orthogenesis

• orthogenesis 25 Jun 2021 3:09 UTC

  12 points

  in reply to: alexgieg’s comment on: [Let­ter] Im­pe­ri­al­ism in the Ra­tion­al­ist Community

  I don’t know about the majority, but I can say for at least a few, when they say “I don’t see people in terms of race”, they’re being literal, not metaphoric. I was like this until my late teen years, when it changed, in a bad way—which I can detail if there’s interest. But the point is, until that moment I really couldn’t see race, at all. I evidently noticed people had different skin colors, hair types, and eye shapes, but this didn’t register with me as significant in any way, shape or form, concrete or abstract.

  I can totally relate to this description and experience. I think the term “not seeing race/​being colorblind” is a bit confusing in a literal sense, even if not disingenously used, because it sounds like its literally talking about not noticing the traits when it’s often meant about not treating the traits as deep meaningful aspects of human being or having (insert stereotypes, associations, connotations) triggered by observing said traits, if used positively/​non-pejoratively. Or if used negatively/​pejoratively these days (when talking about “colorblindness” being covertly actually “racist”), it’s about denial of having said (insert stereotypes, associations, connotations) triggered by observing said traits, but pretending otherwise.
  
  When I was young, I too noticed the physical variability of people but did not see the social categories that came bundled with it (I still remember as a kid literally describing people by skin tone or eye color, like “he’s darker than me in skin” or “her hair’s curlier than his” if asked, but not having learned the social stereotypes as in I would never have associated that curly-haired dark skinned people listen to one type of music that light-skinned, straight-haired ones don’t). I also never really connected culture with physical appearance/​ancestry in a way that people who care a lot about cultural authenticity/​appropriation today do (for instance, my priors were that anyone could speak any language, learn any skill, eat any food etc. so I never picked up why people acted surprised for instance when say a black person spoke with a Scottish accent, or say a white person ate Chinese food more often than his Asian neighbor, until later in my life).
  
  This also changed for me (in my early to mid teens, rather than late teens as you mentioned for your case). I would indeed be interested in your mention of this sort of thing having “changed in a bad way”. I also don’t recall the exact details, but the “loss of colorblindness/​lack of racial consciousness” for me seemed to grow out of being gradually more and more aware and socially conscious about what others around me thought and judged/​stereotyped about others. I learned to pick up said stereotypes, perhaps becoming more socially savvy and accultured to normal adult life (I also didn’t like that and in hindsight would have liked the, perhaps, naively blissful “unaware of racial stereotypes” phase, but I realize it wouldn’t last).
  
  I suppose that’s why people disdain teaching”colorblindness”… trying to make naivity about social categories extend for as long as possible isn’t going to last if these social categories are treated as super significant all around you, better to learn them quickly and counter the ways these social categories impact people negatively (still, I feel some part of me longs for the idealized “not noticing race as significant” phase, and hope that even if “colorblindess” is negative in that solving race-related problems involve noticing social categories and putting super strong emphasis on them, I hope that’s instrumental and in some ways, is meant to lead to a world where we do get into a closer-to “colorblind” end state in the previously thought of as positive way, rather than the “fake” colorblindness of not noticing racial problems).

Sig­nal­ling lack of fa­mil­iar­ity with out­siders or out­side knowl­edge, to raise sta­tus among your in-group peers?

• orthogenesis 6 Jun 2021 16:17 UTC

  6 points

  on: Al­co­hol, health, and the ruth­less logic of the Asian flush

  Looking at alcohol consumption by country, however, East Asia seems pretty middle of the pack. The main trends seem to be Europe and majority European-settled countries are rather high, and the Middle East and North Africa are very low (religious prohibition).

  https://​​ourworldindata.org/​​alcohol-consumption
  
  Since the west is high, the rest is low, or not so-high, with parts of East Asia overlapping parts of the west, it seems like these genetic predispositions aren’t as strong in effect as someone might predict given the culture. I have heard Japanese and Korean drinking culture rivals European ones.

  Within the US, whites and racial minorities (e.g. African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans etc.) do somewhat differ in drinking rates, alcohol problems, but the differences aren’t nearly as drastic as super strong “innate” differences would predict (e.g. https://​​pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/​​publications/​​arh40/​​152-160.htm)
  
  It also seems like a religious prohibition making entire regions in the Islamic world far lower in alcohol consumption which is (almost?) entirely cultural has a strong effect with no need to resort to genes, unless there have been studies on if other non-East Asian populations are predisposed to be disadvantaged by alcohol consumption.

