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Comment by lmnop on low stress employment/ munchkin income thread · 2013-07-24T15:57:22.288Z · LW · GW

Is the pay strictly by hours or by work produced? Is it possible to make more than $10-$12/hr by e.g. reading the essays faster?

Comment by lmnop on "Stupid" questions thread · 2013-07-16T21:01:22.272Z · LW · GW

No, but I read it just now, thank you for linking me. The example takeover strategy offered there was bribing a lab tech to assemble nanomachines (which I am guessing would then be used to facilitate some grey goo scenario, although that wasn't explicitly stated). That particular strategy seems a bit far-fetched, since nanomachines don't exist yet and we thus don't know their capabilities. However, I can see how something similar with an engineered pandemic would be relatively easy to carry out, assuming ability to fake access to digital currency (likely) and the existence of sufficiently avaricious and gullible lab techs to bribe (possible).

I was thinking in terms of "how could an AI rule humanity indefinitely" rather than "how could an AI wipe out most of humanity quickly." Oops. The second does seem like an easier task.

Comment by lmnop on "Stupid" questions thread · 2013-07-16T20:34:46.465Z · LW · GW

Government orders the major internet service providers to shut down their services, presumably :) Not saying that that would necessarily be easily to coordinate, nor that the loss of internet wouldn't cripple the global economy. Just that it seems to be a different order of risk than an extinction event.

My intuition on the matter was that an AI would be limited in its scope of influence to digital networks, and its access to physical resources, e.g. labs, factories and the like would be contingent on persuading people to do things for it. But everyone here is so confident that FAI --> doom that I was wondering if there was some obvious and likely successful method of seizing control of physical resources that everyone else already knew and I had missed.

Comment by lmnop on "Stupid" questions thread · 2013-07-16T14:41:56.570Z · LW · GW

Worst case scenario, can't humans just abandon the internet altogether once they realize this is happening? Declare that only physical currency is valid, cut off all internet communications and only communicate by means that the AI can't access?

Of course it should be easy for the AI to avoid notice for a long while, but once we get to "turn the universe into computronium to make paperclips" (or any other scheme that diverges from business-as-usual drastically) people will eventually catch on. There is an upper bound to the level of havoc the AI can wreak without people eventually noticing and resisting in the manner described above.

Comment by lmnop on "Stupid" questions thread · 2013-07-15T22:35:08.542Z · LW · GW

What are concrete ways that an unboxed AI could take over the world? People seem to skip from "UFAI created" to "UFAI rules the world" without explaining how the one must cause the other. It's not obvious to me that superhuman intelligence necessarily leads to superhuman power when constrained in material resources and allies.

Could someone sketch out a few example timelines of events for how a UFAI could take over the world?

Comment by lmnop on Writing Style and the Typical Mind Fallacy · 2013-07-15T16:44:09.860Z · LW · GW

Could you elaborate on the difference between continual and ongoing growth? Dweck-style growth mindset seems similar to LW-style life optimization on a practical level to me.

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 5 · 2010-11-27T04:08:12.267Z · LW · GW

I'm guessing it's that Albus's own father was committed to and died in Azkaban.

Comment by lmnop on (Virtual) Employment Open Thread · 2010-10-30T02:04:50.728Z · LW · GW

whereas for an uncoached entrant it's almost purely wealth --> ability --> score.

And coaching can't make up a large part of the score difference, either. There's more than 100 points discrepancy on Critical Reading or Math alone between the lowest and highest income groups, whereas coaching only creates improvements of 30 points in Reading and Math combined.

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4 · 2010-10-28T02:58:09.691Z · LW · GW

In book 7, Voldemort visits Grindelwald at Nurmengard in order to interrogate him about the location of the Elder Wand, and then kills him. So Grindelwald was definitely alive in book 1.

Comment by lmnop on The Irrationality Game · 2010-10-03T03:11:40.163Z · LW · GW

Short term or long term? If long, how long?

Comment by lmnop on [deleted post] 2010-09-21T05:26:01.931Z

Eliezer's points about equality and symmetry may be true across the population

I don't even think it's true across the population. How many women do you know who primarily read books, watch movies, read news articles and listen to music created by men? And how many of the opposite? For the 100 top grossing films of 2007, there were 3 female directors and 109 male directors involved. (Off the top of my head) the ratio of news articles written by men vs women is something like 7:1. Women probably have a better understanding of the "male perspective" than men have of the "female perspective," just from the different levels of exposure.

