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I think Stephen Bond did some excellent takedowns of the identity politics that has arisen around Bayes' Theorem back in the day. I wonder where he's at these d

I think Stephen Bond did some excellent takedowns of the identity politics that has arisen around Bayes' Theorem back in the day. I wonder where he's at these days. The Cult of Bayes' Theorem http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html > One of Yudkowsky's constant refrains, appropriating language from Frank Herbert's Dune, is "Politics is the Mind-killer". Under this rallying cry, Lesswrong insiders attempt to purge discussions of any political opinions they disagree with. They strive to convince themselves and their followers that they are dealing in questions of pure, refined "rationality" with no political content. However, the version of "rationality" they preach is expressly politicised.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
I've seen this type of writing before. It's a kind of twisted pseudo-criticism you write against a group you dislike. You can compose stuff like this against any group. It sounds believable from the outside, especially if you start sceptical to begin with. But take a closer look - it's actually full of ad-hominems, cherry-picking facts and presenting them in worst light possible. I've been a part of several groups that were targeted by such prose - first the religious group I grew up in, that is a minority in my country; then the school I went to. My university year used (a very lite version of) such criticism against another, so I've seen it from the other side as well. Hell, people write shit like this about HN! It's hard to defend against such criticism. You'll get boggled down in refuting specific accusations, but this is something you can never win. The only winning move is to ignore it completely. Personally, I shun and shame people who write such stuff, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with their victims. Dishonesty is a poison that destroys societies. TL;DR: this text is harmful, malicious bullshit. If it at least offended people with style, there would be something to save it.
- RodericDay 11y ago
  I know you're a huge advocate for Lesswrong, but not "everybody" or "anyone" has quotes ripe for picking like Yudkowsky. Stephen Bond is not just throwing some opinion out there, he's backing it up with first-hand sources: Yudkowsky on his simplified views of why race gets brought up: > "Race adds extra controversy to everything; in that sense, it's obvious what difference skin colour makes politically". > "Group injustice has no existence apart from injustice to individuals. It's individuals who have brains to experience suffering. It's individuals who deserve, and often don't get, a fair chance at life. [...] Skin colour has nothing to do with it, nothing at all." Yudkowsky on our current societal structure, adulating the people who give him funding: > One of the major surprises I received when I moved out of childhood into the real world, was the degree to which the world is stratified by genuine competence. Yudkowsky writing short stories about a society where rape is legal, leaving himself ample room for plausible deniability, but putting it up "for debate": >> "No, us. The ones who remembered the ancient world. Back then we still had our hands on a large share of the capital and tremendous influence in the grant committees. When our children legalized rape, we thought that the Future had gone wrong." >> Akon's mouth hung open. "You were that prude?" (https://web.archive.org/web/20131206200429/http://lesswrong.com/lw/y8/interlude_with_the_confessor_48/ https://web.archive.org/web/20131206200429/http://lesswrong....) I think some well-meaning LessWrongers get caught in the crossfire, but I think the essay makes a very well grounded case for the blindspots "rationalists" have towards politics that suit the identity of people like Yudkowski.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I'm not that huge advocate of LW. I used to frequent the site, I read the Sequences and generally liked what I saw. RE parts you quoted. Of course they look bad, because they've been ripped out from context. Race: http://lesswrong.com/lw/kk/why_are_individual_iq_differences_ok/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/kk/why_are_individual_iq_differences... This is an article asking, to quote: "But why is it that the rest of the world seems to think that individual genetic differences are okay, whereas racial genetic differences in intelligence are not?". Yudkowsky seems to argue that making big controversies around whether there are, or are not, differences between "races" is missing the point; it's just one of many variables and we should focus on fixing intelligence disparities for everyone. Society: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ub/competent_elites/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/ub/competent_elites/ This blogpost is marked as controversial from the get-go. It covers a quite interesting theory IMO - that the very common meme, which says that elites are stupid and evil, is in fact wrong. Eliezer argues towards a more socially uncomfortable opinion - that elites are, in fact, smarter and better at organizing things. Given that this is a belief most people are heavily biased against, it actually may be the "thing you can't say", per PG's essay at http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html. Story: Geez. This is a sci-fi story. Moreover, it's explicitly designed to fuck with reader's moral intuitions. That's its entire point. Personally, I find it fun and insightful, but it is heavy. You can read the whole work here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/ -- And to be clear. I'm not idolizing Eliezer. He's just a man who thought a lot about some stuff, and wanted to share it. He sometimes gets it wrong (and, as opposed to many, has at least the courage to admit he was wrong). But I absolutely hate this kind of bullshit pseudocriticism when it's directed against anyone - be it my friend or enemy, be it someone I admire or despise of. Eliezer is not beyond criticism, but we can do better than that.