• orthogenesis 24 May 2021 17:08 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: Gordon Seidoh Worley’s comment on: Sa­bien on “work-life” balance

  That context is still relevant to a lot of people, but for many it makes a lot less sense, and work-life balance more seems to be refer to not letting work consume your life when you can be contacted anytime anywhere day or night.

  Right—though you could say the underlying core sentiment is still somewhat similar in that regard.

  “Old work-life balance”—work and life are separate spheres, don’t let the work sphere (a time block of say 9-5) expand to take up space at the expense of the other sphere, a separate time block.

  “New work-life balance”—let’s try to not let the work sphere intrude too much into the other sphere as a single time block (e.g., turn off the screen after 5 pm and that’s it) but if that doesn’t work pragmatically (e.g. on-call, work from home), still minimize the time/​effort that work saps from you (that 10 min interruption to check an email followed by 5 min of worrying and planning for the next day could be shortened to 3 min total, or something, then forgotten about before returning to dinner).

  In one case, I imagine work as one single bloc of contiguously colored territory and non-work as another, and you want to avoid the one territory expanding too much at the expense of the second. In the other one territory has made small patches of enclaves into the other, but the balance is the same—you want to make sense total area of one color is not too big or small, whether it’s contiguous or not. (The area or size of patches could be time, mental effort or whatever in the metaphor).

• orthogenesis 25 Jun 2021 17:36 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: alexgieg’s comment on: [Let­ter] Im­pe­ri­al­ism in the Ra­tion­al­ist Community

  This seems pretty tough because humans easily form associations with negative events, relative to positive events (for instance, refusal to visit a place ever again that they were robbed in, or eat a food that made them terribly sick, even if later on they intellectually realize it was a chance thing).

  I wonder if more positive encounters would help gradually change the bias, also for your own well-being (for example, having experiences where you were helped by, or have friendly relations with people who happen to be black, and overall being further exposed to that variability in all traits good and bad existing across humanity regardless of race).

  But then again, not having been through the same situation (and not knowing if I would develop the same response, or if most people in general would, of having feelings of a certain way towards a group because of a given number of negative encounters), I’ll refrain from too much theoretical postulating.

• orthogenesis 21 Jun 2021 12:41 UTC

  4 points

  on: Ta­boo “Out­side View”

  I’m not sure if outside (ha!) the “rationalist sphere”, other people have independently invented the phrase “outside view” or not but I feel there’s some spillover of the term “outside view” with similarity to “outsiders’ view” which I think is common enough in layperson speak.

  An outsider’s view (or third party view, attempt to be objective and look “outside” your current situation as an “other”) as conceived of in daily life does have elements that are pointed at in this post for popular interpretations of outside view (“Bias correction, in others or in oneself”, “Deference to wisdom of the many”).

  But it also could heavily involve the original meaning described and clarified in this post too of “Reference class forecasting” if outsiders can offer broader views by adding to the reference class.

  For example in an argument when two people are fighting over (thing) say a married couple bickering or two friends whose relations have soured due to some problem, the two parties with vested interests may think their struggle is unique and particular, but a neutral third party or outsider can often (though not necessarily) have a better, objective view because they’ve also seen enough different fights over (thing) that the two involved have not seen before.

• orthogenesis 7 Jun 2021 16:43 UTC

  4 points

  on: Often, en­e­mies re­ally are in­nately evil.

  Wait what?

  What planet are these psychologists from where if you walk away from a bully, they suddenly become stuck in place and give up?

  I think the “walk away” thing works better, broadening the situation to not just school bullies, if you stretch the definition or I suppose steelman it to mean do actions where you can leave the bully behind and it’s costly for the bully to follow unless they stalk or resort to means or risks that are too troublesome.

  e.g. Quit a workplace full of harassers or leave a club or an organization full of jerks. In some settings if enough victims “vote with their feet”, the bully runs out of victims. Obviously totally unreasonable in settings like schools, prisons etc.

  Also moving away from situations with bullies is easier for adults or people with more agency or choice than kids.

  But it doesn’t work in settings where locally “walking away” doesn’t put you out of the bullies reach and there is a low barrier for the bully to “walk back to you and resume bullying”—moving to a different part of the playground, the bully will just follow. Changing office spaces, while a harasser still remains your co-worker and will still harass in regular encounter.