Comment by lmnop on Less Wrong: Open Thread, September 2010 · 2010-09-18T19:41:09.291Z · LW · GW

But if we can't measure the cultural factors and account for them

We can't directly measure them, but we can get an idea of how large they are and how they work.

For example, the gender difference in empathic abilities. While women will score higher on empathy on self report tests, the difference is much smaller on direct tests of ability, and often nonexistent on tests of ability where it isn't stated to the participant that it's empathy being tested. And then there's the motivation of seeming empathetic. One of the best empathy tests I've read about is Ickes', which worked like this: two participants meet together in the room and have a brief conversation, which is taped. Then they go into separate rooms and the tape is played back to them twice. The first time, they jot down the times at which they remember feeling various emotions. The second time, they jot down the times at which they think their partner is feeling an emotion, and what it is. Then the records are compared, and each participant receives an accuracy score. When the test is run is like this, there is no difference in ability between men and women. However, a difference emerges when another factor is added: each participant is asked to write a "confidence level" for each prediction they make. In that procedure, women score better, presumably because their desire to appear empathetic (write down higher confidence levels) causes them to put more effort into the task. But where do desires to appear a certain way come from? At least partly from cultural factors that dictate how each gender is supposed to appear. This is probably the same reason why women are overconfident in self reporting their empathic abilities relative to men.

The same applies to math. Among women and men with the same math ability as scored on tests, women will rate their own abilities much lower than the men do. Since people do what they think they'll be good at, this will likely affect how much time these people spend on math in future, and the future abilities they acquire.

And then there's priming. Asian American women do better on math tests when primed with their race (by filling in a "race" bubble at the top of the test) than when primed with their gender (by filling in a "sex" bubble). More subtly, priming affects people's implicit attitudes towards gender-stereotyped domains too. People are often primed about their gender in real life, each time affecting their actions a little, which over time will add up to significant differences in the paths they choose in life in addition to that which is caused by innate gender differences. Right now we don't have enough information to say how much is caused by each, but I don't see why we can't make more headway into this in the future.

Comment by lmnop on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA · 2010-09-13T05:54:52.254Z · LW · GW

You may not be aware that lots of people who criticize women's preferences seem to consider themselves, or men in general, entitled to female sexual attention, and they show insufficient regard for women's body sovereignty and self-determination. If you want to evaluate women's preferences, could you explain how we can do this in a way that respects women's autonomy? What kind of benefits might women accrue from attempting to change their preferences, and if not, they why should they attempt to do so merely to satisfy men's preferences?

I like this response! While I expect that in the heat of the moment most people (on all sides) won't always be able to word themselves this carefully and explicitly, it's a good general outline for future comments on controversial topics. Upvoted for thoughtfulness.

Comment by lmnop on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA · 2010-09-13T02:22:55.941Z · LW · GW

However, the idea that the general standards of discussion here represent a threatening and hostile environment for women, which is supposedly the main reason why they're few in number, seems to me completely disconnected from reality.

Not the general standards of discussion, no. But the standards of discussion for some of the speculation on sex relations, especially when related to the PUA subculture, seem to create an unpleasant environment for women who are otherwise quite happy with the general standards of discussion. Therefore, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that without that specific subset of the discussion, the site as a whole would be more attractive to women.

The question is whether the usual standards of discourse practiced here are harsh and insensitive enough to qualify as "unwelcoming to hostile." It seems quite clear to me that only extraordinarily fearful, brittle, or paranoid personalities could honestly answer yes to this.

It's fairly hyperbolic to say that only an "extraordinarily fearful, brittle, or paranoid person" could answer yes to the question of whether this site is an unwelcoming to hostile environment at times. Forget hostile, you can't see why the label "unwelcoming" could be used by a reasonable-- or at least not extraordinarily fearful, brittle, and paranoid-- person to describe some subsets of discussion here?

