Posts
Comments
The issue at hand is not whether the "logic" was valid (incidentally, you are disputing the logical validity of an informal insinuation whose implication appears to be factually true, despite the hinted connection — that Scott's views on HBD were influenced by Murray's works — being merely probable)
The issues at hand are:
1. whether it is a justified "weapon" to use in a conflict of this sort
2. whether the deed is itself immoral beyond what is implied by "minor sin"
That is an unrealistic and thoroughly unworkable expectation.
World models are pre-conscious. We may be conscious of verbalised predictions that follow from our world models, and various cognitive processes that involve visualisation (in the form of imagery, inner monologue, etc.), since these give rise to qualia. We do not however possess direct awareness of the actual gear-level structures of our world models, but must get at these through (often difficult) inference.
When learning about any sufficiently complex phenomenon, such as pretty much any aspect of psychology or sociology, there are simply too many gears for it to be possible to identify all of them; a lot of them are bound to remain implicit and only be noticed when specifically brought into dispute. This is not to say that there can be no standard by which to expect "theory gurus" to prove themselves not to be frauds. For example, if they have unusual worldviews, they should be able to pinpoint examples (real or invented) that illustrate some causal mechanism that other worldviews give insufficient attention to. They should be able to broadly outline how this mechanism relates to their worldview, and how it cannot be adequately accounted for by competing worldviews. This is already quite sufficient, as it opens up the possibility for interlocutors to propose alternate views of the mechanism being discussed and show how they are, after all, able to be reconciled with other worldviews than the one proposed by the theorist.
Alternatively, they should be able to prove their merit in some other way, like showing their insight into political theory by successfully enacting political change, into crowd psychology by being successful propagandists, into psychology and/or anthropology by writing great novelists with a wide variety of realistic characters from various walks of life, etc.
But expecting them to be able to explicate to you the gears of their models is somewhat akin to expecting a generative image AI to explain its inner workings to you. It's a fundamentally unreasonable request, all the more so because you have a tendency to dismiss people as bluffing whenever they can't follow you into statistical territory so esoteric that there are probably less than a thousand people in the world who could.
Trouble is that even checking the steelman with the other person does not avoid the failure modes I am talking about. In fact, some moments ago, I made slight changes to the post to include a bit where the interlocutor presents a proposed steelman and you reject it. I included this because many redditors objected that this is by definition part of steelmanning (though none of the cited definitions actually included this criterion), and so I wanted to show that it makes no difference at all to my argument whether the interlocutor asks for confirmation of the steelman versus you becoming aware of it by some other mechanism. What's relevant is only that you somehow learn of the steelman attempt, reject it as inadequate, and try to redirect your interlocutor back to the actual argument you made. The precise social forms by which this happens (the ideal being something like "would the following be an acceptable steelman [...]") are only dressing, not substance.
I have in fact had a very long email conversation spanning several months with another LessWronger who kept constructing would-be steelmen of my argument that I kept having to correct.
As it was a private conversation, I cannot give too many details, but I can try to summarize the general gist
I and this user are part of a shared IRL social network, which I have been feeling increasingly alienated from, but which I cannot simply leave without severe consequences. Trouble is that this social network generally treats me with extreme condescension, disdain, patronisation, etc, and that I am constrained in my ability to fight back in my usual manner. I am not so concerned about the underlying contempt, except for its part in creating the objectionable behaviour. It seems to me that they must subconsciously have extreme contempt for me, but since I do not respect their judgement of me, my self-esteem is not harmed by this knowledge. The real problem is that situations where I am treated with contempt and cannot defend myself from it, but must remain polite and simply take it, provide a kind of evidence to my autonomous unconscious status tracking processes (what JBP claims to be the function of the serotoninergic system, though idk if this is true at all), and that this is not so easily overridden by my own contempt for their poor judgement as my conscious reasoning about their disdain for me is.
I repeatedly explained to this LessWrong user that the issue is that these situations provide evidence for contempt for me, and that since I am constrained in my ability to talk back, they also provide systematically false evidence about my level of self respect and about how I deserve to be treated. Speaking somewhat metaphorically, you could say that this social network is inadvertently using black magic against me and that I want them to stop. It might seem that this position could be easily explained, and indeed that was how it seemed to me too at the outset of the conversation, but it was complicated by the need to demonstrate that I was in fact being treated contemptuously, and that I was in fact being constrained in my ability to defend myself against it. It was not enough to give specific examples of the treatment, because that led my interlocutor to overly narrow abstractions, so I had to point out that the specific instances of contemptuous treatment demonstrated the existence of underlying contempt, and that this underlying contempt should a priori be expected to generate a large variety of contemptuous behaviour. This in turn led to a very tedious argument over whether that underlying contempt exists at all, where it would've come from, etc.
Anyway, I eventually approached another member of this social network and tried to explain my predicament. It was tricky, because I had to accuse him of an underlying contempt giving rise to a pattern of disrespectful behaviour, but also explain that it was the behaviour itself I was objecting to and not the underlying contempt, all without telling him explicitly that I do not respect his judgement. Astonishingly, I actually made a lot of progress anyway.
Well, that didn't last long, because the LW user in question took it into his own hands to attempt to fix the schism, and told this man that if I am objecting to a pattern of disrespectful behaviour, then it is unreasonable to assume that I am objecting to the evidence of disrespect, rather than the underlying disrespect itself. You will notice that this is exactly the 180 degree opposite of my actual position. It also had the effect of cutting off my chance at making any further progress with the man in question, since it is now to my eyes impossible to explain what I actually object to without telling him outright that I have no respect for his judgement.
I am sure he thought he was being reasonable. After all, absent the context, it would seem like a perfectly reasonable observation. But as there were other problems with his behaviour that made it seem smug and self righteous to me, and as the whole conversation up to that point had already been so maddening and let to so much disaster (it seems in fact to have played a major part in causing extreme mental harm to someone who was quite close to me), I decided to cut my losses and not pursue it any further, except for scolding him for what seemed to me like the breach of an oath he had given earlier.
Anyway, the point is not to generalise too much from this example. What I described in the post was actually inspired by other scenarios. The point of telling you this story is simply that even if you are presented with the interlocutor's proposed steelman and given a chance to reject it, this does not save you, and the conversation can still go on for literally months and not get out of the trap I described. I have had other examples of this trap being highly persistent, even with people who were more consistent in explicitly asking for confirmation of each proposed steelman, but what was special about this case was that it was the only one that lasted for literally months with hundreds of emails, that my interlocutor started out with a stated intent to see the conversation through to the end, and that my interlocutor was a fairly prolific LessWrong commenter and poster, whom I would rate as being at least in the top 5% and probably top 1% of smartest LessWrongers
I should mention for transparency that the LessWrong user in question did not state outright that he was steelmanning me, but having been around in this community for a long time, I think I am able to tell which behaviours are borne out of an attempt to steelman, or more broadly, which behaviours spring from the general culture of steelmanning and of being habituated to a steelman-esque mode of discourse. As my post indicated, I think steelmanning is a reasonable way to get to a more expedient resolution between people who broadly speaking "share base realities", but as someone with views that are highly heterodox relative to the dominant worldviews on LessWrong, I can say that my own experience with steelmanning has been that it is one of the nastiest forms of argumentation I know of.
I focused on the practice of steelmanning as emblematic of a whole approach to thinking about good faith that I believe is wrongheaded more generally and not only pertaining to steelmanning. In hindsight, I should have stated this. I considered doing so, but decided to make it the subject of a subsequent post, and I didn't notice that making a more in-depth post about the abstract pattern does not preclude me from making a brief mention in this post that steelmanning is only one instance of a more general pattern I am trying to critique.
The pattern is simply to focus excessively on behaviours and specific arguments as being in bad faith, and paying insufficient attention to the emotional drivers of being in bad faith, which also tend to make people go into denial about their bad faith.
Indeed, that was the purpose of steelmanning in its original form, as it was pioneered on Slate Star Codex.
Interestingly, when I posted it on r/slatestarcodex, a lot of people started basically screaming at me that I am strawmanning the concept of steelmanning, because a steelman by definition requires that the person you're steelmanning accepts the proposed steelman as accurate. Hence, your comment provides me some fresh relief and assures me that there is still a vestige left of the rationalist community I used to know.
I wrote my article mostly concerning how I see the word colloquially used today. I intended it as one of several posts demonstrating a general pattern of bad faith argumentation that disguises itself as exceptionally good faith.
But setting all that aside, I think my critique still substantially applies to the concept in its original form. It is still the case, for example, that superficial mistakes will tend to be corrected automatically just from the general circulation of ideas within a community, and that the really persistent errors have to do with deeper distortions in the underlying worldview.
Worldviews are however basically analogous to scientific paradigms as described by Thomas Kuhn. People do not adopt a complicated worldview without it seeming vividly correct from at least some angle, however parochial that angle might be. Hence, the only correct way to resolve a deep conflict between worldviews is by the acquisition of a broader perspective that subsumes both. Of course, either worldview, or both, may be a mixture of real patterns coupled with a bunch of propaganda, but in such a case, the worldview that subsumes both should ideally be able to explain why that propaganda was created and why it seems vividly believable to its adherents.
At first glance, this might not seem to pose much of a problem for the practice of steelmanning in its original form, because in many cases it will seem like you can completely subsume the "grain of truth" from the other perspective into your own without any substantial conflict. But that would basically classify it as a "superficial improvement", the kind that is bound to happen automatically just from the general circulation of ideas, and therefore less important than the less inevitable improvements. But if an improvement of this sort is not inevitable, it indicates that your current social network cannot generate the improvement on its own, but instead can only generate it through confrontations with conflicting worldviews from outside your main social network, and that means that your existing worldview cannot properly explain the grain of truth from the opposing view, since it could not predict it in advance, which means there is more to learn from this outside perspective than can be learned by straightforwardly integrating its apparent grain of truth.
This is basically the same pattern I am describing in the post, but just removed from the context of conversations between individuals, and instead applied to confrontations between different social networks with low-ish overlap. The argument is substantially the same, only less concrete.
No, the reasoning generalises to those fields too. The problem with those areas driving their need to have measurement of cognitive abilities is excessive bureaucratisation and lack of a sensible top-down structure with responsibilities and duties in both directions. A wise and mature person can get a solid impression of an interviewee's mental capacities from a short interview, and can even find out a lot of useful details that are not going to be covered by an IQ test. For example, mental health, maturity, and capacity to handle responsibility.
Or consider it from another angle: suppose I know someone to be brilliant and extremely capable, but when taking an IQ test, they only score 130 or so. What am I supposed to do with this information? Granted, it's pretty rare — normally the IQ would reflect my estimation of their brilliance, but in such cases, it adds no new information. But if the score does not match the person's actual capabilities as I have been able to infer them, I am simply left with the conclusion that IQ is not a particularly useful metric for my purposes. It may be highly accurate, but an experienced human judgement is considerably more accurate still.
