Being saner about gender and rationality

Here's the thing. We're going to have to face politics and deal with it. There is no way a rationalist community can call itself such, if the first hint of polar controversy makes us commit ritual suicide, then declare the topic taboo forever.

Why is this such a big deal? There were instances of divisive or otherwise unthoughtful language on the site. Alicorn called our attention to them. We should improve and move on to discussing rationality topics, not fretting about mod cliques and calling for account deletions.

[notice how I objectified her there, leaving behind the language of a unified self or person in favour of a collection of mechanical motivations and processes whose dynamics are partially determined by evolutionary pressures, and what a useful exercise this can be for making sense of reality]

I still don't think you understand what feminists mean by objectification. It's not the same thing as cognitive reductionism, which I think hardly anyone here would object to. I mean, yes, minds are causal systems made of parts embedded in the universal laws of physics and can be understood as such. Everyone knows that!---and given that everyone knows that, you should be able to deduce that whatever it is people really mean when they criticize this objectification-thing, it has to be something other than cognitive reductionism.

Let me explain what I understand by objectification. So, even though (as everyone here already knows) everything that exists, exists within physics, we still find it useful and necessary to distinguish structures within physics which we think are conscious and intelligent (whatever it is we refer to with those words), which we call minds or people, and structures that are not, which we call objects. So when we express the proposition that objectification is unethical, we mean that we have special ethical standards for dealing with physical-structures-deemed-people that do not apply when dealing with physical-structures-deemed-objects. For example, in matters of sexual relations, you shouldn't deceive people into doing things that they wouldn't on reflection want to do if they were better informed; rather, when dealing with a person, you should take into account the desires, beliefs, and autonomy of that person, even though (as everyone already knows) none of these things are ontologically fundamental.

Now, perhaps you don't hold this ethical standard yourself. In light of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad truth, there's probably not a whole lot feminists can do to talk you into it. But in order to have a sane discussion, you should at least understand what it is your fellow discussants actually believe. And I really don't think you do.

The epistemic rationality of LessWrong is worth more than the gender ratio we have. A 95% male community that manages to overcome a whole host of problems in instrumental and epistemic rationality is worth more to the world than a 80% male community that is crippled by a blood-feud between a feminist faction and a masculinist faction.

Like the politician said, if I can set the agenda it doesn't matter how anyone votes.

How about an 80% male community that manages to overcome a whole host of problems in instrumental and epistemic rationality, including the one we are looking straight at?

This is it. Right here, right now. Solve this problem.

I would also recommend that anyone who feels that they have played a particularly large part in the debate on either side do the same, for example PJeby.

I almost did that yesterday, but realized that there's no way I wouldn't be recognizable.

However, I will dispute your implication that I'm a "masculinist" - I'm merely against the idea that anyone has a "right" over the thoughts of others, or a right to not have their feelings hurt.... especially in a forum whose purpose is to help people get over their irrationality. Here, we should be talking about how to disconnect our buttons, rather than how to insist that other people stop pushing them.

You don't have to resort to accusations of politics or 'factions' to make sense of what's going on. I think there's honest disagreement, but it's hard to tell until people answer some basic questions:

1. Do we have, or want, a community norm against alienating potential members?
2. Is the seemingly objectionable language in danger of alienating potential members?
3. Are there good reasons to not avoid this sort of language, that would override (1)?

For (1), I think it's a resounding "yes", since part of the reason for the existence of this site is to increase the number of rationalists in the world, so alienating potential members seems antithetical to that goal.

(2) is an empirical question. (Amongst philosophers, that tends to be the end of the discussion - feel free to pursue that)

In the case of (3), I can think of a few. There may be some points which can only be talked about using that sort of language, and I think in that case the importance of discussing things wins (on a case-by-case basis).

Also, it might be the case that it's unclear what constitutes this sort of language, or how to fix it, so it would be asking too much to expect people to change their wording. I don't think that is the case.

Any thoughts? Did I leave anything out?

There is simply no way of enforcing "sanity" standards about a political dispute that people physically fight over in the real world: we should be very clear about this. What disputes like this require is real-world mediation and negotiation skills which go far beyond Less Wrong's scope.

The best introduction to the topic I'm personally aware of is Bernard Crick's work In Defense of Politics, which is helpfully summarized on Wikipedia. Note that Crick describes politics as "an ethical dispute which has become public", and that ethical disputes are an inevitable consequence of goodness and morality standards. Accordingly, virtues like adaptability and compromise are of far higher merit than any platitude about "sanity" or "rationality".

I will delete my account and re-register under a different username. I would recommend that Alicorn do the same.

