USSR-US alliance leading to a fascist authoritarian government in your country to choice.
I did in fact assume that worlds more similar to our current one would make up the majority [or at least the plurality] in that case. Was I wrong to assume that?
Edit: thinking about it now, the plurality was post-hoc rationalisation, so ignore it. On a side note, how do I do strikethrough text?
Retract—circle with an line through it.
What do you mean by circle with a line through it? Is that some sort of code for what buttons to press?
There should be a button with that appearance in the lower right-hand corner of your comments, which brings up a tooltip labeled “retract” when you mouse over it. Using it will strikethrough the entire text of your post, which ’round these parts is shorthand for “I, the author, no longer endorse this comment”. Using it for a second time will delete your post, unless there are responses to it.
There isn’t any way to strikethrough portions of a post with LW’s markup. Or at least I wasn’t able to find one the last time I looked into this. The usual Markdown syntax is disabled here, probably to reserve the look for the retract option.
The causality is unlikely. There was never strikethrough syntax here and the retract option was not conceived until years after the creation of the forum (and syntax choices).
Ah, thank you. I hadn’t noticed that
I don’t think that what I’m about to say actually applies, but you know what I find most annoying in the world?
Well, I’ll give an example: We were in gym class and the teacher was explaining discus and he told us that the boys’ discuses weighed 1 kilogram and the girls’ discuses weighed 750 grams. And then this one girl in my class goes, “Why is the girls’ discus lighter?” And she knows what the teacher is going to say so she goes, “Don’t say it, it’s sexist.”
IT’S NOT SEXIST!!!
In reality, boys ARE stronger than girls! And admitting to that is not being sexist, it’s being truthful! Being sexist would be saying that ALL girls are NOT ALLOWED to throw 1 kilogram discuses because they’ll damage they’re delicate bodies.
NEVER be afraid to say that something’s true JUST because it’s SOMETHING-IST! It’s NOT unless it’s DISCRIMINITORY!!!
Sorry for all the yelling, I’m very passionate about this, and thanks for listening to my rant . . .
If you want to emphasize something without resorting to capslock, put asterisks on either side. The “show help” button (on the right when you’re about to post) explains all the options.
Why thank you!
SIGH!!!
Nooooooo, we do not vote up comments like this. We vote up comments that make good points on the subject we are all trying to learn more about.
Um, a couple notes here:
People sometimes find comments using ALL CAPS for emphasis unpleasant to read. I think that you may be annoying people with this behavior—I wanted to let you know in case this wasn’t your intention.
I think that upvoting simple “Thanks” comments is sometimes beneficial—courtesy can be helpful in maintaining useful dialogue between people who have very different beliefs prior to the discussion.
ETA: Yes, I will downvote such comments if they get too much karma—my note above mostly extends to a point or two.
I think it’s worthwhile, at this point, to define exactly what one means by ‘sexist’. According to Wiktionary, it means (as a noun):
And as an adjective:
Now, looking at ‘discriminate’, we have two definitions:
And:
This definition leaves it a little unclear as to whether describing any differences between genders (including the obvious ones) is sexist, or whether only describing discriminatory differences between genders is sexist. Personally, I had always assumed that any difference counted as sexist, but only discriminatory differences counted as bad things to say; that is, that saying that boys are on average stronger than girls is both true and sexist.
From your post, I think that you are using a different definition of ‘sexist’, where only the discriminatory uses are considered valid examples.