I like the sentiment, but the advice is too often not practical. Also, not much to do with rationality.
Caue
Karma: 97
An internal combustion engine is like Carol’s subjective cold-sensation in her left hand—one way among others to bring about the externally-observable behavior. (By “externally observable” I mean “without looking under the hood”.) In Carol’s case, that behavior is identifying 20 C water. In the engine’s case, it’s the acceleration of the car.
The subjective cold-sensation in her left hand should be part of the observable behavior, surely? To mix the analogies, if it were my job to disguise the fuel cell as a combustion engine, I certainly would feel like I had to include this subjective cold-sensation part.
But I’m not familiar enough with the discussions about uploading to know to what extent people intend to make the fuel cell keep the subjectively observable properties of a combustion engine.
Can anyone recommend good sources on the social dynamics of witch-hunts?
Not necessarily about witches, of course. I’m interested in the hand of Moloch in these situations: social incentives to go along, status rewards for being more morally outraged than your fellow citizen, self-protection by avoiding looking insufficiently outraged, the not necessarily intended but still unescapable prosecutorial traps, the social impossibility of denying the actual existence of the outrageous facts...
Would you attribute essentialist thinking to someone who prefers that watch?
Yes, I don’t see why not. The only difference is a mental tag on their map.
(not that I would look down on anyone who has these preferences, or feel particularly inclined to work on diminishing my own similar preferences).
But there are readily perceivable differences. Just look under the hood.
Ok, no differences that would make her prefer the actual combustion engine, besides it having the essence of a real combustion engine.
To the extent that there really are no perceivable differences, it looks like essentialist thinking. But I wouldn’t call a desire irrational (or rather, I wouldn’t call it especially irrational), even a desire for a perceived essence.
A similar example would be two identical watches, one of which was given to you by your grandfather. Or the loss of value when you discover that the autographed picture you bought on e-bay is a forgery.
(maybe it’s because I’m primed by a discussion on the stupid questions thread, or because I perceived hints that the third part would be controversial, but the example I had in mind as I read the post was of a heterossexual man rejecting trans women)
Also, here’s Yvain applying this reasoning to this exact question.
(The people producing those videos say he’s “producer and co-writer”. Cynical-me suspects that “Gamergate fans” think he must be the real driving force because Anita Sarkeesian is a girl and therefore not to be taken seriously. I do hope cynical-me is wrong. Not-so-cynical me thinks Sarkeesian is more likely to be the real driving force because, other things being equal, a woman is more likely to feel strongly about this stuff than a man.)
Since it’s been brought up...
As far as I can tell the best evidence they have for this is a widely circulated video (from before FemFreq) in which she says she’s “not a fan of videogames”.
And Mcintosh clearly “feels strongly about this”, as much as any woman I’ve seen. The Gamergate people created a whole hashtag to display his tweets (#FullMcintosh), which also became, incidentally, what they use to indicate that they think someone has gone particularly far down the SJ rabbit hole.
Personally, I think the conclusion Viliam mentions doesn’t rest in very solid evidence, but it’s not far-fetched either. (meanwhile, the “because she’s a girl” hypothesis looks very unlikely to me)
What, by the way, makes you think that Anita Sarkeesian doesn’t truly believe in her cause? I’ve only seen a small quantity of her stuff, but what I’ve seen looks sincere (and fairly plausible) to me.
I’m not sure how familiar you are with videogames, or which of her videos you’ve seen. But I can’t imagine how some of the ones I’ve seen could possibly have been made without outright dishonesty.
?
No, I mean people sometimes accuse leftists of holding positions motivated by hate. It’s more common for this accusation to be made against right-wing positions (which is what the grandparent was talking about), but I don’t think the reverse is all that rare.
Oh, that’s quite close to my experience as well. Any disagreement about policies is actually a smokescreen—people only oppose leftist policies because they benefit from the status quo, you see, but they will invent anything to avoid admitting that (including, I gather, the entire field of Economics).
It’s not that rare.
Consider accusations of hate against: Israel/Jews; straight cis white men; Christians; America; Freedom; rich people...
The entire domains of boys toys and girls toys diverge. Previously often one set of toys was sold for and used by boys and girls alike. The play differentiated along roles but still overlapped. But ot any longer. I wondered: Why is that?