Comment by lmnop on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA · 2010-09-13T02:09:43.288Z · LW · GW

That's just not the kind of belief a decent person would hold, so concluding that he might consider women's safety unimportant communicates that he is a bad person. Now he's been made to feel he's such a bad person that he can't even emotionally participate in this topic anymore.

At least two people on the other side of the discussion have assured komponisto that they don't consider him a "bad person" here and here. Besides saying this upfront before each criticism, can you think of some other ways that we might minimize the real or perceived implication that harsh judgment on someone's ideas implies harsh judgment on his/her character?

Comment by lmnop on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA · 2010-09-13T01:49:05.244Z · LW · GW

I'm confused. The data you present shows that women are more picky about personality, and men are more picky about looks. But what (of your data) indicates that "the difference between minimum or maximum percentile attractiveness of the mates you are aiming for, and your own percentile attractiveness, is greater for women"? You can break personality into several separate traits, yes, but you can break looks into several separate traits too, so it isn't clear that women have more requirements on more traits.

Comment by lmnop on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA · 2010-09-13T00:55:14.863Z · LW · GW

You write as if women were some unspeakably fearful, brittle, and paranoid creatures who undergo apoplectic shocks at the slightest whisper that interferes with their delicate sensibilities. Frankly, if I were a woman, I would take offense at that. You're basically proclaiming women congenitally incapable of rationally addressing claims they find unpleasant, instinctively reacting with a shock-and-offense emotional ploy instead.

I think people generally dislike and avoid spending time in environments they perceive as anywhere on the scale from unwelcoming to hostile. That's not a trait that makes someone fearful, brittle, paranoid, or delicate, and I'm confused as to why you'd think I was implying any such thing-- quite the opposite.

Comment by lmnop on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA · 2010-09-13T00:32:43.675Z · LW · GW

Thank you for the pointer! Yes, I started using the site after reading HP:MoR, although I'd read some articles from it before that.

Comment by lmnop on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA · 2010-09-13T00:26:09.007Z · LW · GW

I doubt komponisto feels that great right now, and I don't think he deserves to continue to be villified after clarifying his original problematic comment.

From the karma scores on his clarifying comments, I think many people here understand his perspective and support it. To say that he's been villified is a pretty severe exaggeration.

Comment by lmnop on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA · 2010-09-13T00:19:37.065Z · LW · GW

That doesn't seem to be an accurate or appropriate dichotomy to construct here. No comments here advocate the incidence of rape or other actions which ignore female agenthood. Is the advocacy of such atrocities a crime so abhorrent that even innocence is no excuse?

"Perpetuating ideas that increase the social acceptability" of ignoring female agenthood isn't the same as "advocating" ignoring female agenthood. To clarify: I don't think anyone on this site wants to advocate ignoring female agenthood. I don't think most people in the PUA community want to advocate that either. Perhaps not even Roissy wants to advocate that-- although I'm less certain in his case. But to use him as an extreme example: is it not possible that people exposed to his ideas become less likely to respect female agenthood than they were before, even if he didn't intend that to be the message? It's a conjecture about possible causation, not about intent to harm.

Comment by lmnop on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA · 2010-09-12T19:27:54.757Z · LW · GW

The part in bold could not be further from the truth. A not insignificant number of men here are terrified of contributing on this subject, due to their previous discussions. It reached the stage where people making a point that touched on human mating patterns apologised, asked for permission and generally supplicated and grovelled in an attempt to avoid reprisal.

A few men here fear being criticized. Some women here fear perpetuating ideas that increase the social acceptability and incidence of rape and other actions which ignore female agenthood. Regardless of how "reasonable" you consider each fear, they are not of equal magnitude. And then consider that the women here are women who have already been self selected for interest in rationality, and then further selected for ability to deal with potentially threatening comments regarding sex relations in the past. Something is wrong when they feel threatened by a subset of the talk here-- and it isn't "they're just too PC."

I don't make utilitarian calculations of any kind and while I do make consequentialist calculations they are significantly tempered by ethical injunctions when considering topics such as this. I note that Alicorn takes this a step further - she explicitly professes subscription to deontological ethics.

Take out the word "utilitarian" if you wish. It's the "ignoring of women's interests" that I find disturbing. See this comment and this comment for a better expression of my concerns.

