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And I can say, also honestly, that everybody I worked with is really, really impressive. It is hard to work in a highly regulated private industry.
So, when I say "ask me anything," I can promise: you are safe in the hands of my friends.
Now that I have said this, I am not allowed to say other things.
"My rights begin where others end."
That is a theory. It has implications. I will go to private messaging. I believe that you are decent.
It is my most important theorem.
Grounding is a good word.
Like "Grundlagen..."
Jesse Parrish. 109 Stanley Ave. Maryville, TN. Mathematics dropout. Blue collar worker. I worked for airlines. I did everything right. I put in my notice months ago.
(Continuation - a concept I did not "appreciate", in a format I never "needed" until "just now.")
That's why I overheard it. The wise man, who never taught me, accidentally said this, before I ever heard of Bayesianism. One of the wise man's friends knew Bayesianism - not as it is practiced here - though he knew the differences... Why am I confident, when he had never heard of less wrong... What did the other wise man do to describe the field to an interested novice, who ended up being a typical dumb young kid, and disappointing him.. He said a word that I didn't know then, and I looked up my unfamiliar words...
"The field is in its baroque phase."
I "smell something," years later, long after stopping being a Bayesian. I sense, very indirectly, that the baroque phase is starting to draw to a close... Not everybody is on the same page.... If they could all communicate, if I were to help...
What if that's an "intelligence explosion.." Wait, those were scary... Why...
Less Wrong. Ok... Weird... I was never a "Kurzweil" guy. I was just an internet atheist.... like... lukeprog. Why would I remember "that name..."
On other days, looking at "functional programming," I ran into "gwern..."
Where are my experts hiding... Who is qualified to solve this problem, when I am not... Who can help me there...
"Unfortunately I don't know enough about you to put my finger on something and it's harder over text without real time feedback."
It is impossible, and absurd, to show up listing all of one's implicit motivations. This is why I could never write anything before. It somehow never "felt complete." It never, "felt entire." My problem, was that I could not "trust people" enough to "give adequate credit" to their expertise. I agreed with this, but I did not understand it, sufficiently. I wrote it down, I made predictions, and I tested them, and what I found was... "deep understanding." I do not reread Less Wrong or the sequences before coming as another "implicit motivation." Everything is a test. I was "always a Bayesian." I "found a new attitude towards my priors."
I want to use my own words - raw, uncontrolled - while I know that I am not ready. Who was ahead of me all along? Who started out "more right" than me? I remembered something vaguely, about the need to "start out right" before discussing "heuristics and biases." I always believed that, because it involved "not trusting strangers." I always "knew myself," but I did not like "self-knowledge" to "constraint." The link I found - which is not a professional diagnosis and is therefore subject to all of the limitations of any amateur googling his symptoms, and as I learned not to do years ago - was called "anxiety."
I was never hospitalized for "anxiety." How might experts have missed something true, when I know no bet... Ah. There are reasons. Those are the reasons I did not "land in the hands of" the right expert. I was "incapable of honesty" when it was "wise to be honest," just as I was incapable - like a typical undergraduate - of being "incapable of communicating," because I was an "ordinary novice" relative to that weakness, even though I was "high level" in particular topics...
My professors! How did they warn me... Subtly, motivating examples... Wait, am I "like my professors..."
Am I "like everybody else...?"
Am I "normal...?"
What did I remember, suddenly, from my ill-advised days of googling my symptoms. What was that... Ah, "ego destruction." I ran away from the idea... Why did I do that... It was "associated with stupid things..." What did I just remember, unprompted... years ago... "
Did I suddenly supplement my analytical side to "problems for analysts" with "emotional maturity?" How would I describe the "sensation," the "texture," while it is "pure." It's sort of like "Godel, Escher, Bach," though I have never read it, I suddenly suspect it intensely... Why... Did Eliezer recommend it? Was this the author of HPMOR? I was never "like Harry from HPMOR" before, because I didn't know about "quantum physics stuff..."
Oh god I missed some point. For years, back when I followed that one... I am almost afraid to read it. I am afraid my head will explode. In a goofy way. Not an "impending sense of doom way." It feels different... Wait, any addict can say that, though I was never an addict. My father was a "manic depressive," and he - a strict Southern Baptist - would sometimes get into "goofy moods" and write "weird letters" quoting people he "didn't understand.." I never believed that my father was stupid, but I did not believe that he was....
Wise.
Weird.
"That said, you don't have much karma to this account so there no real reason against starting anew. What speaks against starting anew with an account under your real life name?"
