Why do you think of the discussion of gender roles and gender equality to necessary break down into a camp for men and a camp for women? By creating two groups you have engaged mental circuitry that will predispose you to dismissing their arguments when they are correct and supporting your own sides’ even when they are wrong.
“Why do you think of the discussion of gender roles and gender equality to necessary break down into a camp for men and a camp for women?”
I don’t personally think this. I don’t think there are two genders. There are technically more than two physical sexes even if we categorize the intersexed as separate. I feel that either out of cultural conditioning or instincts, the bulk of people push a discussion about gender into a discussion about steryotypical behaviors by men and by women. This then devolves into a “battle of the sexes” issue where the “male” perspective and “female” perspective are constructed so that they must clash.
However, on my thread, there are a number of people that seem to have no qualms with the idea of barring female voting and such things. I think that sort of opinion goes beyond the point where one could say that an issue was framed to set up a camp for men and a camp for women. Once we are talking about denying functioning adults sufferage, then we are talking about an attitude which should be properly labelled as anti-female.
However, on my thread, there are a number of people that seem to have no qualms with the idea of barring female voting and such things.
On the internet, emotional charge attracts intellectual lint, and there are plenty of awful people to go around. If you came here looking for a rational basis for your moral outrage, you will probably leave empty-handed.
But I don’t think you’re actually concerned that the person arguing against suffrage is making any claims with objective content, so this isn’t so much the domain of rational debate as it is politics, wherein you explain the virtue of your values and the vice of your opponents’. Such debates are beyond salvage.
I saw that Eliezer posts that politics are a poor field to hone rational discussion skills. It is unfortunate that anyone should see a domain such as politics as a place where discussions are inherantly beyond salvage. It’s a strange limitation to place on the utility of reason to say that it should be relegated to domains which have less immediate affect on human life. Poltiics are immensely important. Should it not be priority to structure rational discussion so that there are effective ways for correcting for the propensity to rely on bias, partisanship and other impulses which get in the way of determining truth or the best available course?
If rational discussion only works effectively in certain domains, perhaps it is not well developed enough to succeed in ideologically charged domains where it is badly needed. Is there definitely nothing to be gained from attempting to reason objectively through a subject where your own biases are most intense?
It’s a strange limitation to place on the utility of reason to say that it should be relegated to domains which have less immediate affect on human life. Poltiics are immensely important.
One of the points of Eliezer’s article, IIRC, is that politics when discussed by ordinary people indeed tends not to affect anything except the discussion itself. Political instincts evolved from small communities where publicly siding with one contending leader, or with one policy option, and then going and telling the whole 100-strong tribe about it really made a difference. But today’s rulers of nations of hundreds of millions of people can’t be influenced by what any one ordinary individual says or does. So our political instinct devolves into empty posturing and us-vs-them mentality.
Politics are important, sure, but only in the sense that what our rulers do is important to us. The relationship is one-way most of the time. If you’re arguing about things that depend on what ordinary people do—such as “shall we respect women equally in our daily lives?”—then it’s not politics. But if you’re arguing about “should women have legal suffrage?”—and you’re not actually discussing a useful means of bringing that about, like a political party (of men) - then the discussion will tend to engage political instincts and get out of hand.
If rational discussion only works effectively in certain domains, perhaps it is not well developed enough to succeed in ideologically charged domains where it is badly needed. Is there definitely nothing to be gained from attempting to reason objectively through a subject where your own biases are most intense?
There’s a lot to be gained from rationally working out your own thoughts and feelings on the issue. But if you’re arguing with other people, and they aren’t being rational, then it won’t help you to have a so-called rational debate with them. If you’re looking for rationality to help you in such arguments—the help would probably take the form of rationally understanding your opponents’ thinking, and then constructing a convincing argument which is totally “irrational”, like publicly shaming them, or blackmailing, or anything else that works.