Of course, individualised judgements of this sort are vulnerable to various failure modes, which is why large corporations and organizations like the military are interested in giving IQ tests instead. But this is often a result of regulatory barriers or other hindrances to simply requiring your job interviewers to avoid those failure modes and holding them accountable to it, with the risk of demotion or termination if their department becomes corrupt and/or grossly incompetent.
This issue is not particular to race politics. It is a much more general matter of fractal monarchy vs procedural bureaucracy.
Edit: or, if you want a more libertarian friendly version, it is a general matter of subsidiarity vs totalitarianism.
The measuring project is symptomatic of scientism and is part of what needs to be corrected.
That is what I meant when I said that the HBD crowd is reminiscent of utilitarian technocracy and progressive-era eugenics. The correct way of handling race politics is to take an inventory of the current situation by doing case studies and field research, and to develop a no-bullshit commonsense executive-minded attitude for how to go about improving the conditions of racial minorities from where they're currently at.
Obviously, more policing is needed, so as to finally give black business-owners in black areas a break and let them develop without being pestered by shoplifters, riots, etc. Affirmative action is not working, and nor is the whole paradigm of equity politics. Antidiscrimination legislation was what crushed black business districts that had been flourishing prior to the sixties.
Whether the races are theoretically equal in their genetic potential or not is utterly irrelevant. The plain fact is that they are not equal at present, and that is not something you need statistics in order to notice. If you are a utopian, then your project is to make them achieve their full potential as constrained by genetics in some distant future, and if they are genetically equal, then that means you want equal outcomes at some point. But this is a ridiculous way of thinking, because it extrapolates your policy goals unreasonably far into the future, never mind that genetic inequalities do not constrain long-term outcomes in a world that is rapidly advancing in genetic engineering tech.
The scientistic, statistics-driven approach is clearly the wrong tool for the job, as we can see from just looking at what outcomes it has achieved. Instead it is necessary to have human minds thinking reasonably about the issue, instead of trying to replace human reason with statistics "carried on by steam" as Carlyle put it. These human minds thinking reasonably about the issue should not be evaluating policies by whether they can theoretically be extrapolated to some utopian outcome in the distant future, but simply about whether they actually improve things for racial minorities or not. This is one case where we could all learn something from Keynes' famous remark that "in the long run, we are all dead".
In short: scientism is the issue, and statistics by steam are part of it. Your insistence on the measurement project over discussing the real issues is why you do not have much success with these people. You are inadvertently perpetuating the very same stigma on informal reasoning about weighty matters that is the cause of the issue.
They are not doing it in order to troll their political opponents. They are doing it out of scientism and loyalty to enlightenment aesthetics of reason and rationality, which just so happens to entail an extremely toxic stigma against informal reasoning about weighty matters.
The second option, trying to uncover the real origin of the conclusion, being obviously the best of the three. It is also most in-line with canonical works like Is That Your True Rejection?
But it belongs to the older paradigm of rationalist thinking; the one that sought to examine motivated cognition and discover the underlying emotional drives (ideally with delicate sensitivty), whereas the new paradigm merely stigmatizes motivated cognition and inadvertently imposes a cultural standard of performativity, in which we are all supposed to pretend that our thinking is unmotivated. The problems with present rationalist culture would stand out like a glowing neon sign to old-school LessWrongers, but unfortunately there are not many of these left.
And, again, it is not "false pretenses" to engage in a discussion with more than one goal in mind and not explicitly lay out all one's goals in advance.
It saddens me that LessWrong has reached such a state that it is now a widespread behaviour to straw man the hell out of someone's position and then double down when called on it.
What I think is both rude and counterproductive is focusing on what sort of person the other person is, as opposed to what they have done and are doing. In this particular thread the rot begins with "thus flattering your narcissism"
But the problem is at the level of his character, not any given behaviour. I have already explained this in one of my replies to tailcalled; if he simply learns to stay away from one type of narcissistic community, he will still be drawn in by communities where narcissism manifests in other ways than the one he is "immunized" to, so to speak. Likewise with the concrete behaviours: if he learns to avoid some toxic behaviours, the underlying toxicity will simply manifest in other toxic behaviours. I do not say there is therefore no point in calling out the toxic behaviours, but the only point in doing that is to use them as pointers to the underlying problem. If I just get him to recognise a particular pattern of behaviour, then I will have misidentified the pattern to him and might as well have done nothing. The issue is specifically that he is a horrible person and needs to realise it so he can begin practising virtue — this being of course a moral philosophy that LessWrongers are generally averse to, but you can see the result.
And then we get "you've added one more way to feel above it all and congratulate yourself on it" and "your few genuine displays of good faith" and "goal-oriented towards making you appear as the sensible moderate" and "you have a profound proclivity for bullshitting" and so forth.
All of these are criticising behaviours rather than character and thus fit your pretended criterion. Thus, you made no specific complaint about them, because what you actually take issue with is simply my harshness and directness.
I think this sort of comment is basically never helpful
It is the only thing that is ever helpful when an improvement to the underlying character is what is called for.
Well, maybe I'm confused about what tailcalled's "original comment" that you're complaining about was, because looking at what I thought it was I can't see anything in it that anyone could possibly expect to convince anyone that Blanchardians are abusive. Nor much that anyone could expect to convince anyone that Blanchardians are wrong, which makes me suspect even more that I've failed to identify what comment we're talking about. But the only other plausible candidate I see for the "original comment" is this one, which has eve n less of that sort. Or maybe this one, which again doesn't have anything like that. What comment do you think we are talking about here?
I also don't see how it was supposed to do that, but I am commenting on his stated intentions. The fact that it is hard to spot those intentions in his first comments, even when actively looking for them, only further corroborates my point that his stated intentions were not obvious at all, and that it seemed to be a relatively innocuous reply that was made with only the discussion in mind. Yet, by his own statements, his point in responding was to convince me that Blanchardians are abusive. Thus, as I said, false pretenses.
I am fairly sure my opinions of tailcalled's responses here is very similar to my opinion of his comments elsewhere which haven't (so far as I've noticed) involved you at all, so I don't find it very plausible that those opinions are greatly affected by the fact that on this occasion he is arguing with someone I'm finding disagreeable.
My claim was specifically that the halo effect is blinding you to an evasiveness that he does not typically display. Thus it is wholly consistent with you having a similar opinion of his comments here compared to your usual opinion of his comments.
"Pointing out character flaws". "Insults". Po-TAY-to. Po-TAH-to. My complaint isn't that the way in which you are pointing out tailcalled's alleged character flaws is needlessly unpleasant, it's that you're doing it at all.
I have already addressed that argument, and the whole point of my using the phrase "pointing out character flaws" was to stress the relevance of doing so to the argument I am making.
Ad hominem is not a fallacy if the topic of discussion is literally about the person's character, and justice when commenting on feuds is after all a character trait. I cannot effectively criticise a community without criticising its members, and I cannot effectively criticise its members without pointing out character flaws, ie. without "insulting" them as you put it. If I had to adhere to your standards, my position would be ruled out before I even had a chance to make my case.
In much the same way, saying that 'Ukraine would have quickly surrendered or suffered a quick defeat' is only correct in counterfactual realities. You could of course argue that if the West did not help Ukraine structure it's military prior to the invasion, no help of any kind was delivered (even from Eastern Europe) during the invasion, and magically granted Putin infinite domestic popularity, the war would've ended quickly. But at that point we are living in a different reality. A reality where Russia actually had the capability for a Desert Storm esque operation.
But point 3 was already a counterfactual by your own formulation of it. The claim that giving aid is prolonging the war is implicitly a comparison to the counterfactual in which aid isn't given. I suppose that if you are convinced that Ukraine is going to win, then a marginal increase in aid is expected to shorten the war, but there is no reason to suspect that proponents of point 3 mean are referring to marginal adjustments in the amount of help, and I think there are limits to how uncharitably you can impute their views before you are the one engaging in dark arts.
Western aid did not intensify
From the standpoint of someone like Vivek — or for that matter from the standpoint of someone who understands how present resources can be converted into revenue streams and vice versa — additional donations to the war effort do constitute an intensification of aid, even if the rate of resource transfers remain the same.
I believe this to be a part of an information gap. Not understanding Russia and Ukraine's true military capabilities. (understanding them is, of course, a key part of any geopolitical judgement, since otherwise you cannot tell whether a side is on the brink of defeat or victory). If Vivek was not aware of this gap, then he made an unqualified analysis, and if he was then his analysis is clearly wrong.
Supposing for the sake of argument that his analysis is conventionally unqualified, it does not imply that he has insufficient evidence to hold the position he does. A lot of evidence can be gleaned from which geopolitics experts said what, from which ones changed their mind, and the timing of when they did so, etc. In addition, this being a war of attrition as you pointed out, the key determination to make is who is better situated to win that war of attrition. How many able-bodied, working-age men does Ukraine have left, again?
But by the epistemic standards you have implied, he would need to be a domain expert to hold an opinion, which would leave him strikingly vulnerable to ultra-BS, and more importantly, would cede the whole playing field to technocracy from the get-go. Vivek is part of what could be called the "anti-expert faction".
Saying something relevant to an ongoing discussion (which it seems clear to me tailcalled's original comment was) while also hoping it will be persuasive to someone who has disagreed with you about something else is not "false pretenses".
He specifically wanted to convince me that Blanchardians are abusive, which massively distorts his judgement with respect to commenting on the justice of Zack's actions and LW's reception of him. Tailcalled ought to at the very least have disclosed these ulterior motives from the beginning.
An additional point to note is that after more than a decade of efforts to mend the relationship, I gave up and cut off contact with tailcalled. I had however given him the opportunity to reach out to me with a view to make amends, or otherwise to convince me that I had been wrong to cut him off. He exploited this offer and chose not to do either, and for some reason I went along with it, causing the past several months to have been a lot more torturous than they needed to be, but it was somewhat bearable because it was confined to that one email conversation.
Then he interacts with me here, not only to address the topic of Zack's post, but specifically to pursue his feud with me outside of emails.
It is certainly true that I am put off by your disagreeable manner. I do not think this is the halo effect.
That's not what I said. It's your being put off by my disagreeable manner that makes you subject to the halo effect when it comes to tailcalled's responses.
as for any opinions I may form, that's a matter of reasoning "if Cornelius had good arguments I would expect him to use them; since he evidently prefers to insult people, it is likely that he doesn't have good arguments"
But the things you deemed insults were actually critiques of his character, not mere insults, and most of those critiques were aimed at showing that he is being unjust towards Zack, with the few exceptions pointing out character flaws that are characteristic of many LessWrongers and not just him. It is simply not possible to argue in favour of my position without raising points of personal criticism, because those points of criticism are absolutely central to my position, and it is only the horns effect that makes you perceive them as mere insults.
Of course you might just enjoy being unpleasant for its own sake
No, I do not. I actually have quite a distaste for it, but when faced with an immensely abusive community such as this one, my only other means of defence is to plead for mercy, which is errosive to self esteem.
