Today I realized I had a meme in my head which said the opposite of this. It was like: “If you really want something, then you will do it (without any strategy). And if you didn’t do it, that means it wasn’t really so important for you.” In other words, relax, turn off all your strategic thinking, and believe that everything will be 100% okay. -- In reality this approach often fails. In which case you are supposed to rationalize that you actually didn’t want that thing too much. Of course sometimes you are lucky and succeed despite the lack of strategy; and then you are supposed to take this as an evidence that the strategy really is not necessary.
I already professed the belief that humans are not automatically strategic, but I didn’t realize I had a meme deeper in my head which said the opposite, and that in real life I probably followed that meme most of the time.
(I find it horrifying how easy it is to spread irrational memes, without any… consequences. I mean, if someone distributed poison to people, they would get arrested. But distribute poisonous memes and the only consequence is that the people who refuse to drink are sometimes called closed-minded and intolerant.)
As I was skimming recent comments, I was struck by the tension between this comment:
(I find it horrifying how easy it is to spread irrational memes, without any… consequences. I mean, if someone distributed poison to people, they would get arrested. But distribute poisonous memes and the only consequence is that the people who refuse to drink are sometimes called closed-minded and intolerant.)
Is still feels strange to me that people who participate in terrorist groups, rob banks, etc. are welcome at universities; while people who suggest that maybe women have less mathematical geniuses than men are unwelcome.
I was doubly struck when I went back to compare the two comments and realized they shared the same author.
Of course, one way to reconcile them is if I assume that the strangeness you experience in the second example derives from academics being made unwelcome by spreading what you class as harmless or valuable ideas, like gender differences in math genius frequency, rather than (as I’d originally inferred) deriving from academics being made more unwelcome due to their seen-as-antisocial ideas rather than their seen-as-antisocial behaviors.
To me there is a big difference between saying “X is an interesting hypothesis, let’s check it experimentally” and saying “X is a deep wisdom, if you disagree, you are simply not wise enough”. I generally don’t get angry at people for suggesting a hypothesis, as long as they admit it is just a hypothesis. I get angry at people for presenting something as an absolute truth, if I later discover it was a bullshit.
In the first case, the meme “if you didn’t do something, it only means it wasn’t really important for you” was presented to me by multiple people as an absolute truth that only a person in deep denial could not accept as self-evident.
If someone presented the second case in the same way, insisting that they know with absolute certainty what even science does not know, I would be similarly outraged by their overconfidence.
So it seems it’s not the ideas per se, but the extreme overconfidence (and suggesting that people who don’t share this overconfidence are somehow inferior), which makes me angry. How am I supposed to update on information in an environment which communicates this way?
(With regards to gender differences in math genius frequency, it seems to me that there is a lot of overconfidence, but in the opposite direction. I mean, I personally don’t know. As far as I know, there is no scientific research proving either way—and if I am wrong about this, please send me a hyperlink and I will be happy to update. But some people already know, with 100% certainty, and are ready to judge those who disagree with their certainty as morally inferior.)
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by math geniuses—do you just mean e.g. high-performing university level math students, or math professors doing groundbreaking research?
I’m also not sure if the argument you’re making is biological. I believe that, while there may be biological differences in the average mathematical aptitude between genders, the biological effects are negligible compared to the social aspects.
First of all, stereotype threat.
Stereotype threat is the phenomenon that being reminded of a negative stereotype will inhibit your performance because part of your working memory becomes preoccupied with trying to reject the stereotype. This research is fairly well-established, and interventions performed by one of the researchers, Spencer, have indicated that the gender discrepancy in mathematical performance among first-year engineering students can be basically eliminated by following through on this theory.
I actually took a Psych course from Spencer and had several conversations on the subject with him, so that’s how I know about the interventions, which were done at University of Waterloo. There appears to be a lot of Googleable stuff on it though: Google results for spencer engineering stereotype threat intervention
So, stereotype threat accounts for low-performing students. What about professors? Well, there are tons of factors:
Stereotypes & teacher/parent expectations cause fewer girls to care about math & science at young ages.
