I’m currently researching forecasting and epistemics as part of the Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute.
ozziegooen(Ozzie Gooen)
Karma: 2,429
Is there any culture in which power structures aren’t systemic and deeply ingrained into our culture? Even a tribe of hunter gather has it’s cultural norms that regulate the power between the individuals.
I agree. I think there’s a whole lot of stuff deeply ingrained in the culture of every group.
I would expect that most people at LessWrong don’t have a problem with power structures provided they fulfill critieria like being meriocratic and a few other criteria.
It’s hard for me to understand your argument here, I expect that this would have to be a much longer discussion. I’m not saying that there aren’t some cases where power structures aren’t justified. But I think there are pretty clearly some that almost all of us would agree were unjustified, and I think that a lot of racial/historical cases work like that.
Good to know, thanks so much!
Great question! I have some books I personally enjoyed, and also would like to encourage others to recommend texts. I’m sure that my understanding is vastly less than what I’d really want. However, there are a few books that come to mind.
I think the big challenge, for me, is “attempting to empathize and understand African Americans”. This is incredibly, ridiculously difficult! Cultures are very different from one another. I grew up in an area with a large mix of ethnic groups, and I think that was useful, but the challenge is far greater.I really liked “So You Want to Talk about Race”, a few years ago.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35099718-so-you-want-to-talk-about-race?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Q2Zay18Jca&rank=1
I thought Black Like Me was great, though it’s by a white author, and he doesn’t have as good an understanding (though he comes from a similar place to many white readers)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42603.Black_Like_Me?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=qI4fgVu3E5&rank=1
In pop culture, I found “Dear White People”, both the movie, and the TV show (mostly the first 2 seasons), to be pretty interesting.I really like James Baldwin, though enjoyed his speeches more than his books, so far.
Honestly, African American Studies is just a gigantic field with lots of great work. This can be looked at as interesting to better understand African Americans, but there’s also a lot of other take-aways, like understanding severe cognitive biases and motivated reasoning and from a very different angle.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_studies
Of course, many of these resources are somewhat specific to American problems.
Thanks so much for clarifying! Sorry to have misinterpreted that.
I think this topic is particularly toxic for online writing. People can be intensely attacked for either side here. This means that people of positions feel more inclined to hint at their positions rather than directly saying them. Which correspondingly means that I’m more inclined to think that text is meant as being hints.If you or others want to have a private video call about these topics I’d be happy to do so (send me a PM), I just hate public online discussion for topics like these.
Thanks for the longer comments here!
Quick thoughts, on my end:But he’s also stating that he thinks I have literally nothing to offer him by way of new information and vice-versa. That’s pretty low!
This is definitely not how I saw it.
I’m sure everyone has a lot to learn from everyone else. The big challenge is that this learning is costly and we have extremely limited resources. There’s an endless number of discussions we could be part of, and we all have very limited time left in total (for discussions and other things). So if I try to gently leave a conversation, it’s mainly a signal of “I don’t think that this is the absolutely most high-value thing for me to be doing now”, which is a high bar!
Second, I think you might have been taking this a bit personally, like me trying to hold off conversation was a personal evaluation as you as a person.Again, I know very little about you, and I used to know even less (when you made the original comment). This is the comment in question:
Defending a position by pointing out that a portion (however big or small) of the critics of the position are ‘vitriolic’ isn’t actually a valid argument. If people really hate something so much so that they get emotional about it that’s still pretty good evidence that the something is bad.
This really doesn’t give me much insight into your position or background. Basically all I know about you is that you wrote these two sentences here, and have written a few comments on LessWrong in the past. My prior for “person with an anonymous name on LessWrong, a few previous comments there, and so on”, doesn’t make me incredibly excited to spend a lot of time going back and forth with. I’ve been burned in the past, a few times, with people who match similar characteristics.
Often people who use anonymous accounts wind up being terrific, it’s just hard to discern which are which, early on.
About that last line; I’m fine with you replying or not replying. I wish you the best in the continuation of your intellectual journey.
Lastly, I’ll note that this “White Fragility” is a very sensitive topic that I’m not excited to chat about publicly on forums like this. (In part because my comments on this get downvoted a lot, in part because this sort of discussion can easily be used as ammunition later on by anyone interested (against either myself or any of the other commenters who responds)). My identity is clearly public, so there is real risk.
I write blog posts on LessWrong that are far less controversial, and am much more happy to publicly discuss those topics.
I think it means the reaction to the book is not really the reaction to the book itself, but rather to the political powers this book represents.
I think it’s very likely that you’re right here. I do wish this could be said more. It’s totally fine to argue against political powers and against potential situations. Ideally this argument would be differentiated around discussion on this particular book/author.