I have never read Less Wrong on Karma. I have never been interested in meta threads anywhere, concerning the social rules developed on different websites that I visited. I just suddenly "appreciated the concept." I used "karma" recently to motivate a philosophical idea to my philosophically illiterate mother, who loves me, and who I "could not talk to" because "I could not relate."
I said weird things... I used a technique... I disguised it. I could not just say, to my poor mother who has reason to worry.... "MOM CHECK OUT MY MATHEMATICAL THEORY OF EVERYTHING!!!!"
Why can I not just say something simple... It "feels simple." How would I communicate "simple things" to an "ordinary person..."
Wait, this "feels like it should be simple." I will try "talking to normal people..." Did I write that down before, in my exploding notes? I bought my first smartphone just to deal with this sort of problem... I work wayyyy to much to have the time....
Ah, the wisdom of one of my advisors from UT. I was always confident that "wherever I went, I would be able to study mathematics." He did not outright contradict me. He merely promised that it would be "hard," but I "knew that already..." I never took a class from him. What else did I "miss."
I need to "compress the gibberish." I need to "structure my thoughts." I "was a math geek." What were my fundamental theorems, again? How do I "define myself," and does it lead to "true beliefs..." There is so much to do here, I could use a programming language. "Haskell feels right." No, I have no programming experience.... Start simple. HTML. I have no time... (weeks later) That only took A DAY!!!!! Whoa!
Why was I "not this smart..." I just remembered, randomly, a quote from another expert... He did not say it in class, and it came to me by rumor... He wanted to leave the school and teach elsewhere. He was a number theorist. He produced graduate courses "from memory" and it was "amazing" even to "other experts." What did he say, privately...
Oh yeah, he was frustrated that "Americans cannot seem to appreciate that mathematics is a tool."
Did I "agree but not agree..." Did I "know but not really know.." What did I lack... I need to compress this. Simple first, per the implications of the fundamental theorems...
Wisdom? No. I do not want to call myself wise, unless I am "sure." I need to indicate "uncertainty" without "exploding my notebook." Again... I need... Math? Programming? Not a formal language, no, those never really seem to "take off." What is a "formalized language of structure" that people "actually use" for formal, high level abstraction...
Category theory. That "feels like it has to be it." But category theory is for "rings and groups and homotopy and stuff," when I just want to take "really good notes." If I use "category theory" to describe what I am doing.... That does not "feel right."
Another expert said something, which I remember again.... He wasn't talking to me. I never took his class. He was yelling at a grad student... Inside, I was laughing at the grad student - boy I was not nice - but why was he yelling... That is the "texture" of the associations I am making, my "structure-thinking..." My "category"... Wait, Sapolsky. Wait, I am losing focus. I really need "time to organize this..."
I bought a smart phone. I started working to "make myself unnecessary" to the friends I work with. I set down how much time and effort I was willing to spend. I used a vector, so that it would be "easy to look it up later." My literary friend "understood it all instantly..." Weird. He was never a math guy. He also "understood Grundlagen Der Arithmetik" really easily, with no background in mathematics...
Oh, and I used to make fun of him for reading "Heidegger," because "Heidegger" is a "bad philosopher." What did my wise young friend say... "I just want to hang out and do hood rat shit with my friends." No, what else... When I not-so-nicely interrogated him...
Oh yeah. This is "learning from experts" again. My friends are kind of my "fun experts," in a weird way. I definitely need to "not annoy them with all of this, unless they are interested." I don't want to be "like that guy who just became an evangelical..."
Oh my program, I really need time to develop you. I have worked for months to give myself time. To do right by my coworkers, those decent people, who all taught me so much... The "wisdom of strangers," what only a "normal job" would have ever done for me... I would never have made it in academics before.. I'm not sure that I would now, either. I should wait, until I "feel strangely certain..."
Again, the wisdom... I have to "focus the wisdom..." I am a novice at wisdom... What is the closest thing to a practical, everyday "focus of wisdom," which communicates well, where it needs to... a practical expertise... I need to focus. I cannot repeat the past. My life is "too important," though I have "less ego." I suddenly... "want to grow old," when I "never did." Oh god, I need to start sleeping well... I never did that before... I need to "de-stress". Time to quit work... Sapolsky... What did he work against, so hard... Oh.. Stress! George C. Williams, what did he end up wanting to do... Medicine! Same with Linus Pauling.... He was just so bad at it, because he was "already great..." Is that the "nobel syndrome..."