But in this case, since I am dealing with tailcalled in particular, even that would not work. I have learned from about more than a decade of abuse from him that this is the only viable defence. Problem is, if he is in a crowd of enablers who don't notice his bs because they are used to engaging in milder forms of the same abusive behaviour, then it will paint me as the abusive one.
It doesn't look to me as if tailcalled is being evasive; if anything he[1] seems to me to be engaging with the issues rather more than you are.
No, this is simply him having evaded my arguments for so long that he has managed to distort your impression of what is actually being discussed. The main issue is a critique of the rationalist community. That then led to an issue of tailcalled's injustice in judging the feud, and that in turn led to an issue of his evading my points.
If you trace back the lines of argumentation where I seem to be insulting him, you will find that what you deem insults are mostly accusations of injustice that were centrally relevant to the argument. Then, by endless nitpicking and evasiveness, and my insistence on maintaining the accusations of injustice through this obfuscation, they became increasingly separated from their original context, and you quite simply lost track of why I made them in the first place.
There are however also a few of them (edit: namely, the ones about self-serving bias) that only make sense in context of the private feud, and which are in response to remarks of his (eg. about the critical theory) that only look cruel if seen in context, which sorta illustrates what I mean about the false pretenses, because if he had disclosed them from the beginning, I would not have engaged at all.
Edit: I am also suspicious that he might have taken it here in part to present the feud in front of a crowd, with zero context, and specifically a crowd that is part of his culture and is likely to agree with him based on surface appearances, setting up false appearances of unanimity.
*edit: removed a fact that could be used to personally identify tailcalled
By sacrificing that status, I lost the ability to continue engaging in those things. For instance by criticizing Bailey on his core misbehavior, he did his best to get rid of me, which lost me the ability to continue criticizing him, thus closing off that angle of behavior.
Your self-serving bias is a bias and not a rational stance of calculated actions. It sways your reasoning and the beliefs you arrive at, not your direct behaviour towards Michael Bailey.
Is that getting your position right?
No. I am not making any point about what discourse selects for. I could make such points, but they would look quite different from what you have imputed. My point was about your behaviour and the psychology implied by it.
I then learned that they weren't interested in new information, especially not if it was disadvantageous to their political interests. It seems valid for me to share this to warn others who were in a similar position to me. If Blanchardians don't like this, they shouldn't have promoted me as their intellectual/researcher/teacher without warning me ahead of time.
Does this lead to Blanchardians getting held to higher standards than anti-Blanchardians? I suppose it does, because anti-Blanchardians openly announce their political biases, and so I wouldn't have felt betrayed in the same way by them.
I swear you are inventing more and more elaborate ways to miss the point. The issue is that you portray yourself as a reasonable mediator while having these asymmetric standards. I do not object to you holding Blanchardianism to higher standards when acting in your capacity as an expert critic of Blanchardianism, but here you were commenting on a feud between Zack and LessWrong, and my point was specifically that LessWrong's treatment towards Zack has been abusive, not that they have made more factual errors or that they were more ideologically motivated than him. Your position as an expert critic of Blanchardianism does not in the slightest justify an enormous bias in standards of behaviour when mediating a feud. It is irrelevant.
I suppose you might argue that you were not intending to act as a mediator, but that is precisely why it is objectionable that your behaviour is strongly goal-oriented to portraying yourself as a reasonable mediator willing to call out both sides when they are wrong.
False. It is not simply a way of "positioning myself above it all". It is also factually true; I spent the last few years, including much of the time I should have spent on e.g. education on it, so "so tired of it all" is a factual description of me, and similarly by any reasonable means of counting, I'm cut away from the discourse on this topic, so I am also defeated.
Again you nitpick a single word (in this case the word "simply") as a way of avoiding the issue. The point is that you described yourself as "so tired of and defeated by it all" as an argument that you are not positioning yourself above it all, as if the two were in conflict (hence your usage of the word "instead"), when in fact they are strikingly congruent.
I know more about the Blanchardian and Blanchardian-adj side than I know about the anti-Blanchardian side. More qualifiers are justified due to greater uncertainty.
I call bullshit again. There was no need for that qualifier. Sapphire's argument could have been used with minimal alteration to tell people off for being dissidents in nazi germany. It was overtly abusive and the qualifier was not necessary in the slightest.
But, if Blanchardians are insisting that they are focusing on etiology, then onlookers will concentrate on looking for whether Blanchardians have good etiological insights, and when they see there are none, it's not so surprising if they abandon it.
They really don't. They first see the sociological implications, not even of the position, but of the delivery, of the other stances held by the proponents, etc. You know this. Not only is this addressed extensively in the Sequences (eg. in politics is the mindkiller) but it is also something you yourself have frequently called out in the past, specifically pertaining to the reaction of the LessWrong community toward Blanchardianism. So I simply do not buy the argument that the proponents of Blanchardianism view it through a more sociological lens than the critics do. I do not even buy that you believe otherwise.
When I talk about disruptive transsexuality, this is not the factor I am talking about, and in fact anecdotally HSTSs tend to be elevated on the general factor of disruptiveness. I think this is what you might be getting at when you are talking about disruptive HSTSs?
No, I simply clicked your link and read what you wrote about the disruptive/pragmatic typology.
Maybe one could design a study that measures this factor, then show that there's a huge sexual orientation difference in it, and then switch to calling the factor "androphilic/nonandrophilic" or something, idk.
Androphilia is not however limited to HSTS's, as in the case of meta-attraction or whatever is the current explanation for why some trans women who psychologically resemble exclusively gynephilic trans women are also attracted to men. This latter case is also prone to being viciously oppressive to gay men.
Are there any publicly accessible healthy communities that you'd recommend I peek at as a starting point?
Not in the sense you probably mean by "publicly accessible". These days, public accessibility is almost impossible to reconcile with being a healthy community. The only way to maintain a healthy community at this point is to exclude the people who would destroy it.
But to give you an idea: a typical boxing gym, a traditional martial arts class, a group of fishermen, a scouting organization, or for that matter Bohemian smalltown is a very healthy community. I can also think of some healthy internet communities, but they are not publicly accessible.
I've recently taken a liking to htmx - see their discord here and twitter here. Is that some strain of narcissism too? (Cringemaxxing narcissism maybe?)
Yes. It is less unhealthy than the communities you are used to, which is probably why you like it, but it is still unhealthy. Cringemaxxing stems from profound insecurity and low self-esteem. People cringemaxx to preempt criticism, or to find cathartic release from their habitual vigilance against being cringy, or some other variety of either guardedness or catharsis. Cringemaxxers are, in fact, neurotics.
but I don't see anything manipulative or under-false-pretenses about what you're complaining about here.
He responded to me in a manner that seemed to only suggest an intention of addressing the subject matter of discussion in this post, not an intention of swaying my stance towards him in our private feud, but then in the text I quoted, he explicitly states that his purpose was to sway my stance in that private feud. That's practically the definition of false pretenses.
You're falling prey to the halo effect. You are put off by my more disagreeable manner, and so you impute other negative characteristics to me and become blinded to even very blatant abuses from tailcalled towards me. For my part, I am compelled to be very forcefully assertive by tailcalled's extreme evasiveness.
(And, for what it's worth, reading this thread I get a much stronger impression of "importing grudges from elsewhere" from you than from tailcalled.)
That's because you've fallen for his manipulation tactics. He literally admitted the false pretenses, stopping only short of actually using that label. His original reply to me was, by his own admission, motivated by the private feud, which means he was the one who imported a grudge from elsewhere, regardless of what vibe you are getting.
And the sole reason I am coming across as more begrudging than he is because he keeps evading the points so I have to keep directing him back towards them, making me appear forceful, which you may remember was precisely what I said would happen if I follow his prescription for defusing these manipulation tactics.
All of that is him manipulating you, and you have fallen for it.
But the thing is, Robin DiAngelo and other CRT people are constantly bluffing. They keep citing evidence for their beliefs that doesn't actually precisely pin down their position, but instead can accommodate a wide variety of positions. In such a case, it's not unreasonable or unexpected that people would pick and choose what ideas they find most plausible.
Good thing then that I'm calling you out on self-serving bias rather than special pleading, then.
I don't know to what extent this is just poor communication (maybe she does have the relevant evidence but doesn't cite it) or a grift (considering she axiomatically rejects innate racial differences, and falsely presents innate racial differences as the reigning ideological explanation for racial inequality, there's probably at least a nonzero element of grift).
It's a gift. She is doing precisely the same thing she is calling out other white progressives on, but when you think about it, that only corroborates her point that race grifting is something white progressives are liable to do.
The case with Scott Alexander seems like an exception to this, though? If Scott is someone who is extremely prone to not paying attention to this subject matter, then I am clearly not simultaneously contrasting myself with people who are extremely prone to paying attention to this subject matter. Instead I am making comments all over the place.
The two major factions in a controversy are rarely perfectly orthogonal. I am not suggesting that you are contrasting yourself with people who are extremely prone to paying attention to the subject matter, merely that you are setting yourself up as the moderate who fairly critiques both factions, despite actually having an absolutely immense bias in what standards you hold each side to.
But that doesn't mean I'm "above it all", instead I'm way deep into it all and I'm so tired of and defeated by it all.
Describing yourself as "so tired of and defeated by it all" is simply another way of positioning yourself above it all, differing only in that it insinuates a kind of martyrdom at the same time. Your behaviour is almost comically narcissistic.
Missing the point again — the point is simply that you use a lot more qualifiers when critiquing one side than the other, even if the former is actually behaving a lot worse. ESL or not, I am pretty sure you are able to tell that "sapphire is abusive" is a much more assertive formulation than "sapphire is arguably abusive", therefore I am inclined to call bullshit on your ESL excuse.
Body map theory is pretty stupid, but Zack hasn't really done much to address it (and I think for a while he might even have been sympathetic to it applying to HSTSs? Idk, I may be wrong).
Again missing the point, which is simply that Zack's discussion of these concepts actually did provide a lot of genuine value and insights, even if there were also many points where he was flatly wrong, and the total dismissiveness of the community, again, simply cannot be explained by flaws that were subtle enough for even you to take a while to discover them.
And again this gets to the meat of the issue.
No, this was simply me describing my impression of Michael Bailey. I am well aware that Blanchardianism is not a theory of sociology, and is not about masculinity and femininity.
Of course, these lines of thought would be insane if Blanchardianism was a sociological theory. A sane line of thought if Blanchardianism was a sociological theory would be something like the disruptive/pragmatic typology, though of course since Blanchardianism is claiming to be an etiological theory, it is instead absolutely insane to take the evidence for the disruptive/pragmatic typology as being some huge validation of Blanchardianism.
Disruptive HSTS's are however disruptive in very different ways than other disruptive trans women. In particular, HSTS's, disruptive or not, are much less likely to be extremely oppressive to gay men.