Comment by lmnop on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA · 2010-09-12T18:22:08.261Z · LW · GW

"Sex doesn't seem to be the distinguishing factor on whether a given participant is able to usefully engage on the subject, especially once the selection effect of 'people who like lesswrong type discussions' is applied. It is a political vs epistemic divide, not a male vs female one."

And yet the current norms of discussion are ones that leave a large proportion of the women here fighting through some measure of fear and discomfort to post-- but not the men. This saps cognitive energy and limits how much they can contribute. You may want to consider why this is, and whether there are any minimal changes you would consider making in order to make both genders feel safe enough to post freely.

"Strive to only make utilitarian calculations that take into account both men's and women's best interests" is a good place to start.

This discussion has also given me a lot of insight into why the proportion of women on this site is so atypically small even for computer programming crowds. Some that like lesswrong-type discussions may find dealing with the PUA-related talk here too mentally and emotionally draining for the site to be a net positive in experience. I've changed my mind and now also support moving all PUA-related discussions to another site, if for different reasons than yours.

Comment by lmnop on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA · 2010-09-12T08:58:38.979Z · LW · GW

I don't know if it's possible to discuss anything in a purely objective manner, sex especially, since it's a topic into which most people bring a lot of biases regardless of how objective and rational they're trying to be. If such a topic is discussed by a group of people who are likely to have the same set of biases towards the subject, then that can create a blind spot. And sex in particular requires deep understanding of both men's and women's psychology and socialization to make headway on, so there may be a limit to how much a discussion involving only one sex could accomplish. I wouldn't want to lose insightful perspectives like Alicorn's "gifts vs commodities" comment that otherwise might not come up. I'd be willing to sift through the strong emotions (that mostly fit the facts) the topic may inspire in order to maximize my exposure to such insights.

Comment by lmnop on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA · 2010-09-11T20:22:32.633Z · LW · GW

I think a big component of sex dynamics is, as you said, physical strength. Since women are physically weaker than men, they can't rely on that to protect them from overly aggressive or hostile potential partners. The only thing keeping those overly aggressive or hostile potential partners in line are social norms against rape and abuse, which are already weak enough that, for example, rape apologism for famous athletes and victim blaming are common. Any talk that can potentially weaken those social norms then becomes a legitimate threat... unless the talk includes ways of subverting other social norms that balance its effect. For example, I think we could solve some problems by giving men "niceness training" instead of women.

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3 · 2010-09-06T19:26:25.426Z · LW · GW

That makes sense!

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3 · 2010-09-06T17:48:39.006Z · LW · GW

I never really understood the claim that there's no defense against Avada Kedavra. Sure, there's no direct countercurse, but you can dodge it or levitate an object between yourself and the curse (Dumbledore levitated a statue in front of Harry to protect him from the curse in Book 5). Both of these responses can be trained to the point of instinct, and voila, you have a defense.

Wait, the fact that the second strategy works is inconsistent. If the Killing Curse can be blocked by inanimate objects, why is it that clothing doesn't block it?

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3 · 2010-09-06T17:31:11.517Z · LW · GW

Bertha Jorkins. After she found out that the Crouch family was keeping Barty Crouch Jr. imprisoned in their house, Crouch Sr. put a Memory Charm on her strong enough to cause her permanent brain damage and forgetfulness. But Voldemort was able to break through it with torture.

Comment by lmnop on Dreams of AIXI · 2010-08-31T03:56:56.624Z · LW · GW

The changes in font are distracting.

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 · 2010-08-29T10:10:14.273Z · LW · GW

Interesting. I'm not sure if the correct dichotomy is status vs looks either. It could very well be money vs looks with both as indicators of status, since a woman's status (and ability to confer status on a man with her attention) is often determined by her looks. Have their been studies comparing attraction to, for example, very beautiful female sex workers vs less beautiful cheerleaders? Disclaimer: I'm wildly speculating here...