Remember—rationality means Winning. It’s not the same as having “rational arguments”—you can only have those with other rationalists.
It’s a strange limitation to place on the utility of reason to say that it should be relegated to domains which have less immediate affect on human life.
It’s not so strange if you believe that reason isn’t a sufficient basis for determining values. It allows for arguments of the form, “if you value X, then you should value Y, because of causal relation Z”, but not simply “you should value Y”.
If rational discussion only works effectively in certain domains, perhaps it is not well developed enough to succeed in ideologically charged domains where it is badly needed.
Debates fueled by ideology are the antithesis of rational discussion, so I consider its “ineffectiveness” in such circumstances a feature, not a bug. These are beyond salvage because the participants aren’t seeking to increase their understanding, they’re simply fielding “arguments as soldiers”. Tossing carefully chosen evidence and logical arguments around is simply part of the persuasion game. Being too openly rational or honest can be counter-productive to such goals.
Is there definitely nothing to be gained from attempting to reason objectively through a subject where your own biases are most intense?
That depends on what you gain from a solid understanding of the subject versus what you lose in sanity if you fail to correct for your biases as you continue to accumulate “evidence” and beliefs, along with the respective chances of each outcome. As far as I can tell, political involvement tends to make people believe crazy things, and “accurate” political opinions (those well-aligned with your actual values) are not that useful or effective, except for signaling your status to a group of like-minded peers. Politics isn’t about policy.
It is unfortunate that anyone should see a domain such as politics as a place where discussions are inherantly beyond salvage.
I agree with your assessment, but applying our skills to the political domain is very much an open problem—and a difficult one at that. See these wiki pages: [Mind-killer] and [Color politics] for a concise description of the issue. The gist of it is that politics involves real-world violence, or the governmental monopoly thereof, or something which could involve violence in the ancestral environment and thus misleads our well-honed instincts. Thus, solving political conflicts requires specialized skills, which are not what LessWrong is about.
Nevertheless, there are a number of so-called open politics websites which are more focused on what you’re describing here. I’d like to see more collaboration between that community and the LessWrong/debiasing/rationality camp.
Yes, those who would deny women suffrage are anti-female. But in order to feel they deserve suffrage, one need not be pro-female. One only need be in favor of human rights.
\winces* So, I agree* that no one is competent and everyone has an agenda, but it’s not as if everyone sides with “their” sex.
No, historically we suck at this, too. Got any decision theory questions?
“winces* So, I agree that no one is competent and everyone has an agenda, but it’s not as if everyone sides with “their” sex.”
I didn’t mean to imply that they did always side with their physical sex.
Why do you think of the discussion of gender roles and gender equality to necessary break down into a camp for men and a camp for women? By creating two groups you have engaged mental circuitry that will predispose you to dismissing their arguments when they are correct and supporting your own sides’ even when they are wrong.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/
“Why do you think of the discussion of gender roles and gender equality to necessary break down into a camp for men and a camp for women?”
I don’t personally think this. I don’t think there are two genders. There are technically more than two physical sexes even if we categorize the intersexed as separate. I feel that either out of cultural conditioning or instincts, the bulk of people push a discussion about gender into a discussion about steryotypical behaviors by men and by women. This then devolves into a “battle of the sexes” issue where the “male” perspective and “female” perspective are constructed so that they must clash.
However, on my thread, there are a number of people that seem to have no qualms with the idea of barring female voting and such things. I think that sort of opinion goes beyond the point where one could say that an issue was framed to set up a camp for men and a camp for women. Once we are talking about denying functioning adults sufferage, then we are talking about an attitude which should be properly labelled as anti-female.
On the internet, emotional charge attracts intellectual lint, and there are plenty of awful people to go around. If you came here looking for a rational basis for your moral outrage, you will probably leave empty-handed.
But I don’t think you’re actually concerned that the person arguing against suffrage is making any claims with objective content, so this isn’t so much the domain of rational debate as it is politics, wherein you explain the virtue of your values and the vice of your opponents’. Such debates are beyond salvage.
