1) People tend to hold beliefs for social reasons. For example, belief in theism allows membership of the theist community, the actual existence of a deity is largely irrelevant.
2) For most people, in order to maintain close social relationships it is necessary to maintain harmonious beliefs with nearby members of your social network. Changing your beliefs may harm your social ties.
3) The larger your social network, the more you have to lose by changing your beliefs.
4) Less Wrong encourages questioning and changing of beliefs.
5) On average, women have larger social networks than men.
6) Less Wrong encourages the adoption of strange and boring beliefs, largely based in maths and science.
7) Advocating strange and boring beliefs does not signal high status, rather it signals a misunderstanding of widely accepted social norms, and therefore poor social skills.
8) Much of a woman’s percieved value as a human being is tied to her ability to navigate the social world, men may be forgiven for making the occasional faux pas, women are not. Women are therefore strongly averse to signalling poor social skills.
Some predictions:
1) Willingness to join Less Wrong is inversely proportional to the size of your social network.
2) The exceptions to this rule (Less Wrong members who have large social networks) will be members of fringe groups, where challenges to group beliefs are normal and do not lead to reductions in social status.
3) Less Wrong will never be popular among people with large, mainstream social networks, as long as it advocates self-examination and questioning of recieved beliefs, and promotes discussion of strange and boring beliefs. It will never be popular among women, and the women who do post here are unusual in some way.
ETA: for the sake of complete accuracy, let “fringe belief” be defined as one that is held by <0.1% of the population of the host nation.
Rationalists should win, and human beings need social networks for emotional well-being. Is it possible to
hold true beliefs
be honest about those beliefs
make friends and keep them?
In my experience, my atheism, for example, has not been a huge handicap (with one glaring exception), but it’s certainly hurt me from time to time. People feel that if nothing else, their beliefs deserve “respect,” and I have learned no graceful way of indicating that I have given long consideration to the matter, and give their beliefs no greater probability than I do Santa Claus or the Harry Potter novels, without giving insult.
This would, I think, be an art worth learning.
(The closest, I think, I’ve ever come, was by saying that “where I come from,” the way you give respect to a belief is by actively working to see if it’s true or not—which often simply means attacking it; that “in my culture,” an attack on a belief is a sign of deep respect.)
I find myself prefacing a lot of statements with “Where I come from” or “On this side of the water” when I’m talking to a religious person whose friendship I desire to keep e.g. my parents. This lets you provide exactly the same argument, which probably ends up being processed in exactly the same way, while letting the other person know that you don’t expect them to assent immediately.
I think the answer to your question may be no. I’ve thought on my original post some more and realised that I made a mistake in number (8), one cannot signal poor social skills since signalling is a social skill (it serves no other purpose), a person who cannot signal optimally is a person with poor social skills.
So if a tendency towards telling the truth disrupts a person’s ability to signal optimally, then rationality and popularity must forever remain opposed, since in order to be rational you must give up your ability to signal popular, false beliefs. Even if we say that “rationalism” is only believing the truth—you can lie if you want to—your ability to signal is still disrupted, since the most effective way to signal is to sincerely believe what you’re saying
I’d re-address point 8 by saying that a women is rewarded socially for subverting her own beliefs at the expense of those of her social group.
She is actively punished if she steps away form group-norms (eg by pointing out errors in the groupthink or common misconceptions) - starting by getting a “boy you’re weird” look, glances amongst the others to indicate that “they all think you’re weird” and other social pressures.
If you persist, this can go to the “polite pulling aside”—where usually one of the women will explain to you that you are being disruptive (usually by couching it in “we’re really concerned for you” language)… and then on to hostility, usually involving a heavy dose of “you’re not respecting our opinions”… finally to shunning/ostracism from the group.
Women learn pretty quick that you either put up or shut up… and that if you “don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say it at all”.
The exceptions I’ve found are mainly amongst girl-geeks, SF-fandom and the other usual haunts no doubt familiar to all here… which also are nearly always predominantly male.
1) Willingness to join Less Wrong is inversely proportional to the size of your social network.
I suggested something similar above; participating in an online discussion forum, such as this one, is a time sink that competes with maintaining an offline social network.
If
5) On average, women have larger social networks than men.
is true, then there will be more male commenters, because women have better things to do than waste time commenting here.
