This post would have been a lot better had it contained at least a thumbnail sketch of what Connection Theory is, or what its principle claims are. I reached the end of the post still rather mystified as to what you are talking about.
For those, like me, who needed more background before reading the post, I found quite a good critique of Connection Theory here.
Some points:
This is classic costless analysis. A quarantine would have prevented some transmissions of the disease, but would have severely limited the life quality of those quarantined. It would also have made it more difficult to detect HIV (if having HIV means compulsory quarantine, then if I suspect I have the disease I am less likely to get tested). Any proposal looks good under a benefit analysis; you are supposed to weigh those against the costs.
This kind of costless analysis is especially beloved by medicine and health professionals, whose only measure of value is health (e.g. their “quality of life” measure is essentially just health integrated over lifespan). I would have hoped rationalists would better recognise the complexity of human value.
The fact that the quarantine is compulsory ought to give the game away that it’s not in the interests of the HIV sufferers. Let’s call indefinite compulsory quarantine what it is—prison. It might well be in the interest of the rest of the population for HIV sufferers to be indefinitely imprisoned to stop the spread of the disease, but depending on your ethical theory, it is not obvious that the majority should have their way here.
“What gives the government the moral right to imprison people on grounds of public health?” and “Why should we trust the government to make wise decisions on this matter?” seem like the default questions to ask, and the post doesn’t even begin to address them. See (2) above regarding the deformation professionelle.
How about instead of quarantine, we had instead tattooed all HIV sufferers across the forehead? This would be a less coercive method of achieving substantially the same result. Yet I’m guessing Cochran wouldn’t sign up for that. Can phrases like “rights” and “human dignity” now begin to wend their way into the conversation?
Cochran is fond of calling people dimwits and pinheads, but I have rarely read such a tone-deaf post.
How to compose a successful critical commentary:
You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
D.C. Dennett, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. Dennett himself is summarising Anatol Rapoport.
Offending people is like vomiting. It can be a necessary and healthy act, but it ought to be a last resort, and most of the time it’s an indication of bad health, and people who take a special pride in it* are immature and anti-social. To quote A.P. Herbert:
Nothing is more difficult to do than to make a verbal observation which will give no offence and bring about more good than harm; and many great men die in old age without ever having done it.
*e.g. “Oh man, I got so wasted last night and threw up everywhere!”
I enjoyed this post.
It also hints at the notion of signaling equilibria. Consider the Helen of Troy example—this is clearly not an equilibrium, because Helen ends up marrying a bankrupt. Soon “spends lots of money on diamonds” will no longer be a signal of wealth, but will instead be a signal of profligacy—as indeed it is where I live. A man walking around in flashy jewellery would be considered low-class, presumably because in the past there has been exactly this signaling reversal.
In a stable signaling equilibrium, the signal needs to be hard-to-fake. This is why easy-to-fake signals are unstable—in the flowers example, the proles can and will catch on, and switch to the upper-middle-class flowers, so the upper-middle-class have to keep moving to stay ahead of them. The same phenomenon is seen in baby names, where upper-middle-class names become prole after a generation.
One thing I would have preferred is a discussion of the positive externalities of signaling, not just the negative ones. For example, if Yvain and lukeprog are both trying to signal their superior intelligence by writing insightful posts, this may get into an “arms race” for them, losing utility. However, the Lesswrong community gains utility overall. I think the externalities of signaling are generally positive in the real world, they only tend to be negative in what are anyway zero-sum games (e.g. begging).
I did the survey. Gadzooks!
This post makes some great points. As G.K. Chesterton said:
A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy.
Fundamentally, other people’s attention is a scarce resource, and you have to optimise whatever use of it you can get. Dealing with someone with a large inferential gap can be exhausting and you are liable to be tuned out if you make too many different radical points.
I would also add that part of being persuasive is being persuadable. People do not want to be lectured, and will quickly pick up if you see them as just an audience to be manipulated rather than as equals.
For some time I’ve been thinking about “narcissistic contrarians”—those who make an art form of their exotically counterintuitive belief systems, who combine positions not normally met in the same person.
Ah, another irregular verb.
I am a deep and original thinker, synthesising good ideas from multiple sources without regard to ideology.
You are a magpie, with second-hand beliefs cobbled together without structure.
He is a narcissistic contrarian, making an art form of his exotically counterintuitive belief system, combining positions not normally met in the same person.
