Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not that huge advocate of LW. I used to frequent the site, I read the Sequences and generally liked what I saw.

RE parts you quoted. Of course they look bad, because they've been ripped out from context.

Race:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/kk/why_are_individual_iq_differences...

This is an article asking, to quote: "But why is it that the rest of the world seems to think that individual genetic differences are okay, whereas racial genetic differences in intelligence are not?". Yudkowsky seems to argue that making big controversies around whether there are, or are not, differences between "races" is missing the point; it's just one of many variables and we should focus on fixing intelligence disparities for everyone.

Society:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ub/competent_elites/

This blogpost is marked as controversial from the get-go. It covers a quite interesting theory IMO - that the very common meme, which says that elites are stupid and evil, is in fact wrong. Eliezer argues towards a more socially uncomfortable opinion - that elites are, in fact, smarter and better at organizing things. Given that this is a belief most people are heavily biased against, it actually may be the "thing you can't say", per PG's essay at http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html.

Story:

Geez. This is a sci-fi story. Moreover, it's explicitly designed to fuck with reader's moral intuitions. That's its entire point. Personally, I find it fun and insightful, but it is heavy. You can read the whole work here:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/

--

And to be clear. I'm not idolizing Eliezer. He's just a man who thought a lot about some stuff, and wanted to share it. He sometimes gets it wrong (and, as opposed to many, has at least the courage to admit he was wrong). But I absolutely hate this kind of bullshit pseudocriticism when it's directed against anyone - be it my friend or enemy, be it someone I admire or despise of. Eliezer is not beyond criticism, but we can do better than that.

I guess I just disagree with you that they're taken out of context?

1. Bond posits Yudkowski thinks that racism is mostly due to genetic difference, and not about the deliberate, mostly political disenfranchisement of minorities.

You say this is a wrong because his appraisal of the situation as being caused by genetic disparities is benevolent, and that he wants to work to "fix" it.

These aren't in contradiction- to say that it's unfortunate that society is racialized, but that it's due to traits rather than politics, is better than being wantonly racist, but still a well-known form of fallacious racism. Some would say this latter one is actually worse in terms of perpetuating the situation.

2. Of course it's "controversial from the get go". He looks at the disproportionate representation of certain people in ie: tech, and concludes that it's because they're "more competent". Nothing here seems to be a counter, you're just basically saying "it's politically incorrect so it's probably right".

3. Clearly it's just a story. This point eludes exactly nobody. The whole point is that these kind of people find these questions ("is rape really bad?") really intriguing rather than obvious. It makes you wonder about the power of Bayesian reasoning- the exact point of the essay.

I think you're too uncharitable to critical writers like Bond (it took me a while to acquire a taste for this vicious kind of writing), underestimating their and their audiences' understanding. As a result, you think this context adds way more than it does.

The racism and feminism points Bond makes sound to me like typical social justice warrior bullshit - no matter what you do, you're a misogynist racist. Disagreeing with the modern trend of mindless outrage paints you as an enemy. So does ignoring the topic. So let me skip it, because I do disagree with Bond very seriously about that part of the text, and I don't want to start another SJW subthread here.

> Nothing here seems to be a counter, you're just basically saying "it's politically incorrect so it's probably right".

No; I'm saying that just because he's politically incorrect, doesn't mean he's wrong. And it most definitely does not mean Bond gets to assume all the bad things he did about the author. Eliezer is just toying with an idea based on some observations. Personally, I find his idea intriguing and worth considering, given that time and again I've learned that when the general population seems to believe something counterintuitive and self-serving, like "those rich people are stupid and evil", they're usually wrong.

> The whole point is that these kind of people find these questions ("is rape really bad?") really intriguing rather than obvious.

I think we disagree on the interpretation. Many stories raise weird questions about morality; that's the reason we have literature. Please find me a place on LW where people, and Eliezer in particular, were seriously advocating for rape. Also it's worth noting that the rape angle was just a passing remark in the story, a way to shake the audience a little bit - and otherwise in no way relevant to the plot.

> I think you're too uncharitable to critical writers like Bond (it took me a while to acquire a taste for this vicious kind of writing), underestimating their and their audiences' understanding. As a result, you think this context adds way more than it does.

Maybe I am, but it's because I've been a member of groups that were on the receiving end of such writings, and spent a lot of time debunking them point-by-point to concerned friends and colleagues who stumbled upon them. It's painful, and you realize just how helpless you are against people who argue dishonestly.

"1. Bond posits Yudkowski thinks that racism is mostly due to genetic difference, and not about the deliberate, mostly political disenfranchisement of minorities."

You don't need to take the author's word for it. Look at the article itself.