I have some conjectures.
1) People tend to hold beliefs for social reasons. For example, belief in theism allows membership of the theist community, the actual existence of a deity is largely irrelevant.
2) For most people, in order to maintain close social relationships it is necessary to maintain harmonious beliefs with nearby members of your social network. Changing your beliefs may harm your social ties.
3) The larger your social network, the more you have to lose by changing your beliefs.
4) Less Wrong encourages questioning and changing of beliefs.
5) On average, women have larger social networks than men.
6) Less Wrong encourages the adoption of strange and boring beliefs, largely based in maths and science.
7) Advocating strange and boring beliefs does not signal high status, rather it signals a misunderstanding of widely accepted social norms, and therefore poor social skills.
8) Much of a woman’s percieved value as a human being is tied to her ability to navigate the social world, men may be forgiven for making the occasional faux pas, women are not. Women are therefore strongly averse to signalling poor social skills.
Some predictions:
1) Willingness to join Less Wrong is inversely proportional to the size of your social network.
2) The exceptions to this rule (Less Wrong members who have large social networks) will be members of fringe groups, where challenges to group beliefs are normal and do not lead to reductions in social status.
3) Less Wrong will never be popular among people with large, mainstream social networks, as long as it advocates self-examination and questioning of recieved beliefs, and promotes discussion of strange and boring beliefs. It will never be popular among women, and the women who do post here are unusual in some way.
ETA: for the sake of complete accuracy, let “fringe belief” be defined as one that is held by <0.1% of the population of the host nation.
Rationalists should win, and human beings need social networks for emotional well-being. Is it possible to
hold true beliefs
be honest about those beliefs
make friends and keep them?
In my experience, my atheism, for example, has not been a huge handicap (with one glaring exception), but it’s certainly hurt me from time to time. People feel that if nothing else, their beliefs deserve “respect,” and I have learned no graceful way of indicating that I have given long consideration to the matter, and give their beliefs no greater probability than I do Santa Claus or the Harry Potter novels, without giving insult.
This would, I think, be an art worth learning.
(The closest, I think, I’ve ever come, was by saying that “where I come from,” the way you give respect to a belief is by actively working to see if it’s true or not—which often simply means attacking it; that “in my culture,” an attack on a belief is a sign of deep respect.)
I find myself prefacing a lot of statements with “Where I come from” or “On this side of the water” when I’m talking to a religious person whose friendship I desire to keep e.g. my parents. This lets you provide exactly the same argument, which probably ends up being processed in exactly the same way, while letting the other person know that you don’t expect them to assent immediately.
I think the answer to your question may be no. I’ve thought on my original post some more and realised that I made a mistake in number (8), one cannot signal poor social skills since signalling is a social skill (it serves no other purpose), a person who cannot signal optimally is a person with poor social skills.
So if a tendency towards telling the truth disrupts a person’s ability to signal optimally, then rationality and popularity must forever remain opposed, since in order to be rational you must give up your ability to signal popular, false beliefs. Even if we say that “rationalism” is only believing the truth—you can lie if you want to—your ability to signal is still disrupted, since the most effective way to signal is to sincerely believe what you’re saying
I’d re-address point 8 by saying that a women is rewarded socially for subverting her own beliefs at the expense of those of her social group.
She is actively punished if she steps away form group-norms (eg by pointing out errors in the groupthink or common misconceptions) - starting by getting a “boy you’re weird” look, glances amongst the others to indicate that “they all think you’re weird” and other social pressures.
If you persist, this can go to the “polite pulling aside”—where usually one of the women will explain to you that you are being disruptive (usually by couching it in “we’re really concerned for you” language)… and then on to hostility, usually involving a heavy dose of “you’re not respecting our opinions”… finally to shunning/ostracism from the group.
Women learn pretty quick that you either put up or shut up… and that if you “don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say it at all”.
The exceptions I’ve found are mainly amongst girl-geeks, SF-fandom and the other usual haunts no doubt familiar to all here… which also are nearly always predominantly male.
I suggested something similar above; participating in an online discussion forum, such as this one, is a time sink that competes with maintaining an offline social network.
If
is true, then there will be more male commenters, because women have better things to do than waste time commenting here.