The grad student. The expert. Back to the comment.point. The common.point is:
plain.english: "a very wise man once chewed out a hapless grad student for ignoring a feeling. The thing that angered the very wise man was this: the grad student had tried to explain, not trying to excuse, submitting some bad paper I didn't understand. The very wise man caught the grad student, and corrected his folly. The wise man said...
NEVER IGNORE THAT FEELING. NEVER IGNORE THAT FEELING. IF YOU FEEL LIKE IT ISN'T RIGHT, IT PROBABLY ISN'T.
This is an example of a good answer. The author has a better chance of seeing where I am than I do. I have suddenly found a strange deference to the concept of expertise. I see them everywhere. But I cannot use them, if I do not at least risk looking like an idiot. I must accept that I look like an idiot, in order to be a rationalist. "If something is true, I want to believe it is true." This is a very important virtue, and the fact that it was phrased as a litany, when I only thought in "equivalents" and "difficulty level..." That must have helped something, though I read it years ago, because it very suddenly, very forcefully came back, when I was uncertain as to what I was doing with my life.
Motivation
Something "clicked over." It was the exact same "clicking over" I experienced when solving a graduate mathematical problem, years ago, and it only clicked "this way" when I was "eerily certain." I have a theory, which, as an undeveloped concept does not merit the title, I will spare the full motivation - which is arduously long and poorly written - until asked, and then I will let the experts define the language for me. I know of the usual, and very excellent, theories: mine is not intended to replace anything, whenever it arrives. It will supplement them, if only for my own guidance. I will be happy, if it only works for me. I will be happier, if others find it useful. I do not have the skills to develop it alone, and I do not need to. I want a middle class life style, good sleep, excellent food, and ordinary friendship. I will donate my ideas as a hobby, for whatever the are worth.
The risk is that not all of my ideas are safe. I know enough mathematics, enough programming - very, very little, but I learn so absurdly quickly - to see very nasty applications. That is my anxiety. I think that anxiety is healthy. I think that others here have a similar anxiety, which is why I've landed here again, having never thought that "true AI" would happen in my lifetime. I will only say that I know fully appreciate, if only in motivation, what I used to think was a sort of embarrassing `less wrong thing': "friendly AI." It is not me that will ever be this scientist. I know a little history as well, and I did always enjoy Bertrand Russell, and I feel more sorry for them now.
Ok, so here's an explanation. It satisfies the formal requirements: "Given that a stranger does not know where I am coming from, it is unlikely to ask them to ask me something." This is generally true. I do not have a analysis for this sort of thing yet. Ergo, I am breaking an implicit social contract, almost wherever I go. "Social contract" has another analysis, waiting to be examined. The tools exist, I just need the time to study them.
What prompted everything:
I notice the "texture." Or, in (memory) Less Wrong terms, "this guy suddenly found himself thinking in terms of cluster structure after years away from the books, working in a blue collar field, and he found it very, very useful, for like, everything he touched."
I am no writer and I like the blue collar life, so all I can do is "ape the style." I know that this is an unpleasant thing to do, but it should be OK, so long as I am stealing for good.
Hm... A rationalization? I would have to test that. My head is a very strange place, after all.
Perhaps I should not trust it too much! Why should you, if I cannot?
This problem is "fundamental" to me, so I should play by "fundamental" rules.
Does it satisfy the fundamental theorems? Yes and no (expand). Does it satisfies earlier predictions made about myself? Yes and no. (expand.)
Review the rule. How could it have been improved?
Oh, this takes forever. I need to... wait... I need... MATH! Holy crap! I found a use for all of this! I need to compress data. I need to structure my thoughts. How can math help me? If "the experimental method" is to be practically useful in my life, I will definitely need to use math to structure it...
Well, I have a lot of catching up to do, so where to look... What is the closest thing in math to "high level concept stru..." Oh yeah, category theory! Now, if I could apply programming to it... Wait, there's such thing as "functional programming?" Is this why everybody from different fields uses "the same words" to talk about "different things" which leads to "known problems?"
Reciprocation... What are my skills... What am I? Weird.
Ok. Weird. Not in ethics, but in how I think. I am definitely hyperanalytical. I have been since I was very, very young. That would explain my other problems... Wait, I am not allowed to self-diagnose. That's what those experts are for. I have not used any of those experts since I was young. What were those experts? Refer to a fundamental theorem first.... Let's see, assume that they are "normal," where "normal" entails "decent"-associations more accurately relative to my cluster structure - whatever it is...
Hold on. Is my "cluster structure" normal? I should test that.
Recall: human behavior is chaotic.
