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For example, if I know nothing more about a particular conflict than that person A was talking to person B and person B shot person A in response, I have a pretty high confidence that person B reacted inappropriately.
But what it it's one person A who is committed to drawing cartoons which offend a billion muslims. He flatly refuses to stop over an extended period of time. Eventually one (or more) of them kills A..
Did the killer(s) act inappropriately in this case? It looks efficient under Yvain's calculus, doesn't it?
What would you say to someone who replied "Many punches would have hurt me deeply 15 years ago but hardly any can now because I've studied martial arts. It is within my power to feel zero pain from any blow you might deliver. People really can change their physical capabilities to take less physical pain if they want to."?
There is play there, but the ability to your ability to change your body is really not remotely close to your ability to change your mind.
Yes. Say the Brits had put the electrodes in their own brains and built up a tradition of shocking themselves if others produced and published drawings of King Arthur.
To me, that seems closer to what the muslims in question are doing.
And people would be a lot less sympathetic with my Brits than Yvain's, for good reason.
"But the argument here is going the other way - less permissive, not more."
No, I'm defending a bright line which Yvain would obliterate. If they are interchangeable it follows that answering an argument with a bullet may be the efficient solution.
"To hold that speech is interchangeable with violence is to hold that certain forms of speech are no more an appropriate answer than a bullet."
So which to which argument would you prefer a bullet?
"The issue at stake is why. Why is speech OK, but a punch not? Presumably because one causes physical pain and the other not. So, in Yvain's salmon situation, when such speech does now cause pain should we treat it the same or different from violence?"
The brits are feeling the pain of a real physical assault, under the skin. That's not mental torment, it's electrodes.
A crucial difference is that we can change our minds about what offends us but we cannot choose not to respond to electrodes in the brain and we cannot choose not to bleed when pierced by a bullet.
"To just repeat "violence is different from speech" is to duck the issue, because you haven't answered this why question, which was the whole point of bringing it up.
It is not my comprehensive answer but I think it is a sufficient answer. They are not interchangeable. Many words would have hurt me deeply 15 years ago but hardly any can now because I've changed my mind about them. It is within my power to feel zero pain from anything you might say. People really can change their minds to take less offense if they want to. They cant choose to not be harmed by a punch or a bullet.
Different.
People don't typically get trapped in Scientology by trying it out either.
But if you try a cigarette there's some risk you'll want to smoke another and then another.
I'm confident smoking is a bigger danger to me than Scientology.
Yes, that's what I mean. And "relatively cheap" has to factor in the benefit of all of the pain you avoid for the rest of your life by thickening your skin, not just the cost of modification of the "offender".
There's a lot of win on that table.
If most people succumbed when exposed to such techniques we'd see a lot more explosive growth.
This caused me to modify my priors:
"Most cult converts were children of privilege raised by educated parents in suburban homes. Young, healthy, intelligent, and college educated, they could look forward to solid careers and comfortable incomes. Psychologists searched in vain for a prevalence of “authoritarian personalities,” neurotic fears, repressed anger, high anxiety, religious obsession, personality disorders, deviant needs, and other mental pathologies. They likewise failed to find alienation, strained relationships, and poor social skills. In nearly all respects – economically, socially, psychologically – the typical cult converts tested out normal."
I expected those at risk to be more easily identifiable. If they are not identifiable than the risk of conversion of most people is much higher than I thought.
On the other hand
"Moreover, nearly all those who left cults after weeks, months, or even years of membership showed no sign of physical, mental, or social harm."
Supports the view that the supposed danger of cults is overblown.
And..
"Stated somewhat more abstractly, the fundamental sociological “law” of conversion asserts that conversion to religious groups almost never occurs unless the recruit develops stronger attachments to members of the group than to non-members. Among other things, the law explains why the establishment of a new religion, cult, or sect almost always begins with the conversion of the founder’s own family members and close friends.11 The law likewise predicts that as long as people remain deeply attached to the social networks of one faith, they rarely ever switch to another faith."
...does seem to provide some criteria by which you could assess risk to yourself or another individual.
To hold that speech is interchangeable with violence is to hold that a bullet can be the appropriate answer to an argument.
Surely more people die from it.
Both what are true?
Do you think most people subjected to the mind control techniques of Scientology are successfully brainwashed into Scientology or not?
I don't know the data but bet it's a smallish fraction. I believe less than 10% of the people who are subjected to the mind controlling properties of heroin become addicted.
lukeprog has apparently looked into Scientology more than I have, is conceded to be aware of the dangers, and yet there is not even a hint in his piece that he thought the young girl he was partnered with was in danger. Surely people would have reacted differently to this article if he cheerfully recounted shooting heroin with a twelve year old. So clearly he was very confident that what was going on in the room was a lot less dangerous than shooting heroin. But how could that be if Scientology is more persuasive than heroin?
"The other major hack going on in all of those routines is people paying attention to you. Being paid attention to is an extremely powerful behavior modifier, and it's a major recruitment tool used by cults of all kinds."