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 · 2010-08-29T09:42:14.992Z · LW · GW

While it's true that the average man is more attracted to looks than to status, and the average woman is more attracted to status than to looks, be careful not to over-generalize these preferences. Harry doesn't seem to mind, for instance, that Hermione is plain looking, and admires her intelligence, while the average man prefers beautiful women noticeably less intelligent than he is. Hermione isn't particularly attracted to high status men in canon (she picked Ron over Viktor Krum, for chrissakes), and there's no indication that she's different in MoR. Neither of them fit the personality profiles that the PUA community has studied most heavily, which I've heard described as "extroverted young women of average intelligence" and... well, I haven't been informed about the type of men specifically, but I'll hazard a guess that they're not like MoR Harry. So PUA models of interaction between the sexes wouldn't give you very reliable intuitions about how Hermione and Harry should act towards one another. Never mind that they're prepubescent and applying any adult models of interaction that were developed with sexual relations in mind to them seems kind of creepy in the first place. "Relationship" aside, they're mostly friends at this point.

I mean, I agree with you that Harry's apology was rather embarrassing, but that was because it wasn't warranted by the circumstances. If he'd actually done something worthy of an abject apology to Hermione, then he should be giving one, not restraining himself in order to protect his dominance over her.

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 · 2010-08-28T09:50:52.584Z · LW · GW

Hermione and Harry are acting a bit out of character in these last few chapters. Canon Hermione is straightforward, sometimes even abrasive, and extremely concerned with fairness. That is why she started S.P.E.W., after all. I can understand making her more social and diplomatic in order to strengthen her above canon, but the preoccupation with fairness and justice is pretty central to her personality. Is she toying with Harry (which isn't like her), or are they both blind to how silly he's being?

This apology business doesn't strike me as cute, like Ch. 36 was. It's just strange.

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 · 2010-08-28T09:40:37.453Z · LW · GW

Or they could've just created self cleaning houses, so no one is forced to do work.

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 · 2010-08-26T22:16:10.351Z · LW · GW

Eh, even if Quirrel points were the problem, Harry's apology is still unnecessarily grovelly.

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 · 2010-08-26T21:57:56.497Z · LW · GW

"I bet he hasn't had the Anglo/muggle training about not hurting girls"

I agree. The "don't hurt females" meme and the idea of chivalry arise from the fact that men are physically stronger than women. But in the magical world, physical strength hardly matters in comparison to magical ability, which seems to be evenly distributed between the sexes. A witch would feel angry, or perhaps just confused, at being treated like porcelain. Granted, Hermione and Harry come from the muggle world, but Draco doesn't, and he shouldn't behave like he does.

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 · 2010-08-23T06:10:27.581Z · LW · GW

...now I'm curious.

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 · 2010-08-07T19:17:35.451Z · LW · GW

Wands cost 7 Galleons. People throw around comparable sums all the time in canon. Percy Weasley bets 10 Galleons on a Quidditch game, heck, Harry buys three sets of Omnioculars (wizarding binoculars) at 10 Galleons apiece to watch the Quidditch World Cup. Many wizarding supplies less useful than a wand cost considerably more. There really is no good reason for witches and wizards not to carry multiple wands except for tradition. Even the Weasleys could afford multiple wands if they made it a priority.

Comment by lmnop on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread · 2010-07-25T23:12:36.073Z · LW · GW

I'm guessing that Blaise will shoot himself in the name of Sunshine, tying all the scores. That seems like the kind of thing Dumbledore would plot. It makes the most sense from Eliezer's point of view too, in terms of leading the story in a more interesting direction.

Comment by lmnop on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks · 2010-07-20T02:36:01.259Z · LW · GW

Certainly it would be nice if there were less delusion-fuel, as you call it, floating around. But I'm guessing that most men who make a habit of ignoring women's preferences won't actually change their behavior if the minority of women who lie becomes a smaller minority. They will just find another rationalization.

If we really want to reduce stalking, assault and other such behaviors by men, then I don't think targetting women and demanding that they be more honest will be a very efficient use of our time. Abusive men are far more likely to be dissuaded by scorn and social ostracization directed at them by other men, and that's something concerned men can implement directly.

Comment by lmnop on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks · 2010-07-20T02:07:33.397Z · LW · GW

But if you, personally, are less respectful of women's requests, this won't make men who are less respectful than you any more inclined to be respectful. It may lead them to be even less respectful (ie engaging in coercion or assault) because they're now under more competition. Besides, by continuing to be respectful of women's requests, you wouldn't be "ceding the dating world," you'd only be ceding the portion of the dating world that's comprised of women who consistently give false rejections, which in my experience is a clear minority. Whereas by adopting a policy of ignoring women's rejections, you're likely to hurt the majority, who rejected you honestly. This seems unethical.

