It’s an explicitly hetero story because you wrote it that way
Are you requesting that he omit the genders of the participants in his life, including his romantic life?
If so, are you prepared to support with evidence an argument that hetero romance and the hetero dating scene is completely identical in all aspects to gay romance and the gay dating scene, and therefore knowing the genders and the sexual orientation of the participants isn’t at all necessary to be communicated?
If so, are you prepared to support with evidence an argument that hetero romance and the hetero dating scene is completely identical in all aspects to gay romance and the gay dating scene,
In context I agree with your general point, but this seems like a strong demand for particular proof. To establish the point handoflixue would not need to establish that they are ‘completely identical in all aspects’ but rather that they have enough similarities for the genders and orientations to not be relevant in this context.
(Incidentally, I’m a het male who agrees that there’s been a serious problem of focusing on advice for het males here. The most obvious solution is for the people who aren’t in this set to write more general pieces. Or volunteer to work with someone like luke to coauthor a piece that is more broad. There’s not some magic rule that luke and a few other people have to write all the posts on this subject.)
If so, are you prepared to support with evidence an argument that hetero romance and the hetero dating scene is completely identical in all aspects to gay romance and the gay dating scene, and therefore knowing the genders and the sexual orientation of the participants isn’t at all necessary to be communicated?
Um, if the “heterosexual male romance” angle is essential to this story, then it’s heterosexual dating advice, and LessWrong is not a dating advice site. So lukeprog should stop posting about it. Rationality (y’know, core focus of this site?) does not, to my knowledge, care whether I am a heterosexual male.
I will also point out that Alicorn managed a relatively gender-free story, by focusing on the rationality and internal aspects, rather than on dating advice and “how to get a girl”.
Um. if the “heterosexual male romance” angle is essential to this story, then it’s heterosexual dating advice, and LessWrong is not a dating advice site. So lukeprog should stop posting about it.
How does this follow? Why is it okay for lukeprog to post dating advice which are independent of gender-orientation-independent, but it’s not okay to post advice which are dependent on gender-orientation? You may argue that the former interests more people, but that’s just a difference in the number of people that may be interested, not a qualitative difference.
I doubt you believe that all rationalists must be by necessity bisexuals.
Rationality (y’know, core focus of this site?) does not, to my knowledge, care whether I am a heterosexual male
First of all, is this sentence supposed to actually mean something? What would it mean for “Rationality” to “care” about your orientation, as opposed to “rationality” not caring about it?
Secondly, if anything, rationality means that you care about the elements that are relevant, and you don’t care about the elements that aren’t relevant. You’ve still not argued that sexual-orientation wasn’t actually relevant to Lukeprog’s story. Don’t you think it would affect, for starters, whether he would seriously break up with someone and argue it’s because they lacked evolution-promoted fitness markers?
I will also point out that Alicorn managed a relatively gender-free story, by focusing on the rationality and internal aspects, rather than on dating advice and “how to get a girl”.
And I will point out that Alicorn is bisexual, so gender would be less relevant to her criteria than to lukeprog’s. But hopefully not everyone needs be bisexual, for their existence and experiences to matter.
Um,
[...]
y’know, core focus of this site?)
I can recognize verbal signals of implicit condescension, so do be a bit careful over those.
“X doesn’t care about Y” is often used idiomatically to mean “Y does not change X”. This is clearly a true statement when it comes to rationality and gender/orientation; there are not separate versions of Bayes’ theorem for various preferences.
I will try to clarify points when I see them missed. This should not be interpreted as me siding with you in the debate, necessarily.
This was not one of my favorite posts on the site, but I did find it interesting—and, more particularly, I think there is space nearby for more interesting things. I think where I most strongly disagree with you is your classification (mentioned a few places) of this as dating advice at all. I see it as more of a case study in the exercise of rationality.
That rationality itself doesn’t care about sexuality, therefor, cuts both ways. If we are going to examine Luke’s rationality, we look at the evidence he has acquired and how he has turned that into conclusions. The conclusions are therefor material, but are not themselves the point of the post. In this case, it is a feature of that evidence that it was drawn from a skewed sample; it would not necessarily be better for Luke to generalize to cases excluded from sampling. While there are certainly other ways in which the sampling was nonuniform, this was a big, clear, intentional one and it makes sense to note it.
Why is it okay for lukeprog to post dating advice which are independent of gender-orientation-independent, but it’s not okay to post advice which are dependent on gender-orientation?