I remember when I was 18 and on the road alone on a spiritual quest and I got heavily recruited by a cult. The primary techniques seemed to be giving me such attention and affirmation for every word that came out of my mouth. My reaction was: Well, this is awkward. These people are being very nice but they're not interesting. Given their techniques I had difficulty politely disentangling myself from their presence. After about 12 hours I heard Reverend Moon mentioned, at which point I said "Oh, you're Moonies!". A few hours later I politely bid them goodbye and walked away. They followed me around for a while to no avail.
I wasn't in danger. Their perspective seemed narrow and boring to me.
I would assume a lot of LWers are pretty immune.
I think one is not in much danger of being brainwashed by another if one has a broader perspective on life than the would be manipulator.
I think most people who try heroin or Scientology suffer no lasting ill effects. If it worked on most people Scientology would be a lot more virulent than it is.
You are awesome.
"You went dancing in live fire and dodged a bullet, and that's excellent. Others may not be so lucky, particularly including those who are sure they could never be fooled (since such certainly has no observed correlation with a detailed working awareness of human cognitive biases)."
You really think he dodged a bullet? I assume lots of people are in no danger of being brainwashed by Scientology and lukeprog is probably one of them.
lukeprog,
Did you judge you were in danger of being brainwashed into Scientology at any point during this class? Or seriously in danger of being otherwise mind damaged?
What would you think of Brits who could have their electrodes removed, but preferred to leave them in?
Personally, it would reduce my interest in being careful with salmon pictures.
"That said, the cost to me of other people doing the work of not being offended by my actions is of course extremely low, which makes that strategy maximally efficient for me."
Sure, but as someone whose skin has become a lot thicker over time I see the primary benefit of that change is to me. I didn't require the cooperation of offenders to experience less pain.
With little further ongoing effort I'm now largely immune to what many experience as a world of hurt. For the rest of my life. Seems efficient to me. I think it was a lot easier than retraining the world to be less offensive to me.
Yes, growing a thicker skin might be very difficult for some, but most people can make very productive headway. This appears to have been overlooked by Yvain.
"Even in this situation - in which I am only suffering because I have a false belief, and for reasons directly related to that false belief - I still think my interlocutor is very much in the wrong."
You wouldn't be suffering only because you had a false belief, another reason would be that you weren't sufficiently thick skinned to decline to be offended.
"Someone makes Nazi jokes around me, or says that everyone who died in the Holocaust deserved it and went to Hell, or something equally offensive."
At this point I would ask myself "Of what consequence is this person's opinion to me"? And I'd instantly conclude: None.
To cause me real pain a statement would have to be justified in my own judgment.
"A thick-skinned person just can't model a person with thinner skin all that well. "
Maybe so. And I'm a very thick skinned person. But if a thin skinned person takes offense when a thick skinned person intends none, then isn't it fair to say that the thin-skinned person isn't modeling the other very well either?
"And so when the latter gets upset over some insult, the thick-skinned person calls them "unreasonable", or assumes that they're making it up in order to gain sympathy. My friends in the online forum couldn't believe anyone could really be so sensitive as to find their comments abusive, and so they ended up doing some serious mental damage."
In your prescriptions for how to deal with this I don't see any consideration of the possibility that the offended could grow thicker skin. I really think this would be the most efficient protection of the offended from such offense in at least some cases, and perhaps in most cases.
If a person literally had thin skin such that he was vulnerable to being wounded by contact with rough surfaces it would be more efficient for him to put on protective clothing than to modify his entire environment.
It seems to me that on the whole Islam was a lot less fully engaged with the Enlightenment than Christianity.
Put another way, Christianity got it's balls cut off and Islam didn't. A lot of muslims are aware of this and recognize the Enlightenment as bent on cutting the balls off their religion. And they're right about that.
With the exception of evicting the pisser from your garden I'd say none of these actions justifies a violent response. As a believer in the value of free speech I defend them all even if I would not choose to participate in them.
"Say a random Christian kicked a Muslim in the face, and a few other Muslims got really angry, blew the whole thing out of proportion, and killed him and his entire family. This would be an inappropriately strong response, and certainly you could be upset about it, but the proper response wouldn't be to go kicking random Muslims in the face. "
Several times you seem to equate speech or illustration with a punch in the face. They don't seem interchangeable to me. The American founding fathers made a strong case for protecting speech, they argued that people should be able to say what they would without fear of violence in return. I'm pretty sure they never contemplated that face punching should be protected. I see the a bright line between the two behaviors.
Some of the people passing around pictures of Mohammed surely mean to insult. Others are demanding that a bright line between speech and physical harm be observed by all. They are appealing to more reasonable muslims to "police their area" and part of the plan is draw out the muslims who need policing.
I'm not defending that as an optimal plan but I sure think the bright line is a swell idea.
"Sorry kid, what can I tell ya? More people wanted war for Christmas. Ho, Ho, Ho!"
