I like the norm of “If you’re saying something that lots of people will probably (mis)interpret as being hurtful and insulting, see if you can come up with a better way to say the same thing, such that you’re doing that.” This is not a norm of censorship nor self-censorship, it’s a norm of clear communication and of kindness.
I think that this is completely wrong. Such a norm is definitely a norm of (self-)censorship—as has been discussed on Less Wrong already.
It is plainly obvious to any even remotely reasonable person that the OP is not intended as any insult to anyone, but simply as a book review / summary, just like it says. Catering, in any way whatsoever, to anyone who finds the current post “hurtful and insulting”, is an absolutely terrible idea. Doing such a thing cannot do anything but corrode Less Wrong’s epistemic standards.
Suppose that Person A finds Statement X demeaning, and you believe that X is not in fact demeaning to A, but rather A was misunderstanding X, or trusting bad secondary sources on X, or whatever.
What do you do?
APPROACH 1: You say X all the time, loudly, while you and your friends high-five each other and congratulate yourselves for sticking it to the woke snowflakes.
APPROACH 2: You try sincerely to help A understand that X is not in fact demeaning to A. That involves understanding where A is coming from, meeting A where A is currently at, defusing tension, gently explaining why you believe A is mistaken, etc. And doing all that before you loudly proclaim X.
I strongly endorse Approach 2 over 1. I think Approach 2 is more in keeping with what makes this community awesome, and Approach 2 is the right way to bring exactly the right kind of people into our community, and Approach 2 is the better way to actually “win”, i.e. get lots of people to understand that X is not demeaning, and Approach 2 is obviously what community leaders like Scott Alexander would do (as for Eliezer, um, I dunno, my model of him would strongly endorse approach 2 in principle, but also sometimes he likes to troll…), and Approach 2 has nothing to do with self-censorship.
~~
Getting back to the object level and OP. I think a lot of our disagreement is here in the details. Let me explain why I don’t think it is “plainly obvious to any even remotely reasonable person that the OP is not intended as any insult to anyone”.
Imagine that Person A believes that Charles Murray is a notorious racist, and TBC is a book that famously and successfully advocated for institutional racism via lies and deceptions. You don’t have to actually believe this—I don’t—I am merely asking you to imagine that Person A believes that.
Now look at the OP through A’s eyes. Right from the title, it’s clear that OP is treating TBC as a perfectly reasonable respectable book by a perfectly reasonable respectable person. Now A starts scanning the article, looking for any serious complaint about this book, this book which by the way personally caused me to suffer by successfully advocating for racism, and giving up after scrolling for a while and coming up empty. I think a reasonable conclusion from A’s perspective is that OP doesn’t think that the book’s racism advocacy is a big deal, or maybe OP even thinks it’s a good thing. I think it would be understandable for Person A to be insulted and leave the page without reading every word of the article.
Once again, we can lament (justifiably) that Person A is arriving here with very wrong preconceptions, probably based on trusting bad sources. But that’s the kind of mistake we should be sympathetic to. It doesn’t mean Person A is an unreasonable person. Indeed, Person A could be a very reasonable person, exactly the kind of person who we want in our community. But they’ve been trusting bad sources. Who among us hasn’t trusted bad sources at some point in our lives? I sure have!
And if Person A represents a vanishingly rare segment of society with weird idiosyncratic wrong preconceptions, maybe we can just shrug and say “Oh well, can’t please everyone.” But if Person A’s wrong preconceptions are shared by a large chunk of society, we should go for Approach 2.
Imagine that Person A believes that Charles Murray is a notorious racist, and TBC is a book that famously and successfully advocated for institutional racism via lies and deceptions. You don’t have to actually believe this—I don’t—I am merely asking you to imagine that Person A believes that.
If Person A believes this without ever having either (a) read The Bell Curve or (b) read a neutral, careful review/summary of The Bell Curve, then A is not a reasonable person.
All sorts of unreasonable people have all sorts of unreasonable and false beliefs. Should we cater to them all?
No. Of course we should not.
Now look at the OP through A’s eyes. Right from the title, it’s clear that OP is treating TBC as a perfectly reasonable respectable book by a perfectly reasonable respectable person.