I think I’m seeing the opposite (in Brazil). I see a lot of for-girls versions of toys that used to be made for boys when I was a child. Like RC Barbie racing cars, or pink Nerf guns with matching fashion accessories. Traditional girl toys also look more varied than they used to be (e.g. horror-themed dolls).
I was wondering more about the happiness/wellbeing part than the my terminal goal part.
But about that: it would mean it’s one of my terminal goals. I’m also not seeing how it would be incompatible with a “transactional relationship”.
I feel there’s an intended connotation that it should rank high among his terminal goals (in the example, high enough that he shouldn’t end the relationship), but this doesn’t necessarily follow from “seeing her as an end in herself”.
(I think the “intended correct answer” in the scenario is that he shouldn’t want to leave her in that situation. This is compatible with him wanting to stay for her sake, but also with him wanting to stay because he would still enjoy being with her. This latter possibility has a better claim to being a healthy relationship than the former, and it’s also entirely compatible with a “transactional attitude” as described by Salemicus)
A healthy attitude to a relationship makes the other person an end in herself.
What does it mean for a person to be an end? In the example, is the end the continuity of the relationship, her happiness, or what?
If the end is the continuity of the relationship regardless of quality, or her happiness regardless of his, it doesn’t look very “healthy”. But if it’s conditional on quality or on his own satisfaction, it doesn’t look like the “end”.
What I can’t figure out is why some noticeable proportion of heterosexual men hate prostitutes.
My bet is that they process it as a purity/sacredness violation.
I am, however, stronger than most of the villagers, and could take some of the food that the raiders don’t scavenge for.
You’d have to be stronger than the group of villagers.
The way status works looks analogous to the way Schelling points work: members of the group expect the other members to act a certain way towards member X, and also expect that everyone will expect everyone else to expect that, and so on. This is clearly how authority works (each grunt obeys the boss because he expects the other grants to obey and punish him if he doesn’t, which is what all of them are thinking), and I suspect it might be a special case of the general case of status.
The value of strength, wealth, talent and etc. for high status would then go beyond their inherent usefulness in influencing people, by also acting as salient features that are more likely to become Schelling points. At the other end, each person would know not to ally with a coward because “nobody follows a coward”, which would be a pretty natural Schelling point, but a similar behavior can arise if “it is known” that people born under the full moon are unlucky, and therefore nobody expects anyone else to follow someone born under a full moon...
This accords well, I believe, with the common observation that acting as one who expects to be assigned high status is an effective way to indeed be assigned high status.
I’m not sure I see what “dominance” is here. If you mean something like the OP’s “general purpose ability to influence a group”, then my guess is that this person is only “not-dominant” to the extent that they choose not to overtly use it. For instance, I expect the answer to the following questions would be “yes”:
When the group is uncertain about an outsider, or someone new, is this person’s support more important than that of the average member of the group?
Regarding trivial choices, like ambient temperature or where to go for lunch, do this person’s preferences count more than the average, or do they get their choice more than the average member of the group?
In times of change or crisis, would this person’s voice carry more weight than the average voice?
Maybe I’m missing something, but the mystery of people wanting to be low status appears to vanish if we don’t think of binary high/low status, but as a continuum going from highest to lowest status. Then we can see people not wanting to go for highest status (including, perhaps, because they don’t think they can manage it), but that doesn’t mean they want to be low status.
I find it useful to see status as “fuzzily ordinal”, in that it’s often possible to identify one or some higher status members of a group, one or some lower status members (or maybe “would-be members”), as well as some in the middle, even if it’s not possible to order them precisely.
I really like Venkat’s illustration of this in his Gervais Principle (as in “it’s interesting and aesthetically pleasing”, not necessarily as in “I have high confidence in its accuracy”), especially in this post.
1- I am not sure it would happen, but I think that someone who does shout “fire!” is indeed quite sure people will run.
2 - I don’t know Australia’s laws, so I don’t know what would be protected. But Hugh’s speech goes in my first box (the only information being transmited is Hugh’s preferences. Also, by analogy: if it were “should I kill him?”, both would be responsible).
At last. Wouldn’t miss it.