Regarding your claim that stalking, sexual assault and other "ills" would decrease if women were only more honest--serial rapists are great at deluding themselves into thinking the women they raped "wanted it." Even if more women were completely honest in their rejections, how do you know that some men wouldn't simply delude themselves into thinking otherwise, thus internally justifying their behavior?

Thank you for clarifying that paragraph. I wasn't sure whether you were indicating whether the women or the stalker men didn't receive punishment. It seems that you mean the men. You would be correct. Perhaps good men should band together to punish the men who behave threateningly to women, for instance by socially ostracizing those men and making it clear that such behavior is low status?

Comment by lmnop on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks · 2010-07-20T00:06:34.052Z · LW · GW

Please do cite more. Understand that your claims are difficult for me to just accept, because in my experience when women offer men a flat refusal, in the vast majority of cases they mean no. Yes, there are exceptions to this rule, but you seem to be implying that when women offer a flat refusal, there's a significant, even close to 50% chance that they actually mean yes. You need more evidence than the word of a PUA or an anecdote about a woman you know to support that claim for people who haven't had the same experiences as you.

Comment by lmnop on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks · 2010-07-19T23:58:45.538Z · LW · GW

But women usually don't react the same way to welcome and unwelcome advances. At the very least, women are far more likely to react positively to a welcome advance than to an unwelcome one. Therefore, a negative response should cause you to update your estimate of her receptiveness down. Maybe not to zero, but definitely below 50%, and don't you want to err on the side of not causing her significant fear or distress?

I'm not sure what your second to last paragraph even means--elaborate?

As for women knowing exactly what they need to do differently, you still haven't addressed my point on the social penalties for women who behave assertively (by sticking to their guns instead of yielding to pressure and giving in despite an initial refusal). At any rate, why are you putting the onus on women? I might as well say that if men just changed so that they always respected women's stated preferences, then women would soon adapt to become more honest and direct. But don't you see how this is just wishful thinking? Instead of bemoaning the fact that people don't behave the way you'd like them to, try to think of ways that the current social structure can be changed. Perhaps by persuading parents to teach their sons to be more respectful and their daughters more assertive, portraying respectful men and assertive women more positively in entertainment, and so on.

Comment by lmnop on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks · 2010-07-19T19:09:56.840Z · LW · GW

You're going to have to present some evidence that "good" men are systematically disadvantaged in getting relationships if you want this to be a universally accepted premise in this discussion. But if we're only speaking anecdotally, then in my experience jerks find it easier to get laid, but good men find it easier to obtain long term relationships involving children. Anyhow, if you want to bring up the betterment of the gene pool as a serious argument, then you have to prove that abusive men are at more of a reproductive advantage than they were historically.

And how do you get "unilateral disarmament" from "going away when a woman tells me to go away" anyway? What about the relationships that ensue from encounters that both partners enjoy and want to continue? Hint: the majority of healthy relationships.

Women can't change the way they behave until they're assured that behaving with assurance and aggressiveness won't penalize them socially or put them at risk of violence (since women can't back up their assertiveness with physical force). You're severely oversimplifying the issue if you think it's just a matter of women "choosing" to behave differently than they do.

Comment by lmnop on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks · 2010-07-19T18:36:53.682Z · LW · GW

Point taken. But is the gene pool really at much risk? It seems clear that the modern mating environment already penalizes abusive/disrespectful men more than almost all environments since the agricultural revolution. By the way, do you really care that much about the gene pool, or was that just a stray comment you threw out to vent your frustration?

I agree that it would be better if women behaved the way you described. But currently, women who behave that way are also penalized; they can lose status through being labelled as a "bitch" or "dyke." This would change if direct aggressiveness in women (instead of passive aggressiveness) was more socially acceptable. But as it is, a woman who genuinely wants a man to leave will often eventually give in to his persistence just to avoid coming off as cold or unreceptive, even if she doesn't really come to like him much more. Would the kind of relationship that ensues from such an encounter be the type you want?