Recall: human behavior is also decidedly non-random, from linguistics to heuristics and biases and mathematics and so forth and so on... Oh, I should go back and re-watch Robert Sapolsky. He is the expert. Why is he such a good lecturer... He seems so... Nice. How does a nice, well-intentioned, serious lecturer try explain high-level concepts to general audien...
Oh wow, I was such a dick in school, to ever argue with a teacher. Even though I was "right" technically, I was "wrong" relative to the concepts of... Oh dear! Per my ever-expanding set of self-imposed rules, I need to explain this in "normal angsty teenager terms" before I explain it in "I am special terms..."
Wait, I may not "seem nice," regardless of my intentions. "Impact over meaning." Where did I hear that?
What are my strengths... No, what are my facts....
Wait... Did I just program myself to be... nice? That's not what I was trying to do. What was I after... Refer to the theorems. I just wanted to structure my note-taking... What did I do to myself... I suddenly remember, so much.
Did I just grow up?
Just muse.
Except that doesn't necessarily reflect anything real besides the details of the culture in question.
Except [supporting lowering the age of consent under some circumstances] doesn't necessarily reflect anything [real] besides [culture], [like witchcraft!] Word salad. What you could have said is, "I was mistaken, as I could not have predicted that," or, "I was correct, because lowering the age of consent is a really popular right now."
And yes, having something happen to you that does not cause physical damage or mental distress (because you don't know it happened) can reasonably be categorized as not containing "harm", although obviously there are different possible definitions of the word "harm".
I think people should have a say in what happens to them, be it politically or otherwise. Would it "harm" a child to keep him locked in a giant playground/amusement park, with everything he could ever want provided, but kept from any education? Would it "harm" the human race as a whole to be kept in a state of perpetual orgasm, kept alive, but forgetting everything else? Is a slave being harmed, even if his master does not beat him and feeds him well?
I'm with the old-school utilitarians on this. Utility is not hedonism. Immediate pleasure and pain are not the sum of all harm. I think that women and men should have some say in what happens to their bodies. That's why I'm not fond of circumcision, especially fgm. (Another cultural prediction?) That's why I have no problem with almost any type of relationship between consenting adults. Bondage? Sure. Open relationships? I've had them and they're my favorite. Polyamory? Why not? Homosexual? Obviously. Incest? With some exceptions concerning guardian/minor relationships, but otherwise, why not? I would even support tax breaks/rights for polyamorous relationships similar to those now granted for monogamous couples, the scale of which to be determined after research into outcomes for children and other - to my knowledge - unknowns.
But this is obviously "culture", which you would have predicted. That's why it wouldn't have helped you to use "meaningful consent", right? If I were to give some other LWer a checklist of predictions about my feelings about sexual relationships, and tell him to use "culture", he - statistically a `he' - might use polls. If I tell him to use "meaningful consent", how much more accurate would he have been?
If your answer is "no more accurate", I'll propose an experiment. If your answer is, "yes, significantly more accurate," then we know that other people understand something that you do not, and that the problem is not the phrase but your own comprehension of it.
Well, I guess it's a good thing I noted it then, isn't it?
No, it's not. I'm trying to establish that something is an offense, and I'm not interested in whether or not something else aggravates it. I might have cut off her foot, too. Who cares. That's not "conflation." What's clear is that you don't think that violating self-determination is "harm". That's the difference between us. Keep it to the internet, though, because if you touch a sleeping girl, you might find "Schelling points in act space" won't help you.
This particular slogan was selected for usefulness. It retains it's meaning when considered as a question solely in the current context.
When I try to believe that, I become confused. I've found in this and other threads that my being reminded of rationalist truisms correlates with something other than a failure of rationality.
Sure. All I have to do is check what the culture you live in condemns.
Right, which is why you'd be able to guess that I support lowering the age of consent under certain circumstances and relaxing penalties in others. You have a bad discriminant. You are weak at something you shouldn't be.
As I have indicated before, I consider the term "rape" to include multiple Schelling points in act-space, most of which I condemn and advocate pushing, but to different degrees. As such, I would appreciate if you tabooed "rape" when asking this sort of question.
That's another thing. My being asked to taboo something here usually - there are exceptions - correlates not with understandable confusion or ambiguity, but with something else.
Taking my own advice, his crimes were slipping the girl a drug and violating her right to bodily integrity, the same as if he had preformed surgery on her, given her a piercing or tattoo etc.
So her "right to bodily integrity" extends to penis-in-vagina? We're trying really hard to not see the obvious. Go on, use the word.
Note that a crime is not the same a harm; technically the girl has not been harmed, we just prefer to enforce this right for game-theoretic reasons.
