I have read today a good article about a male privilege. I link it here because in my opinion it is much better written that all other articles I read about the same topic; and it’s relevant to our topic of understanding the people of opposite sex. But I still have some questions about the whole thing.
The article suggests that as a man I simply cannot imagine the situation of women, because some things either don’t happen to me, or I wouldn’t mind them because of my different preferences, or both of that. If I try to estimate the impact of those things on a woman’s utility function, I am almost certainly wrong. Thus the best cognitive strategy is, if a woman tells me something hurts her so much, just trust her, even if it does not make much sense to me.
This strategy would work great for a man who only ever communicates with women that have absolutely no cognitive biases and would never lie to gain unfair advantage. Because I don’t expect such perfection from men around me, I also don’t expect it from women. Any information I get can be wrong, whether intentionally or unintentionally, even if it comes from a woman.
So what should I do as a rationalist that cares about other people’s utility functions? Perhaps I could assign a high prior probability that I am wrong about things related to male privilege. (How high? 90%? 99%) Also I should discount opinions of other men (unless they already discounted it themselves, in which case I will not count the same evidence twice). But there is still a chance that considering this I will come to a conclusion that a woman is wrong.
By the way, perhaps there is a female privilege, too. (I do not think that it has the same magnitude as the male privilege and that things are somehow fair and balanced. No. I just say that it exists.) If you are a woman and you think I am wrong, I would like to remind you that if such things exist, by definition you wouldn’t recognize it, neither would other women, so you should trust me. As a rationalist I admit that you can still get enough evidence against this hypothesis.
Back to the original topic; what should I do if two women disagree with each other? One of them says: “You shouldn’t do this, because it is bad for women,” and the other says: “There is nothing wrong about that; she is probably oversensitive or making things up.” As I am not able to judge it directly, should I assign equal weight to both evidence, or should I always treat the complaining woman more seriously?
I know that for a perfect Bayesian reasoner all these suggestions would be irrelevant, because they would look at the available evidence and draw the most probable conclusion. However as a human, I need a heuristic.
You’re focusing on a special case here, but I find the general case a useful one to consider: some person P reports that some action A harms them, where I do not consider A harmful. As you say, I can’t know what underlies that report. Maybe P is more vulnerable to A than I am, maybe P is lying to gain unfair advantage, maybe P isn’t as aware of what actually harms them as I am, maybe I’m not as aware of what actually harms P as P is. All I know is the report itself.
What do you do in that case? P doesn’t have to be a woman; that’s just a special case. For example, suppose I report that I am terribly allergic to strawberries, and on that basis I want you not to serve me strawberries. Or suppose I report that behaving as though all men are exclusively attracted to women diminishes my status in our community, and on that basis I want you not to behave that way. Or suppose I report that God doesn’t want me to eat pork, and on that basis I want you not to serve me pork.
What do you do?
The heuristic I generally use goes something like this...
First, I attend to the evidence I’m being given and see if my belief about the harmfulness of A changes. E.g., I ask myself “Now that he’s reported that he’s allergic to strawberries, do I believe that he’s allergic to strawberries?” or “Now that he’s reported that heteronormativity diminishes his social status, do I believe that heteronormativity diminishes his social status?” or “Now that he’s reported that God doesn’t want him to eat pork, do I believe that God doesn’t want him to eat pork?”
Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t.
When it does, I either don’t do A to P, or if I do, I do so in the awareness that I’m harming P.
When it doesn’t, I ask myself whether refraining from A does any harm. If it doesn’t, I generally refrain from A.
A common form of harm in this case is that not being subject to A seems likely to give P an unfair advantage over other people (including me). In that case, I generally try to avoid subjecting anyone to A, which eliminates the advantage.
Another common form of harm is that eliminating A from my behavior, either with respect to P or more generally, puts me or people I care about at a significant disadvantage. In that case I generally go on performing A.
There are other possibilities, but those cover most cases in my life.