The title, as I said before, is neutrally descriptive. Anyone who takes it as an endorsement is, once again… unreasonable.
Now A starts scanning the article, looking for any serious complaint about this book, this book which by the way personally caused me to suffer by successfully advocating for racism
Sorry, what? A book which you (the hypothetical Person A) have never read (and in fact have only the vaguest notion of the contents of) has personally caused you to suffer? And by successfully (!!) “advocating for racism”, at that? This is… well, “quite a leap” seems like an understatement; perhaps the appropriate metaphor would have to involve some sort of Olympic pole-vaulting event. This entire (supposed) perspective is absurd from any sane person’s perspective.
I think a reasonable conclusion from A’s perspective is that OP doesn’t think that the book’s racism advocacy is a big deal, or maybe OP even thinks it’s a good thing. I think it would be understandable for Person A to be insulted and leave the page without reading every word of the article.
No, this would actually be wildly unreasonable behavior, unworthy of any remotely rational, sane adult. Children, perhaps, may be excused for behaving in this way—and only if they’re very young.
The bottom line is: the idea that “reasonable people” think and behave in the way that you’re describing is the antithesis of what is required to maintain a sane society. If we cater to this sort of thing, here on Less Wrong, then we completely betray our raison d’etre, and surrender any pretense to “raising the sanity waterline”, “searching for truth”, etc.
Sorry, what? A book which you (the hypothetical Person A) have never read (and in fact have only the vaguest notion of the contents of) has personally caused you to suffer? And by successfully (!!) “advocating for racism”, at that? This is… well, “quite a leap” seems like an understatement; perhaps the appropriate metaphor would have to involve some sort of Olympic pole-vaulting event. This entire (supposed) perspective is absurd from any sane person’s perspective.
I have a sincere belief that The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion directly contributed to the torture and death of some of my ancestors. I hold this belief despite having never read this book, and having only the vaguest notion of the contents of this book, and having never sought out sources that describe this book from a “neutral” point of view.
Do you view those facts as evidence that I’m an unreasonable person?
Further, if I saw a post about The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion that conspicuously failed to mention anything about people being oppressed as a result of the book, or a post that buried said discussion until after 28 paragraphs of calm open-minded analysis, well, I think I wouldn’t read through the whole piece, and I would also jump to some conclusions about the author. I stand by this being a reasonable thing to do, given that I don’t have unlimited time.
By contrast, if I saw a post about The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion that opened with “I get it, I know what you’ve heard about this book, but hear me out, I’m going to explain why we should give this book a chance with an open mind, notwithstanding its reputation…”, then I would certainly consider reading the piece.
Your analogy breaks down because the Bell Curve is extremely reasonable, not some forged junk like “The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion”.
If a book mentioned here mentioned evolution and that offended some traditional religious people, would we need to give a disclaimer and potentially leave it off the site? What if some conservative religious people believe belief in evolution directly harms them? They would be regarded as insane, and so are people offended by TBC.
That’s all this is by the way, left-wing evolution denial. How likely is it that people separated for tens of thousands of years with different founder populations will have equal levels of cognitive ability. It’s impossible.
I have a sincere belief that The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion directly contributed to the torture and death of some of my ancestors. I hold this belief despite having never read this book, and having only the vaguest notion of the contents of this book, and having never sought out sources that describe this book from a “neutral” point of view.
Do you view those facts as evidence that I’m an unreasonable person?
Yeah.
“What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?” never stopped being the rationalist question.
As for the rest of your comment—first of all, my relative levels of interest in reading a book review of the Protocols would be precisely reversed from yours.
Secondly, I want to call attention to this bit:
“… I’m going to explain why we should give this book a chance with an open mind, notwithstanding its reputation…”
There is no particular reason to “give this book a chance”—to what? Convince us of its thesis? Persuade us that it’s harmless? No. The point of reviewing a book is to improve our understanding of the world. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a book which had an impact on global events, on world history. The reason to review it is to better understand that history, not to… graciously grant the Protocols the courtesy of having its allotted time in the spotlight.