I mean it would be insane for me to just simply avoid those 2 pathologies. Instead I should ask more generally what the community is trying to achieve, whether it is good at achieving that, whether I want to achieve that and whether it would be helpful for me to be in it, whether it is responsive to critique and accountable, etc..
No, going with an immunity analogy, that will still only give you immunity to specific strains of narcissism as you learn to recognise them. What you ought to do instead is to find healthy communities so that you can train your system 1 to immediately recognise the difference between a healthy community and an unhealthy one. The approach you are using is much too vulnerable to self-deception.
But that's just the community side of things. You are still leaving unexamined the question of why those pathological communities appealed to you in the first place.
The issue at hand is a critique of the rationalist community. A community is the product of its members.
Although, in this particular case, part of the issue is that tailcalled is having a private feud with me on the side, which he decided to bring into this comment section under false pretenses, cf. his own words:
My actual motivation with my original comment was to try to point you at some of the areas in which Blanchardians are wrong or even abusive, since (in our other Discussion, in the emails) you were skeptical that my views are all that much driven by my experiences with Blanchardianism.
There is no excuse for this kind of manipulative behaviour, but it is par for the course when it comes to the LessWrong community and thus eminently relevant to critiquing that same community.
The apparently-not-critical-theory-but-instead-something-else impression I got still made me question a bunch of my past behavior.
Indeed, and some of those lines of questioning yourself did indeed lead to regrets — for a time. Until you walked back your few genuine displays of good faith (edit: excepting the one with the discord server, though you did weaponise my emphasis on that one against me, which is arguably similar to walking it back). That sort of thing gives me an impression that even the process of questioning your past behaviour is basically just a self-serving preemptive defence against criticisms such as this one.
If critical theorists have come up with some relevant theory, then feel encouraged to post it. I'm not going to be convinced by vague allusions to figures I don't know anything about.
Iirc it is mostly in its applied forms, as in critical race theory. Robin DiAngelo for example frequently argues that white progressives are just appropriating the language of the civil rights movement and of subsequent theories (CRT being one) in a way that doesn't properly engage with the issues and is really just a self-serving tactic to preserve their privileged position and their white saviour complex. I believe Herbert Marcuse also argued something similar in One-Dimensional Man, albeit obviously without the focus on race.
I've added one more way to feel above it all and congratulate myself on it? How?
Because, whether by calculation or (as I think) by political instinct, all your critiques of Zack's critics are goal-oriented towards making you appear as the sensible moderate as contrasted with the extremists on both sides, even though in point of fact I have had to practically drag you to make even this admission. At first you were describing sapphire as only arguably abusive, and even your previous comment you were still creating an outrageously one-sided portrayal of Zack's interactions with the community that simply portrayed his arguments as bad while glossing over the fact that he was pointing to a lot of real substance. Even after your break with Blanchardianism, you are after all still using most of the terminology that you were introduced to through Blanchardianism. There is real substance there, even if most (all?) of it predates Blanchard's own work, and the idea that the rationalist community dismissed it all simply because of flaws in Zack's arguments does not even come remotely close to being a reasonable characterisation. I think you know this on some level.
In short, your behaviour is goal oriented towards keeping up appearances of being a sensible moderate, charitable to both sides, while in actual fact having an absolutely immense bias.
- Zack... doesn't seem to have discussed brainsex much?
Not by that term, but that is what is implied when discussing whether LOGD is an intersex condition. It's not like he was referring to XXY chromosomes or some such.
I am not convinced you are correctly interpreting that market.
Approximately nobody in these rationalist debates are claiming that all MtFs are HSTS
Of course not. Almost none of them would've even encountered the term if not for Blanchardianism, which is the point I'm getting at. Previously they would have simply recognised HSTS's as "straight transwomen" and left it at that.
- It's not clear how you're asking it to be investigated, and Zack hasn't written much about this either. (I have extensive opinions about how it should be investigated! But nobody listens to me about this...)
It's not like I am criticising them for failing to spend lots of effort pursuing some particular line of investigation, just pointing out that their rejection of Zack simply cannot be explained by some flaws in Blanchardianism that took even you quite a while to uncover.
Look, I am going to be blunt and say that you have a profound proclivity for bullshitting and you really need to learn to get it under control.
Well, for one, because you don't seem to agree with me in the case of Zack.
Zack is being complicit in his own abuse in much the same way you are complicit in it, albeit to a lesser extent.
Also I'm not super convinced by your opposition to Michael Bailey as you probably don't know the specifics of that conflict. For all I know, you might support Bailey if you knew more. And considering that Michael Bailey did offer something like a debate, it seems like you need to be more specific about which subject you'd like to see me debate with him, in order for you to truly illustrate that you are not simply on his side.
I indeed don't know the specifics of that conflict; certainly not enough to be "simply on his side". I have however read your explanation of how he came to block you, and am willing to take your word for it, since it seems consistent with the vibe I get from him. He actually kinda reminds me of a very particular kind of annoying Catholic father figure[1]. So although I do not know the specifics of that conflict, I do know enough to have a negative overall impression of him, just going by vibes.
My bad impression of him has been sufficient to deter me from looking closer into him without a clear reason, though such a reason was to some extent granted by his view of femininity as you related them to me (something to the effect that straight men will never be truly feminine). There, I am probably mostly on his side, though I suspect he has less understanding of the more aristocratic kind of femininity that I consider more central to the concept.
Given that they were all abusive in like 2 very specific ways, yes, but also this makes me able to identify them in the future.
Yes, you will be able to identify these particular manifestations of narcissism, and thus find communities in which it manifests differently, in ways you are less aware of, and hence will have even less self-awareness of perpetrating. If there is an improvement implied here, I fail to see it.
- ^
and I say this as someone who both prefers Catholicism to Protestantism and patriarchy to feminism. There are nevertheless some very annoying, very prejudiced Catholic patriarchs in Texas, and he reminds me of them. I don't mean to imply that he actually is Catholic, of course.
In typical terms, ultra-BS is lying. (as in, you know you are wrong and speak as if you're right anyways). In my view, however, there's also an extension to that. If you are aware that you don't have knowledge on a topic and make wild assertions anyhow to support a narrative (say, if I declared that Kremlin whisperers are considering a coup against Putin) I would also be 'BS-ing'. I'm not lying in the traditional sense, as it's certainly possible I'm correct (however unlikely). But if I clearly don't have information then I can't act as if I do. Thus I'd consider some 'erroneous' arguments by Vivek to be bullshit, because it displays an information gap I have trouble believing he wasn't aware of.
I understand how you use the terms, but my point is that Vivek does not in fact demonstrate the information gap you impute to him. I am confident he would be easily able to address your objections.
The same cannot be said for 2) and 3), however.
The fact that the war has persisted for so long seems sufficient proof that, in the absence of the aid, Ukraine would have quickly surrendered or at worst suffered a quick defeat. In either case, the war would have been shorter. Point 3 is unambiguously correct, and even most people on your side of the issue would agree with that (ie. they believe that a large part of the reason Ukraine has been able to fight so long has been the aid)
With knowledge about the specific situation in Ukraine, you cannot reasonably believe 2) and 3).
There are lots of people of the realist school of geopolitics who know a lot about the specific situation in Ukraine and who nevertheless at least claim to believe 2. Are they all liars? I don't think so. I guess you could argue that they are all unreasonable and thus capable of believing it despite contrary evidence, but such a stance is again merely arguing that point 2 is erroneous, not that it is dark arts.
Is my position more clear now?
No. Your position was already quite clear from the original post. It's just incorrect, not unclear.
Is this correct?
Sort of, but you're missing my main point, which is simply that what Vivek did is not actually dark arts, and that what you are doing is.
His arguments, as you summarised them into bullet points, are topical and in good faith. They are at worst erroneous and not an example of bullshitting. You have convinced yourself that if he were to contend with your objections, he'd resort to surface level arguments about battlefield outcomes, pressing domestic concerns, etc., which actually would fall under your category of ultra-bullshit. Ie. you did in fact assume that he does not have substantive arguments in favour of, say, paleoconservative geopolitical principles, and you accuse him of practising dark arts simply on account of the response you assume he would come up with.
My dabbles in critical theory arose from and is almost entirely limited to my contact with Zack's associates, and from critical theorists seeming to describe pathologies that I have frequently faced from Blanchardians. As such, Blanchardianism basically screens off (in a probabilistic DAG sense) other critical theory topics for me. If critical theory says that my behavior in these topics is that of Bad Centrists, then I say "hmm then maybe those Bad Centrists were actually onto something, idk". I don't know anything about how combative Malcolm X was, nor do I know anything about William F. Buckley, I just know that Blanchardianism sucks, and if critical theorists don't know that then they lack basic information for commenting on this subject matter.
So the whole critical theory thing really was just self-serving, then. Funny, the critical theorists wrote about that, too.
I guess "Zack only recently began more directly calling out the rationalist community" is maybe a natural way for an outsider/newcomer to parse this conflict, idk. I don't find this parsing super intuitive because I immediately think of posts from 2018-2020 like this and this and this and this. But I was following his blog during this time, and these haven't really been discussed on LessWrong due to the "no politics!" restriction.
Look, I am really becoming quite impatient with this whole tangent of nitpicking one single adjective that was never particularly essential to my argument. There are older cases of him calling out the LessWrong community, some of them even before 2018, and there are also older cases of him being abused in various ways. His more recent interactions are met with an abusive reception more consistently than his older interactions. I am not going to bother continuing to defend my choice to use the phrase "constant abuse". My point stands without it, and as far as I can tell, there is no point to this endless nitpicking other than simply evading the actual argument.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that Zack is Simply Crazy And That's Why He's Doing This. I agree that Scott's weird stonewalling of him makes it worse.
Great, you've added one more way to feel above it all and congratulate yourself on it. Now if you could see how your own behaviour makes it worse, we might actually get somewhere.
I'm... somewhat ambivalent about describing sapphire as "Wielding massive social and financial pressures against thoughtcriminals, to silence them and champion a progressive cause"?
She didn't create the pressure, but she invoked it when talking about how he has gone insane and is losing friends, etc., and she certainly wielded it against him. But actually my point was simply that even the creation of such pressures is so widely accepted that your callout of sapphire's comparatively milder abuse would fly beneath the radar of most people, and thus not work effectively as a callout.
It doesn't seem to me that sapphire has been consistent enough towards this topic to be described as "constantly" anything
Hold on; I talked about the abuse he's been receiving as an explanation for his insanity, not as part of an accusation that sapphire was constantly abusing him. I was in fact in the process of collecting examples of abusive behaviour and other bad faith engagement, to use for a post about the existence of unintentional manipulation and other forms of bad faith that the perpetrator may not be aware of engaging in, because there is in the LessWrong community a completely erroneous implicit assumption that people are always aware when they're being manipulative. I wanted to make a post correcting this error, explaining some things about the boundaries of consciousness, about what it means for intents to be conscious, etc., and I wanted to illustrate it with examples of people unknowingly engaging in bad faith.