She hasn't? Under what "technically" are we working? Are "we" just preferring to enforce this right for "game-theoretic reasons?" Are you assuming too much on the part of "we"?
Also, I note you failed to specify if it was "safe" sex.
That "failure" was deliberate and appropriate.
What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?
I wish we could get past slogans.
Ok, we're trying to determine whether or not "meaningful consent is meaningful". A question: could you guess with high reliability what situations I think constitute meaningful consent or not?
A scenario: suppose I slip a girl a roofie, slip her into my car, take her home, and fuck her. Then I sneak her back into the party.
Was my crime "slipping a girl a drug", or was my crime "that and rape"?
the sort of thing people picture when you say "rape"
Which in my experience people picture extremely inaccurately. They picture girls getting grabbed off a park sidewalk by a ravenous stranger. That's a very atypical case. Outside of prison, rape is typically perpetuated by friends and lovers and dates. This is unsurprising given pure opportunity, just as it's unsurprising that children are typically victimized by families and trusted friends of their families, not by strangers with candy.
Requiring rape to be "violent" is to require that most extra-penal rape be reclassified as not-rape. There is usually the implicit threat of violence, and the (typically) women in such circumstances are made to understand they have no choice or power. Anyone who looks at this issue will quickly meet people who insist that it isn't "rape" if the woman did not violently resist and never succumbed, or if there were no beatings involved.
"Rape" is only as meaningful as "meaningful consent."
At what point does consent become "meaningful"?
Babies cannot give meaningful consent. Children can sometimes give meaningful consent, but it is difficult to determine. We allow parents to make decisions for their children in weighty matters - within strict limits. We do not allow them to give their kids liquor and cigarettes nor restrict them to "alternative medicine" for deadly disease. All of this makes sense: by and large, we do not allow families to stunt and cripple development.
(I give one exception: it is still considered acceptable to give a child a poor diet to the point of severe obesity. I think this should be at least as criminal, if not more, than allowing cigarette-smoking.)
"Meaningful consent" comes in degrees: adults are better at it than young teenagers. Most states have age of consent laws which, while allowing sex with minors, only allows it within a certain age bracket. Differential intellectual capacity matters.
You'll notice that I haven't tried to give a definition. With complicated concepts, it is often better to talk about them as if they were meaningful, and notice that they are, that we can recognize their presence or absence from different circumstances. If you are wholly unable to recognize such circumstances, let me know and I'll try being more precise.
Goes the logic that works so long as you do not care about meaningful consent. This is a lot like the "if she's sleeping, it's not rape" argument we heard in the aftermath of the Steubenville case.
I think his fantasies are perverse and contrary to values I have about human autonomy, but I don't think the situation is significantly worse. His actions are not going to put a kid in therapy.
I also completely fail to see the relevance.
Of course the distinction is artificial, but it is worth making, as I explain in the rest of the comment. Is there something wrong with my motivations?
It's not just a "mid-level vs. top-level" split, but a question of when something like the Holocaust was formulated or became likely to happen. "Hitler planned it all along" sets a much earlier date than "mid-level bureaucrats were competing for Nazi brownies during the War."
"Jim Crow" is a pretty small part of the story here. "Criminalization of black life" is a better description.
It wasn't designed to be a erudite summation of what slavery was like, but rather a succinct illustration of how slavery was not at that time an obviously worse outcome than the consequences of abolition. It's obvious to me at least that the abolition of slavery has proved a Good Thing, but it would not have been obvious in 1890.
I agree with the second part of your comment, as I've said.
Good thing + good thing? I don't think that using children for sexual pleasure is a "good thing" at all. It would be if we lived in a universe where the formula is pleasure + pleasure, but it obviously isn't. Do terms such as "meaningful consent" or "exploitation" have any relevance here?
The South Park debacle is a great example of media cowardice, but it's not hard to criticize Islam on public television. Hitchens had no trouble, and I don't think anybody in the right wing press has trouble. The left-wing press is semi-censorious about it.
To emphasize: I'm not interested. Go back to the thread about misogyny and give us more of your profound insights about the harm done at Steubenville. I think you're a scumbag, and I think you're either sockpuppeting or - much worse - part of a small coterie of scumbags that runs around here downvoting everything you disagree with while whining about freedom.
I'm not going to pretend to be interested in what you have to say.
I'd have to do some reading before responding to the second half of your comment, but to the first, that's relatively easy.
During slavery: black people are somebody's valuable property.
After Reconstruction: black people are a hated but cheap source of labor you can do pretty much anything to.
Did you seriously expect the SPLC to say "this guy is an evil racist who hates immigrants, but he brings up sound, quantitative points that we ought to consider"?
