It certainly has something to do with his post, even if the main point of the post was specifically about domains from which to choose examples for your writing.
Politics is an important domain to which we should individually apply our rationality—but it’s a terrible domain in which to learn rationality, or discuss rationality, unless all the discussants are already rational.
This is the whole crux of the issue. According to some people, Less Wrong is a site to learn about and discuss rationality among people who are not already rational (or to “refine the art of human rationality”). According to some others, it’s a community site around which aspiring rationalists should discuss topics of interest to the group. Personally I think phl43′s posts are decent, and will likely improve with more practice, but I didn’t think that particular post was very relevant or appropriate for Less Wrong specifically.
Just out of curiosity, why did you think that my post wasn’t very relevant or appropriate for Less Wrong? I ask this because, based on what you’re saying (again I just arrived here), according to some people here, it’s a community for people to rationally discuss topics of interest to the group. I think that, on a common understanding of “rational”, my post was rationally discussing the claim that Trump’s election caused a substantial increase of the number of hate crimes. After all, I’m using evidence to argue logically that, even though a large number of people asserted this claim as if it had been conclusively established, the evidence doesn’t actually support it. Of course, if by “rational” you meant something stronger, such that my post wasn’t rationally discussing this claim in that sense because I was using unnecessarily abrasive language, then I guess I understand.
You claim “almost everyone on Facebook was apparently convinced that buckets of mostly unverified anecdotes, many of which had already been proven to be hoaxes at the time, showed that Trump’s victory had unleashed a wave of hate crimes on the US”.
That’s a central claim for which you don’t provide any evidence and you don’t steelman the opposing position.
You try to speak in tribal terms when there’s no necessity for doing so. Unnecessarily abrasive language is not helpful.
I think one can reach a point past which asking for evidence is not a sign of rationality, but rather of pedantry. And I think that asking for evidence in favor of the first claim you mention definitely falls under that description. I didn’t provide evidence for that claim, because if someone denies it, I simply don’t believe they are saying that in good faith. Of course, you could argue that one could totally deny in good faith what I literally said in the passage you quote, because it’s probably not true that almost everyone seemed convinced of the claim I was talking about, but any person who has normal conversations should be able to recognize that kind of rhetorical hyperbole when he sees it and interpret it charitably. Now, I agree with you that my tone in that post didn’t invite charity and that rhetorical hyperbole doesn’t help the argument, but that’s not a reason to be voluntarily dense.
As for the data from the NYPD, I think it’s incredibly poor evidence. It really wouldn’t be surprising if, after Trump’s election, the propensity to report hate crimes to law enforcement had increased. It also wouldn’t be surprising if the NYPD, who reports to a Democratic mayor, had become more proactive on that kind of crimes. The article also doesn’t make any attempt to determine how inconsistent with past variability this spike in the number of incidents recorded by the NYPD was. It also seems to be driven by attacks against Jews, which is probably not what most people would have expected, if they had predicted a spike in hate crimes after Trump’s election. Now, it’s true that I didn’t make any of those points in my post, but I did point out that, for any kind of crime, data from law enforcement is problematic for all sorts of reasons (some of which I just mentioned), so it’s better to use victimization surveys.
Also, my post was criticizing people who claimed that Trump’s victory had caused a substantial increase in the number of hate crimes immediately after the election, whereas the NYPD made the announcement you mention almost a month later. The claim that Trump’s election caused a substantial increase in the number of hate crimes is not harmless, it has real effects such as making people who are members of minorities freak out, so I think it should require strong evidence before people can assert it. I really don’t see how anyone could reasonably maintain that we have strong evidence that it’s true and I also think that my post was doing a perfectly good job at showing that the evidence most commonly used immediately after the election to support that claim was clearly insufficient.
so I think it should require strong evidence before people can assert it.
That a valid opinion but “other people should provide more evidence when they make claims on facebook” in not a good basis for a post on LW when arguing against a political opinion.
When addressing bad arguments made on facebook it’s your burden to steelman them if you want to have a discussion about them on LW.
it’s probably not true that almost everyone seemed convinced of the claim I was talking about, but any person who has normal conversations should be able to recognize that kind of rhetorical hyperbole when he sees
Engaging in hyperbole instead of rational discussion is a choice. You made it. Hyperbole doesn’t help rational thinking about the subject.
Removing hyperbole from political discussions on LW is useful. Removing posts that engage in too much of it is useful.
Now, I agree with you that my tone in that post didn’t invite charity and that rhetorical hyperbole doesn’t help the argument, but that’s not a reason to be voluntarily dense.