If you think that the Protocols are insignificant, that they don’t matter (and thus that reading or talking about them is a total waste of our time), that is one thing—but that’s not true, is it? You yourself say that the Protocols had a terrible impact! All the things which we should strive our utmost to understand, how can a piece of writing that contributed to some of the worst atrocities in history not be among them? How do you propose to prevent history from repeating, if you refuse, not only to understand it, but even to bear its presence?
The idea that we should strenuously shut our eyes against bad things, that we should forbid any talk of that which is evil, is intellectually toxic.
And the notion that by doing so, we are actually acting in a moral way, a righteous way, is itself the root of evil.
Hmm, I think you didn’t get what I was saying. A book review of “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is great, I’m all for it. A book review of “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” which treats it as a perfectly lovely normal book and doesn’t say anything about the book being a forgery until you get 28 paragraphs into the review and even then it’s barely mentioned is the thing that I would find extremely problematic. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t that seem like kind of a glaring omission? Wouldn’t that raise some questions about the author’s beliefs and motives in writing the review?
Do you view those facts as evidence that I’m an unreasonable person?
Yeah.
Do you ever, in your life, think that things are true without checking? Do you think that the radius of earth is 6380 km? (Did you check? Did you look for skeptical sources?) Do you think that lobsters are more closely related to shrimp than to silverfish? (Did you check? Did you look for skeptical sources?) Do you think that it’s dangerous to eat an entire bottle of medicine at once? (Did you check? Did you look for skeptical sources?)
I think you’re holding people up to an unreasonable standard here. You can’t do anything in life without having sources that you generally trust as being probably correct about certain things. In my life, I have at time trusted sources that in retrospect did not deserve my trust. I imagine that this is true of everyone.
Suppose we want to solve that problem. (We do, right?) I feel like you’re proposing a solution of “form a community of people who have never trusted anyone about anything”. But such community would be empty! A better solution is: have a bunch of Scott Alexanders, who accept that people currently have beliefs that are wrong, but charitably assume that maybe those people are nevertheless open to reason, and try to meet them where they are and gently persuade them that they might be mistaken. Gradually, in this way, the people (like former-me) who were trusting the wrong sources can escape of their bubble and find better sources, including sources who preach the virtues of rationality.
We’re not born with an epistemology instruction manual. We all have to find our way, and we probably won’t get it right the first time. Splitting the world into “people who already agree with me” and “people who are forever beyond reason”, that’s the wrong approach. Well, maybe it works for powerful interest groups that can bully people around. We here at lesswrong are not such a group. But we do have the superpower of ability and willingness to bring people to our side via patience and charity and good careful arguments. We should use it! :)
Hmm, I think you didn’t get what I was saying. A book review of “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is great, I’m all for it. A book review of “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” which treats it as a perfectly lovely normal book and doesn’t say anything about the book being a forgery until you get 28 paragraphs into the review and even then it’s barely mentioned is the thing that I would find extremely problematic. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t that seem like kind of a glaring omission? Wouldn’t that raise some questions about the author’s beliefs and motives in writing the review?
I agree completely.
But note that here we are talking about the book’s provenance / authorship / otherwise “metadata”—and certainly not about the book’s impact, effects of its publication, etc. The latter sort of thing may properly be discussed in a “discussion section” subsequent to the main body of the review, or it may simply be left up to a Wikipedia link. I would certainly not require that it preface the book review, before I found that review “acceptable”, or forebore to question the author’s motives, or what have you.
And it would be quite unreasonable to suggest that a post titled “Book Review: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is somehow inherently “provocative”, “insulting”, “offensive”, etc., etc.
Do you ever, in your life, think that things are true without checking?
I certainly try not to, though bounded rationality does not permit me always to live up to this goal.
Do you think that the radius of earth is 6380 km? (Did you check? Did you look for skeptical sources?)
I have no beliefs about this one way or the other.
Do you think that lobsters are more closely related to shrimp than to silverfish? (Did you check? Did you look for skeptical sources?)
I have no beliefs about this one way or the other.
Do you think that it’s dangerous to eat an entire bottle of medicine at once? (Did you check? Did you look for skeptical sources?)
Depends on the medicine, but I am given to understand that this is often true. I have “checked” in the sense that I regularly read up on the toxicology and other pharmacokinetic properties of medications I take, or those might take, or even those I don’t plan to take. Yes, I look for skeptical sources.