I saw that Eliezer posts that politics are a poor field to hone rational discussion skills. It is unfortunate that anyone should see a domain such as politics as a place where discussions are inherantly beyond salvage. It’s a strange limitation to place on the utility of reason to say that it should be relegated to domains which have less immediate affect on human life. Poltiics are immensely important. Should it not be priority to structure rational discussion so that there are effective ways for correcting for the propensity to rely on bias, partisanship and other impulses which get in the way of determining truth or the best available course?
If rational discussion only works effectively in certain domains, perhaps it is not well developed enough to succeed in ideologically charged domains where it is badly needed. Is there definitely nothing to be gained from attempting to reason objectively through a subject where your own biases are most intense?
One of the points of Eliezer’s article, IIRC, is that politics when discussed by ordinary people indeed tends not to affect anything except the discussion itself. Political instincts evolved from small communities where publicly siding with one contending leader, or with one policy option, and then going and telling the whole 100-strong tribe about it really made a difference. But today’s rulers of nations of hundreds of millions of people can’t be influenced by what any one ordinary individual says or does. So our political instinct devolves into empty posturing and us-vs-them mentality.
Politics are important, sure, but only in the sense that what our rulers do is important to us. The relationship is one-way most of the time. If you’re arguing about things that depend on what ordinary people do—such as “shall we respect women equally in our daily lives?”—then it’s not politics. But if you’re arguing about “should women have legal suffrage?”—and you’re not actually discussing a useful means of bringing that about, like a political party (of men) - then the discussion will tend to engage political instincts and get out of hand.
There’s a lot to be gained from rationally working out your own thoughts and feelings on the issue. But if you’re arguing with other people, and they aren’t being rational, then it won’t help you to have a so-called rational debate with them. If you’re looking for rationality to help you in such arguments—the help would probably take the form of rationally understanding your opponents’ thinking, and then constructing a convincing argument which is totally “irrational”, like publicly shaming them, or blackmailing, or anything else that works.
Remember—rationality means Winning. It’s not the same as having “rational arguments”—you can only have those with other rationalists.
It’s not so strange if you believe that reason isn’t a sufficient basis for determining values. It allows for arguments of the form, “if you value X, then you should value Y, because of causal relation Z”, but not simply “you should value Y”.
Debates fueled by ideology are the antithesis of rational discussion, so I consider its “ineffectiveness” in such circumstances a feature, not a bug. These are beyond salvage because the participants aren’t seeking to increase their understanding, they’re simply fielding “arguments as soldiers”. Tossing carefully chosen evidence and logical arguments around is simply part of the persuasion game. Being too openly rational or honest can be counter-productive to such goals.
That depends on what you gain from a solid understanding of the subject versus what you lose in sanity if you fail to correct for your biases as you continue to accumulate “evidence” and beliefs, along with the respective chances of each outcome. As far as I can tell, political involvement tends to make people believe crazy things, and “accurate” political opinions (those well-aligned with your actual values) are not that useful or effective, except for signaling your status to a group of like-minded peers. Politics isn’t about policy.
I agree with your assessment, but applying our skills to the political domain is very much an open problem—and a difficult one at that. See these wiki pages: [Mind-killer] and [Color politics] for a concise description of the issue. The gist of it is that politics involves real-world violence, or the governmental monopoly thereof, or something which could involve violence in the ancestral environment and thus misleads our well-honed instincts. Thus, solving political conflicts requires specialized skills, which are not what LessWrong is about.
Nevertheless, there are a number of so-called open politics websites which are more focused on what you’re describing here. I’d like to see more collaboration between that community and the LessWrong/debiasing/rationality camp.
Yes, those who would deny women suffrage are anti-female. But in order to feel they deserve suffrage, one need not be pro-female. One only need be in favor of human rights.