• orthogenesis 6 Jun 2021 21:57 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: reallyeli’s comment on: Al­co­hol, health, and the ruth­less logic of the Asian flush

  Any other, alternative hypotheses to explain why Europeans and European-descended peoples drink far more than most others (this holds true for country to country comparisons though some places like Nigeria with little European descent are high, and less so but somewhat true within places like the US where whites seem to drink a bit more than racial minorities)?
  
  I’m struck that “Europeans drink more than most of the world” is a bigger thing than “East Asians drink less than most of the world” by a long shot. That still seems to ask for an explanation, even if not genetic (e.g. cultural, historical etc.).

• orthogenesis 25 Jun 2021 3:46 UTC

  3 points

  on: [Let­ter] Im­pe­ri­al­ism in the Ra­tion­al­ist Community

  The phrase keep your identity small is a good thing to tell yourself when your identity is trivial and superficial. It is a harmful, insensitive thing to tell a discriminated-against minority when you are a member of the majority.

  I think the ideal would be the majority (or the powerful, capable of doing the discriminating) keeps their identity small AND the minority (or the less powerful, the target of the discriminating) keeps their identity small (without said discrimination, there then would be lowered need for defensive identity-forming). Thus, making people super individualistic.
  
  After all in some sense, it’s because the majority doesn’t keep their identity small but enlarges it to be the normative “norm” that the minority suffers. It’s those who don’t realize they’re not keeping their identity small at all (seeing oneself as default is not humility or keeping one’s identity small). If the minority’s traits were seen as just as neutral (neither more good or more bad than the majority’s) just as the majority’s traits were neutral, there wouldn’t be a problem with either one’s identity being kept small or large.

  But absent that, it’s riskier for groups targeted based on some identity to keep their identity small I agree. I think a lot of the problem with the whole identity discourse is people fail to distinguish between voluntary vs. involuntary identities (glossing over problems with wording like “self-identify as”). Voluntary identities you can keep large or small based on your own will. Involuntary ones forced upon you force you to be reactive.
  

• orthogenesis 21 Jun 2021 12:21 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Four Com­po­nents of Au­dac­ity

  In particular, “boldness” and “daring” seem to me as if they have very little to do with nonconformity

  So, for instance, you could be bold and risk-taking but doing so because you want to live up to a norm (or are heavily driven by chasing an ideal that’s “conventional”)?

  For instance, a manly warrior taking risks to show off his manliness or lack of cowardice, or desire to fill the warrior role in his tribe. Would that count?

• orthogenesis 7 Jun 2021 20:54 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: Open and Wel­come Thread – June 2021

  Learning Chinese because you love China and Chinese culture is a stupendous idea

  There seems to be a definite shift in the last decade or two (or maybe generation) from the perception that people who are into Chinese-related things like culture/​language are doing it for heritage and cultural interest reasons vs. doing it because of the perceived importance of China geopolitically, business-wise, science-wise etc. and because China is seen as “the future”.

  Whether it’s really practical or not, it appears claimed practical (careerist) reasons have increasingly taken over cultural reasons/​liberal arts for being interested in China.
  
  By contrast, it’s interesting that say learning, French or Japanese, is still more associated with interest and appreciation for the culture than hardheaded pragmatism. Or even stuff like learning Korean because K-pop is seen as cool now.

• orthogenesis 6 Jun 2021 20:59 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: reallyeli’s comment on: Al­co­hol, health, and the ruth­less logic of the Asian flush

  Yes, but it seems like the genetic predisposition hypothesis is about or at least usually framed as “East Asians vs. others (unless there are other groups where genetic predispositions are relevant)”. Implying to test the protective effect of one trait, you want to see if East Asians who have the trait at higher levels differ from all others (presumably not having the trait at all, or at lower levels?). Yet the patterns/​statistics for alcohol consumption or problems with alcoholism doesn’t line up with “East Asian vs. the rest” as opposed to the West and the rest. What seems more notable to me is why the West is higher than everyone else. As opposed to East Asians who drink a middling amount (relative to the world) neither particularly high or low, and many East Asian countries are within the range of the west.
  
  I suppose you could make the argument that East Asians would drink even more (perhaps as much as or even greater than the highest western countries) if not for the genetic predisposition that puts a brake on it. But counterfactuals are hard, and I don’t know what would be an easy way to test that.

• orthogenesis 25 Jun 2021 3:19 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: alexgieg’s comment on: [Let­ter] Im­pe­ri­al­ism in the Ra­tion­al­ist Community

  but outside of these exceptional cases of misassignment, using these expressions gives the impression the assignation is incorrectly made way more often than it in fact is.

