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Your link seems like a bad idea considering I'm seeing people throwing tantrums and mass down voting certain users. Considering your nick I'm a bit suspicious that you are a troll.
Edit: I should clarify, I don't find anything wrong with the content written by Lynn, just that some people go instantly into political mode if they see links to a political site, even when the article is by an expert in his field.
Linking some other relevant writing by Lynn would have been preferable.
2nd Edit: Reading the whole article I find nothing wrong with it, the besides politically motivated whining about the site hosting the article I see no good reason to down vote this link. Retracted.
A interesting NYT article I saw linked to in your inside higher ed link.
Social Scientist Sees Bias Within
SAN ANTONIO — Some of the world’s pre-eminent experts on bias discovered an unexpected form of it at their annual meeting.
Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”
It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.
“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.
“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”
Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) told the audience that he had been corresponding with a couple of non-liberal graduate students in social psychology whose experiences reminded him of closeted gay students in the 1980s. He quoted — anonymously — from their e-mails describing how they hid their feelings when colleagues made political small talk and jokes predicated on the assumption that everyone was a liberal.
Right but unlike gays those nasty non-liberal minded students clearly deserve it! Amirite?
I'm sorry GLaDOS but while distortions of the map are important and probably what we should talk about it, I agree with Lammers from the OP here. We should not dismiss the human cost of this situation for the minority of students with non-liberal views.
What most impressed him about the issues raised by the study, Inbar said, is the need to think about "basic fairness."
You seem to have quite good research skills, do you have any advice for someone trying to find out if academia has considered something already? Especially if that someone doesn't know that much about the field in question.
Ah I fear I misunderstood you and took "produces" rather too literally. Don't forget that STEM fields are attractive to those who want to climb socially but lack the graces because of their upbringing.
Obviously they retain few of those who go to become mathematicians.
In general, nothing is more difficult than not pretending to understand.
--Nicolás Gómez Dávila, source
We just care a lot more about the the views of the Brahmin than your second class of people.
Than you for catching the typo. Also I find it refreshingly honest that you acknowledge reality of this.
Which class of people has the larger microphone? Which class has the money?
Yes they by definition don't control the media or academia, their material resources aren't trivial but it is impossible for them to coordinate, since any organization they create to defend their interests will be subverted or marginalized.
Which class produces mathematicians?
The class produces its fair share of mathematicians. In absolute numbers I'd say more than the upper classes.
People talking about how low status Glenn Beck is need to realize that numerically far more people take Glenn Beck seriously than Kurzweil. Just because the Brahmin (Moldbug's terminology) hate him, dosen't mean he isn't influential and popular in among the class of people who find themselves vulnerable to be mislead to react badly to the Singularity.
You do realize he is speaking in favour of the singularity and SIAI? Also if you haven't noticed there are plenty of right wing people on LW.
I've heard a top poster here mention that 1950s America was Communist. :)
The question now becomes what is Glenn Beck's username on LessWrong?
Not if he wants it done. Ask if he has any objection to you writing something like this for LW.
What do you think in the context of the link I called "Relevant"?
The fact is that political stupidity is a special kind of stupidity, not well correlated with intelligence, or with other varieties of stupidity.
--John Derbyshire, source
This is a most excellent point, that I need to consider more. Honestly I have no desire to force people to "Truth", but I do want the liberty to seek it and act on it. If this means my segregation or secession from the vast majority of humanity and posthumanity, since they can't be protected in any other way, so be it.
Thank you! Fixed the link to match yours.
Why make up a new word? Paleoconservatives and smarter white nationalists (think Jared Taylor ) seem to often fit the bill.
Depends if the differences in assigned moral values are large enough they can easily approach Nazi pretty quickly. As a thought experiment consider how many dolphins would you kill to save a single person?
Not really it is perfectly possible to be explicitly aware of one's racial preferences and not really be bothered by having such preferences, at least no more than one is bothered by liking salty food or green parks, yet not be a Nazi or prone to violence.