If we interpret sapphire as making a forceful threat, then Zack's poor writing doesn't justify the forceful threat. (On the other hand, if Zack was e.g. a university professor or a clinical researcher, then poor argument for his theories would justify a threat of firing - it'd literally be his job to do proper research.) This wasn't really how I interpreted it, and last I heard from Zack, it's not really something he has feared. But I guess I can see how one could interpret it that way.
I did not interpret it as a forceful threat either.
But... again if we take someone like Viliam, I think calling his comment "abuse" is just wrong? If Zack's original arguments against rationalists were bad, then rationalists shouldn't be convinced by them, and it's not that outrageous that that they sort of make a half-assed counter and then ignore the topic, and it's a relevant point to ask "but wait, what were your original arguments? doesn't this seem overly convoluted?".
The only way you're getting this analysis to sound reasonable at all is by omitting a lot of crucial points. For example, the cultishness of trans theory in assuming that gender dysphoria in an AMAB implies female brainsex, the fact that his arguments, though erroneous in some of the particulars, did point to a very real and very central point, which I will here just indicate as the point that not all MtFs are HSTS, whatever the explanation for the others, the disinterest in seriously investigating these issues at all, despite how massively they impact so many members of this community, etc. There was plenty of very real bad faith in the LW community's reception of Zack's points, well beyond what can be explained by factual errors, especially when they were the sort that took even you a considerable amount of time to discover.
My actual motivation with my original comment was to try to point you at some of the areas in which Blanchardians are wrong or even abusive
Most Blanchardians I have interacted with were TERFs, whom I consider to be some of the most dishonest, abusive people I have ever encountered. Even with our current falling out, I am still utterly enraged at how Rod Fleming treats you. He is probably in my top ten of least likeable people I have ever encountered. I am very annoyed at Michael Bailey's behaviour towards you, because I would very much have liked to see debates between you and him.
I am not sure why you think you need to convince me that Blanchardians are wrong and most of them abusive. I think it is worth pointing out that you are just now making the case that a community you interact with a lot, and which you were a part of for a long time, is wrong and abusive. You have made the same observation about a lot of other such communities. I don't remember the exact list, but I seem to recall that it included liberals (and perhaps antifeminists? idk).
Here's the kicker: I agree.
I also happen to think it might be fruitful for you to wonder if you might be drawn to these abusive communities, and whether the abusiveness might have been something of a constant throughout your changing affiliations, and whether it might not have persisted through your most recent such changes.
since (in our other Discussion, in the emails) you were skeptical that my views are all that much driven by my experiences with Blanchardianism.
Because, regarding your dabbles in critical theory, I was paying attention to the bright little spark of genuine contrition and good faith, not to the apparently much larger component that was merely self-serving. Perhaps I was being overly Christian.
Thanks for confirming my suspicions, since the precise wording must have been very embarrassing to intentionally delete without a trace, I won't pry, and I'll let bygones be bygones.
I already told you what the comment said. I deleted it not because I thought it was embarrassing, but because I thought it was irrelevant.
Is there some way for moderators or admins to identify the content of a deleted comment? If so, I give my permission for them to do so and state publicly what it contained.
I understand it can be a bit scary and frustrating when someone much more experienced and well established takes a counter-argument line
I have been in this community for over ten years.
This latest comment of yours is utterly disgraceful and contemptible by any reasonable standard. Purely an attempt to humiliate me, and on an entirely speculative basis. So much for "letting bygones be bygones", eh?
Yes, there was abuse before then, but it wasn't constant. It has since then become constant abuse. Do we really need to endlessly nitpick my usage of the phrase "constant abuse"?
I still think the word "constant" is sufficiently apt, but more importantly, my argument does not depend in the slightest on the aptness of that one particular word, yet here we are, idk how many comments in, still discussing it. That strikes me as merely a way to evade the point by endless nitpicknig.
The tactic consists of two prongs, both of which I have seen used in isolation in other places than LessWrong. I have not however seen both together with this switching tactic elsewhere. Non-rationalists may also dismiss arguments addressing the big picture by calling them baseless assertions or manipulative or conspiracy theories or whatever, but they will not be in the habit of prompting people to revisit underlying assumptions, and if the proponent does this of his own initiative, they might accuse him of spin and of making elaborate excuses to hold on to an obviously untenable view.
They will not however follow the discussion to these prior assumptions and engage with these, tracing it all the way back to the epistemology of classification, or by some other manner of obfuscation induce the proponent to write several pages of explanation, and only then turn around and accuse him of making things needlessly complicated. That, as far as I can tell, really does seem to be a tactic unique to the LessWrong crowd.
Edited to add:
For clarification, I don't think it's solely a matter of degree. The difference is that the LessWrongian approach has an intermediate step of encouraging the added complexity, instead of immediately making accusations of obfuscation. In the non-LW version, the approach is to accuse the overall argument of being baseless or manipulative, and then when more substantiation is added, to accuse the proponent of making excuses. The LessWrongian approach would at this state debate with these, accusing the additional substantiation of being insufficient or baseless or of simply not being argumentation at all, then keep this going for a while, and only after quite a long time turn around and accuse the proponent of obfuscation. That intermediate step is the crucial bit, because it obscures what is going on by causing people to lose track of the conversation, and it creates so many circumlocutions that the charge of obfuscation will seem credible to people who haven't noticed the tactic that was employed.
This is spot on, as is your subsequent point that the real defense is to simply be right and not let counterarguments change your mind. The fact that you are getting downvoted is a rather sad commentary on the state LessWrong has reached. What you are preaching is the twelfth rationalist virtue, which is really the culmination of all the others.
As I said, I don't know how one can consistently recognize traps like this. It seems exceedingly difficult to me, but that's what an actual defense would look like.
It is exceedingly difficult, but it can be learned. Unfortunately libertarianism (I get anarcho-capitalist vibes from you but I could be wrong) is itself captured by one of these traps, being basically a way of subverting leftism and turning it against itself. If you're curious, the Austrian school was "pure" in a sense up to and including Mises, but then Ayn Rand was heavily inspired by Mises and wrote Atlas Shrugged, which is a brilliant book but also profoundly flawed, in no small part because its sociology is basically Marxian. Rothbard, heavily influenced by Ayn Rand, then made Austrolibertarianism into a revolutionary ideology rather than a reactionary one. That is a trap.
I've figured out the correct answer: there is no such thing as a morally legitimate state.
Non-aggression principle? My own principle is best formulated by Alexander Pope: For forms of government let fools contest, whichever governs best is best (slightly paraphrased), or alternatively, the old Catholic doctrine: error non habet ius. There are correct and incorrect principles of government; correct governance is always legitimate; incorrect governance never is.
Embrace the light side. The liberal establishment is not an establishment at all; it is an interregnum by edgy rebels who are against the establishment, ie. the ancien régime. Revolution, like Protestantism[1], is a disease of the soul.
It seems exceedingly difficult to me, but that's what an actual defense would look like.
I can now return to this. The way to resist these artificial narratives is to simply learn to recognise archetypes in general. Archetypes of revolution, of patriarchy, of dark side epistemology, and so on. You will be able to see all the false narratives from the outside, as part of a larger worldview that subsumes them all.
I would love to do a quick rebuttal of libertarianism from a Carlylean standpoint, but unfortunately this is one of those issues where bullshit asymmetry applies. I can give a few pointers, however: libertarian theory is basically correct in its refutations of progressive economic policies, but there is a case to be made for political economy where the goal is something other than the maximisation of current GDP — averting the problem of the zero marginal product of labour, for example, by making labour artificially scarce. Yes, that is a tax and diminishes the productivity of the economy in the GDP sense, but it will nevertheless be conducive to general flourishing because productivity and flourishing, though aligned, are not the same. Mises understood this distinction, hence his insistence on keeping his economic theory descriptive only. Rothbard did not understand, being not quite on par with Mises. If you doubt this, just look at their faces to see which one was the greater man. As your name seems Indian to me, I would also recommend Late Victorian Holocausts as a helpful refutation of libertarianism.
I realise that various aspects of this comment are likely to be irritating. It is somewhat patronising and consists of various pointers and hints but not any actual arguments. I am making it because you stand out to me as someone who is a lot smarter than a typical member of this community, and you deserve the chance to take it to the next level by discovering the world entirely outside of the revolutionary bubble, rather than merely the ideologies at its periphery. It is presumably clear to you that OP is stuck inside a bubble like in the Matrix which you have broken out of. Problem is that it's a Matrix within a Matrix.
How to recognise traps? Break through all the layers of the bubble and all the traps will be as overtly parochial as OP's post is.
- ^
Not intended as an endorsement of Catholicism, but Catholicism is merely incorrect. It is not a psychic illness that distorts its believers' views of absolutely everything, including secular matters, the way that Protestantism does. Anarchism, incidentally, is a culturally Protestant ideology.
Have you given even a moment's thought to what Vivek might say in response to your objections? I get the impression that you haven't, and that you know essentially nothing about the views of the opposing side on this issue.
The three bullet points in your summary of his argument are not an example of dark arts just on account of seeming unconvincing to you. They are actual arguments that you may disagree with, and which you consider obviously stupid simply because you have no clue what response he would give to your objections, and so you blithely assume that he would have no response and that there is no more substance behind his arguments than what he is able to provide in that particular debate forum. That assumption is flatly incorrect.
Here are a few examples:
- Promotion of liberal/democratic values
That's literally the exoteric party line that even the people of your side do not believe in, if they are in-the-know. It's not about promoting liberal/democratic values, it's about safeguarding the pax americana to preserve a progressive technocracy within USA. One that is more Rousseauvian than liberal. Read some Mahan, Brzezinski, hell even Walter Lippmann or for that matter even Noam Chomsky should be fully sufficient to dispel this illusion.
Russian actions aren’t unique, however. Rather, history shows Russia acted very similarly in Georgia, where military force was used in response to threats of European integration. Yet, curiously, we do not see the same force applied to NATO member states. Finland’s accession did not spark a military invasion. The Baltics still remain safe from Russian military aggression. If there has been a consistent deterrent to Russia, it has been military force, vis-a-vis NATO membership.
Finland was already part of the geopolitical west as evidenced by its membership in the EU. Becoming a member of NATO did not constitute a threatening expansionist move the way that Ukraine's prospective membership does.
In all cases, we see countries asking to join NATO, not the other way around, because those countries understand that to defend their national sovereignty they need NATO membership as a safeguard against Russian invasion.
"Sovereignty" here being an interesting euphemism for being a protectorate of USA and the international order. What is the difference between suzerainty and sovereignty again? Let's ask Emer de Vattel, hm... Oops.
Well at least now we know why European covid policy, monetary policy, government spending, etc. is practically a carbon copy of USA. You may want to rethink some conclusions of which nations exactly are sovereign.
So appeasement doesn’t work. Who’d have guessed?