I am deeply suspicious when people try to explain away their opponents’ beliefs, rather than defeat them intellectually.
On the contrary, honesty, conscientiousness, being law-abiding, etc. have powerful reputational effects. This is easily seen by the converse; look, for example, at the effect a criminal record has on chance of getting a job.
This quote only gets any mileage by equivocating on the meaning of fair. What the quote is really saying is: “If you expect the world to fulfil even modest dreams just because you try not to be a jerk, expect disappointment.” But said like that, if loses all its seemingly deep wisdom. In fact, of course, if you personally fulfilled even some modest dream of a large proportion of the people on earth, you would be wealthy beyond the dreams of lucre.
Lots of things have increasing marginal utility at some hypothetical margin. But very few things have increasing marginal utility at the margin on which they are utilised, precisely because if people notice that increasing marginal utility, they will increase their consumption, until they hit a new point on the utility curve where the marginal utility is no longer increasing.
For example, shminux, above, talks about education. We can well imagine that education has steeply increasing marginal utility at some levels; once you have made the investment in learning to read, using that knowledge to learn some more things is very cheap compared to the benefits. But people are already aware of this, and so have already acted to do far more than just learn some basics, to the extent that, at the margin, educational consumption appears to be a costly signaling race.
I took the survey, but, like others, I was unable to answer the American-style school questions.
In Silicon Valley, [...] many of the more successful entrepreneurs seem to be suffering from a mild form of Asperger’s where it’s like you’re missing the imitation, socialization gene… It happens to be a plus for innovation, and creating great companies, but I think we always should turn this around as an incredible critique of our society. We need to ask, what is it about our society where those of us who do not suffer from Asperger’s are at some massive disadvantage because we will be talked out of our interesting, original, creative ideas before they are even fully formed?
Peter Thiel on the Future of Innovation, in conversation with Tyler Cowen.
[This claim] is like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock, which not only is itself discredited but casts a shade of doubt over all previous assertions.
A. P. Herbert, Uncommon Law.
What does it say about us that (I would guess) most well educated westerners know about the “Carthage must be destroyed” quote but not the “Carthage must be saved” one?
It says that we care about the real as opposed to the imaginary. That is entirely to our credit.
Regardless of what may be considered moral, Carthage was destroyed. Educated people who wish to understand ancient history therefore naturally wish to learn of Cato’s anti-Carthaginian campaign, precisely because it was successful. In addition, Cato the Elder was considered a model of behaviour by subsequent generations of Romans, in a way that Corculum was not, therefore to understand ancient Rome we have to understand the behaviour they valourised.
Similarly, Fumimaro Konoe is not nearly as famous as Hideki Tojo. This is not because educated Westerners favour Tojo’s foreign policy, but because Tojo won the debate and Japan went to war.
I agree. It strengthens your point to note that, although the quote is normally used seriously, the author intended it mischievously. In context, the “thirteenth stroke” is a defendant, who has successfully rebutted all the charges against him, making the additional claim that “this [is] a free country and a man can do what he likes if he does nobody any harm.”
This “crazy” claim convinces the judge to convict him anyway.
Geographers crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs.
Plutarch, from Life of Theseus.
I am confused as to why your potted history indicates that Meiji Japan is a bad example of successful westernisation.
On first contact, Japan unwisely attempts to shut out the Westerners, and stagnates for centuries, leading to the humiliation of Bakumatsu. This could easily have ended in the destruction of the Japanese nation; not copying the West was a disaster.
Seeing the need to avoid that fate, the Japanese showed the flexibility and wisdom to reform their nation. They quickly copied the ways of the West, which was a roaring success for Japan; they not only avoided destruction, but managed to defeat Western powers (e.g. Russo-Japanese war). Yes, they became an “imperialistic oppressor” (your words) to their neighbours. So what? The question is how should a people facing colonization act, not how should their neighbours hope they act.
Despite the destruction of WW2, Japan quickly rebounded, becoming even more Western, and even more successful. Yes, things aren’t perfect, no, they aren’t doomed, they are one of the richest and most successful countries in the world. The Cree Nation would kill to have their problems.
Finding a good formulation for a problem is often most of the work of solving it… Problem formulation and problem solution are mutually-recursive processes.
Dualism is a coherent theory of mind and the only tenable one in light of our current scientific knowledge.