  I see what you mean, but perhaps to be charitable (if not pedantic), I feel like the term “assigned” doesn’t necessarily tell you about accuracy, reliability (or perhaps goodness) of an assignment. For example, if I hear someone say “the policy-maker assigned a high economic value to X” or “the scientist assigned a high probability to the chance of a drought”, I wouldn’t think absent more info, that it was likely correct or incorrect, just that someone was reporting someone else’s judgement.

• orthogenesis 24 May 2021 16:23 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Urshanabi’s comment on: Sig­nal­ling lack of fa­mil­iar­ity with out­siders or out­side knowl­edge, to raise sta­tus among your in-group peers?

  Well, it seems like it’s still the case in situations where people can’t (or won’t) leave their tribes. For example, men and women aren’t usually each other’s outgroup and in situations where no one plans or gives indication of “leaving” a gender, it’s still bad for say men who have all intentions of remaining men to signal too much knowledge of girly movies, chick flicks etc.. But that works in the other cases I brought up—the local citizen who is too into foreign stuff might pack up and leave, or a nerd/​jock/​artsy person who is too into the other clique’s stuff might also switch peer groups.

  I feel like things in some cases may be driven by “neutral” outsider stuff competing for attention/​time/​cost from “good” ingroup stuff, even in situations where you don’t leave your ingroup, so maybe it’s “bad” in a non-zero sum way even in situations where you don’t see the outsider stuff as bad in absolute terms (i.e., why don’t you spend more effort on ingroup stuff, which would be “even better”, even if I’m not opposed to outsider stuff?).

• orthogenesis 24 May 2021 16:16 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Selueen’s comment on: Sig­nal­ling lack of fa­mil­iar­ity with out­siders or out­side knowl­edge, to raise sta­tus among your in-group peers?

  It’s mainly about associations.

  The outgroup is bad. There are beliefs and behaviors associated with the outgroup.
  Therefore these beliefs and behaviors are bad. If I show any of these beliefs and behaviors people might think I’m bad.

  Fair, but I mentioned examples where the (not necessarily outgroup in an rivalrous way but non-ingroup) outsiders are not seen as bad per se, but neutral whereas the ingroup is good.

  For instance a local citizen might not be seen as “bad” for being interested in foreign stuff (if the foreign countries in question are not seen as bad, just “other”, or possibly fargroup, or even viewed positively just “not us”), but this would still take away from perception of patriotism (here, assumed as positive trait) that a similar local citizen who all else being equal totally lacks interest or curiousity in foreign stuff.
  
  Also, men and women aren’t each other’s outgroups usually (barring some more radical views) but a man who in too interested into “girl stuff” or vice versa can be seen as bad even in situations where there is no confusion where the ingroup can’t be confused with the other group. I suppose the “outgroup stuff is bad” still works if you define “bad” relative to the person’s social role. Such as “girl stuff” is “good” for girls”, “bad for boys”, even if boys and girls are equally good. “French stuff is good for French people but bad for British people”, even if British and French folks are equally good.

  Then it’s about transgression of roles I guess and policing which stuff are for what people.

  The opposite is also true, I’ve known some people who seriously neglected their health because they associated exercise with not-so-bright folks. Notice how it has the same process behind it, but it’s not related to knowledge the same way your example was.

  I would agree that that reversed example of the nerd and jock is also bad, and perhaps could generalize that to avoid learning skills/​abilities/​things, instead of just intellectual knowledge, that would benefit you because it’s associated with the other outgroup/​non-ingroup members.

• orthogenesis 26 Jun 2021 21:20 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: [Let­ter] Im­pe­ri­al­ism in the Ra­tion­al­ist Community

  It’s unclear to me why you would make such an accusation without bringing any examples of what uninformed things about non-white non-Western ciswomen are supposedly said on LessWrong.

  The phrase “I don’t see people in terms of race” is such an example.

  I don’t have any stats on this, but while I wouldn’t be surprised that groups considered the default say this (e.g. white, western males in the west), this seems less asymmetrical in principle in some other situations (e.g. I could see in principle a non-western non-white person being the majority in their majority non-western non-white country saying something similar if they’ve only lived with people of one so-called “race”, under popular definitions, in their life).
  
  When you mentioned “uninformed things about non-white non-Western ciswomen”, my imagination ran towards a group of homogenous (white, western male) people who sit around and bring up “hey, I heard group X (of non-white, non-western, ciswomen) have these (insert imagined bizarre rituals and habits), I heard from (source)” “Yeah, I heard that too (from other source)”, “My mom told me (insert same stereotype) is true when I was 5” or something.