Indeed I think a good argument can be made not only that large number of such people lived in the 19th and 20th century, but that we probably have millions of them living today in say a place like Japan.
And that they are mostly pretty decent and ok people.
Edit: Sorry! I didn't see the later comments already covering this. :)
This is missing Racist4:
Someone whose preferences result in disparate impact.
Thank you for the link!
Checking out some of his other videos and links I found this podcast on the topic rather interesting commentary.
Especially the summary of facts starting at the 23 minute mark.
(I'm actually integrating a sinister-yet-rationalist one world government based on these fears in my science fantasy novel - instead of a generic villainous empire I started out with - except that in my story it was formed by voices of moderation in high places after the Axis victory in WW2 and the ensuing cold war, not as the radical elitist movement that I can phantom it as in the real world.)
That is a very interesting concept! I'd love to read more about it, if you are writing in English and have any drafts you would like someone to read or will eventually publish, please make a post on LW!
Even today you see the more extreme elements of the Right scouring the net in what can be described as a search for ammunition, their bottom-line being already as entrenched as that of the Left extremists.
Why does right wing extremism scare you so much more than left wing extremism when the former is utterly despised as the definition of evil by most Westerners while the latter is only ever lukewarmly condemned?
Do extreme right wingers have some particular super power that I'm not aware of? The right wing are the guys who have been on a losing streak since Stalingrad and if you listen to Moldbug for a century before that too. I need some actual evidence that I should worry about them getting power anywhere in the West without being bombed into the stone age by the US five minutes later (bombing European right wing extremists, especially racist ones is the stuff of victory, moral superiority and war fantasies for them --- check out American video games, adventure novels and action movie villains), than say of me personally being struck by lightning when I'm walking my dog on a rainy Saturday evening.
Reading some of your comments I can't shake the feeling that you for some reason see their intellectual ammunition as so much more formidable than what is usually consumed by intellectuals that it despite the massive incentives against it threatens to one day quite suddenly break out and become popular among the smart fraction. Is this a correct reading?
Naturally, I don't see how I implied they wouldn't be. I just said that we are under no automatic obligation to signal our preferences for cryonics when we put up our rationalist hats. Even if one is convinced that cryonics would be an excellent policy according to one's values one can still judge the cost of agitating for it or advertising it to be too high.
Quietly agreeing that cryonics is the best course of action without making main posts about how awesome it is and everyone should do it might be better for our community than doing so.
Sam0345 is sometimes right.
Also eloquent rational reactionary thought is bad and unwelcome on LW? Why? I though rationality dosen't come with a political package. If we are worried about signalling ditching our support for Cryonics would probably help more.
That democracy can reliably be used as an applause light is a sign that we as a society agree it is indeed a good thing.
Silphium was reputed to have birth controlling properties because its seeds were heart-shaped. I was talking about something a little more... reliable... such as, say, Premarin.
You got it wrong. It is the other way around.
There has been some speculation about the connection between silphium and the traditional heart shape (♥). The symbol is remarkably similar to the Egyptian "heart soul" (ib). The sexual nature of that concept, combined with the widespread use of silphium in ancient Egypt for birth control, and the fact that silphium seeds were heart-shaped, leads to speculation that the character for ib may have been derived from the shape of the silphium seed.
Years six through ten depend on unforseen variables for whether there will be protracted suppression of luddites and conservatives, or if my reputation precedes me sufficiently that Rome begs me to induct her into my Constitutional Republic of Aligned City-States.
Through a careful management of new agricultural, medical, economic, industrial, and military technologies as above, conquering Rome would be easily achievable within 5-10 years at the absolute most.
Silly Logos01. Do you think you will get any of this done in a Constitutional Republic? In practice the Rome of the first century AD would be more a Republic than what you would need to get this done
If this worked you would de facto be God Emperor of Hispania or the state would be a plutocracy with you as the wealthiest man in the world. Once you die good luck trying to set up a workable republican culture, or people following anything but the forms of your proposed system of government. Social engineering is hard.