If you want to submit your posts to LW, you should expect to have them judged by LW’s rhetoric standards. If you want to play with different rhetoric standards there are many fora on the internet who have other standards.
Engaging in hyperbole instead of rational discussion is a choice.
I don’t think the kind of rhetorical hyperbole I’m using in my post, that any normal person can recognize as such, is incompatible with rational discussion. Other than that, what you say is fair enough.
(On another topic, you’re using the verb “steelman”, which I think you already used before. I had never encountered this word before. I’m guessing that it’s local jargon for the opposite of “to strawman”, meaning something like “making the position you attack as strong as possible”?)
Yes. You have that correct. Just because someone present an argument that may be week via their presentation does not mean the argument definitely does not have a stronger root. You should correct the argument to be stronger, then be able to defeat it anyway (provided you are right about things).
These things often end up on the lesswrong wiki. It’s an ongoing process to write everything up. Often if you ask, or google, or lesswrong search for it, the original post will come up.
(On another topic, you’re using the verb “steelman”, which I think you already used before. I had never encountered this word before. I’m guessing that it’s local jargon for the opposite of “to strawman”, meaning something like “making the position you attack as strong as possible”?)
Since hyperbole is only loosely connected with evaluating evidence, I’m not convinced it is compatible with rational discussion, at least as that term is generally understood in this community.
I don’t see how that’s incompatible. If I say that Trump often speaks unintelligibly and someone denies it or even claims not to be sure that it’s true, provided that person is intelligent and has a decent mastery of the English language, I would not believe they are saying that in good faith. Similarly, when I say that immediately after the election a lot of people were asserting that Trump’s victory had caused a substantial increase in the number of hate crimes and someone denies it or claims not to be sure it’s true, I think it’s perfectly reasonable of me to conclude that they are not seriously engaging with me.
Of course, people here didn’t deny it, they just asked me to provide evidence for that claim. But I don’t see the point of asking for evidence for a claim that you agree with unless you have some serious reason to think that you might be wrong in believing it’s true. (In this case, if someone had any doubt, Google would solve that problem in 5 seconds.) To my mind, this isn’t really being rational, it’s pedantry that can only serve to avoid dealing with the part of the argument that is actually contentious, which in this case was my argument that the evidence doesn’t support the claim that Trump’s victory had caused a substantial increase of the number of hate crimes.
The issue isn’t what you see, the issue is what intelligent people from outside of your echo chamber see.
when I say that immediately after the election a lot of people were asserting that Trump’s victory had caused a substantial increase in the number of hate crimes and someone denies it or claims not to be sure it’s true, I think it’s perfectly reasonable of me to conclude that they are not seriously engaging with me.
Well, let’s take me (me! me! :-D). I don’t live on Facebook and don’t pay much attention to political noise. I have no idea how many people were asserting what kind of things about the number of hate crimes after the election. I also have no reason to just take your word for it. So unless you show some actual evidence, I would be inclined to consider you just another blowhard. The habit of presenting doubtful claims as gospel truth is… widespread on the ’net and while you have full confidence in yourself, I don’t.
Theory of mind is a pretty useful thing to have. Kids acquire it early :-P
The issue isn’t what you see, the issue is what intelligent people from outside of your echo chamber see.
Okay, let me rephrase what I originally said: it’s not incompatible. Do you think it’s incompatible? Based on what you say later in your comment, I guess you do. So let me ask you a more general question: do you think there are no claims one can make, such that if someone denies them, one can reasonably conclude that the person denying it is not seriously engaging with one? I’m sure you don’t (obvious counterexamples are not hard to come up with), so there must something about the particular claim I made, which makes you think it doesn’t fall under that category.
Indeed, in the second part of that comment, you say that for someone like you this claim wasn’t obvious. I believe you when you say that you had no idea about this, but I also think that, for any random person, it’s highly unlikely they are in your epistemic situation with respect to this claim. And I don’t think I have to provide evidence for claims that, in all likelihood, an overwhelming proportion of my readers already know to be true.
Even if you disagree with that, it wouldn’t change the fact that, if you had a doubt, it would have taken you 5 seconds to assuage it by looking this up on Google. I just searched “trump hate crimes election” and got plenty of evidence that a lot of people were saying that after the election. Now, if what you mean is that, given my tone and the fact that you don’t know me, it was reasonable of you not to make any effort to ascertain the plausibility of that claim, then I’m happy to concede that. But I took you, perhaps mistakenly, to be making a stronger claim.
