There’s a human cognitive bias that may be relevant to this whole discussion, but that may not be widely appreciated in Rationalist circles yet: gender bias in ‘moral typecasting’.
In a 2020 paper, my U. New Mexico colleague Tania Reynolds and coauthors found a systematic bias for women to be more easily categorized as victims and men as perpetrators, in situations where harm seems to have been done. The ran six studies in four countries (total N=3,317).
(Ever since a seminal paper by Gray & Wegner (2009), there’s been a fast-growing literature on moral typecasting. Beyond this Nonlinear dispute, it’s something that Rationalists might find useful in thinking about human moral psychology.)
If this dispute over Nonlinear is framed as male Emerson Spartz (at Nonlinear) vs. the females ‘Alice’ and ‘Chloe’, people may tend to see Nonlinear as the harm perpetrator. If it’s framed as male Ben Pace (at LessWrong) vs. female Kat Woods (at Nonlinear), people may tend to see Ben as the harm-perpetrator.
This is just one of the many human cognitive biases that’s worth bearing in mind when trying to evaluate conflicting evidence in complex situations.
Maybe it’s relevant here, maybe it’s not. But the psychological evidence suggests it may be relevant more often than we realize.
(Note: this is a very slightly edited version of a comment originally posted on EA Forum here).
Cognitive bias against men, or stereotype accuracy that men do in fact tend to be perpetrators? I don’t think it’s a secret that men are more antisocial, and the original accusations against Nonlinear include Emerson seeming dangerously powerseeking in a way that I don’t think has been seriously disputed yet. It could be that e.g. Emerson Spartz was manipulating everything at Nonlinear, and this lead to conflicts between Alice/Chloe and Kat, which in turn lead to Ben targeting Kat too much. If something like this works out, I think it could be correct to take the female side over the male side in both conflicts.
There’s a human cognitive bias that may be relevant to this whole discussion, but that may not be widely appreciated in Rationalist circles yet: gender bias in ‘moral typecasting’.
In a 2020 paper, my U. New Mexico colleague Tania Reynolds and coauthors found a systematic bias for women to be more easily categorized as victims and men as perpetrators, in situations where harm seems to have been done. The ran six studies in four countries (total N=3,317).
(Ever since a seminal paper by Gray & Wegner (2009), there’s been a fast-growing literature on moral typecasting. Beyond this Nonlinear dispute, it’s something that Rationalists might find useful in thinking about human moral psychology.)
If this dispute over Nonlinear is framed as male Emerson Spartz (at Nonlinear) vs. the females ‘Alice’ and ‘Chloe’, people may tend to see Nonlinear as the harm perpetrator. If it’s framed as male Ben Pace (at LessWrong) vs. female Kat Woods (at Nonlinear), people may tend to see Ben as the harm-perpetrator.
This is just one of the many human cognitive biases that’s worth bearing in mind when trying to evaluate conflicting evidence in complex situations.
Maybe it’s relevant here, maybe it’s not. But the psychological evidence suggests it may be relevant more often than we realize.
(Note: this is a very slightly edited version of a comment originally posted on EA Forum here).
Cognitive bias against men, or stereotype accuracy that men do in fact tend to be perpetrators? I don’t think it’s a secret that men are more antisocial, and the original accusations against Nonlinear include Emerson seeming dangerously powerseeking in a way that I don’t think has been seriously disputed yet. It could be that e.g. Emerson Spartz was manipulating everything at Nonlinear, and this lead to conflicts between Alice/Chloe and Kat, which in turn lead to Ben targeting Kat too much. If something like this works out, I think it could be correct to take the female side over the male side in both conflicts.
Does any of the moral typecasting research take regression to the mean into account?