I agree that people act to reinforce social norms all the time, every day. But there are facts. If it turns out that men should not be primary care-givers of children because men, but not women, have a 5% chance of murderous rage when caring for children, society is morally justified in taking that fact into account.
But if a scientist reported that finding as an experimental result, they’re failed to be properly empirical (given all the other evidence that exists for this question).
You’re failing to be a good rationalist, because you’re putting some ideal form of “rationalism” over winning in your political struggle. If you have a goal you wish to accomplish, and you choose not to because that would “treat arguments as soldiers,” your self-image as the sort of Bayesian monk EY depicts has conflicted with your struggle, and you’ve become your own enemy.
Rationalism itself does not preclude “treating arguments as soldiers” within an adversarial debate (most political debates are adversarial). It just cautions aganst doing this within individual deliberation or public deliberative-like processes, where truth-seeking efficiency is an instrumental goal. Nevertheless, the social norms of LessWrong do discourage (1) political discussion, as well as (2) “treating argument as soldiers” in any discussion, be it political or otherwise.
One interpretation of TimS’ behavior is that he places a higher value on following LW’s established social norms than he does on promoting his political cause. Alternately, he may believe that flaunting the norms of LW would be mostly unhelpful to his political advocacy.
Treat arguments as soldiers
Claim to be a good empiricist
Be internally consistent.
Pick two.
Edit: Ok, that was snarky.
I agree that people act to reinforce social norms all the time, every day. But there are facts. If it turns out that men should not be primary care-givers of children because men, but not women, have a 5% chance of murderous rage when caring for children, society is morally justified in taking that fact into account.
But if a scientist reported that finding as an experimental result, they’re failed to be properly empirical (given all the other evidence that exists for this question).
You’re failing to be a good rationalist, because you’re putting some ideal form of “rationalism” over winning in your political struggle. If you have a goal you wish to accomplish, and you choose not to because that would “treat arguments as soldiers,” your self-image as the sort of Bayesian monk EY depicts has conflicted with your struggle, and you’ve become your own enemy.
Rationalism itself does not preclude “treating arguments as soldiers” within an adversarial debate (most political debates are adversarial). It just cautions aganst doing this within individual deliberation or public deliberative-like processes, where truth-seeking efficiency is an instrumental goal. Nevertheless, the social norms of LessWrong do discourage (1) political discussion, as well as (2) “treating argument as soldiers” in any discussion, be it political or otherwise.
One interpretation of TimS’ behavior is that he places a higher value on following LW’s established social norms than he does on promoting his political cause. Alternately, he may believe that flaunting the norms of LW would be mostly unhelpful to his political advocacy.