It would be fascinating to learn why you think I'm going to take this recommendation as anything but an attack on my project and the identity I have established here. I maintain a consistent identity under the same name everywhere on the Internet because I stand by the things I write and value the ability to build a reputation and a history over time.

I would also implore everyone to just not bring this issue up again. If someone uses language in a way that mildly annoys you (hint: they probably didn't do this on purpose)

That's an interesting "hint", since you deliberately pointed out a sentence as an instance of the objectification I've complained about earlier in your post. Interestingly, that sentence isn't an example of the objectification I've complained about, although I do think it is false.

crippled by a blood-feud between a feminist faction and a masculinist faction.

This seems like an unduly dire prediction. What it looks like to me is there are three basic groups: people who actively support gender-neutrality (me, the "some lovely people"); people who never gave it much thought but appreciate having their attention called to the problem because they had not noticed it but now recognize it as a problem (I think this is most people on the site); and some people who, after the fashion of fish who cannot notice water, think that sexist language which does not typically annoy them must be the natural way of things.

To leave the conversation unhad is to leave the things just the way they are, and thanks to the demographic makeup of this site and the state of the gender dynamics in society in general, "the way things are" when left alone is "masculinist" - not neutral.

Your concern is fine but your suggested solutions amount to shooting off your arm to cure a bee-sting. The community seems to me nowhere near as polarized as you suggest.

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Two rationalists fail to agree, so you're going to:

A) discuss until some sort of synthesis is found (this statement needs some qualifiers, which you, my charitable reader, may insert to your liking)

or

B) not talk about it (and delete your identities for good measure!)

Hmm, that's a tough one. (and I ommitted C/D, the other side is stupid/evil!)

Additionally, this post seems rather disingenuous coming from a participant (I gather; I don't/haven't read every comment, and don't really pay any attention to usernames) in the argument whose side seems to be to maintain the status quo... (IOW, if everyone stops talking about it, your "side" wins-- that's no way for a rationalist to win a debate)

I didn't see what Alicorn said in her post as a start or continuation of politicization in here. I saw it as an observation of possible biases.

I agree with you on the issue that those camps are unneccessary and harmful, but I think that excluding this topic from rationalistic discussion would do more harm than good. As you say, modelling general human female as a mechanical system is standard in both thinking and in language. Why is it so? Must it be so? Is the same true with generic human male? Is there any value in making such generalizations of either sex? These all are questions which must be considered if that standardization is to be upheld.

Your mention about deleting your account made me realize that in a small way I'm taking part in this model-building. Using distinctively feminine nickname will affect how people read my replies, and I'm considering changing it. The problem is that when people don't instantly recognize the poster as a female, they will assume that it is a man and this too will contribute to the traditional models. If anyone has good suggestions about solving this problem or finding a way around it, I would like to hear them :P

I would also like to find out why you think there would be loss of rationality with different gender distribution in LessWrong?

(P.s. using a simplistic language algorithm http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.php (The Gender Genie) has determined that I'm a man)

Edit: linkfix

Heh. Feel free to do what you think is right, but I for one won't blame Alicorn or the others if they decide to maintain their identity on this site. I don't even see how deleting your account is going to help the community.

Give it a couple of days, and people are going to move on. They'll remember that feminists (male and female) made some complaints about gender sensitivity and probably forget that after awhile, since its not a major topic and we'd all probably prefer to talk and think about other things.

I don't see a mod clique forming. The worst that is going to come from this is people might be more tactful for a couple of days.

Edit: I just wanted to add... Didn't this all start because of the trolling thread? I find that amusing.

Cliques form when you don't separate people and their ideas. Political struggle forms when you make value claims("It's unethical to talk about people as if they were objects". Even better since people are objects in almost every meaning of the word) that you want everyone else to accept and follow.

Take these two out, and I see no problem about talking gender issues. Talk about how it might be irrational to not take into account some aspect of people(instead of "objectifying is bad"), and focus on arguments, not on who's making them. Basically, keep doing what you've been doing up until now, and there won't be any problems. I agree with Roko's critique on Alicorn's post, but I also disagree that deleting account is necessary.

I mean, even if someone here was a cannibal(in a country where that was allowed), comments like "it's unethical what you're doing" wouldn't be seen here. Rationality is not related to the values you try to achieve using your rational mind.

20% women would be a big change. But this is an ultra-nerd topic - so I don't see it happening.

Hooray! Internet dramas has finally reached LessWrong!

I agree with your assessment of the problem and would also like to help. If Alicorn succeeds in forming a mod clique, the site will be much worse off. But we mustn't form cliques of our own to counter, because that would lead to the same outcome. Tragedy of the commons.