These same factors cause fewer high school girls to apply to STEM (Science, Technology, Math & Engineering) degree programs.
Stereotype threat causes fewer undergraduate women to perform highly in STEM, thereby reducing the odds that they make it to grad school.
Due to points 1-3, the gender ratios in STEM graduate programs are hugely slanted. I don’t know about research on the effects of this, but Spencer commented at one point that he’s heard of men leaving the English departments of universities because they didn’t feel comfortable there, being the only man. Similarly, women often find it unpleasant to be working in a predominantly male environment.
In addition to the mere ratio being detrimental, there’s also this factor:
People treat male and female professors differently. This bias, again, will affect their perceived intelligence and performance, and therefore factors like funding, etc. See this article from a transgender professor who was treated profoundly differently before and after his sex change: Transgender Experience led Stanford Scientist to Critique Gender Difference
“Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but his work is much better than his sister’s work.”
and
In his commentary Barres points to data from a range of studies showing bias in science.
So sure, there are more male mathematical geniuses than female. And maybe there’s a biological difference that causes men to be more mathematical. But no significant innate difference has been found, and there is plenty of harm being done by assuming that it’s there, or even drawing attention to it, in most situations.
But some people already know, with 100% certainty, and are ready to judge those who disagree with their certainty as morally inferior
(nods) I suspect that many people consider the primary value of acquiring knowledge to be feeling certain and being able to judge people who disagree with their certainty as morally inferior.
In the first case, the meme “if you didn’t do something, it only means it wasn’t really important for you” was presented to me by multiple people as an absolute truth that only a person in deep denial could not accept as self-evident.
Mmm. Agreed that the “only” in this sentence makes it unjustifiably strong, but I still think revealed preferences has a lot going for it, and the defenses I’ve seen of it is “this is the best of bad options” rather than “this is a good option.”
The meme is dangerous because it is similar to something true, which is why one gets a lot of what seems to be an evidence for the meme. Yes, humans often do express desires which are not their true desires, or at least not the strongest ones. It is useful to know that, about others and about yourself. I am absolutely not denying this.
The danger is in assuming that all differences between the expressed preferences and achieved results can be explained by this kind of hypocrisy; that everything that happened to me reflects the desires of a hidden homunculus in my head, and that this homunculus is my true self, and I am just too hypocritical to admit it. (Taken ad absurdum, if I slip on a sidewalk and break my arm, it could also be explained that my “true wish” was to break my arm, because .) While in reality other factors influence the result too:
Luck—let’s assume that I want something, and I make a plan to achieve it. Because of my uncertaintly and external factors, the plan has a chance to succeed and a chance to fail. So in one Everett branch my plan succeeds, which means that I “truly wanted” the thing; in another Everett branch my plan fails, which means that I was only hypocritical about the thing a never “truly wanted” it.
Internal conflict—so one part of me wants to enjoy some habit with harmful side-effects, other part of me wants to get rid of the habit. Which of these parts is supposed to be my “true self”? According to the folk wisdom it would be the pro-habit part, because it is less rational and because it usually wins. But does that mean that the other part is completely fake, or is it also a part of myself? Maybe in one Everett branch the pro-habit part wins, and in another Everett branch someone introduces me to e.g. Beeminder, which helps me to overcome the habit. Does it mean that in the former branch I “truly wanted” to keep the habit, while in the latter I “truly wanted” to overcome it?
In other words, this meme pretends to have even higher predictive power by redefining its predictions to match the observed outcome. If someone talks for ten years about a desire to do something, does many partial steps towards the goal but never achieves it, it is a proof that he never really wanted it; but if on the eleventh year he finally succeeds, suddenly it becomes a proof that he always wanted it, which made him work diligently for those eleven years. (Alternatively, it could be explained that in the very last moment his “true wish” switched from not wanting it to wanting it.)
The harm of the meme is that when you find yourself in an internal conflict and try to prepare a strategy to overcome your impulses and reach a better outcome, it tells you to stop planning, because either you “truly want” to do it, and then you don’t need a strategy, or you don’t “truly want” to do it, in which case the strategy will not help. (So you stop planning, you most likely fail, and then you rationalize it into evidence that you didn’t “truly want” the thing. At the moment you already have some “ugh fields” associated with the topic, which makes the explanation feel more likely.)