Sorry, I thought the logic was clear, but I can see how that wouldn’t have been clear:
ASSUME rationality is not changed by sexual orientation (see dlthomas if this is unclear)
IF (the advice is heterosexual oriented) THEN (the advice must be discussing something which is not rationality) OTHERWISE (the advice might be about rationality, but also still might be about something else)
I can recognize verbal signals of implicit condescension, so do be a bit careful over those.
Condescension there is intentional, but meant generally, not targeted at you specifically. Given that dating advice got posted, it’s clear that at least one person on this site is confused as to the focus of the site, and feels that their dating advice is appropriate to post.
Are you requesting that he omit the genders of the participants in his life, including his romantic life?
If so, are you prepared to support with evidence an argument that hetero romance and the hetero dating scene is completely identical in all aspects to gay romance and the gay dating scene, and therefore knowing the genders and the sexual orientation of the participants isn’t at all necessary to be communicated?
In context I agree with your general point, but this seems like a strong demand for particular proof. To establish the point handoflixue would not need to establish that they are ‘completely identical in all aspects’ but rather that they have enough similarities for the genders and orientations to not be relevant in this context.
(Incidentally, I’m a het male who agrees that there’s been a serious problem of focusing on advice for het males here. The most obvious solution is for the people who aren’t in this set to write more general pieces. Or volunteer to work with someone like luke to coauthor a piece that is more broad. There’s not some magic rule that luke and a few other people have to write all the posts on this subject.)
Um, if the “heterosexual male romance” angle is essential to this story, then it’s heterosexual dating advice, and LessWrong is not a dating advice site. So lukeprog should stop posting about it. Rationality (y’know, core focus of this site?) does not, to my knowledge, care whether I am a heterosexual male.
I will also point out that Alicorn managed a relatively gender-free story, by focusing on the rationality and internal aspects, rather than on dating advice and “how to get a girl”.
How does this follow? Why is it okay for lukeprog to post dating advice which are independent of gender-orientation-independent, but it’s not okay to post advice which are dependent on gender-orientation? You may argue that the former interests more people, but that’s just a difference in the number of people that may be interested, not a qualitative difference.
I doubt you believe that all rationalists must be by necessity bisexuals.
First of all, is this sentence supposed to actually mean something? What would it mean for “Rationality” to “care” about your orientation, as opposed to “rationality” not caring about it?
Secondly, if anything, rationality means that you care about the elements that are relevant, and you don’t care about the elements that aren’t relevant. You’ve still not argued that sexual-orientation wasn’t actually relevant to Lukeprog’s story. Don’t you think it would affect, for starters, whether he would seriously break up with someone and argue it’s because they lacked evolution-promoted fitness markers?
And I will point out that Alicorn is bisexual, so gender would be less relevant to her criteria than to lukeprog’s. But hopefully not everyone needs be bisexual, for their existence and experiences to matter.
I can recognize verbal signals of implicit condescension, so do be a bit careful over those.
“X doesn’t care about Y” is often used idiomatically to mean “Y does not change X”. This is clearly a true statement when it comes to rationality and gender/orientation; there are not separate versions of Bayes’ theorem for various preferences.
Bingo :)
I will try to clarify points when I see them missed. This should not be interpreted as me siding with you in the debate, necessarily.
This was not one of my favorite posts on the site, but I did find it interesting—and, more particularly, I think there is space nearby for more interesting things. I think where I most strongly disagree with you is your classification (mentioned a few places) of this as dating advice at all. I see it as more of a case study in the exercise of rationality.
That rationality itself doesn’t care about sexuality, therefor, cuts both ways. If we are going to examine Luke’s rationality, we look at the evidence he has acquired and how he has turned that into conclusions. The conclusions are therefor material, but are not themselves the point of the post. In this case, it is a feature of that evidence that it was drawn from a skewed sample; it would not necessarily be better for Luke to generalize to cases excluded from sampling. While there are certainly other ways in which the sampling was nonuniform, this was a big, clear, intentional one and it makes sense to note it.
Seriously? I’m being down voted for confirming that somebody else had the correct interpretation of what I said? o.o
This kind of moral outrage is a bad reaction to have to voting.
That’s not outrage, that’s genuine confusion.
My apologies.
Why is this being downvoted? I’d be confused too.
Sorry, I thought the logic was clear, but I can see how that wouldn’t have been clear:
ASSUME rationality is not changed by sexual orientation (see dlthomas if this is unclear)
IF (the advice is heterosexual oriented) THEN (the advice must be discussing something which is not rationality) OTHERWISE (the advice might be about rationality, but also still might be about something else)
Condescension there is intentional, but meant generally, not targeted at you specifically. Given that dating advice got posted, it’s clear that at least one person on this site is confused as to the focus of the site, and feels that their dating advice is appropriate to post.