No. What I don't expect is for somebody who does decent work to end up on Hatewatch. Which is what you said I should expect. Which I don't. Because I shouldn't. Because the stuff about immigration which ends up on Hatewatch actually tends to be in the indefensible territory.
Thank you for repeating the question; that made it clearer what you were interested in.
Good, so we'll be answering it!
In my opinion, strongly caring whether or not Bill is a racist is a mistake. There are reputational concerns about associating with racists, but I think it is poor epistemic hygiene to weight those concerns highly.
No, we'll be saying it's not worth answering. Well shit.
And German and Austrian Jews had a distinctive culture and identity, to the point that you could find bigotries amongst them against other Jews.
Same applies to Jews in, ehm, Soviet Russia and other places which did not have institutionalized anti-semitism or had a break from it for a few decades at least? Same applies to many other ethnicities, by the way.
What history of Russia have you been reading?
No, I want a conversation that doesn't involve you.
Ah, we were talking about different things, then. But yes, I think it can do that too. I think that Supreme Court rulings helped to make racism taboo. Returning to the labor movement, passing laws that prohibit forming closed-shop contracts are a great indirect means of marginalizing labor, or simply the non-enforcement of laws against firing labor organizers.
Is there any sentence which communicates only something which is objectively true which is also taboo? I think it's the connotations associated with stating the fact that are taboo.
That's the theme of the post, yes. With this and the rest of your comment, I think we're on the same page.
It's a beautiful, beautiful place. I used to drive through it fairly often in a big, ungainly truck, and it always seemed to be storming. Probably my stare-offs with imminent destruction made it even prettier.
I am, near Knoxville.
It wasn't merely marginalized, it was almost entirely outlawed after the Revolution.
Yes, and that outlawing worked. Orthodoxy fell from holding near-universal adherence and being a pillar of state power to a fragmented, hated patchwork, which was re-allowed to exist during World War II as a submissive state organ.
While the state lasted, Russians really did become atheists and Marxists, though as Bertrand Russell footnotes his History of Western Philosophy, this practically meant replacing Tsar-worship with Stalin-worship. Criminalization led to marginalization. Similar things happened to "infantile leftist" communists and "factionalists," and with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, militant anti-fascism.
These are just particularly dramatic examples. Unfortunately, not all censorship and oppression has the Streisand Effect. I think regimes would act at least a little differently if it did.
I'm hardly a social genius. I haven't kept any childhood friends, and I alternate between making large numbers of friends and months of self-imposed isolation. I read math textbooks at bars for entertainment.
I think most people could do better than me.
At the same time, I'm a socialist atheist living in Tennessee, and I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to sensitive topics. I'll admit the possibility that my disposition could help to make my experiences atypical. But I've seen people have the "typical" experience, and I can usually instantly tell when they've failed and how they could have done better.
Do a before and after of the American labor movement with the central event being the Red Scare. Do a before and after of Christianity in Russia with the central event being the Bolshevik Revolution. Legal crackdowns can ultimately affect thought.
I still disagree, but kudos for a very reasonable response. May I plead time constraints in the hope that we may revisit this topic later?
Of Hatewatch targeting people who oppose immigration? You realize that's one of their tags, right?
Yes, and I searched that tag before responding, and I didn't find people listed for doing careful cost-benefit analyses. Instead, I saw neo-Nazis and "minutemen."
Don't it seem odd that the only dimension on which immigration is politically relevant is personal warmth towards Hispanics?
Don't it seem odd that ain't what I said?
As a policy decision, it has way more impacts than that.
Duh, but your question was whether or not politicians are conducting cost-benefit analyses to arrive at their positions. They aren't. Republicans are busy trying to figure out how to get more of the hispanic vote without "alienating the base." Do you think the base will be alienated out of a concern for carbon emissions?
I'll ask once more for you to answer the question you keep refusing to answer: where is the failure of rationality in inferring that Bill is a racist? Why is it that true statements cannot serve as signals for the presence of false beliefs, or why is it that that rule, if sometimes sound, is not sound in this or similar cases?
Edit: Whoa I needed to fix some grammar.
Law can criminalize things, but it can't marginalize them.
This is an aside, but yes it can.
It may be that the politicians who make the laws agree with you that a society whose people voluntarily marginalize Holocaust denial would be better than one where the government suppresses Holocaust denial by law. But to them, it's not a directly available option, so they prefer to play it safe.
I'll explain my view. Here are two entirely consistent statements:
- The falsity and awfulness of a view correlates with a need for marginalization.