My recommendation, in general, is to avoid having opinions about things that don’t affect you; aim for a neutral skepticism. For things that do affect you, investigate; don’t just stumble into beliefs. This is my policy, and it’s served me well.
I think you’re holding people up to an unreasonable standard here. You can’t do anything in life without having sources that you generally trust as being probably correct about certain things. In my life, I have at time trusted sources that in retrospect did not deserve my trust. I imagine that this is true of everyone.
The solution to this is to trust less, check more; decline to have any opinion one way or the other, where doing so doesn’t affect you. And when you have to, trust—but verify.
Strive always to be aware of just how much trust in sources you haven’t checked underlies any belief you hold—and, crucially, adjust the strength of your beliefs accordingly.
And when you’re given an opportunity to check, to verify, to investigate—seize it!
A better solution is: have a bunch of Scott Alexanders, who accept that people currently have beliefs that are wrong, but charitably assume that maybe those people are nevertheless open to reason, and try to meet them where they are and gently persuade them that they might be mistaken.
The principle of charity, as often practiced (here and in other rationalist spaces), can actually be a terrible idea.
But we do have the superpower of ability and willingness to bring people to our side via patience and charity and good careful arguments. We should use it! :)
We should use it only to the extent that it does not in any way reduce our own ability to seek, and find, the truth, and not one iota more.
we are talking about the book’s provenance / authorship / otherwise “metadata”—and certainly not about the book’s impact
A belief that “TBC was written by a racist for the express purpose of justifying racism” would seem to qualify as “worth mentioning prominently at the top” under that standard, right?
And it would be quite unreasonable to suggest that a post titled “Book Review: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is somehow inherently “provocative”, “insulting”, “offensive”, etc., etc.
I imagine that very few people would find the title by itself insulting; it’s really “the title in conjunction with the first paragraph or two” (i.e. far enough to see that the author is not going to talk up-front about the elephant in the room).
Hmm, maybe another better way to say it is: The title plus the genre is what might insult people. The genre of this OP is “a book review that treats the book as a serious good-faith work of nonfiction, which might have some errors, just like any nonfiction book, but also presumably has some interesting facts etc.” You don’t need to read far or carefully to know that the OP belongs to this genre. It’s a very different genre from a (reasonable) book review of “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, or a (reasonable) book review of “Mein Kampf”, or a (reasonable) book review of “Harry Potter”.
A belief that “TBC was written by a racist for the express purpose of justifying racism” would seem to qualify as “worth mentioning prominently at the top” under that standard, right?
No, of course not (the more so because it’s a value judgment, not a statement of fact).
The rest of what you say, I have already addressed.
Approach 2 assumes that A is (a) a reasonable person and (b) coming into the situation with good faith. Usually, neither is true.
What is more, your list of two approaches is a very obvious false dichotomy, crafted in such a way as to mock the people you’re disagreeing with. Instead of either the strawman Approach 1 or the unacceptable Approach 2, I endorse the following:
APPROACH 3: Ignore the fact that A (supposedly) finds X “demeaning”. Say (or don’t say) X whenever the situation calls for it. Behave in all ways as if A’s opinion is completely irrelevant.
(Note, by the way, that Approach 2 absolutely does constitute (self-)censorship, as anything that imposes costs on a certain sort of speech—such as, for instance, requiring elaborate genuflection to supposedly “offended” parties, prior to speaking—will serve to discourage that form of speech. Of course, I suspect that this is precisely the goal—and it is also precisely why I reject your suggestion wholeheartedly. Do not feed utility monsters.)
There’s a difference between catering to an audience and proactively framing things in the least explosive way.
Maybe what you are saying is that when people try to do the latter, they inevitably end up self-censoring and catering to the (hostile) audience?
But that seems false to me. I not only think framing contoversial topics in a non-explosive way is a strategically important, underappreciated skill. In addition, I suspect that practicing the skill improves our epistemics. It forces us to engage with a critical audience of people with ideological differences. When I imagine having to write on a controversial topic, one of the readers I mentally simulate is “person who is ideologically biased against me, but still reasonable.” I don’t cater to unreasonable people, but I want to take care to not put off people who are still “in reach.” And if they’re reasonable, sometimes they have good reasons behind at least some of their concerns and their perspectives can be learnt from.