I have read today a good article about a male privilege. I link it here because in my opinion it is much better written that all other articles I read about the same topic; and it’s relevant to our topic of understanding the people of opposite sex. But I still have some questions about the whole thing.
The article suggests that as a man I simply cannot imagine the situation of women, because some things either don’t happen to me, or I wouldn’t mind them because of my different preferences, or both of that. If I try to estimate the impact of those things on a woman’s utility function, I am almost certainly wrong. Thus the best cognitive strategy is, if a woman tells me something hurts her so much, just trust her, even if it does not make much sense to me.
This strategy would work great for a man who only ever communicates with women that have absolutely no cognitive biases and would never lie to gain unfair advantage. Because I don’t expect such perfection from men around me, I also don’t expect it from women. Any information I get can be wrong, whether intentionally or unintentionally, even if it comes from a woman.
So what should I do as a rationalist that cares about other people’s utility functions? Perhaps I could assign a high prior probability that I am wrong about things related to male privilege. (How high? 90%? 99%) Also I should discount opinions of other men (unless they already discounted it themselves, in which case I will not count the same evidence twice). But there is still a chance that considering this I will come to a conclusion that a woman is wrong.
By the way, perhaps there is a female privilege, too. (I do not think that it has the same magnitude as the male privilege and that things are somehow fair and balanced. No. I just say that it exists.) If you are a woman and you think I am wrong, I would like to remind you that if such things exist, by definition you wouldn’t recognize it, neither would other women, so you should trust me. As a rationalist I admit that you can still get enough evidence against this hypothesis.
Back to the original topic; what should I do if two women disagree with each other? One of them says: “You shouldn’t do this, because it is bad for women,” and the other says: “There is nothing wrong about that; she is probably oversensitive or making things up.” As I am not able to judge it directly, should I assign equal weight to both evidence, or should I always treat the complaining woman more seriously?
I know that for a perfect Bayesian reasoner all these suggestions would be irrelevant, because they would look at the available evidence and draw the most probable conclusion. However as a human, I need a heuristic.
You’re focusing on a special case here, but I find the general case a useful one to consider: some person P reports that some action A harms them, where I do not consider A harmful. As you say, I can’t know what underlies that report. Maybe P is more vulnerable to A than I am, maybe P is lying to gain unfair advantage, maybe P isn’t as aware of what actually harms them as I am, maybe I’m not as aware of what actually harms P as P is. All I know is the report itself.
What do you do in that case? P doesn’t have to be a woman; that’s just a special case. For example, suppose I report that I am terribly allergic to strawberries, and on that basis I want you not to serve me strawberries. Or suppose I report that behaving as though all men are exclusively attracted to women diminishes my status in our community, and on that basis I want you not to behave that way. Or suppose I report that God doesn’t want me to eat pork, and on that basis I want you not to serve me pork.
What do you do?
The heuristic I generally use goes something like this...
First, I attend to the evidence I’m being given and see if my belief about the harmfulness of A changes. E.g., I ask myself “Now that he’s reported that he’s allergic to strawberries, do I believe that he’s allergic to strawberries?” or “Now that he’s reported that heteronormativity diminishes his social status, do I believe that heteronormativity diminishes his social status?” or “Now that he’s reported that God doesn’t want him to eat pork, do I believe that God doesn’t want him to eat pork?”
Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t.
When it does, I either don’t do A to P, or if I do, I do so in the awareness that I’m harming P.
When it doesn’t, I ask myself whether refraining from A does any harm.
If it doesn’t, I generally refrain from A.
A common form of harm in this case is that not being subject to A seems likely to give P an unfair advantage over other people (including me). In that case, I generally try to avoid subjecting anyone to A, which eliminates the advantage.
Another common form of harm is that eliminating A from my behavior, either with respect to P or more generally, puts me or people I care about at a significant disadvantage. In that case I generally go on performing A.
There are other possibilities, but those cover most cases in my life.