But look, I think we’re both wasting our time here, since I’ve already decided to tone down my language and not to post anything here that is directly related to politics. So I’ll just leave it at that, because I really have work to do :-p
It certainly has something to do with his post, even if the main point of the post was specifically about domains from which to choose examples for your writing.
This is the whole crux of the issue. According to some people, Less Wrong is a site to learn about and discuss rationality among people who are not already rational (or to “refine the art of human rationality”). According to some others, it’s a community site around which aspiring rationalists should discuss topics of interest to the group. Personally I think phl43′s posts are decent, and will likely improve with more practice, but I didn’t think that particular post was very relevant or appropriate for Less Wrong specifically.
Just out of curiosity, why did you think that my post wasn’t very relevant or appropriate for Less Wrong? I ask this because, based on what you’re saying (again I just arrived here), according to some people here, it’s a community for people to rationally discuss topics of interest to the group. I think that, on a common understanding of “rational”, my post was rationally discussing the claim that Trump’s election caused a substantial increase of the number of hate crimes. After all, I’m using evidence to argue logically that, even though a large number of people asserted this claim as if it had been conclusively established, the evidence doesn’t actually support it. Of course, if by “rational” you meant something stronger, such that my post wasn’t rationally discussing this claim in that sense because I was using unnecessarily abrasive language, then I guess I understand.
You claim “almost everyone on Facebook was apparently convinced that buckets of mostly unverified anecdotes, many of which had already been proven to be hoaxes at the time, showed that Trump’s victory had unleashed a wave of hate crimes on the US”.
That’s a central claim for which you don’t provide any evidence and you don’t steelman the opposing position.
You try to speak in tribal terms when there’s no necessity for doing so. Unnecessarily abrasive language is not helpful.
You say that you haven’t found any evidence but don’t address the fact that the NYPD claimed it has evidence (http://observer.com/2016/12/nypd-reports-huge-spike-in-hate-crimes-since-donald-trumps-election/). You didn’t provide evidence of why the NYPD shouldn’t be believed.
There’s also a valid intererst of LW of not having people who aren’t established members post a lot of link about Trump here.
I think one can reach a point past which asking for evidence is not a sign of rationality, but rather of pedantry. And I think that asking for evidence in favor of the first claim you mention definitely falls under that description. I didn’t provide evidence for that claim, because if someone denies it, I simply don’t believe they are saying that in good faith. Of course, you could argue that one could totally deny in good faith what I literally said in the passage you quote, because it’s probably not true that almost everyone seemed convinced of the claim I was talking about, but any person who has normal conversations should be able to recognize that kind of rhetorical hyperbole when he sees it and interpret it charitably. Now, I agree with you that my tone in that post didn’t invite charity and that rhetorical hyperbole doesn’t help the argument, but that’s not a reason to be voluntarily dense.
As for the data from the NYPD, I think it’s incredibly poor evidence. It really wouldn’t be surprising if, after Trump’s election, the propensity to report hate crimes to law enforcement had increased. It also wouldn’t be surprising if the NYPD, who reports to a Democratic mayor, had become more proactive on that kind of crimes. The article also doesn’t make any attempt to determine how inconsistent with past variability this spike in the number of incidents recorded by the NYPD was. It also seems to be driven by attacks against Jews, which is probably not what most people would have expected, if they had predicted a spike in hate crimes after Trump’s election. Now, it’s true that I didn’t make any of those points in my post, but I did point out that, for any kind of crime, data from law enforcement is problematic for all sorts of reasons (some of which I just mentioned), so it’s better to use victimization surveys.
Also, my post was criticizing people who claimed that Trump’s victory had caused a substantial increase in the number of hate crimes immediately after the election, whereas the NYPD made the announcement you mention almost a month later. The claim that Trump’s election caused a substantial increase in the number of hate crimes is not harmless, it has real effects such as making people who are members of minorities freak out, so I think it should require strong evidence before people can assert it. I really don’t see how anyone could reasonably maintain that we have strong evidence that it’s true and I also think that my post was doing a perfectly good job at showing that the evidence most commonly used immediately after the election to support that claim was clearly insufficient.
That a valid opinion but “other people should provide more evidence when they make claims on facebook” in not a good basis for a post on LW when arguing against a political opinion.
When addressing bad arguments made on facebook it’s your burden to steelman them if you want to have a discussion about them on LW.
Engaging in hyperbole instead of rational discussion is a choice. You made it. Hyperbole doesn’t help rational thinking about the subject.