As I mentioned elsethread, if I’d written the book review I would have done what you describe. But I didn’t and probably never would have written it out of timidness, and that makes me reluctant to tell someone less timid who did something valuable that they did it wrong.
I was just commenting on the general norm. I haven’t read the OP and didn’t mean to voice an opinion on it.
I’m updating that I don’t understand how discussions work. It happens a lot that I object only to a particular feature of an argument or particular argument, yet my comments are interpreted as endorsing an entire side of a complicated debate.
FWIW, I think the “caving in” discussed/contemplated in Rafael Harth’s comments is something I find intuitively repugnant. It feels like giving up your soul for some very dubious potential benefits. Intellectually I can see some merits for it but I suspect (and very much like to believe) that it’s a bad strategy.
Maybe I would focus more on criticizing this caving in mentality if I didn’t feel like I was preaching to the choir. “Open discussion” norms feel so ingrained on Lesswrong that I’m more worried that other good norms get lost / overlooked.
Maybe I would feel different (more “under attack”) if I was more emotionally invested in the community and felt like something I helped build was under attack with norm erosion. I feel presently more concerned about dangers from evaporative cooling where many who care a not-small degree about “soft virtues in discussions related to tone/tact/welcomingness, but NOT in a strawmanned sense” end up becoming less active or avoiding the comment sections.
Edit: The virtue I mean is maybe best described as “presenting your side in a way that isn’t just persuasive to people who think like you, but even reaches the most receptive percentage of the outgroup that’s predisposed to be suspicious of you.”
This is a moot point, because anyone who finds a post title like “Book review: The Bell Curve by Charles Murray” to be “controversial”, “explosive”, etc., is manifestly unreasonable.
I think that this is completely wrong. Such a norm is definitely a norm of (self-)censorship—as has been discussed on Less Wrong already.
It is plainly obvious to any even remotely reasonable person that the OP is not intended as any insult to anyone, but simply as a book review / summary, just like it says. Catering, in any way whatsoever, to anyone who finds the current post “hurtful and insulting”, is an absolutely terrible idea. Doing such a thing cannot do anything but corrode Less Wrong’s epistemic standards.
Suppose that Person A finds Statement X demeaning, and you believe that X is not in fact demeaning to A, but rather A was misunderstanding X, or trusting bad secondary sources on X, or whatever.
What do you do?
APPROACH 1: You say X all the time, loudly, while you and your friends high-five each other and congratulate yourselves for sticking it to the woke snowflakes.
APPROACH 2: You try sincerely to help A understand that X is not in fact demeaning to A. That involves understanding where A is coming from, meeting A where A is currently at, defusing tension, gently explaining why you believe A is mistaken, etc. And doing all that before you loudly proclaim X.
I strongly endorse Approach 2 over 1. I think Approach 2 is more in keeping with what makes this community awesome, and Approach 2 is the right way to bring exactly the right kind of people into our community, and Approach 2 is the better way to actually “win”, i.e. get lots of people to understand that X is not demeaning, and Approach 2 is obviously what community leaders like Scott Alexander would do (as for Eliezer, um, I dunno, my model of him would strongly endorse approach 2 in principle, but also sometimes he likes to troll…), and Approach 2 has nothing to do with self-censorship.
~~
Getting back to the object level and OP. I think a lot of our disagreement is here in the details. Let me explain why I don’t think it is “plainly obvious to any even remotely reasonable person that the OP is not intended as any insult to anyone”.
Imagine that Person A believes that Charles Murray is a notorious racist, and TBC is a book that famously and successfully advocated for institutional racism via lies and deceptions. You don’t have to actually believe this—I don’t—I am merely asking you to imagine that Person A believes that.
Now look at the OP through A’s eyes. Right from the title, it’s clear that OP is treating TBC as a perfectly reasonable respectable book by a perfectly reasonable respectable person. Now A starts scanning the article, looking for any serious complaint about this book, this book which by the way personally caused me to suffer by successfully advocating for racism, and giving up after scrolling for a while and coming up empty. I think a reasonable conclusion from A’s perspective is that OP doesn’t think that the book’s racism advocacy is a big deal, or maybe OP even thinks it’s a good thing. I think it would be understandable for Person A to be insulted and leave the page without reading every word of the article.