The danger is in assuming that all differences between the expressed preferences and achieved results can be explained by this kind of hypocrisy; that everything that happened to me reflects the desires of a hidden homunculus in my head, and that this homunculus is my true self, and I am just too hypocritical to admit it.
Agreed; this is what I mean when I object to the ‘only.’
“Humans are not automatically strategic.”
Today I realized I had a meme in my head which said the opposite of this. It was like: “If you really want something, then you will do it (without any strategy). And if you didn’t do it, that means it wasn’t really so important for you.” In other words, relax, turn off all your strategic thinking, and believe that everything will be 100% okay. -- In reality this approach often fails. In which case you are supposed to rationalize that you actually didn’t want that thing too much. Of course sometimes you are lucky and succeed despite the lack of strategy; and then you are supposed to take this as an evidence that the strategy really is not necessary.
I already professed the belief that humans are not automatically strategic, but I didn’t realize I had a meme deeper in my head which said the opposite, and that in real life I probably followed that meme most of the time.
(I find it horrifying how easy it is to spread irrational memes, without any… consequences. I mean, if someone distributed poison to people, they would get arrested. But distribute poisonous memes and the only consequence is that the people who refuse to drink are sometimes called closed-minded and intolerant.)
As I was skimming recent comments, I was struck by the tension between this comment:
...and this comment:
I was doubly struck when I went back to compare the two comments and realized they shared the same author.
Of course, one way to reconcile them is if I assume that the strangeness you experience in the second example derives from academics being made unwelcome by spreading what you class as harmless or valuable ideas, like gender differences in math genius frequency, rather than (as I’d originally inferred) deriving from academics being made more unwelcome due to their seen-as-antisocial ideas rather than their seen-as-antisocial behaviors.
To me there is a big difference between saying “X is an interesting hypothesis, let’s check it experimentally” and saying “X is a deep wisdom, if you disagree, you are simply not wise enough”. I generally don’t get angry at people for suggesting a hypothesis, as long as they admit it is just a hypothesis. I get angry at people for presenting something as an absolute truth, if I later discover it was a bullshit.
In the first case, the meme “if you didn’t do something, it only means it wasn’t really important for you” was presented to me by multiple people as an absolute truth that only a person in deep denial could not accept as self-evident.
If someone presented the second case in the same way, insisting that they know with absolute certainty what even science does not know, I would be similarly outraged by their overconfidence.
So it seems it’s not the ideas per se, but the extreme overconfidence (and suggesting that people who don’t share this overconfidence are somehow inferior), which makes me angry. How am I supposed to update on information in an environment which communicates this way?
(With regards to gender differences in math genius frequency, it seems to me that there is a lot of overconfidence, but in the opposite direction. I mean, I personally don’t know. As far as I know, there is no scientific research proving either way—and if I am wrong about this, please send me a hyperlink and I will be happy to update. But some people already know, with 100% certainty, and are ready to judge those who disagree with their certainty as morally inferior.)
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by math geniuses—do you just mean e.g. high-performing university level math students, or math professors doing groundbreaking research? I’m also not sure if the argument you’re making is biological. I believe that, while there may be biological differences in the average mathematical aptitude between genders, the biological effects are negligible compared to the social aspects.
First of all, stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is the phenomenon that being reminded of a negative stereotype will inhibit your performance because part of your working memory becomes preoccupied with trying to reject the stereotype. This research is fairly well-established, and interventions performed by one of the researchers, Spencer, have indicated that the gender discrepancy in mathematical performance among first-year engineering students can be basically eliminated by following through on this theory. I actually took a Psych course from Spencer and had several conversations on the subject with him, so that’s how I know about the interventions, which were done at University of Waterloo. There appears to be a lot of Googleable stuff on it though: Google results for spencer engineering stereotype threat intervention
So, stereotype threat accounts for low-performing students. What about professors? Well, there are tons of factors:
Stereotypes & teacher/parent expectations cause fewer girls to care about math & science at young ages.
