Newtonmas Meetup, 12/25/2010

That is a brilliant explanation; It's a shame that it is buried here so deeply in a neg-filtered branch.

First you claimed there was bias involved in eating animals. It is eminently reasonable to interpret your responses as being connected to that claim.

No, it isn't at all reasonable. My comment was a direct reply to Eliezer's and was explicitly addressed as an answer to his rationale for downvoting my comment. You need to make an effort to keep the separate strands of the debate separate, otherwise you'll misinterpret the structure of the different arguments.

If I was in error, and you have no care at all about eating animals

Wait, why does it follow from my saying you were in error that I had "no care at all about eating animals"?

That you can easily generate past examples of the 1% where they are not bullshit is not an argument for not downvoting such claims - any more than you easily generating examples of past lottery winners is an argument to play the lottery.

I didn't claim in this context that my ability to generate such examples was an argument for not downvoting such claims. I claimed that my ability to generate such examples was an argument for concluding that Eliezer's claim was false.

For my actual views on the appropriateness of downvoting such comments, see the other subthreads in this debate.

I was under the impression the stated (by Eliezer) problem was that "X is wrong" is a simple assertion, which is almost certain to change no-one's mind.

• Q: "Why are you doing X, when X is obviously wrong?"
• A: "Uh.. because it's not? Why do you think X is wrong?"

Of course it also has connotations of "What are you, some kind of hypocrite?", which isn't exactly helpful either.

Yes, exactly. Eliezer characterized the form of my comment in a way that suggested I was exploiting the ambiguity of the term 'wrong', when in fact I was giving that term the same meaning it has in the locution 'less wrong'. If the site's name had been 'Less Incorrect', I would still have written

Eliezer's reply works either way. You would still be downvoted for the version given this time. Perhaps Shockwave's answer would be helpful for you?

I'm sorry, but I did no such thing. My comment could have been restated as follows:

What ought one to think of a community that seeks to be overcome bias and yet succumbs to such obvious forms of anthropocentric bias?

See what I said in reply to wedrifid for further clarification.

Never having been born means one can't benefit from one's life,

This seems as much a mis-answer as the saying "someone lost their life", as if the someone and the life are separable.

"One can't benefit from one's life if one isn't born" implies that one exists before one is born - that there is a "person" (a specific person) hanging around somewhere real, waiting to be born. This is not the case. A child is born and it's neural patterns arrange themselves into a person.

Before a child is born, there is no real extant thing, anywhere, posessing the attribute "lack-of-benefitting-from-it's-possible-future-life".

(Similarly, you cannot ask what it would be like if you were born in another country, or born in 1750, or born to a wealthier family, because that style of question makes the same mistake of getting the order of the wrong way around).

There isn't any X to satisfy the sentence "X is not being born", so "not being born" isn't evil. [Edit: I suppose, unless you class miscarriages or abortions, but I think the point still holds because that still carries the same misconception of a whole "you" within the unborn cell cluster somewhere].

Thanks for your reply. I mostly agree with sfb (sibling to this comment), although I wouldn't classify your statement as an error (as sfb seems to do). It certainly doesn't match my values, however. (I find the Repugnant Conclusion truly repugnant, and happily its hypotheses are not met.)

Anyway, I hope that the party was enjoyable (if you went).

If that's what you think about the concept of sentience, fine; I can restate my reply without using that concept. I would draw the boundary at the ability to experience the sensation of "liking", as that term is operationally defined by Kent Berridge.

As I have said already, I was instead simply noting an instance of how even members of a community organized around the goal of overcoming bias can themselves be blatantly biased against certain other beings.

I don't think you've established that this is bias. First, clarify what you mean by "bias" — you seem to be using it more in the colloquial sense of prejudice, while here it's used in a different and more technical sense. Do you claim that this is an instance of a particular cognitive bias, or that it is an unjustified prejudice (which, surely, should also be overcome) based on something like unconsidered anthropocentrism? If the latter, you need to specifically justify the implication that most non-vegetarians here haven't actually thought about the morality of eating meat, and are just going by a default lack of concern for different-looking entities. (Do you think that many LWers would eat Yoda?) I suspect that many among us (as in Kevin's comment below) have considered the question much more deeply than John Q. Omnivore has.

Or if you simply want to argue that their moral reasoning is faulty or based on false factual beliefs, just say that, and say how; that's much more useful then a blanket accusation of "bias". (In general, it's bad argument to tell people that they're being "biased" or "irrational", particularly on a site where everyone is well-acquainted with the more obvious and/or well-documented forms of systematic irrationality. It's too fully general. If someone is wrong, stay at the object level and just tell them what they're wrong about and what you think you know that you think they don't know.)

You're underestimating how seriously many of us have taken our decisions to be meat eaters. All the animal suffering is not something I take that lightly.

The quote above is a case in point: you say that the "strongest argument" for downvoting rude comments is that it "reflects poorly on" commenters.

I apologize if I was unclear: upvotes and downvotes exist to signal to two different groups: the authors of comments, and the readers of comments. To the first group they have pedagogical value ("ok, I should be posting X and should refrain from posting Y") and to the second group they have predictive value ("hmm, karma too low? I don't think I'll waste my time").

And so my argument is that if someone posts statement Z and doesn't realize that statement Z is rude, then a downvote (preferably coupled with a polite "try being less rude" comment) is the best thing for them pedagogically, since it helps them improve their ability to articulate themself. If they know they're being rude but think it helps make their point, that's one thing- but if it's from ignorance, even ignorance of social customs, then that's something we generally try to fix around here.

And, in case you're wondering, this is the sort of thing that happens to everyone. If one of EY's comments approaches the issue the wrong way, it will get voted down.

I see no reason for thinking that a community of people devoted to refining the art of human rationality should assume the task of punishing others for saying things that would reflect poorly on them as social creatures.

Rational agents should WIN. Winning often involves social interaction (especially if your goal is to persuade others).

I also note (again) that there is sometimes a tension between doing what is socially appropriate and what is epistemically appropriate.

This looks like a false dilemma. It's not "do I point out their hypocrisy or not?"- there are two separate questions, "do I raise this issue?" and "how do I raise it?". You seem to be under the impression that the only way to raise this issue is rudely, and it's better to be rude than not raise the issue. I strongly disagree; there are very many ways you could approach the issue with a little patience and get much farther than you did. For example, you could say something like "I'm curious about your justification for eating meat; would you mind telling me it?" or "Is vegetarianism an issue that's come up here before? There seems to be a lot about moral reasoning and that seems as appropriate a question as any."

Tact is a rather valuable skill, both at convincing others of their errors and leaving yourself in a social position where you can admit your errors. Both are valuable tools when it comes to refining human rationality.