But in any case that isn't the goal here and I wouldn't be too upset in any case. Long live the Leviathan!
These include factories, vacuum tubes (and through them early-tech varieties of computers), birth control and other forms of concerns for quality-of-life, and various forms of chemistry and so on.
Are you sure this is a good idea considering modern Western civilization hasn't yet demonstrated the survivability of such technology? Let alone an upstart society in underpopulated Roman Spain. In any case the ancients did know means of birth control and it at various points sapped the power of the Roman state.
Obviously you are right on that. I should have said:
Also [ we as a society ] agree democracy is a good thing this isn't even very political.
What I really meant by this is that Democracy is something very well entrenched and accepted in Western society and even LessWrong. Dissent from democracy isn't threatening heresy it is the mark of an eccentric.
Yes I fully agree. But it shouldn't be underestimated that when it comes to non-democratic forms of government what kind of people are in power genuinely does have a big impact on how the country is run.
Wanting a philosopher king isn't a bad idea if you aren't mistaken about the philosopher king in question.
When people talk about the importance of democracy, it is never democracy as it has ever actually functioned, with the politicians that have actually been elected, and the policies that have actually been implemented. It is always democracy as people imagine it will operate once they succeed in electing "the right people" — by which they mean, people who agree almost completely with their own views, and who are consistent and incorruptible in their implementation of the resulting policies.
--Ben O'Neill, here
Considering the above quote can be used to criticize nearly any popular political position I don't think it is inherently mind-killing. Also since we all agree democracy is a good thing this isn't even very political. The original article and context obviously does make it somewhat political.
Crazy idea. Maybe Mike was likley to agree with any line of reasoning, true or false, simply because he found himself in a situation where his opinion was utterly out of sync with that of his peer group.
I don't know why but I can imagine the exact same situation 200 years earlier where Mikey was the only one in the group who voted for that snake Lincoln and after some rational thought realized his reasons where wrong and we had a happy evening discussing whether the union will hold rather than calling him a traitor.
It seems very likley that that would be illegal in such a society.
Oh? Go right ahead, I've got karma to spare.
This is the wrong way to take down votes.
Ok from now on I won't modify comments after posting for this debate.
Edit: Starting after this one!
I don't ever modify them after reading someone else's statements. It is just that I often post and then reread my comment and find a point is in need of clarification and immediately hit edit and start fixing it. Most of the time no one notices since responses come 5 or 15 or 200 minutes later.
But if you'd like to keep this more real-timeish, I have no problem from with waiting longer before hitting "comment" and then leaving them unchanged. Sorry for any inconvenience. In any case weren't the above two comments last modified before you posted yours?
If people don't want to buy it, sucks to be you!
From what kind of a position are people choosing to buy? The veil of ignorance? Lol.
You can't choose to buy or not buy a spot somewhere in mind-space without already being somewhere in mind-space.
The above holds for either. Erratio's formulation was:
It sounds very much like you're saying that no one would choose to be part of a minority culture if they weren't forced into it by non-acceptance.
I think it would be trivial by a superinteligence to design a culture that no one would choose any other culture over, yet wouldn't be a very pleasant place to live. And if superinteligence can do this, why could something like this arise due to memetic evolution? Religious and ideological memeplexes are already examples of weaker but dangerous beasts of this kind.
I use it in the technical legal sense and made that explicit too.
Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (Article 2 CPPCG)
People are really inconsistent however in colloquial usage and moral reasoning. I partially agree with your objection. Communist crimes are basically whitewashed because "Mao killed Chinese and he was Chinese so it wasn't genocide so Hitler is still worse". Isn't a life a life? Shouldn't whatever the term one uses, the negative feeling be the same?
You do realize we are talking about retention of children raised in a culture right? Orgasmium cults and brainwashing indoctrinators would tend to out compete most others by such measures. A cult worshipping a baslisk that hacks your brain into absolute loyalty would also win out.