Once again, we can lament (justifiably) that Person A is arriving here with very wrong preconceptions, probably based on trusting bad sources. But that’s the kind of mistake we should be sympathetic to. It doesn’t mean Person A is an unreasonable person. Indeed, Person A could be a very reasonable person, exactly the kind of person who we want in our community. But they’ve been trusting bad sources. Who among us hasn’t trusted bad sources at some point in our lives? I sure have!
And if Person A represents a vanishingly rare segment of society with weird idiosyncratic wrong preconceptions, maybe we can just shrug and say “Oh well, can’t please everyone.” But if Person A’s wrong preconceptions are shared by a large chunk of society, we should go for Approach 2.
If Person A believes this without ever having either (a) read The Bell Curve or (b) read a neutral, careful review/summary of The Bell Curve, then A is not a reasonable person.
All sorts of unreasonable people have all sorts of unreasonable and false beliefs. Should we cater to them all?
No. Of course we should not.
The title, as I said before, is neutrally descriptive. Anyone who takes it as an endorsement is, once again… unreasonable.
Sorry, what? A book which you (the hypothetical Person A) have never read (and in fact have only the vaguest notion of the contents of) has personally caused you to suffer? And by successfully (!!) “advocating for racism”, at that? This is… well, “quite a leap” seems like an understatement; perhaps the appropriate metaphor would have to involve some sort of Olympic pole-vaulting event. This entire (supposed) perspective is absurd from any sane person’s perspective.
No, this would actually be wildly unreasonable behavior, unworthy of any remotely rational, sane adult. Children, perhaps, may be excused for behaving in this way—and only if they’re very young.
The bottom line is: the idea that “reasonable people” think and behave in the way that you’re describing is the antithesis of what is required to maintain a sane society. If we cater to this sort of thing, here on Less Wrong, then we completely betray our raison d’etre, and surrender any pretense to “raising the sanity waterline”, “searching for truth”, etc.
I have a sincere belief that The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion directly contributed to the torture and death of some of my ancestors. I hold this belief despite having never read this book, and having only the vaguest notion of the contents of this book, and having never sought out sources that describe this book from a “neutral” point of view.
Do you view those facts as evidence that I’m an unreasonable person?
Further, if I saw a post about The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion that conspicuously failed to mention anything about people being oppressed as a result of the book, or a post that buried said discussion until after 28 paragraphs of calm open-minded analysis, well, I think I wouldn’t read through the whole piece, and I would also jump to some conclusions about the author. I stand by this being a reasonable thing to do, given that I don’t have unlimited time.
By contrast, if I saw a post about The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion that opened with “I get it, I know what you’ve heard about this book, but hear me out, I’m going to explain why we should give this book a chance with an open mind, notwithstanding its reputation…”, then I would certainly consider reading the piece.
Your analogy breaks down because the Bell Curve is extremely reasonable, not some forged junk like “The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion”.
If a book mentioned here mentioned evolution and that offended some traditional religious people, would we need to give a disclaimer and potentially leave it off the site? What if some conservative religious people believe belief in evolution directly harms them? They would be regarded as insane, and so are people offended by TBC.
That’s all this is by the way, left-wing evolution denial. How likely is it that people separated for tens of thousands of years with different founder populations will have equal levels of cognitive ability. It’s impossible.
Yeah.
“What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?” never stopped being the rationalist question.
As for the rest of your comment—first of all, my relative levels of interest in reading a book review of the Protocols would be precisely reversed from yours.
Secondly, I want to call attention to this bit:
There is no particular reason to “give this book a chance”—to what? Convince us of its thesis? Persuade us that it’s harmless? No. The point of reviewing a book is to improve our understanding of the world. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a book which had an impact on global events, on world history. The reason to review it is to better understand that history, not to… graciously grant the Protocols the courtesy of having its allotted time in the spotlight.