Ah there we have it, the cult of Churchill. Appeasement was a highly idealistic doctrine with its own fair share of issues compared to the geopolitics of the pre-Wilsonian era, but compared to the deranged foreign policy USA is pursuing these days, it works like a charm, and would have sufficed in WW2 as well if followed in a principled manner. See eg. Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker or Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War by Pat Buchanan. Incidentally, Pat Buchanan got that phrase, "the unnecessary war", from none other than Churchill, who was indeed referencing WW2 which he deemed unnecessary in hindsight. Even Churchill himself, the absolute maniac, was not quite maniacal enough to be a Churchillian.
If Ukraine falls, the Baltics are likely next, and the world will face the terrifying prospect of a clash between nuclear powers. And, as America is distracted, maybe a Taiwan Strait Crisis as well.
It is facing that prospect as it is. Being excessively bellicose does not diminish the danger, or at least not so obviously as you seem to be implying.
What about Ukraine? Ukrainians have died in the hundreds of thousands to defend their country. Civil society has mobilized for a total war. Zelensky retains overwhelming popular support, and by and large the populace is committed to a long war.
Is this the picture of a people about to give up? I think not.
Indeed not; it is the picture of sunk cost fallacy in a case with tragically high stakes.
Though wrong, his answers are straightforward, and reflect a clear, internally cohesive narrative. The uninformed judge cannot tell him from someone with a genuine understanding of geopolitics. In fact, he’s far more convincing than his opposing candidates, who defend Ukraine aid with overt emotional appeals.
Because his opposing candidates, with their "overt emotional appeals" are the dark side, and Vivek is constrained by the debate medium and by time limitations. Likewise, I am constrained by having to get at very deep disagreements and a profoundly distorted view of history held by the establishment, more than can possibly be overcome in a comment, or even a post. It would require several entire books, or at least many very lengthy conversations in a very different spirit than some hot button debate about a pressing topic.
So I understand if this comment seems annoying on account of just referencing a bunch of books. But the point I am trying to make is not really about the geopolitics of the Ukraine situation, but rather about the fact that these books do exist, that you have very little familiarity with them and yet consider yourself informed on the issue, that even if Vivek has not read these books, the ideas they contain are part of the discourse in his political sphere.
You have not shown a way to defend against the dark arts. You have shown a way to defend the dark arts.
See the thing is for a long time I used to think Zack's ultimate point was his original tagline, but as I kept pushing him more and more to focus on empirical research in the area instead of on arguing with rationalists, eventually he stopped me and corrected me that his true point wasn't really trans etiology anymore, it was philosophy of classification.
True point =/= ultimate point. The ultimate point is where your line of argumentation terminates, whereas the true point is simply the point you care most about in the given moment. At this point it appears to me that his focus has shifted all the way to calling out "the blight" or "epistemic rot", ie. the apparent decline of a community he loves or loved. That, then, would be his present true point, though the ultimate point is nevertheless the one corresponding to his original tagline.
The other two topics can't be relegated to secondary relevance in this way. This post is a critique of the rationalist community, but it's a critique with respect to the philosophy of classification (and autogynephilia?), and so understanding the point of the original conflict around philosophy of classification is a necessary condition for understanding the meaning of the critique of the rationalist community.
That is what I meant by "secondary", though, in analogy to how a necessary instrumental goal is sometimes described by non-LessWrongers as being secondary to their final purpose.
Overall, I don't think the pattern is as bad as you say.
Most of those posts are from before the thing I call "constant abuse" began on LessWrong. It started when Zack began more directly calling out the rationalist community. The only post you gave as an example from this period was the Assume Bad Faith one, and that one wasn't one in which he directly addressed any of the three topics enumerated (LOGD not being an intersex condition, philosophy of classification, critique of LW), so it is not actually a counterexample of the trend I am talking about. If you look at his recent posts on these topics, you will find that the pattern of abuse began at some point and was a constant occurrence since.
Of course, he was having some mental health issues before then, but as his chronicle shows, he was being met with a lot of abuse well before that abuse became a constant trend in his LessWrong comment sections in particular. The reason I attribute his present mental health issues to the present constant abuse, however, is that I don't think of mental illness as a switch that's turned on somehow and then remains turned on, caused by the initial trigger. I attribute his past mental illness to past abuse, and his present mental illness to the current stream of abuse, ie. the one I referred to as "constant abuse". While I have no doubt that there are endogenous factors to his mental illness (eg. his decision to try to save this sinking ship that is LW rather than walking out on it), I don't think those are the main factors that make him deviate from baseline mental health. That seems distinctly attributable to the mistreatment of him, rather.
One of the abusers was sapphire, who I posted a pretty decisive rebuttal to. Is this not putting her in her place? There was a subtext of "you seem to be part of the forces that are trying to control Zack", would it have been sufficient to surface this subtext?
Potentially. The way your comment was written was decidedly insufficient, however. Wielding massive social and financial pressures against thoughtcriminals to silence them and champion a progressive cause — is so ubiquitous and widely accepted that a subtext is certainly not sufficient social punishment for someone who evidently takes such controlling behaviours (and her right to them) for granted, and indeed sapphire responded to your comment with more of the same abuse: "I don't think we should help him convince other people of a position that seems to have driven him kinda insane."
More importantly, when I called out the abuse more directly[1], you immediately made a comment that seemed to imply that the constant abuse could not be the reason for what sapphire calls his insanity, by arguing that the abuse was not constant. In this comment, you also described sapphire's mistreatment of him as being merely "arguably" abusive, when it quite clearly had the form of a bully telling the victim that he shouldn't have picked the losing side — a grossly and overtly abusive behaviour. You then characterised what seems to me like an abusive pattern of weaponised confusion and the catch 22 tactic I mentioned earlier as being merely "unstructured and unproductive" rather than abusive, and attributed to this to what you deem as flaws in Zack's writings. That is you using the very same abusive tactic to downplay the abuse he is being met with.
Also, whatever flaws his writing may have, none of them come even close to justifying the way in which he is treated, and your initial comment in this thread obscured this important point by way of blaming the victim with a semi-plausible critique of his writing.
By being less abusive than sapphire and simultaneously two-siding it with "to be fair, they do have a point that Zack's writing is unclear", you are juxtaposing these two criticisms and making the case seem a lot more even than it is. One side is engaging in gross overt abuse against someone who has been gaslit by progressive ideology, the other side writes posts that are too long and meandering. Guess I'll take the middle ground. Also worth noting that you wrote considerably more words to criticise Zack's writing than to call out sapphire's abusive behaviour. You effectively set yourself up to appear as a sensible middle-ground, creating a position of compromise between Zack and his abusers, which is frankly worse than anything sapphire did, but even setting that whole tactic aside, you were also being directly abusive to him yourself as I pointed out two paragraphs ago.
It is true that I have come up with opinions about how Zack should communicate his message, but I don't really think it is accurate to characterize it as me setting myself up as a helpful mediator. A lot of it comes down to the fact that I have spent the past few years researching transgender topics for my own purposes, for a long period believing in autogynephilia theory, but then uncovering a wide array of flaws.
I am again in the position of having to remind you that being incorrect about factual issues is not a sufficient justification for others to engage in vicious abuse against you. Also, it was specifically your behaviour in this comment thread that I am characterising as setting yourself up as a helpful mediator. Your comment in this thread was not directed at Zack, pointing out flaws in his autogynephilia theory, but directed at me, undermining my attempt to call out sapphire's blatantly and grossly abusive behaviour.
I don't think this is true because if it gets off track one can sort of take stock and "regroup", getting rid of irrelevant side-threads and returning to the core of it.
That approach does not diffuse the moral opprobrium levelled against a person for being long winded or making baseless assertions. These "regroupings" can equally well be engaged in by the person wielding the abusive tactic as by the person trying to defend himself against it, but it is typically the abuser and not the defender who has more experience controlling and weaponising the complexity of a discussion.
Not sure I understand this.
The defensive person is in the position of having to demand regroupings, or else of trying to simply impose them. Either one gives a weapon to the attacker if done repeatedly.
I'm not even sure who you say I am enabling in that link - Jiro or S. Verona Lišková? Both?
That's beside the point. The point is that you are not the recipient of the abuse and so your situation is fundamentally different, and the only reason it even looks successful is because it manages to set you up as a reasonable mediator who is above it all, thus flattering your narcissism.
My take is that I am consistently able to navigate rationalist conversations about autogynephilia theory or sex differences without getting caught up in these sorts of issues.
My take is that that reflects negatively on your own communication tactics and merely indicates being skilful at manipulation, though in this case it is probably as simple as two-sides'ing everything. Your take reminds me of the "white allies" who say that Malcolm X was setting himself up for trouble by being too combative, or, on the other end of the political aisle, of William F. Buckley trying to clean up the mainstream right by silencing eg. libertarians, paleoconservatives, and populists. I believe your recent dabbles in critical theory have taught you something or other about this social dynamic, which is itself a part of the abuse I am accusing the LessWrong community of being guilty of.
- ^
Incidentally I was sorely tempted to invoke Godwin's law and point out that she could've wielded the same tactic against frustrated, embittered dissidents living under nazism, and with only very slight variations she could've used it to condemn the Edelweiss pirates, the swings, etc., eg. "I don't think we should help him convince other people of a position that seems to have gotten him ostracised and driven him into trouble with the SS". Granted, it was "mere" psychiatrists that Zack had gotten in trouble with.
Do you realize I can see when you've posted replies and then 'deleted them without trace' immediately afterwards? The mods can too.
For any others wondering, the deleted comment simply said "... That's what I get for engaging with a blatant troll", or something to that effect. It was because M. Y. Zuo's manipulative bs had made me forget my actual reasons for engaging, and I deleted the comment when I remembered what they were.
But it seems superfluous at this point, since any reasonable person can tell that M. Y. Zuo's behaviour is absolutely reprehensible. But I also have to admit that any such person can also tell that I've "bitten the bait" and engaged with him too long, to the point where my behaviour has become ridiculous and embarrassing.
There is a lot of wisdom to Mark Twain's admonition to never argue with a fool, lest they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience — wisdom which, I am sorry to report, I seem to have not yet learned.
I can't possibly hope to convince you when you are engaging in abysmally bad faith. My purpose is to call you out, because you should not be getting away with this shit.
On another note, I did in fact "list out actual arguments", exactly as you said. I can only surmise that they didn't satisfy the "criteria of the counter-party", and for some unguessable (/s) reason, you once again will not give even the slightest indication of what you deem to be insufficient about them.
How exactly am I supposed to convince an interlocutor who will not even explain why he is unmoved by the arguments provided? Again, this is insane.
Since you seem to have completely lost track of what actually happened, I will remind you:
- Zack made this post and was met with a barrage of abuse
- Some of the abusers were blaming Zack for making a post that random passersby might not care about
- I pointed out that the people making this critique had in fact interacted much more with the post than somebody who genuinely wouldn't care
- You pointed out that these people had interacted with the post in ways beside the one I just mentioned
- I pointed out that this obviously corroborates my point rather than detracting from it
- Instead of addressing this obvious point, you just called it incoherent and started delivering a barrage of insults instead of making any actual arguments
Ie. you are the one just asserting opinions, whereas I made arguments, and then pointed out the arguments when you denied their existence, and now you seem to be asserting that your opinion is just as valid as mine, a thinly veiled "that's just your opinion, man", while still ignoring the actual arguments rather than actually addressing them. That is insane.