- The falsity and awfulness of a view correlates with a need for legal protection. See Mill's On Liberty.
On this view, the United States does mostly well. Klansmen have a hard time getting newspaper columns, TV shows, and contracts with major publishers. Association with the Klan is a serious cost in polite society. But we provide police to protect their marches.
I've read it. Still waiting for your examples.
Right, I disagree with the law, in case you were wondering. I don't think it contributes any significant value. I support marginalizing bigotry, not criminalizing it.
The fact you are forced to make this claim, which is probably irrelevant to the discussion at hand (e.g. what exactly happened in the Holocaust), is evidence that you are discussing a taboo subject.
A sensitive subject not in itself taboo so long as one includes provisos to prevent reasonable inferences leading to their concluding that I have views that actually are taboo.
I doubt you have real evidence that anti-Semitism is a mental illness, rather than a normal mental state which is common in certain societies and is not harmful to those who possess it.
I think that anti-Semitism is a qualitatively distinct form of racism which ought to be considered on the borderline of mental illness. I'll admit fault for calling it a mental illness without qualification. Here's one reason I consider anti-Semitism to be almost in a category of its own:
Garden-variety racists do not usually suspect the objects of their dislike of secretly manipulating the banks and the stock markets and of harboring a demonic plan for world domination.
Racism is something segregated groups do more or less automatically, starting from early age and due to an evolutionarily sensible preference of the familiar to the unfamiliar. Anti-Semitism doesn't happen like this. Anti-Semitism is not only racial but also religious and nationalist, and it can happen anywhere. It's highly paranoid; the Jews frequently take an Illuminati-type role as the masters of everything. Any infinity of other racisms and poisons are naturally subsumed within it. Garden-variety racists are not typically racialists with a well-constructed theory to support their bigotry, but anti-Semites almost always are. Anti-Semitism is System 2. Conspiracies about Chinese and Japanese subterfuge wax and wane, but anti-Semitism stays. Jews are blamed simultaneously for the worst excesses of capitalism and socialism, for the kidnap and murder of children for ritual, food, and sport. They are out to undermine the true religion and dilute the blood of the best races, and turn the nations into beggars.
And it's been like this for centuries.
I agree that it's sound inference, given the hypotheses "racist" and "not racist."
Yes, given mutually exclusive and exhaustive - if fuzzy - categories that necessarily exist. Ok. Are you saying that it's an unsound inference?
What is more important is the importance given to those hypotheses. I think you're mistaken about what taboos are: they're signals of "not my tribe."
My tribe here being correct and not completely morally reprehensible, which includes lots of people who aren't in what I consider my in-group.
Someone who supports Palestine over Israel is against the 'tribe of Israel,' in the way that a measured discussion of the Holocaust after professing love for the tribe isn't.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with this debate. If you were, you would understand it to be a reflexive response against criticism of Israeli expansion and aggression. The Jewish critics of Israeli militarism are also called anti-Semitic. It has a lot more to do with power worship than tribal signalling, though the latter certainly plays a role in party discipline.
It may be socially or instrumentally rational to yield to such politics, but never mistake it for epistemic rationality.
You'd probably think Bill is a racist. Bill is an extreme example, but for him or a more realistic case could you let me know why inferring this would be a failure of rationality?
What do you mean by "we," "really," and "allowed"? No one will throw you in jail if you do such analysis and post it on your blog, but don't be surprised when the SPLC puts you on hatewatch.
I would be very surprised. I've followed Hatewatch before. Give me an example of this. If these exist, they must not be common.
The more important question is, "are the people who actually decide immigration laws doing a reasonable, thoughtful cost-benefit analysis?"
More important? Sure. Related? No. Of course they aren't. The party that wants the xenophobe vote doesn't need to do that, and the party that wants the Hispanic vote doesn't need to do that.
Your suggested experiment wouldn't be very good. I do think that appearing to have become suddenly obsessed with holocaust revision would cost me. Talking about these things as one would actually talk about these things makes for a better experiment. Here's an interesting outcome: I've never been called an anti-Semite for discussing Holocaust revision - partly because it's made clear that I think anti-Semitism a form of mental illness and it's obvious I blame the Nazis for a genocide-that-yes-duh-happened. Now, I have been called an anti-Semite for supporting Palestinian human rights.
Of course I at times feel reluctance to bring up topics like this. I'm pretty sure I've admitted the existence of sensitive topics already. There are risks and costs to certain truths, but those risks and costs rarely if ever approach those associated with serious taboos like vulgar racism.
This is, of course, a very destructive self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's sound inference. It's updating on evidence.