The oldest of six children, I felt good about being initiated into my first adult secret society. Had I been one of the younger children I might have resented older siblings who'd held out on me.
I was also a little saddened that the world might be a little less magical than I'd assumed.
On the whole I was cool with it.
That's consistent with the point I was making, but let me dial back a bit.
I don't want to commit the Typical Mind Fallacy by generalizing too much from one example. In recent years I've realized more and more that my mind works in a fashion that is not typical of most people I've met. Some things which are very easy for me seem very difficult for others, and some things difficult for me seem easy for them.
Options available to one are not necessarily available to others.
It's fine to offer my experience but I'd do better to be more conservative about speculation on the options available to other particular individuals. Yvain is obviously a top poster here who I assume has done a lot of introspection and thought a lot about self modification so it was cheeky of me to assume I might know more about how he can self-modify than he does - in one of my first posts.
Oops.
Yes, I think it's a crucial distinction that the brits in question would almost all choose to have the electrodes removed immediately. And shortly they would take considerably less offense at pictures of salmon.
Far fewer of the offended muslims (it's not the case that all muslims are equally offended) would immediately choose to rewire their brains or rewrite their software to avoid the psychic pain. This is because their current configuration was chosen, to a far greater extent than the brit's was.
"I have no reason to think I can model Klansmen well, but when I try, I imagine their feelings around an interracial couple as being a lot like my feeling around gay people having PDAs."
Yes, except the feelings of the Klansman are far stronger - more similar in intensity to the feelings of many muslims toward depictions of Mohammed.
"f I could self-modify to remove this feeling I'd do so in a second, but given that I can't self-modify ..."
From my own experience I suspect you could self-modify but have insufficient incentive to do so. (That's not intended as a criticism.) I once had a very strong revulsion to gay PDAs, now I have a very mild aversion to it, perhaps similar to what you describe:
"I admit that seeing public displays of affection between gays gives me a negative visceral reaction more than the same displays among straights do".
Since you are apparently behaving decently toward gays and not massively uncomfortable in most situations with them there's not much reason to change. No doubt you have bigger fish to fry.
I feel similar to that but I'm confident that my mild aversion would decrease if I became close friends with a gay couple and spent a lot of time with them. My aversion would easily be swamped by more important values.
"You could argue Brits did not choose to have their abnormal sensitivity to salmon while Muslims might be considered to be choosing their sensitivity to Mohammed. But this requires a libertarian free will. "
Absent free will I don't understand why you'd be more critical the supposed offending parties than the offended ones.
"And if tomorrow I tried to "choose" to become angry every time someone showed me a picture of a salmon, I couldn't do it - I could pretend to be angry, but I couldn't make myself feel genuine rage."
Some people born and raised in America who freely take up Islam in adulthood and proceed to take offense at such things as pictures of Mohammed which they previously would not have taken offense at. One may not directly choose to take such offense but it's a consequence of choices and one may choose otherwise.
Out of a billion muslims I'd bet there are many who are not deeply offended when outsiders print such pictures. The choice to take less offense is there.
Growing up I had a strong and deeply ingrained aversion to homosexuality. I could feel physically ill at the description or depiction of men kissing, for instance. The aversion was so strong that I identified it as an instinctive part of my nature. Over time however I chose to discount the aversion. I was able to do so. Presumably you would not have thought gays should have refrained from acts which offended me.
I'm confident muslims are also capable of discounting irrational beliefs. If one didn't think people could do this then what would be the point of lesswrong?
"Now imagine I believe the Earth is flat, and you believe the earth is (roughly) spherical. Those two beliefs are mutually contradictory. Clearly, one of us is mistaken."
Nitpick: . The given beliefs are contradictory but not exhaustive. At least one of the disputants is mistaken, but both could be wrong. The earth could have another shape.
I think theist and atheist can reasonably be defined to be contradictory and exhaustive. Agnostics do not affirm an alternate opinion about whether God exists, they're simply undecided.
"It is, of course, totally unclear whether Moravec, Kurzweil, and their supporters are correct. Will robots become massively intelligent? Will human beings become highly intelligent cyborgs or upload our minds fully into machines and thereby live forever? Whether they are correct is probably less important than the fact that the faithful who believe they are has a growing membership. " - Robert M. Geraci
I am not surprised see someone assigning low probability to a technological singularity. But low importance?
This is not an anti-rational prescription like the Glenn Beck quote I offered, but I found it a striking example of irrational bias.
When I run an old 8 bit game on a Commodore-64 emulator it seems to me that the emulation functionally reproduces a Commodore-64. The experience of playing the game can clearly be faithfully reproduced.
Hasn't something been reproduced if one cannot tell the difference between the operation of the original system and that of the simulation?
| heard this prescription live on the air several months ago:
"Refuse to believe in coincidence and you will see miracles." - Glenn Beck
I heard that and thought: Yup, I can sure see why it would then look like miracles all the way down.
I do not cite this to signal disapproval of Beck; on the whole I think well of him. I just thought it was a clear example.