The article is not about the question of whether race affects intelligence. It's saying that that question is much less important than the fact that individuals have different IQ levels regardless of race. At least in the context of this article, which is asking whether "God is fair".

To make it crystal clear - Yudkowsky is saying:

1. Forget race. There are clear, obvious, and gigantic genetic differences in individuals which cause differences in intelligence.

2. This is "unjust".

3. We should be upset about this, and try to fix it.

That's all he's saying in that article - it is not at all racist.

If you think otherwise, please - quote the relevant part of the article and explain yourself.

I'm not gonna do a good job at explaining this, because it's far from my subject area, but the problem is that your demand for "the relevant part" asks for blunt evidence of a subtle phenomenon.

When we talk about politics, context matters. Someone like Yudkowsky doesn't believe stupidly racist things, like a KKK member or turn-of-century politician, or even modern anti-immigration people. Bond's targeting something much more subtle.

The point is that here you have a man who naively keeps trying to push the dialogue "beyond race" ("forget race"), in a forum where if you scroll down to the comment section, you'll see Jeff H. with 5 upvotes defending Watson's racist remarks, with Epiphany at 0 upvotes talking about the cultural reasons why IQ tests fail.

It's about the framework, and what it allows, and about what allows the people championing it to be naive or indifferent about what it allows. Someone discussing coldly and clinically the pros and cons of rape isn't a rapist, but there's something else about someone who can have discussion coldly and clinically. Some people take pride in their level-headedness about tough topics, others would take it as a signal of their lack of empathy with the victims, and the signal this sends to people who do feel passionately about it.

And so Yudkowsky will discuss race in this goofy aloof kind of way- "maybe black people are intellectually inferior, let's talk about it, does it even matter in the end?", and some people will believe that this is the right kind of coolness to produce neat solutions, and others will believe it robs the steam off of the emotional connection that would engage people in political action for change.

You have to suss this kind of thing out, and if you plain don't want to believe me that there's something enabling towards racism and sexism and other various supremacist ideologies in the LessWrong ecosystem, you don't really have to.

You have to suss this kind of thing out, and if you plain don't want to believe me that there's something enabling towards racism and sexism and other various supremacist ideologies in the LessWrong ecosystem, you don't really have to.

There is definitely something enabling about it. A lot of modern politics wants you to NOT believe black people are stupid criminals.

Yudkowsky would almost certainly endorse "if black people are stupid criminals I want to believe black people are stupid criminals, if black people are not stupid criminals I want to believe they are not stupid criminals". (This is the litany of tarski, which he endorses, applied to a specific case.) One could certainly view this as "enabling" supremacist views under the circumstances that reality supports them.

Is a fair summary of your critique that Yudkowsky is rationally and unemotionally reasoning about problems which are normally addressed via appeals to emotion, and this subverts emotional appeals to the masses to take certain actions?

I've read your post several times, and this is the most charitable takeaway I can come up with. But this sounds insane so I feel like I must be misunderstanding something.

Someone who feels injustice, but hasn't had the time or resources to codify it into a calm rational treatise is said to be speaking from emotion. Someone who merely experiences base greed, but is able to justify it to themselves as righteous and deliberate and socially beneficial with a bunch of babble, is considered rational.

And so, the idea that the rigid set of discursive boundaries that LessWrongians impose upon themselves may favor a political outcome (the status quo) seems ridiculous to you, because you use "rational" as a compliment and "emotional" as an insult.

Can you find me an influential LessWrongian who describes making emotional decisions based on greed as "rational"?

Based on my reading, a profit seeker obeying his gut and losing money is irrational. In contrast, a social justice type observing that assortative mating causes inequality and therefore attempting to reduce educated women's marriage choices is rational. But maybe you've read more than me, and can figure out what I missed?

And so, the idea that the rigid set of discursive boundaries that LessWrongians impose upon themselves may favor a political outcome (the status quo)...

This is a completely new critique of the Less Wrong crowd. The normal critique, and the specific one you cited, claim that Less Wrong is too far from the status quo and concerns itself with things like the singularity.

Adding to my confusion is that in the very post you criticize, Yudkowsky explicitly advocates fixing intelligence deficits with "sufficiently advanced technology, biotech or nanotech". How is fixing every person with an IQ < 150 using nanotechnology remotely preserving the status quo?

(Note also that Yudkowsky is explicitly advocating that if genius isn't uniformly distributed, as social justice types claim to believe, we should explicitly change the world to make it so.)

I can't seem to post a reply, so I'll wrap it up here.