What is more likely to happen, is someone reading the book, and then yelling at me for not agreeing with some idea in the book. Possibly in a situation where this might get me in trouble
I agree that there are lots of ideas in the book that are probably wrong. To be clear, I could also easily imagine many situations where unreasonable people would take either the wrong ideas too far, or take their own spin on this and take those ideas far too far. I imagine that in either case, the results can be highly destructive.
I hope that these sorts of fears don’t prevent us from understanding or understanding interesting/useful ideas from such material. I think they make this massively harder, but there might be some decent strategies.
I would be curious if people here have recommendations on how they would like to see these ideas getting discussed in ways that minimize the potential hazards of getting people into trouble for unreasonable reasons or creating tons of anxiety. I think that this book has generated a lot of high-anxiety discussion that’s clearly not very effective at delivering better understanding.
I’m really sorry if I hurt or offended you. I assumed that a brief description of where I was at would be preferred to not replying at all. I clearly was incorrect about that.
I disagree with some of your specific implications. I’m fairly sure though that you’d disagree with my responses. I could easily imagine that you’ve already predicted them, well enough, and wouldn’t find them very informative, particularly for what I could write in a few sentences.
This isn’t unusual for me. I try to stay out of almost all online discussion. I have things to do, I’m sure you have things to do as well. Online discussion is costly, and it’s especially costly when people know very little about each other[1], and the conversation topic (White Fragility) is as controversial as this one is.
[1]: I know almost nothing about you. I feel like I’d have a very difficult time feeling comfortable saying things in ways I can predict you’d be receptive to, or things that you wouldn’t actively attack me for. I find that I’ve had a difficult time modeling people online; particularly people who I barely know. This could easily lead to problems of several different kinds. It’s very, very possible that none of this applies to you, but it would take a fair amount of discussion for me to find that out and feel safe with my impressions of you. This also applies for all the other people I don’t know, but who might be watching this conversation or jump in at any point.
Position noted, but I don’t feel like more back-and-forth here will be productive
I feel like both sides of the “White Fragility” debate have some of this going on.
I don’t feel like I’ve exactly seen rationalists on these sides (in large part because the discussion generally hasn’t been very prominent), but I’ve seen lots of related people on both sides, and I expect rationalists to have similar beliefs to those people. (Myself included)
I think from reading some of the other comments here on the LessWrong post, I’m a bit worried that this might be turning into some flame wars.
I’d note that this particular book is probably not the best one to have debates around this issue for. The book seems to be quite a bit more sensationalist, moralistic, and less scientific than I’d really like, which I think makes it very difficult to discuss. This seems like a subject that would attract lots of motte-and-bailey thinking on both sides. (the connection between more reasonable vs. outlandish claims representing the motte-and-bailey, but switched on each side).
This is clearly a highly sensitive issue. No one wants to be (publicly especially!) associated with either racism or cancel culture.Publicly discussion is far more challenging than private discussions. For example, we simply don’t know who is watching these discussions or who might be trying to use anything posted here for antagonistic purposes. (They copy several comments from someone and post them without much context, accusing them of either racism or cancel culture).
Very sadly, public discussion of topics like these right now is thoroughly challenging for many reasons. My guess is that it’s often just not worth it.
I’m really not sure what you’re trying to do here, but I feel like your phrasing could be interpreted like creating a dichotomy between:
1. People who this impacts (in near mode), who will be very much hurt by this work.2. Armchair, ivory-tower intellectuals who smirk and find the same sorts of interest in this book that they would get from the next “provocative” Game of Thrones book.
As such, the clear implication (that some readers) might take away is that I sit very much in the camp of (2), that just finds it interesting because the issues don’t actually matter much to me. So my opinion probably shouldn’t matter as much as those in (1).
It’s possible that such a criticism, if it were meant, might be justified! I’ve been wrong before, many times. But I wanted to be more clear if this is what you were intending before responding.
I’d note that far-mode being-interesting-and-provocative, as I used it, often means that for some people it will be difficult.
Previous discussions introducing athiesm/veganism/altruism also really upset a lot of people. They clearly led to a whole lot of change that was incredibly challenging or devastating to different people.
Often interesting-and-provocative could be very bad, like both extreme left-wing and extreme right-wing literature.
Thanks for writing this up. I was a bit nervous when reading the title because I was expecting that this would have been an “edgy takedown”, but it wasn’t.
I haven’t read the book, but I seen a few talks by Robin DiAngelo, and found them generally reasonable. They at least brought up several points I thought were interesting and provocative, which is a high bar for public presentations.
I then saw numerous reviews from sources I previously deemed decent that treated the book with extreme vitriol.