Optimizing for allure will not optimize for welfare. At least not under these mechanisms of "choice". It also means our value sets can be out competed by really convincing paperclippers.
From the perspective of many traditional cultures Westerners may as well be Supper Happy people.
It sounds very much like you're saying that no one would choose to be part of a minority culture if they weren't forced into it by non-acceptance.
Not really, just that for some minorities implementation of such a policy would produce non-acceptance rates would result in genocidal (by the UN definition of the legal terms rather than colloquial use) levels of assimilation. It does a community little good if only 0.5 or 1 or 1.5 child per generation would choose to remain part of it.
If that is what you meant, wouldn't that imply that destroying that minority culture is better than forcing people to continue being part of it?
Good point, but what if the minority culture's values differ on this? Much like I prefer to exist than my carbon being used for the construction of a perfect orgasmium human. Members of minority cultures might prefer to put costs on each other to prevent them from leaving the community.
Also it would really upset groups like say Haredim Jews.
Why stop at cuckoldry, where the child is still genetically half one's spouse's? Outright cuckcooing! Swap everybody's kids around in the hospital!
Terrible idea to try actually implement in a multicultural society, since for visible minorities it amounts to cultural genocide. What are the odds the child they get actually assimilate to their culture if he can easily pass in greater society as a member of the privileged one?
Unless one factors in ethnicity in who gets who... which is just a horrible can of worms.
Let's do the impossible and think the unthinkable! I must know what those secrets are, no matter how much sleep and comfort I might lose.
Anarcho-capitalists are right.
Most upper class and wealthy jobs are actually rent seeking activities as argued in this video by fellow LessWrong user Aurini.
White people love feeling guilty and signalling moral superiority to other white people. I think that's partially genetic btw. Most other people on the planet are not such annoying moral poseurs. I don't have any real data to back me on this claim but anecdotal evidence is pretty consistent on this
This almost reads like you are trying to hint at something but for the life of me I can't figure out what. Nope. No idea.
This seems false and certainly contradicts Putnam (see sibling comment), who gives historical reasons for thinking these effects will vanish in the long term.
I obviously think he is wrong.
In recent years, Putnam has been engaged in a comprehensive study of the relationship between trust within communities and their ethnic diversity. His conclusion based on over 40 cases and 30 000 people within the United States is that, other things being equal, more diversity in a community is associated with less trust both between and within ethnic groups. Although limited to American data, it puts into question both the contact hypothesis and conflict theory in inter-ethnic relations. According to conflict theory, distrust between the ethnic groups will rise with diversity, but not within a group. In contrast, contact theory proposes that distrust will decline as members of different ethnic groups get to know and interact with each other. Putnam describes people of all races, sex, socioeconomic statuses, and ages as "hunkering down," avoiding engagement with their local community—both among different ethnic groups and within their own ethnic group. Even when controlling for income inequality and crime rates, two factors which conflict theory states should be the prime causal factors in declining inter-ethnic group trust, more diversity is still associated with less communal trust.
Lowered trust in areas with high diversity is also associated with:
Lower confidence in local government, local leaders and the local news media.
Lower political efficacy – that is, confidence in one's own influence.
Lower frequency of registering to vote, but more interest and knowledge about politics and more participation in protest marches and social reform groups.
Higher political advocacy, but lower expectations that it will bring about a desirable result.
Less expectation that others will cooperate to solve dilemmas of collective action (e.g., voluntary conservation to ease a water or energy shortage).
Less likelihood of working on a community project.
Less likelihood of giving to charity or volunteering.
Fewer close friends and confidants.
Less happiness and lower perceived quality of life.
More time spent watching television and more agreement that "television is my most important form of entertainment".
High class people unknowingly wage class war against low class people by promoting liberal social norms that they can handle but induce dysfunction in the lower classes (drug abuse, high divorce rates, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, more violence, ... ).
Reminds me of this.