I'm criticizing an ecosystem. Yudkowsky-types noodle with weird hypotheticals, others with elitist views get validation. Fantasizing of fixing our current issues with futuristic tech, using it as a yard-stick to criticize ie: a collective black identity from forming a political block, is not explicitly pro-status quo but ends up being so in practice.

So the only criticism here is that views of various people on LW forum do not conform to the mainstream social justice outrage narrative, where everything needs to be politicized and "status quo" must be fought?

That's sort of the entire point of "Politics is the Mind-Killer" statement, a point which Bond also missed - LW community wants to focus on effective ways to deal with actual problems, as opposed to doing politics. They're not criticizing "a collective black identity", speaking against them "forming a political block". They're not talking about it. It's besides the point of that article and mostly besides the point of the entire community, which tends to focus on how to make things better for everyone.

Frankly, I find it funny to see accusations of racism aimed at people who are known to seriously, and not just as a figure of speech, consider humanity as one great family who are in it together. But then again, everyone of us who is not outraged is secretly a racist and supports the enemy.

Also consider the core statement of the Mind-Killer article:

"Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you're on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it's like stabbing your soldiers in the back—providing aid and comfort to the enemy. People who would be level-headed about evenhandedly weighing all sides of an issue in their professional life as scientists, can suddenly turn into slogan-chanting zombies when there's a Blue or Green position on an issue."

It's perfectly OK to avoid that kind of political discussions. I'd say it's weird to actually partake in them.

I'd love to reply to you all (ie: siblings) but this discussion is just sprawling (not a fan of "tree-and-leaf" fanning arguments, I much prefer linear forums), and I just can't put in the time.

FWIW, you strike me as a good person, as do many LWers. I wish I could communicate to you the nuance of my issues with statements like "humanity as one great family", but I'm a newbie at the study of ideology myself, so I wouldn't do a good job.

À la prochaine!

I'm not very familiar with the subject matter, but do you realize that this concluding argument is very weak?

Firstly, I don't think I've seen mentioned an instance where Yudkowsky seems to be trying to prevent a collective black identity from forming a political block.

Secondly, you've suggested that the mechanism by which Yudkowsky's material end up as bullets for people who desire to perpetuate prejudice is where the prejudiced party misrepresents Yudkowsky (thereafter, Y). Therefore, your reasoning goes, Y and the LW commenters are guilty for engaging in subject matter that are ripe for appropriation.

Unless I'm mistaken, your accusation is one that is pretty unjust in itself. You are accusing Y with a moral crime for Y&LW's association with (racially) prejudiced groups that have misrepresented Y as prejudiced. This is despite that Y has neither affirmed this association nor mentioned anything prejudiced, his crime being entertaining "weird hypotheticals". Rather, if such a thing has occurred, isn't Y a victim of the prejudiced groups himself?

I think your premises are mistaken on several fronts, I'm annoyed by your (mis)characterizations of LW and Eliezer, and I disagree strongly with your conclusion...

but your comment helped me actually understand this position for the first time, so thank you for articulating it.

>The whole point is that these kind of people find these questions ("is rape really bad?") really intriguing rather than obvious.

That isn't the question the story is asking. Second of all, Eliezer says:

>This is a work of fiction. In real life, continuing to attempt to have sex with someone after they say 'no' and before they say 'yes', whether or not they offer forceful resistance and whether or not any visible injury occurs, is (in the USA) defined as rape and considered a federal felony. I agree with and support that this is the correct place for society to draw the line. Some people have worked out a safeword system in which they explicitly and verbally agree, with each other or on a signed form, that 'no' doesn't mean stop but e.g. 'red' or 'safeword' does mean stop. I agree with and support this as carving out a safe exception whose existence does not endanger innocent bystanders. If either of these statements come to you as a surprise then you should look stuff up. Thank you and remember, your safeword should be at least 10 characters and contain a mixture of letters and numbers. We now return you to your regularly scheduled reading. Yours, the author.

The point that the protagonists legalized rape, is to demonstrate that the protagonists morals are just as far from us, as the baby eaters or super happies. That the story isn't about two alien societies, but three.

Second of all, what "these kind of people" find intriguing is that our morals are for the most part due to our circumstances. That in the future, people may very well accept what we find today to be abhorrent, and find abhorrent what we accept.

That is the point of "is rape bad?". Because it is simply an example of something that is obviously bad. Just like some time ago there were other things that were considered obviously bad, that today we accept (same sex relationships for example). And if we are aware that the future will look back and mock us for our obviously wrong morals, then maybe we will be faster to get on the ball with the next gay rights or what ever.

Are there moral beliefs you hold today, that you think the future might condemn you for? Or do you think in this time and place you've acquired a perfect set of morals?

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