The thing is this tactic needs the cooperation of both participants to work. If the participant getting attacked with the catch 22 just makes a clear description of the central point, and then writes quick clear answer to each sidetracking about how they are sidetracking, it's easy to resist.
No it doesn't, it just requires that the person engaging in the tactic is sufficiently persistent to resume immediately after the victim of the tactic has defused it using the defence you recommend. The tactic will succeed if there's even the slightest failure in the victim's vigilance, and your prescription still not only leaves the victim on the defensive, but also (at least in the example conversation you linked) puts the person using this defensive tactic in the position of having to make demands, which may well become repetitive if the attacker is being persistent, and which on that account opens further vulnerabilities.
Also, your example gives a grossly distorted picture because, 1., it is a case in which you are playing the role of a "helpful mediator", or, more bluntly, that of an enabler, and 2., the tactic I am describing was not particularly central to the strategy of either person's side in that particular case. It simply is not a relevant example to any appreciable degree.
I disagree, because Zack's Ultimate Point is also somewhat unclear to me.
Because you like other LessWrongers are in the habit of being fooled by your own manipulations, such as the aforementioned weaponised confusion, and even then you have correctly identified Zack's ultimate point in your reference to this original tagline.
That said, if he was purely making a philosophical point about locally valid types of reasoning for classification, then that would be OK. What I'm saying is that part of what shapes the conflict a lot is that people don't really believe that he is purely making a philosophical point about classification.
Valid principles of classification are valid even if their proponents are advocating them with a view to some other, more specific point, and the fact that he has that point in mind when making posts about those principles of classification does not alter the fact that such posts are about principles of classification and not about the points he plans to make with them. This is not merely a high-decoupling vs low-decoupling thing; I am not suggesting that people should feign ignorance of his broader point, simply pointing out that the fact that he may advocate some principles of classification as part of a more specific line of argumentation about autogynephilia does not in fact create ambiguity surrounding the thesis/theses of a single given post. They can still straightforwardly be classified as making a point about autogynephilia, about the philosophy of classification, about the flaws of the rationalist community, or some combination of these. This post is clearly mainly a critique of the rationalist community, with the other two topics being secondary to that.
I do think there are gains to be made in increasing cooperativeness, but my experience is that there tends to be a need for greater order
I think there has been an excess of cooperativeness. Setting yourself up as a helpful mediator between Zack and his abusers is an injustice to Zack. The abusers need to be put it in their place, rather.
Like I said, one person's opinions regarding the supposed characteristics of another's comments simply cannot outweigh the opinions of anyone else.
Utterly irrelevant since I never asked anybody to take my opinions as outweighing their own.
But if you genuinely want to productively engage, I'll give one final chance:
Can you offer some actual proof or substantive backing, not in edited comments, for at least half of all the stuff written so far?
Again, I have already presented arguments for my case. If you do not consider them sufficiently substantive, then I invite you to tell me what you see as the flaw, or why you deem them insufficient.
"Constant" implies some notion of uniformity, though, doesn't it? Not necessarily across critics as it could also be e.g. across time, but it seems like we should have constancy across some axis in order for it to be constant.
Yes, pretty much every time he makes a post on this topic, he is met with a barrage of abuse.
I'm not completely sure what you mean by "weaponization" of confusion.
There is this particular tactic I have seen from LessWrongers[1] and nowhere else. It consists of a catch 22:
- if you make a simple informal point, eg. calling attention to something absurd and pointing out its absurdity, your argument will be criticised for being manipulative or consisting of baseless assertions, or perhaps your interlocutor will simply deny that you made an argument at all, and you will be called upon to formalise it more or in some other way make the argument more rigorous.
- if you make a detailed point covering enough ground to address all the obfuscations and backtracking, then you will be accused of obfuscating, people will claim they are confused about what you mean, and they will blame you for the confusion, and still other people, believing themselves to be helpful mediators, will assert that your central point isn't clear.
This tactic is a "fully general counterargument", but also, either prong includes some amount of moral condemnation and/or ridicule for the person putting forward the argument. It is just about the single most toxic debate tactic I have ever seen anywhere, and if you call out some instance of it, your detractors will simply use this very same tactic to dismiss your calling it out.
Ten years ago, this community was a force for unusual levels of clarity and integrity. Now it seems to be a force for unusual levels of insanity and dishonesty, but because most people here seem to believe that dishonesty is always intentional, and that intent is always honest, they implicitly assume that it is impossible to be dishonest without being aware of it, and thus a lot of the worst offenders manage to convince themselves that they are perfectly or almost perfectly honest. By contrast, when people engage in similarly toxic flamewars on eg. twitter or reddit, they are at least usually not in deep denial about being eristic in their argumentation; they do not usually pride themselves on their good faith at the same time, and on that account they are still not quite as dishonest as many LessWrongers have become.
What I mean is that Zack's Ultimate Point is unclear.
Only because his critics insist on endless obfuscation.
LessWrongers may not behave this way with non-political topics, but do they behave this way with well-communicated political topics?
Yes, but in such cases they will also go into denial about those political thoughts being well-communicated.
It's definitely justified to hold politically sensitive discussion to higher standards than non-political discussion
I suggest these fine people start with holding their own political discussion to a higher level, then.
- ^
Intended here to include LessWrong-adjacent people like ACX'ers, EAs, etc.
I acknowledge my own comments may seem to be low quality or 'bad' in your eyes, but to post even lower quality replies is self-defeating.
I didn't. Mine at least contained actual arguments.
Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
The text you quoted makes a specific argument that you once again chose to simply insult instead of addressing it. Again, your behaviour speaks for itself.
At this point it has become abundantly clear that you are simply a troll, so I will not bother to engage with you henceforth.
There hasn't been a coherent argument presented yet, hence why I directly pointed out the incoherency...
No, you did not, you added a fact that further corroborated the argument, as my reply showed.
Since this is the second deflection in a row, I'll give one more chance to answer the previous direct questions:
I have already directly answered the first question: no, I am not confused about the terminology. I have also answered the assumptions implicit in the question and shown why the question was irrelevant. Of course, both that one and the subsequent questions were merely insults disguised as questions, and your accusation that I am deflecting is mere hypocrisy and projection.
Where are your manners?
I'm not sure "constant abuse" is accurate. Zack's interlocutors seem to vary from genuinely abusive (arguably applicable to sapphire's comment) to locally supportive to locally wrong to locally corrective, but most significantly his interlocutors seem unstructured and unproductive for the conversation.
I did not say that his critics are uniformly abusive, merely that he is being met with constant abuse. This can still be the case even if only some of his interlocutors are abusive. I think "constant abuse" is a fitting description of the experiences recounted in Zack's post, not to mention that it seems aptly justified by simply looking at this comment section.
It's not abusive to be genuinely confused.
As you say, there are aspects that they may legitimately be confused about, but those do not cover the whole of the issue, and even these do not justify the weaponisation of that confusion as seems to have become a favourite tactic of his more toxic detractors, whose favourite tactics seem to include:
- Obfuscate endlessly to force Zack to revisit basic principles that were previously noncontroversial, then blame him for the added complexity
- Declare imperiously that Zack and/or his supporters are being incoherent and poorly reasoned without even bothering to make actual counterarguments
- Blame him for not being interesting enough
That said, I don't know whether fixing Zack's bad communication/Bad Takes would fix the conflict.
It quite clearly wouldn't. The abuse he is being met with comes from people having glimpses of the politically incorrect aspect of his positions, not from bad takes, which the abusers themselves make free to engage in and thus is only something they take issue with when the outgroup does it.
But it seems to me like even that could generate less mental illness, as it could be less ambiguous that what is left is simple conflict rather than Zack genuinely being importantly mistaken.
That is already quite unambiguous. LessWrongers do not behave this way when it comes to non-political topics[1], even if they deem someone to be seriously mistaken. Any such ambiguity is purely the result of motivated reasoning, or more specifically: their habitual tactic of weaponising confusion.
- ^
I am including the controversy surrounding Duncan Sabien and Said Achmiz as political due to the centrality of LessWrong moderation policy to the dispute.
You are not even pretending to address the argument at this point, you are merely insulting it and me. I think your latest reply here speaks for itself.
That incoherence you speak of is precisely what my previous comment pointed out, and it pertains to your argument rather than mine. As my previous comment explained, engaging with a post even just to call it uninteresting undermines any proclamation that you do not care about the post. If your engagement is more substantive than this, then that only further calls into question the need to shame the author for making posts that random passing readers might not care about.
Edited to add:
The 'random passing reader' refers to all readers within a few standard deviations of the average, but not to literally every single reader.
i.e. Those who have no strong views regarding Zack either way.
Hence it's unsurprising, and implied, that there are outliers.
Are you confused about this terminology?
If the outliers are sufficiently many to generate this much discussion, and they include such notable community members as Said Achmiz, then the critique that random passing readers might not spend hours on it is clearly asinine, regardless of the exact amount of standard deviations you include. I am not "confused about this terminology", I am just calling out your bad faith engagement.
I guess it's just not very clear to me why Michael Vassar doesn't consider them to be highly blameworthy.
It is the bad faith engagement which I deem abusive, especially given the context, not the disagreement.
Even if Zack happens to be right, the fact that people do not update about something they don't care about and which cannot be sufficiently simply explained, is not evidence of them being "fake", "corrupt", "epistemically rotten", "enemy combatants", or any other hysterical hyperbole.
The complexity you complain about is not Zack's fault. His detractors engage in endless evasiveness including God-of-the-gaps style arguments as ChristianKI pointed out, and walking back an entire LW sequence that was previously non-controversial, simply because it has become politically inconvenient. The reception is so hostile that Zack is required to go practically all the way back to first principles, even needing to briefly revisit the modus ponens.
Phrases like "epistemically rotten" and "enemy combatants" are not a hysterical hyperbole to describe that. Zack chooses these terms because he is too agreeable to call a spade a spade and point out that the rationalist community has become outright evil.
See, this is an example of the bad faith engagement that lies close to the core of this controversy.
People who do not care about a post click away from it. They do not make picket signs about how much they don't care and socially shame the poster for making posts that aren't aimed at random passing readers. Whether a post is aimed at random passing readers is an abysmally poor criterion for evaluating the merits of posts in a forum that is already highly technical and full of posts for specialist audiences, and in point of fact several readers did care enough to spend hours of their time on it.
The insanity is more reasonably attributed to being met with constant abuse (which your comment is ostensibly an example of) than to his positions on epistemology or the ontology of gender. Also, Zack has already explained that he has something to protect, which is existentially threatened by his detractors. The implication of your sentiment seems to be that he should simply give up on what is precious to him and pick the winning side. This is not the standard you would be applying if you were engaging in good faith.