  Then, a newcomer (or two, or three or a bunch) from group X joins in the conversation and say “no, I (or we all) have firsthand knowledge of growing up in X society, and that is totally unlike what you described. There is no bizarre ritual like that, or perhaps it’s a garbled description of something real that’s exaggerated.” Had the newcomers not joined, the old-timers would not have been able to shed their misconception and update their knowledge (in the charitable case that it was a genuine example of misinformation and not malicious hatred of outgroup, though with conflict theory that’s always possible still).

• orthogenesis 26 Jun 2021 20:59 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: [Let­ter] Im­pe­ri­al­ism in the Ra­tion­al­ist Community

  It’s the premature transhumanist idea that “whether you are an $x$ doesn’t matter”. A world without racism would be nice. But we live in a world with racism. Therefore pretending race doesn’t matter exacerbates racial inequity and brings us further away from actually bringing about a transhumanist utopia.

  To be charitable, in many types of human conversation, statements that sound like mere descriptions of people or society (“this is not who we are as a nation”, “adults don’t act like children”, “in life, friends are more important than money”) are frequently shorthand for normative ones (“I think our nation shouldn’t act that way”, “I think adults shouldn’t act the way I perceive is childish”, “people should value friendship in their lives much beyond mere economic transaction”), to the point where even people with the best of intentions don’t realize they’re conflating the usages. I think rationalists generally try to avoid this but even so it’s still possible to slip up and intend a normative statement when you use a descriptive one.
  
  I would distinguish between someone saying “x doesn’t matter” as a sincere belief that “x shouldn’t matter” vs. “x doesn’t matter” as a cop-out or denial, even cover-up of situations where x mattering is unsavory to them and they wish to pretend things are hunky-dory.
  
  I feel like the latter tarnished the reputation of the former.

  I don’t know if this is the best analogy, but thinking on the fly, I can imagine someone saying “your personal happiness is more important than what people think” to justify being a jerk (after all, who cares what others think if I do something to piss them off) or “material things in life are overrated, the best things in life are free” as justification to not help the poor or solve inequality (after all, material things won’t make them happier, look the poor can learn to be satisfied living with what they have already have) all the while benefitting from material prosperity itself. That doesn’t mean the principles themselves don’t have any (or some reasonable) amount of goodness, even if people use them for nasty justifications.

• orthogenesis 21 Jun 2021 13:03 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Tobias H’s comment on: Are bread crusts healthier?

  I only know of children and elderly people not eating the crust because it’s harder to chew.

  Interesting explanation, but does that hold for other foods—do kids/​adults that don’t enjoy the crust because it’s harder tend to also dislike other difficult-to-chew foods? Anything from jerky to raw vegetables? And those that do enjoy it, enjoy chewing other harder foods?

  Clearly, there are lots of crunchy/​chewy foods kids are willing to eat or at least are not stereotyped as off-putting the way bread crusts are for kids.
  
  It’d be interesting to tease apart what is causing the dislike—is it really texture, or taste or something else?

• orthogenesis 21 Jun 2021 12:55 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Tobias H’s comment on: Are bread crusts healthier?

  When I try to look up the question of why kids (often) don’t like crusts, there is the occasional person that frames it as an “American” thing. Other disagree pointing out Brits, Europeans etc. also feel this way.

  But is there any evidence that this varies by country, culture or nationality? If so why might this be—differences in type of bread/​baking styles?

• orthogenesis 9 Jun 2021 13:08 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: orthogenesis’s comment on: Open and Wel­come Thread – June 2021

  Here is just an example (from a fairly mainstream media source, NPR), of what I was thinking about when it comes to motivation, titled A Daughter’s Journey To Reclaim Her Heritage Language, and discussing a third-generation Chinese American who never previously spoke a Chinese language trying to learn at age 30 to reconnect with her roots.

  Back in the days (perhaps even not so long ago as the 90s), it feels like this—along with liberal arts folks, cultural intellectuals like humanities professors -- was far closer to an archetype if not one of the central examples of the average American interested in Chinese culture or language.

  Now this sort of thing is heavily swamped by the perception that interest in China is all political/​business/​realpolitik related. The heritage/​culture side—both Chinese Americans interested in so-called “reconnecting with their roots” or anyone of any heritage for that matter interested in the subject—seems pretty drowned out by comparison.