Heh, now that you’ve spelled it out like this, I think it was mostly an interpretation problem. What I was referring to was, suppose a particular group of Mad Doctors is performing retroviral experiments in secret:
25% of them target LGBT people¹ 25% of them target low-IQ people² 25% of them target public figure individuals³ 25% of them target women.
In such a case, I don’t see why everyone should focus on the women-targeting and only or specifically or specially or with more effort try to get rid of the ones targeting women. Exactly 25% of the effort should be on the ones that target women, ceteris paribus. In other words, the efforts should be directed at the group and all the bad things they’re doing, not freezing in place at the word women.
Unfortunately, this seems to be exactly what some “Feminists” are doing wrong, and the popular media is obviously going to get a lot of stuff wrong anyway (for any cause in almost any situation—I’m still disgusted by the articles on SIAI). That’s why I was saying that the fact that they also target women is only relevant if there’s some particular, additional reason to care about them specifically—if the above toy group were 75% targeting women, now I’d say yeah there’s good reason to worry about those in particular. Or if the women were somehow suffering a hell of a lot more, or if there was higher utility in saving the women than the other groups.
Also, the footnote “reasons” are there as illustration that there may be some mundane reason why women were targeted, such as genetics or maybe 25% of those Mad experimenters just happen to be gynecologists. I really wouldn’t be surprised if some Mad Gynecologists were to target women practically exclusively. What would surprise me is if it turned out that nearly all the people prone to become Mad Experimenters all for some reason decided to become gynecologists, to experiment on women.
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Possibly because they work in an “LGBT reform clinic” in Africa or the Middle-East, e.g. Lesbian Rape Camps… which is very horrible anyway in its own right.
Possibly because as part of their functions they treat or test people with mental deficiencies or somesuch.
Possibly because they’re insane and subconsciously try to give themselves an excuse for failing, because really, who the hell would be that stupid? You’re doing secret experiments! Heh.
Ahh. Yeah, I’m thinking about real cases rather than a thought experiment here. I don’t know of any such group of Mad Doctors who divvy up their brutality in nice, even fractions purely for the lulz, but I do know of rather a lot of perfectly ordinary doctors who focus their brutality on specific populations, and may be enabled to varying degrees by outside parties or ideas.
Note that (assuming the threshold for “low-IQ” is less than 100) the last target group is the largest, in terms of population. (I’m not sure this should matter, but it’s not obvious to me that it shouldn’t.)
It’s 25% of the Doctors, not of the population of potential victims. If the Doctors at each group take victims at the same frequency and quantity, the number of victims will be the same. Actually, depending on what kind of social impact you think about, maybe the largest group suffers the least.
I was thinking about the fact that, if doctors are known to target members of $group, all members of $group might feel worried. (I’m using “worry” to mean ‘psychological discomfort’.) Of course ceteris paribus the probability that a given member of $group will be targeted will be inversely proportional to the size of $group; but since humans are biased, I guess the amount of worry an individual will experience won’t be directly proportional to the probability of being targeted, so the total amount of worry will increase with the size of $group.
Heh, now that you’ve spelled it out like this, I think it was mostly an interpretation problem. What I was referring to was, suppose a particular group of Mad Doctors is performing retroviral experiments in secret:
25% of them target LGBT people¹
25% of them target low-IQ people²
25% of them target public figure individuals³
25% of them target women.
In such a case, I don’t see why everyone should focus on the women-targeting and only or specifically or specially or with more effort try to get rid of the ones targeting women. Exactly 25% of the effort should be on the ones that target women, ceteris paribus. In other words, the efforts should be directed at the group and all the bad things they’re doing, not freezing in place at the word women.
Unfortunately, this seems to be exactly what some “Feminists” are doing wrong, and the popular media is obviously going to get a lot of stuff wrong anyway (for any cause in almost any situation—I’m still disgusted by the articles on SIAI). That’s why I was saying that the fact that they also target women is only relevant if there’s some particular, additional reason to care about them specifically—if the above toy group were 75% targeting women, now I’d say yeah there’s good reason to worry about those in particular. Or if the women were somehow suffering a hell of a lot more, or if there was higher utility in saving the women than the other groups.
Also, the footnote “reasons” are there as illustration that there may be some mundane reason why women were targeted, such as genetics or maybe 25% of those Mad experimenters just happen to be gynecologists. I really wouldn’t be surprised if some Mad Gynecologists were to target women practically exclusively. What would surprise me is if it turned out that nearly all the people prone to become Mad Experimenters all for some reason decided to become gynecologists, to experiment on women.
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Possibly because they work in an “LGBT reform clinic” in Africa or the Middle-East, e.g. Lesbian Rape Camps… which is very horrible anyway in its own right.
Possibly because as part of their functions they treat or test people with mental deficiencies or somesuch.
Possibly because they’re insane and subconsciously try to give themselves an excuse for failing, because really, who the hell would be that stupid? You’re doing secret experiments! Heh.
Ahh. Yeah, I’m thinking about real cases rather than a thought experiment here. I don’t know of any such group of Mad Doctors who divvy up their brutality in nice, even fractions purely for the lulz, but I do know of rather a lot of perfectly ordinary doctors who focus their brutality on specific populations, and may be enabled to varying degrees by outside parties or ideas.
Note that (assuming the threshold for “low-IQ” is less than 100) the last target group is the largest, in terms of population. (I’m not sure this should matter, but it’s not obvious to me that it shouldn’t.)
It’s 25% of the Doctors, not of the population of potential victims. If the Doctors at each group take victims at the same frequency and quantity, the number of victims will be the same. Actually, depending on what kind of social impact you think about, maybe the largest group suffers the least.
I was thinking about the fact that, if doctors are known to target members of $group, all members of $group might feel worried. (I’m using “worry” to mean ‘psychological discomfort’.) Of course ceteris paribus the probability that a given member of $group will be targeted will be inversely proportional to the size of $group; but since humans are biased, I guess the amount of worry an individual will experience won’t be directly proportional to the probability of being targeted, so the total amount of worry will increase with the size of $group.
I see your point. Agreed.