I found the hate leveled at this book to be frightening. There are a lot of “mediocre popular science books”, but this one was truly disdained by large communities. (Right wing ones, of course, but also some somewhat politically neutral or left crowds).
The basic ideas of “racism” being systemic in our culture, but occasionally very difficult to directly notice (especially for those in power), strike me as very similar to ones of implicit biases and similar. The Elephant in the Brain comes to mind. I think the Rationality community and similar should be well equipped to be able to discuss some of these issues.
My impression is that this book isn’t rigorous in the ways that most of us here would hope for. It doesn’t seem to have nearly as much nuance as I’d probably want, but books with nuance typically don’t become popular. It’s a bit of a pity, it is an important topic, so it would be great to work here we could trust to be fairly non-biased (either way) and thoughtful. However, I think I’m still happy that this book was written. I’m sure that Robin DiAngelo has probably faced gigantic amounts of harassment for writing it; perhaps this will lessen the burden for other people doing work in the area.
It seems like there are two big issues here:
1. Racism and power structures are systemic and deeply ingrained into our culture
2. This book presents a scientifically rigorous account of many details around the situation.
My impression is that #1 has a lot of truth to it, but #2 is lacking. In fairness, lots of books are terrible at #2, but this one might be particularly bad (given the broad claims). Unfortunately, I get the impression that a lot of reviews argue that because #2 is poor, #1 is wrong, and that seems cheap to me.
I considered writing my own review on the book on LessWrong to generate discussion, but myself was too wimpy to do so. I was very nervous about possible flame wars from doing so. (This makes me more thankful you’ve done it.)
For examples of the vitriol I’m talking about, see the Goodreads reviews:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43708708-white-fragility?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=sSB9PhQyYt&rank=1
Personally, I found this useful.
I think that the key point of LessWrong is the community, rather than the content. The community is fairly unique and specialized. Any content that’s a good fit for the community seems relevant here (even if it seems quite different, I personally would be interested in the comments of others here).
I think over time the filtering and tagging systems will continue to improve. Ideally LessWrong will continue to be able to absorb larger and larger genres of topics, while still being able to allow readers to get what they want out of it.
I recently looked more into the phrase “All models are wrong”, and found that it seems to be much more aligned with my thinking here than I expected.
From Wikipedia, discussing earlier, related work by the author (George Box)
2.3 Parsimony
Since all models are wrong the scientist cannot obtain a “correct” one by excessive elaboration. On the contrary following William of Occam he should seek an economical description of natural phenomena. Just as the ability to devise simple but evocative models is the signature of the great scientist so overelaboration and overparameterization is often the mark of mediocrity.
2.4 Worrying Selectively
Since all models are wrong the scientist must be alert to what is importantly wrong. It is inappropriate to be concerned about mice when there are tigers abroad.(bolding added to refer to the correct section)
Ah, got it.
I’d flag that I don’t think non-autists literally think this way. It’s not like they consider all 13 options and select #7 or something. My impression is that ~90% of the work happens intuitively or subconsciously. Often a person would agree to their intended meaning after having it explained to them, but they wouldn’t naturally articulate it themselves.
To be more clear, this isn’t exactly how non-autists think, it’s more how nerds who are trying to understand non-autists think, think.
You’re right, I wrote this bit early on, then didn’t refactor.
I just changed it a bit. I’m sure with more thought we could have a better definition here.
Very true. In this particular set of examples, I was holding the specific word meanings as pretty fixed, but in common usage, discrepancies here are a really big deal.
There are really so many things that a simple phrase could mean.
I just want to flag that I’m not sure what you mean here.
5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, and 12 are all variations on the same theme of “I want to be associated with a particular sub-set of humans” That is Simulacra level 3 behavior. And I don’t think they really count as separate meanings.
I agree that those have that basic thing in common. Whether they “count as separate meanings” mostly depends on how big you decide a “meaning” is; this seems a lot like a semantic question to me. I could easily imagine some circumstances where caring about the differences between some of these might be useful.
and is kind of a wrap-around Level 1 simulacra: you are accurately stating that you are a member of the tribe, and it is common knowledge that the mouth noise “I like red” carries no information relating to the speakers opinions about “red”
I think we mostly agree, though I’d clarify:
In many circumstances, this ritual still tells us something about you liking red. If you really, really hated red, the person might notice this and be reluctant to say this. For example, “Nice to see you” is a fairly ritualized phrase, but it still carries some literal meaning.
“you are accurately stating that you are a member of the tribe” → This is one thing that a ritual could be useful for, but there are many other meanings rituals can point at.
I was fairly excited for this book for a second there