Comment by lmnop on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks · 2010-07-19T18:19:55.983Z · LW · GW

If a man can become accustomed to ignoring women's requests for him to leave, making the judgment that his desires are more important than her sense of security, then does he still count as a "respectful man"? If not, then his breeding successfully doesn't increase the number of "respectful" genes in the gene pool either.

Comment by lmnop on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks · 2010-07-19T18:10:06.286Z · LW · GW

If you really can't reliably tell when people are being serious or not, err on the side of respecting their articulated preferences.

Comment by lmnop on Attention Lurkers: Please say hi · 2010-07-13T21:43:40.169Z · LW · GW

Hi! I too found the site through MoR, and I have to say, as fun as MoR is, the posts here are even more interesting.

Comment by lmnop on Some Thoughts Are Too Dangerous For Brains to Think · 2010-07-13T20:58:08.911Z · LW · GW

That is exactly what should happen, but I suspect that in real life it doesn't, largely because of anchoring and adjustment.

Suppose I know the average intelligence of a member of Group A is 115, and the average intelligence of a member of Group B is 85. After meeting and having a long, involved conversation with a specific member of either group, I should probably toss out my knowledge of the average intelligence of their group and evaluate them based on the (much more pertinent) information I have gained from the conversation. But if I behave like most people do, I won't do that. Instead, I'll adjust my estimate from the original estimate supplied by the group average. Thus, my estimate of the intelligence of a particular individual from Group A will still be very different than my estimate of the intelligence of a particular individual from Group B with the same actual intelligence even after I have had a conversation (or two, or three) with both of them. How many conversations does it take for my estimates to converge? Do my estimates ever converge?

Comment by lmnop on Some Thoughts Are Too Dangerous For Brains to Think · 2010-07-13T20:34:23.673Z · LW · GW

This is exactly the crux of the argument. When people say that everyone should be taught that people are the same regardless of gender or race, what they really mean isn't that there aren't differences on average between women and men, etc, but that being taught about those small differences will cause enough people to significantly overshoot via confirmation bias that it will overall lead to more misjudgments of individuals than if people weren't taught about those small differences at all, hence people shouldn't be taught about those small differences. I am hesitantly sympathetic to this view; it is borne out in many of the everyday interactions I observe, including those involving highly intelligent aspiring rationalists.

This doesn't mean we should stop researching gender or race differences, but that we should simultaneously research the effects of people learning about this research: how big are the differences in the perception vs the reality of those differences? Are they big enough that anyone being taught about gender and race differences should also be taught about of the risk of them systematically misjudging many individuals because of their knowledge, and warned to remain vigilant against confirmation bias? When individuals are told to remain vigilant, do they still overshoot to an extent that they become less accurate in judging people than they were before they obtained this knowledge? I would have a much better idea how to proceed both as a society and as an individual seeking to maximize my accuracy in judging people after finding out the answer to these questions.

Comment by lmnop on Open Thread: July 2010 · 2010-07-09T00:09:48.751Z · LW · GW

I mostly agree with you. I would even expand your point to say that if you want to convince anyone (who isn't a perfect Bayesian) to do anything, the probability of success will almost always be higher if you use primarily emotional manipulation rather than rational argument. But cryonics inspires such strong negative emotional reactions in people that I think it would be nearly impossible to combat those with emotional manipulation of the type you describe alone. I haven't heard of anyone choosing cryonics for themselves without having to make a rational effort to override their gut response against it, and that requires understanding the facts. Besides, I think the type of males who choose cryonics tend to have female partners of at least above-average intelligence, so that should make the explanatory process marginally less difficult.

Comment by lmnop on Open Thread: July 2010 · 2010-07-08T23:37:30.605Z · LW · GW

Well the practical advice is being offered to LW, and I'd guess that most of the people here are not average IQ, and neither are their friends and family. I personally think it's a great idea to try and give someone the relevant factual background to understand why cryonics is desirable before bringing up the option. It probably wouldn't work, simply because almost all attempts to sell cryonics to anyone don't work, but it should at least decrease the probability of them reacting with a knee-jerk dismissal of the whole subject as absurd.