These same factors cause fewer high school girls to apply to STEM (Science, Technology, Math & Engineering) degree programs.
Stereotype threat causes fewer undergraduate women to perform highly in STEM, thereby reducing the odds that they make it to grad school.
Due to points 1-3, the gender ratios in STEM graduate programs are hugely slanted. I don’t know about research on the effects of this, but Spencer commented at one point that he’s heard of men leaving the English departments of universities because they didn’t feel comfortable there, being the only man. Similarly, women often find it unpleasant to be working in a predominantly male environment.
In addition to the mere ratio being detrimental, there’s also this factor: People treat male and female professors differently. This bias, again, will affect their perceived intelligence and performance, and therefore factors like funding, etc. See this article from a transgender professor who was treated profoundly differently before and after his sex change: Transgender Experience led Stanford Scientist to Critique Gender Difference
and
So sure, there are more male mathematical geniuses than female. And maybe there’s a biological difference that causes men to be more mathematical. But no significant innate difference has been found, and there is plenty of harm being done by assuming that it’s there, or even drawing attention to it, in most situations.
(nods) I suspect that many people consider the primary value of acquiring knowledge to be feeling certain and being able to judge people who disagree with their certainty as morally inferior.
Mmm. Agreed that the “only” in this sentence makes it unjustifiably strong, but I still think revealed preferences has a lot going for it, and the defenses I’ve seen of it is “this is the best of bad options” rather than “this is a good option.”
The meme is dangerous because it is similar to something true, which is why one gets a lot of what seems to be an evidence for the meme. Yes, humans often do express desires which are not their true desires, or at least not the strongest ones. It is useful to know that, about others and about yourself. I am absolutely not denying this.
The danger is in assuming that all differences between the expressed preferences and achieved results can be explained by this kind of hypocrisy; that everything that happened to me reflects the desires of a hidden homunculus in my head, and that this homunculus is my true self, and I am just too hypocritical to admit it. (Taken ad absurdum, if I slip on a sidewalk and break my arm, it could also be explained that my “true wish” was to break my arm, because .) While in reality other factors influence the result too:
Luck—let’s assume that I want something, and I make a plan to achieve it. Because of my uncertaintly and external factors, the plan has a chance to succeed and a chance to fail. So in one Everett branch my plan succeeds, which means that I “truly wanted” the thing; in another Everett branch my plan fails, which means that I was only hypocritical about the thing a never “truly wanted” it.
Internal conflict—so one part of me wants to enjoy some habit with harmful side-effects, other part of me wants to get rid of the habit. Which of these parts is supposed to be my “true self”? According to the folk wisdom it would be the pro-habit part, because it is less rational and because it usually wins. But does that mean that the other part is completely fake, or is it also a part of myself? Maybe in one Everett branch the pro-habit part wins, and in another Everett branch someone introduces me to e.g. Beeminder, which helps me to overcome the habit. Does it mean that in the former branch I “truly wanted” to keep the habit, while in the latter I “truly wanted” to overcome it?
In other words, this meme pretends to have even higher predictive power by redefining its predictions to match the observed outcome. If someone talks for ten years about a desire to do something, does many partial steps towards the goal but never achieves it, it is a proof that he never really wanted it; but if on the eleventh year he finally succeeds, suddenly it becomes a proof that he always wanted it, which made him work diligently for those eleven years. (Alternatively, it could be explained that in the very last moment his “true wish” switched from not wanting it to wanting it.)
The harm of the meme is that when you find yourself in an internal conflict and try to prepare a strategy to overcome your impulses and reach a better outcome, it tells you to stop planning, because either you “truly want” to do it, and then you don’t need a strategy, or you don’t “truly want” to do it, in which case the strategy will not help. (So you stop planning, you most likely fail, and then you rationalize it into evidence that you didn’t “truly want” the thing. At the moment you already have some “ugh fields” associated with the topic, which makes the explanation feel more likely.)
Agreed; this is what I mean when I object to the ‘only.’