Hmmm... what if I require intent but the intent needs not be conscious? What makes intent specifically conscious is simply that you model yourself as having the intent; a kind of map-territory correspondence between your intent (territory) and your self-model of your intent (map). We can be conscious of our intentions, but it is not the intentions themselves that are conscious.
In fact, I consider it more dishonest for people to have dishonest intentions they are unaware of than for them to knowingly lie. Insofar as the liar is not making excuses even in his own mind, I would call it an "honest lie" — a term I take from Nietzsche, whose point was that most people of his time are insufficiently honest to be capable of such a lie.
As for the content axis, I am content-neutral.
My thinking on this point is that the only proper way to respect a great work is to treat it with the same fire that went into making it. Grovelling at Niels Bohr's feet is not as respectful as contending with his ideas and taking them seriously — and expending great mental effort on an intense, focused interlocution is an act of profound respect.
There's a difference between that and discourtesy like what is displayed in the movie scene. Extending courtesy to a kind and virtuous person is a simple matter of justice. Comparing his face to a frog is indelicate, whereas admitting plainly that you find him unattractive is equally as honest without being as hurtful. If he wants a more specific inventory of his physical flaws, he can ask for elaboration.
In The Latter-Day Pamphlets, Thomas Carlyle made a big deal about something he called the human intellect, the beaverish intellect, and the vulpine intellect. With regards to school assignments, these map more or less straightforwardly to the pursuit of excellence in the moment for its own sake, the "good enough" mindset associated with the Chinese phrase "cha bu duo", and finally plagiarism and other forms of cheating.
Of these three, only the former can provide a schoolchild with a profound sense of fulfilment and self-esteem. This does not mean that everyone other than geniuses are screwed. Instead, most children should be working on either (edit: easier) material, but should learn it to a higher level of fluency. School in this vision should not be aimed at giving you access to universities for the sake of some credential race, but simply at teaching you skills and rectitude and making you able to take pride in your work.
This then is my vision of what childhood should be: children should learn to read and write, but instead of their classes focusing on giving them as broad a knowledge as possible of these fields, spanning every gimmicky type of fad literature that was popular in some decade or other, they should focus on the fundamentals and develop these so that they can write with clarity, dignity, confidence, etc. Likewise, they should learn mathematics. Introducing them to sociology, philosophy, etc. is however pointless as children do not have the life experience to grasp these at any but the most superficial level, not to mention that it is a rare schoolteacher who is capable of teaching them.
Aside from that, they should get work experience, ideally something more or less artisanal in nature. This needs not be traditional crafts like tailoring, but also modern crafts like gamedev, audio engineering, etc. They should of course learn to work seriously and be paid for their work.
In addition to that, they should of course still have plenty of time to play and experiment with things.
This is in many ways a form of preparation for adulthood, but because the children would be achieving excellence in easier tasks instead of struggling at harder tasks, it will also be fulfilling in the short term, not to mention that the skills are much more likely to stick than present schooling is.
The term "altruism" was at the time of The Fountainhead's writing — or at least at the time of Ayn Rand's youth — used in a much stronger sense than it is now, referring not only to a disposition towards charity, but to something more along the lines of what we'd now describe as selflessness. Since then, memes favourable to self-affirmation have entered the dominant culture from the integration of sexual minorities and especially the black gay scene. Thus, the apparent discrepancy in vocabulary is to at least a certain extent a generational gap.
Setting that aside, I think there is an important distinction between having unnatural categories that lump completely separate phenomena together and having coherent categories that are systematically being used as smears in a case they don't properly refer to. If for example some culture is in the habit of referring to atheists as idiots, it does not mean they are using the word "idiot" in a sense that conflates these two phenomena, but simply that they are trying to insult atheists.
While that distinction is obvious in this case, I do believe it is often accidentally erased in the name of linguistic descriptivism. The meaning of a word is not merely how it is commonly used, but what people intend to convey by it. When people accuse someone of selfishness, they really do mean someone who is highly egocentric and doesn't care about other people. In Ayn Rand's time, it was of course used somewhat more broadly, since it was also considered selfish to care about your own friends, your own family etc. more than your fellow countrymen or indeed the whole human race.
Howard Roark's line there is indeed alluding to the tendency of people to conflate selfishness with narcissism, which does constitute failure to carve reality along the joints, but a similar conversation with Gail Wynand clearly implies that Roark believes this unnatural category stems from people being mistaken about the psychology behind narcissism. Ayn Rand's position is that people have a profound antipathy towards selfishness as she uses the term, much more so than they do towards narcissism of the Peter Keating variety, and that when they do on occasion want to decry narcissism, they do it by associating it with selfishness.
I think you have profoundly misunderstood Ayn Rand's novels. The position you attribute to her, that even self-proclaimed altruists are secretly selfish, is known as descriptive egoism and is something Ayn Rand fervently disagreed with. Her refutation of this view is actually a major part of both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
There's a moment where James Taggart realizes that he was never motivated by material greed:
It was not the knowledge of his indifference to money that now gave him a shudder of dread. It was the knowledge that he would be equally indifferent, were he reduced to the state of the beggar. There had been a time when he had felt some measure of guilt—in no clearer a form than a touch of irritation—at the thought that he shared the sin of greed, which he spent his time denouncing. Now he was hit by the chill realization that, in fact, he had never been a hypocrite: in full truth, he had never cared for money. This left another hole gaping open before him, leading into another blind alley which he could not risk seeing.
What this is getting at is that wealth was merely a means for him to achieve admiration in the eyes of others. While this may still seem selfish, the key realization here is that what he sought admiration for was not his real self, but a facade that was constructed specifically for the purpose of being liked and admired, and which was shaped on the basis of the ideals of others rather than his own ideals. That is, he wishes for others to like not his true self, but the character he has constructed in reverence to their values and prejudices, not even his own.
Here's a second quote where Howard Roark reflects on Peter Keating's life:
"I’ve looked at him--at what’s left of him--and it’s helped me to understand. He’s paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself that he’s been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness--in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy--all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn’t want to be great, but to be thought great. He didn’t want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others. There’s your actual selflessness. It’s his ego he’s betrayed and given up. But everybody calls him selfish."
You can of course agree or disagree with the reasoning, but she is pretty unambiguously repudiating descriptive egoism.
Ayn Rand's theory of narcissism is that it stems from a lack of confidence in one's ability to survive / thrive independently, so that popularity becomes vitally necessary for one's flourishing. A person confident that he can "make it", in some sense, "on his own" will have a tendency to only care about the opinions of people whose judgements he respects. Compare the following quote from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:
"I don't know how to explain to you," Hermione said in a sad soft voice. "I'm not sure it's something you could ever understand, Harry. All I can think of to say is, how would you feel if I thought you were evil?"
"Um..." Harry visualized it. "Yeah, that would hurt. A lot. But you're a good person who thinks about that sort of thing intelligently, you've earned that power over me, it would mean something if you thought I'd gone wrong. I can't think of a single other student, besides you, whose opinion I'd care about the same way -"
(Incidentally, I think Yudkowsky is a lot more influenced by Ayn Rand than he realizes and/or is willing to admit)
Ayn Rand's position is that people are usually born with a certain love of life and confidence in themselves and eagerness to face the world. Some of them lose this, and acquire a feeling of helpless dependence on others, which in turn leads them to value popularity to an unhealthy extent, leading to a narcissism that erodes their sense of self as they more and more habituate to performing a character act shaped according to the values, prejudices, and whims of others.
For this reason, the Danish translation of The Fountainhead has a title which literally means "only a strong person is free". She would almost certainly have been infuriated at this title, but I think it actually fits pretty well with her view.
It is not describing memetics, which I regard as a mostly confused framework that primes people to misattribute the products of human intelligence to "evolution".
New memes may arise either by being mutated from other memes or by invention ex nihilo - either of which involves some degree of human intelligence. However, if a meme becomes prevalent, it is not because all of its holders have invented it independently. It has rather spread because it is adapted both to the existing memetic ecosystem as well as to human intelligence. Of course, if certain memes reduce the likelihood of reproduction, that provides an evolutionary pressure for human intelligence to change to be more resistant to that particular kind of meme, so there are very complex interactions.
It is not a confused framework - at least not inherently - and it does not require us to ignore the role of human intelligence.
Memetic evolution in this context would not have inclusive genetic fitness as its "outer" objective, so whether memetic evolution can "transfer the skills, knowledge, values, or behaviors learned by one generation to their descendants" is irrelevant for the argument I was making in the post
My argument is that evolution selects simultaneously for genetic and memetic fitness, and that both genes and memes tend to be passed on from parent to child. Thus, evolution operates at a combined genetic-memetic level where it optimizes for inclusive genetic-memetic fitness. Though genes and memes correspond to entirely different mediums, they interact in complex ways when it comes to evolutionary fitness, so the mechanisms are not that straightforwardly separable. In addition, there are social network effects and geographic localization influencing what skills people are likely to acquire, such that skills have a tendency to be heritable in a manner that is not easily reducible to genetics, but which nevertheless influences evolutionary fitness. If we look aside from the fact that memes and skills can be transferred in manners other than heredity, then we can sorta model them as an extended genome.
Not really. The only way our understanding of the biology of taste impacts the story about humans coming to like ice cream is that we can infer that humans have sugar detecting reward circuitry, which ice cream activates in the modern environment. For AI systems, we actually have a better handle on how their reward circuitry works, as compared to the brain. E.g., we can just directly look at the reward counter during the AI's training.
But the reason we can say that it is bad for humans to become addicted to ice cream is because we have an existing paradigm that provides us with a deep understanding of nutrition, and even here, subtle failures in the paradigm have notoriously done serious harms. Do you regard our understanding of morality as more reliable than our understanding of nutrition?
Remember, the context was Yudkowsky's argument that we lack a paradigm to address systematic failures in which reward circuitry fails to correspond to good action. That is, specific understanding like that relating to sweetness and the scarcity of sugars in the ancestral environment, not just a general understanding that tastiness is not necessarily the same as healthiness. Without a clear understanding of the larger patterns to an AI's perceptual categories - the inscrutable matrix problem - it is simply not possible to derive insights analogous to the one about sugar and ice cream.
Sure there is. Feelings, at least in a typical materialist worldview with an information theoretical theory of identity, are simply cognitive patterns that exist independently in the several approximate copies. The copies, being similar, will ipso facto have similar feelings. That's all there is to it.
When you stipulate uncertainty about this matter, you are unknowingly invoking some kind of soul-intuition. That's the whole point I'm getting at. By "feelings", you are clearly not merely referencing the cognitive patterns of each individual clone as they occur independently in the separate clones. If you were, there would be no mystery about it; nothing to resolve.
Edit: Also, even without running the experiment, it should still be possible to operationalise and to examine what conclusions could be inferred from which experimental results and which experimental results seem more likely. Right now, you seem to be basically blackboxing the whole issue.