If you think that the Protocols are insignificant, that they don’t matter (and thus that reading or talking about them is a total waste of our time), that is one thing—but that’s not true, is it? You yourself say that the Protocols had a terrible impact! All the things which we should strive our utmost to understand, how can a piece of writing that contributed to some of the worst atrocities in history not be among them? How do you propose to prevent history from repeating, if you refuse, not only to understand it, but even to bear its presence?
The idea that we should strenuously shut our eyes against bad things, that we should forbid any talk of that which is evil, is intellectually toxic.
And the notion that by doing so, we are actually acting in a moral way, a righteous way, is itself the root of evil.
Hmm, I think you didn’t get what I was saying. A book review of “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is great, I’m all for it. A book review of “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” which treats it as a perfectly lovely normal book and doesn’t say anything about the book being a forgery until you get 28 paragraphs into the review and even then it’s barely mentioned is the thing that I would find extremely problematic. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t that seem like kind of a glaring omission? Wouldn’t that raise some questions about the author’s beliefs and motives in writing the review?
Do you ever, in your life, think that things are true without checking? Do you think that the radius of earth is 6380 km? (Did you check? Did you look for skeptical sources?) Do you think that lobsters are more closely related to shrimp than to silverfish? (Did you check? Did you look for skeptical sources?) Do you think that it’s dangerous to eat an entire bottle of medicine at once? (Did you check? Did you look for skeptical sources?)
I think you’re holding people up to an unreasonable standard here. You can’t do anything in life without having sources that you generally trust as being probably correct about certain things. In my life, I have at time trusted sources that in retrospect did not deserve my trust. I imagine that this is true of everyone.
Suppose we want to solve that problem. (We do, right?) I feel like you’re proposing a solution of “form a community of people who have never trusted anyone about anything”. But such community would be empty! A better solution is: have a bunch of Scott Alexanders, who accept that people currently have beliefs that are wrong, but charitably assume that maybe those people are nevertheless open to reason, and try to meet them where they are and gently persuade them that they might be mistaken. Gradually, in this way, the people (like former-me) who were trusting the wrong sources can escape of their bubble and find better sources, including sources who preach the virtues of rationality.
We’re not born with an epistemology instruction manual. We all have to find our way, and we probably won’t get it right the first time. Splitting the world into “people who already agree with me” and “people who are forever beyond reason”, that’s the wrong approach. Well, maybe it works for powerful interest groups that can bully people around. We here at lesswrong are not such a group. But we do have the superpower of ability and willingness to bring people to our side via patience and charity and good careful arguments. We should use it! :)
I agree completely.
But note that here we are talking about the book’s provenance / authorship / otherwise “metadata”—and certainly not about the book’s impact, effects of its publication, etc. The latter sort of thing may properly be discussed in a “discussion section” subsequent to the main body of the review, or it may simply be left up to a Wikipedia link. I would certainly not require that it preface the book review, before I found that review “acceptable”, or forebore to question the author’s motives, or what have you.
And it would be quite unreasonable to suggest that a post titled “Book Review: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is somehow inherently “provocative”, “insulting”, “offensive”, etc., etc.
I certainly try not to, though bounded rationality does not permit me always to live up to this goal.
I have no beliefs about this one way or the other.
I have no beliefs about this one way or the other.
Depends on the medicine, but I am given to understand that this is often true. I have “checked” in the sense that I regularly read up on the toxicology and other pharmacokinetic properties of medications I take, or those might take, or even those I don’t plan to take. Yes, I look for skeptical sources.
My recommendation, in general, is to avoid having opinions about things that don’t affect you; aim for a neutral skepticism. For things that do affect you, investigate; don’t just stumble into beliefs. This is my policy, and it’s served me well.
The solution to this is to trust less, check more; decline to have any opinion one way or the other, where doing so doesn’t affect you. And when you have to, trust—but verify.
Strive always to be aware of just how much trust in sources you haven’t checked underlies any belief you hold—and, crucially, adjust the strength of your beliefs accordingly.
And when you’re given an opportunity to check, to verify, to investigate—seize it!
The principle of charity, as often practiced (here and in other rationalist spaces), can actually be a terrible idea.
We should use it only to the extent that it does not in any way reduce our own ability to seek, and find, the truth, and not one iota more.
A belief that “TBC was written by a racist for the express purpose of justifying racism” would seem to qualify as “worth mentioning prominently at the top” under that standard, right?
