Outside Analysis and Blind Spots

I approve of the algorithm that generated your post.

Possibly pedantic nitpick...

I thought "Inside View" and "Outside View" referred to predictions derived from a thorough, assumption-laden* mechanism-based model for something, and predictions derived from embedding the thing in a class of roughly similar things, respectively. You seem to be using the phrases to distinguish between in-group and out-group criticism.

* This isn't pejorative; the assumptions may be well-supported.

This is not a failing of one part of this community or another; this seems to be part of the current human condition

This is a failing of all parts of this community, and seems to be a part of the current human condition. (The eighth virtue is humility; the ninth virtue is perfectionism.)

Voted up, however, your second version of Roko's statement couldn't really fit into his post as a whole.

Basically, Roko's position was "I wish male rationalists who care about saving the world were also more interested in things like money and status and sex with women, because in the pursuit of those goals they would incidentally become better at saving the world."

Or at least, that's what I think he was saying. As I say, your second, "acceptable" version of what he said isn't really what he said at all.

That was a very nice trick you pulled. I was even grimacing at the phrase "rather intelligent Leon Kass acolyte". Too bad it will be hard to do it again as we'll be on alert!

I second Allan, you definitely changed the meaning from OUGHT_TO(x) to GIVEN(x).

I posted this before, but it seems appropriate again, so here is the Mind Hacks post on bias blind-spot.

I do have a favorite blogger that gets under my skin through that sort of outside-group analysis. Unfortunately, the benefits to my epistemic health are not captured in any way to provide incentives for production.

While it's important ('rational') to be polite and to be inclusive of different groups, it should not be necessary to use velvet gloves either.

It's only natural that some of the background of the contributors will show through in their writing -- ie., their native language, gender, education, life experience and so forth will influence what and how they write.

If someone's background makes him or her biased in the truth-seeking process, this should of course be pointed out; but if the background only colors the language a bit, I think we shouldn't be overly sensitive of that, even when we don't really like the color.

money and status would make a man more attractive to many women; men who really value a better romantic or sexual life should thus put more priority on money and status

It's funny how discussing attraction in cold hard psychological terms gives rise to debate. I am a man and therefore hard-wired to look at breasts and hips and feet for cues about whether the woman in question is fertile and non-pregnant.

That is not graceful, I don't even really meta-like it (of course I object-like it, I'm hard-wired to do so).

But that does not change the fact that I think of everyone as 'humans' or 'persons' before 'men' and 'women'.

Now, in the same vein, going with sexual cue-theory, women are just as hard-wired to evaluate which men are wealthy/high status and thus better able to support a family.

That does not change the fact that I am neither wealthy nor high-status (but maybe just a bit suave) but still have a female partner in a stable relationship of mutual trust, dependence and love.

Can we stop discussing genetic mental architectures as if they offend us? Because genetic mental architectures sure as hell don't care.

Heh. I actually thought your reworded quote was better formulated and more convincing than my original post. Then I went back to look at it to realize that oh yeah, some of that was a straight copy from what I said back then. It may have been because your quote was more concise and to the point, while my post was more rambling. (Though obviously there's also the possibility of subconsciously recognizing those as my thoughts, and a "that must be a smart guy for sharing my suspicions" reaction.)

I've actually found that I often give the criticism of outsiders extra weight compared to that of insiders, exactly because they're less likely to be blinded by the communal biases and groupthink. Of course, this assumes that their critiques are basically coherent and don't start out with misunderstanding the very basic concepts.

A probably related phenomenon - I've noticed that if I'm writing something that's supposed to be persuasive, I sometimes like the first draft and consider it pretty solid. Then I imagine showing it to a certain rather critical friend of mine, and try to imagine what she'd say about it, and suddenly I see a lot of weak points that need more justification.

IAWYC. That said, I don't like conversations changing topic to grammar because someone misused a word, and I feel that conversations switching to gender issues because someone misused a pronoun are the same thing. The topic is fine when raised directly, as in this post, but obnoxious when it hijacks a conversation about something else, as it often does.

I don't know who Leon Kass is, but

Trying to think more like a mathematician, whose empiricism resides in the realm of pure thought, does not predispose these 'rationalists' to collect evidence from the real world. Neither does the downplaying of personal experiences. Many are computer science majors, used to being in the comfortable position of being capable of testing their hypotheses without needing to leave their office. It is, then, an easy temptation for them to come up with a nice-sounding theory which appears to explain the facts, and then consider the question solved. Reason must reign supreme, must it not?

is a definite temptation we need to avoid. We do seem to like coming up with such theories, and I know that I personally rarely seek out a way to test them, but I don't think we consider the question solved when we do, and that seems to be the problematic part.

I'm just here to have fun, though, so I don't really mind the "not testing" part.

I completely agree with your underlying points (and voted up your article), but I wonder why you had to go and spoil an otherwise excellent post by "catastrophizing" the conflict and framing it as "the Less Wrong Gender Wars". That sort of silly hyperbole doesn't help; in fact, it is likely to make things worse.

Adding to this, it seems to me [1] human brains are adapted to eagerly form group identification just from tiny cues. So we don't need secret handshakes or any other formal group forming rituals. All it takes is just a bunch of well-written articles with subtle cues that trigger our group identification algorithms. Even though we might not objectively be part of a group yet, our brains have already decided that we are and this in turn will form a huge bias in our mind of the subject matter itself.

This occurred to me when I read the start of the article and felt the effect of the trick that original article was intended to bring. I am not yet, objectively, a member of this community, but my brain apparently has already decided that I am. I have no idea what triggered this group identification. All I think I did was to read some interesting articles and discussion and make couple of quite irrelevant comments myself.

This is of course generalizing from one, but I hope someone points to some relevant studies in this subject. (Human group identification, that is.)

[1] I'm assuming already that this has been studied extensively somewhere. I have no references myself, though.

Great post.

I agree that you identify a very good reason to take care in the use of gender-specific pronouns or anything else that is likely to create in-group, out-group effects.

I also think there probably was a fair amount of attitude polarization on the question of how acceptable it was to make the statement in question.

Does it seem to be less of a caricature now that you've read a version in which you identify with the writer, rather than one in which the writer is analyzing and criticizing you from outside?

Honestly, no. The only thought that passed my mind when the context was changed was 'Watch out Kaj! Make sure you've secured the aliances and status necessary to make that sort of honest observation. That's a recipe for getting yourself bullied and ostracised!"

Sometimes it might be necessary to go ahead and damn the torpedoes

Damn right.

Orthonormal, can you please post a link to blog that you quoted?

Out of the 23 comments so far, none has actually properly handled the question[1] raised by orthonormal.

Would love to see eliezer reply to this one

Please do that if possible.

1. How seriously do you take this critique? Do you wonder why I'm bothering with this straw-man criticism of Less Wrong?

Best LW post I've read all week. . .