Removing hyperbole from political discussions on LW is useful. Removing posts that engage in too much of it is useful.
If you want to submit your posts to LW, you should expect to have them judged by LW’s rhetoric standards. If you want to play with different rhetoric standards there are many fora on the internet who have other standards.
I don’t think the kind of rhetorical hyperbole I’m using in my post, that any normal person can recognize as such, is incompatible with rational discussion. Other than that, what you say is fair enough.
(On another topic, you’re using the verb “steelman”, which I think you already used before. I had never encountered this word before. I’m guessing that it’s local jargon for the opposite of “to strawman”, meaning something like “making the position you attack as strong as possible”?)
Yes. You have that correct. Just because someone present an argument that may be week via their presentation does not mean the argument definitely does not have a stronger root. You should correct the argument to be stronger, then be able to defeat it anyway (provided you are right about things).
Is there a glossary of your jargon somewhere?
These things often end up on the lesswrong wiki. It’s an ongoing process to write everything up. Often if you ask, or google, or lesswrong search for it, the original post will come up.
Thanks, I hadn’t noticed that there was a wiki.
Humans easily think in terms of black and white. It takes effort to think in shades of gray. This kind of hyperbole primes for black/white thinking.
Yes. More details are found at http://lesswrong.com/lw/85h/better_disagreement/
Since hyperbole is only loosely connected with evaluating evidence, I’m not convinced it is compatible with rational discussion, at least as that term is generally understood in this community.
I thought you said something about attracting intelligent people and not wanting to live in an echo chamber..?
I don’t see how that’s incompatible. If I say that Trump often speaks unintelligibly and someone denies it or even claims not to be sure that it’s true, provided that person is intelligent and has a decent mastery of the English language, I would not believe they are saying that in good faith. Similarly, when I say that immediately after the election a lot of people were asserting that Trump’s victory had caused a substantial increase in the number of hate crimes and someone denies it or claims not to be sure it’s true, I think it’s perfectly reasonable of me to conclude that they are not seriously engaging with me.
Of course, people here didn’t deny it, they just asked me to provide evidence for that claim. But I don’t see the point of asking for evidence for a claim that you agree with unless you have some serious reason to think that you might be wrong in believing it’s true. (In this case, if someone had any doubt, Google would solve that problem in 5 seconds.) To my mind, this isn’t really being rational, it’s pedantry that can only serve to avoid dealing with the part of the argument that is actually contentious, which in this case was my argument that the evidence doesn’t support the claim that Trump’s victory had caused a substantial increase of the number of hate crimes.
The issue isn’t what you see, the issue is what intelligent people from outside of your echo chamber see.
Well, let’s take me (me! me! :-D). I don’t live on Facebook and don’t pay much attention to political noise. I have no idea how many people were asserting what kind of things about the number of hate crimes after the election. I also have no reason to just take your word for it. So unless you show some actual evidence, I would be inclined to consider you just another blowhard. The habit of presenting doubtful claims as gospel truth is… widespread on the ’net and while you have full confidence in yourself, I don’t.
Theory of mind is a pretty useful thing to have. Kids acquire it early :-P
Okay, let me rephrase what I originally said: it’s not incompatible. Do you think it’s incompatible? Based on what you say later in your comment, I guess you do. So let me ask you a more general question: do you think there are no claims one can make, such that if someone denies them, one can reasonably conclude that the person denying it is not seriously engaging with one? I’m sure you don’t (obvious counterexamples are not hard to come up with), so there must something about the particular claim I made, which makes you think it doesn’t fall under that category.
Indeed, in the second part of that comment, you say that for someone like you this claim wasn’t obvious. I believe you when you say that you had no idea about this, but I also think that, for any random person, it’s highly unlikely they are in your epistemic situation with respect to this claim. And I don’t think I have to provide evidence for claims that, in all likelihood, an overwhelming proportion of my readers already know to be true.
Even if you disagree with that, it wouldn’t change the fact that, if you had a doubt, it would have taken you 5 seconds to assuage it by looking this up on Google. I just searched “trump hate crimes election” and got plenty of evidence that a lot of people were saying that after the election. Now, if what you mean is that, given my tone and the fact that you don’t know me, it was reasonable of you not to make any effort to ascertain the plausibility of that claim, then I’m happy to concede that. But I took you, perhaps mistakenly, to be making a stronger claim.
But look, I think we’re both wasting our time here, since I’ve already decided to tone down my language and not to post anything here that is directly related to politics. So I’ll just leave it at that, because I really have work to do :-p