I imagine that very few people would find the title by itself insulting; it’s really “the title in conjunction with the first paragraph or two” (i.e. far enough to see that the author is not going to talk up-front about the elephant in the room).
Hmm, maybe another better way to say it is: The title plus the genre is what might insult people. The genre of this OP is “a book review that treats the book as a serious good-faith work of nonfiction, which might have some errors, just like any nonfiction book, but also presumably has some interesting facts etc.” You don’t need to read far or carefully to know that the OP belongs to this genre. It’s a very different genre from a (reasonable) book review of “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, or a (reasonable) book review of “Mein Kampf”, or a (reasonable) book review of “Harry Potter”.
No, of course not (the more so because it’s a value judgment, not a statement of fact).
The rest of what you say, I have already addressed.
Approach 2 assumes that A is (a) a reasonable person and (b) coming into the situation with good faith. Usually, neither is true.
What is more, your list of two approaches is a very obvious false dichotomy, crafted in such a way as to mock the people you’re disagreeing with. Instead of either the strawman Approach 1 or the unacceptable Approach 2, I endorse the following:
APPROACH 3: Ignore the fact that A (supposedly) finds X “demeaning”. Say (or don’t say) X whenever the situation calls for it. Behave in all ways as if A’s opinion is completely irrelevant.
(Note, by the way, that Approach 2 absolutely does constitute (self-)censorship, as anything that imposes costs on a certain sort of speech—such as, for instance, requiring elaborate genuflection to supposedly “offended” parties, prior to speaking—will serve to discourage that form of speech. Of course, I suspect that this is precisely the goal—and it is also precisely why I reject your suggestion wholeheartedly. Do not feed utility monsters.)
There’s a difference between catering to an audience and proactively framing things in the least explosive way.
Maybe what you are saying is that when people try to do the latter, they inevitably end up self-censoring and catering to the (hostile) audience?
But that seems false to me. I not only think framing contoversial topics in a non-explosive way is a strategically important, underappreciated skill. In addition, I suspect that practicing the skill improves our epistemics. It forces us to engage with a critical audience of people with ideological differences. When I imagine having to write on a controversial topic, one of the readers I mentally simulate is “person who is ideologically biased against me, but still reasonable.” I don’t cater to unreasonable people, but I want to take care to not put off people who are still “in reach.” And if they’re reasonable, sometimes they have good reasons behind at least some of their concerns and their perspectives can be learnt from.
As I mentioned elsethread, if I’d written the book review I would have done what you describe. But I didn’t and probably never would have written it out of timidness, and that makes me reluctant to tell someone less timid who did something valuable that they did it wrong.
I was just commenting on the general norm. I haven’t read the OP and didn’t mean to voice an opinion on it.
I’m updating that I don’t understand how discussions work. It happens a lot that I object only to a particular feature of an argument or particular argument, yet my comments are interpreted as endorsing an entire side of a complicated debate.
FWIW, I think the “caving in” discussed/contemplated in Rafael Harth’s comments is something I find intuitively repugnant. It feels like giving up your soul for some very dubious potential benefits. Intellectually I can see some merits for it but I suspect (and very much like to believe) that it’s a bad strategy.
Maybe I would focus more on criticizing this caving in mentality if I didn’t feel like I was preaching to the choir. “Open discussion” norms feel so ingrained on Lesswrong that I’m more worried that other good norms get lost / overlooked.
Maybe I would feel different (more “under attack”) if I was more emotionally invested in the community and felt like something I helped build was under attack with norm erosion. I feel presently more concerned about dangers from evaporative cooling where many who care a not-small degree about “soft virtues in discussions related to tone/tact/welcomingness, but NOT in a strawmanned sense” end up becoming less active or avoiding the comment sections.
Edit: The virtue I mean is maybe best described as “presenting your side in a way that isn’t just persuasive to people who think like you, but even reaches the most receptive percentage of the outgroup that’s predisposed to be suspicious of you.”
This is a moot point, because anyone who finds a post title like “Book review: The Bell Curve by Charles Murray” to be “controversial”, “explosive”, etc., is manifestly unreasonable.
My comment here argues that a reasonable person could find this post insulting.