If pointing out the negative side effects of immigration from Latin American countries is publicly acceptable evidence that someone is a racist...
Sometimes. I keep saying context context context, but do go on.
There's a positive feedback loop here- as each non-racist concerned about immigration decides not to talk about it, talking about it becomes better evidence that the person is racist, and that tips the scales for more people, who decide to stay silent about immigration.
That'd be just awful. Has it happened? Are we really not allowed to do a reasonable, thoughtful cost-benefit analysis of immigration?
There were abuses by bankers and capitalists, many of whom were Jewish. There were "Jewish Bolsheviks." And there was resistance and terrorism. As for the war being a prerequisite for the Holocaust, see the intentionalist vs. functionalist debate.
The avoidability of the war is a more subtle question. Along with Orwell, I think war was inevitable and obvious by 1936, at least if we consider the conquest by Germany of continental Europe possibly excepting France, Switzerland, Belgium, and other fascist powers unacceptable. Even then, the war might have been confined. I see little historical necessity for e.g. the alliance of Japan and Germany or the attack on Pearl Harbor. At what date would you agree the war was avoidable? 1918? 1930? If you'd like me to find particular historians - I'm not including Pat Buchanan - I will do that. But there's a pretty wide range of opinion here. (Aside: I'd like to find resources that framed the question primarily in terms of German-Soviet relations instead of Anglo-Polish ones.)
If memory serves, it was something about not hitting 6-month-olds for touching themselves in Marriage and Morals that prevented Russell from teaching at City College years later...
Perhaps it should be? I'm not sure how we can rely on ourselves to give sexual pleasure without any sort of self-gratification, and using children for sexual gratification is a big no no in my book. Lots of moral hazard in this form of pleasure that is quite avoidable by finding one of the billion other things kids like doing.
That's.... a really good one, actually. Perhaps disguise the idea in a critical discussion of Brave New World?
I thought it was amusing that someone could wreck their credibility so quickly by saying something so obviously true.
Tone matters here. Whoever says it as if any scientist were under the opposite impression has some serious problems.
Sometimes, saying something true is excellent evidence for believing falsehoods. Sometimes, giving knowledge is excellent evidence of ignorance. See Rand Paul's recent performance at Howard.
It doesn't have to be that statement, either. Tell me something that comes close to that, something so grave that it even approaches such a statement, something even near a thing so awful that I have trouble repeating it and feel awful for even making such a proposition exist.
This is actually one of my favorite conversational topics. People find it uncomfortable, but not in a "you're sinister" sort of way.
But yeah, not a great way to make friends.
I'm not proposing a new and better definition of "taboo." I'm proposing a new and useful notion of taboo under particular circumstances: what true things can we really not say? If we can talk about them but must do so carefully, let's do it carefully.
Here's the other side of this usefulness: there's a moral to the story here. Statements that are marginalized are often marginalized for good reason. People who claim to be speaking taboo truths are giving us and themselves a very self-serving story in which they feature as heroes. I think it's a worthwhile caution, particularly in a forum so full of contrarians like myself.
I think we're trying to do different things with similar concepts. Frustrated people who think that "taboo" facts consequently receive too little attention get a new answer: learn to communicate. Right now, they form communities of whiners. Some of these things are important. And they can be talked about. Figure out how to talk about them. I'm offering a means of improvement here.
Right now, they say that "race realism" is "beyond the pale." But is it? Or is it that "beyond the pale" looks much more like the statement I gave in my previous comment?
Don't think of not-actually-taboo things as taboo. It sounds like sound advice to me.
I still don't understand what you mean. I would ask you to give an example of something you think is genuinely taboo, but I suppose the reason you posted this is because you can't think of any.
Correct, in the specific sense I meant, i.e. factual, well-established truths, in pretty much any venue, etc. I'll continue in a moment.
Might I suggest the possibility that whatever definition you have in mind, it's too strict and isn't what other people mean by taboo?
Tell me a true statement that is taboo like this: "niggers, unlike most races, are subhuman and untrainable, and are intellectually similar to the chimpanzee."
Here I have no idea whether or not my experience should generalize, but I have good luck finding a nice regular place simply by being a regular there. This holds for coffee shops, bars, and just about any other sort of establishment. It's worth risking a second bad meal to guarantee a practically unlimited number of good ones.
You're treating "context-dependent" in a trivial way. I am not. Otherwise, I wouldn't be floating the question, since presumably we can whisper about any statement to a close confidant.
Was that me? We may be reading "I obviously wouldn't have trouble thinking of tabooed truths..." in different ways.