    - RodericDay 11y ago
      I guess I just disagree with you that they're taken out of context? 1. Bond posits Yudkowski thinks that racism is mostly due to genetic difference, and not about the deliberate, mostly political disenfranchisement of minorities. You say this is a wrong because his appraisal of the situation as being caused by genetic disparities is benevolent, and that he wants to work to "fix" it. These aren't in contradiction- to say that it's unfortunate that society is racialized, but that it's due to traits rather than politics, is better than being wantonly racist, but still a well-known form of fallacious racism. Some would say this latter one is actually worse in terms of perpetuating the situation. 2. Of course it's "controversial from the get go". He looks at the disproportionate representation of certain people in ie: tech, and concludes that it's because they're "more competent". Nothing here seems to be a counter, you're just basically saying "it's politically incorrect so it's probably right". 3. Clearly it's just a story. This point eludes exactly nobody. The whole point is that these kind of people find these questions ("is rape really bad?") really intriguing rather than obvious. It makes you wonder about the power of Bayesian reasoning- the exact point of the essay. I think you're too uncharitable to critical writers like Bond (it took me a while to acquire a taste for this vicious kind of writing), underestimating their and their audiences' understanding. As a result, you think this context adds way more than it does.
- manish_gill 11y ago
  If your ideas can stand on their own merit, you can defend them against criticism without resorting down to saying things like "oh it's a pseudo criticism and cherry picking facts". You're the one calling it bullshit. You even admit you wouldn't want to refute specific accusations. And then go on to call it "malicious bullshit". So, basically what you're saying is that we shouldn't listen to this criticism (which provides very valid points btw) but listen to you, when all you've done is attack the critique in a classic ad-hominem fallacy. See the problem here?
  - loup-vaillant 11y ago
    Let's try: as far as I know, this bit: Under this rallying cry, Lesswrong insiders attempt to purge discussions of any political opinions they disagree with. Having hanged around LessWrong for quite some time, I'm pretty sure this point is false. How am I to show it however? Dump the whole site to show the absence of such purges? And how the inevitable counter-example? Quite a lot has been said there, we're bound to find unacceptable behaviour somewhere. All I can provide is a testimony. In other word, anecdotal evidence, which we all know to be weak. There's another way to say "pseudo criticism and cherry picking facts". It's the fully general counter-argument. If the criticism can indeed apply to all groups, then it effectively applies to none, because it doesn't provide a way to discriminate different groups.
    - manish_gill 11y ago
      Alright, lets see > Having hanged around LessWrong for quite some time, I'm pretty sure this point is false. How am I to show it however? Dump the whole site to show the absence of such purges? To refute the above statement, only one statement to the contrary would be a good start - it would provide me with enough evidence to consider your side of the story and think that perhaps the critique isn't completely fair. > Quite a lot has been said there, we're bound to find unacceptable behaviour somewhere. This can be said for any popular community. Does that mean we should not critique them? Or that some how invalidate any criticism against them? No. The thing you're missing here is not the number of counter-examples, but a general cultural trend. HN, for example, is a tech oriented community, but political discussion isn't anathema here. I can show this by reading a few posts and noticing how people are comfortable discussing differentiating political opinions here. It's not perfect argument, but it's a good start, and goes a long way towards making me appreciate the environment. Here, there is an important role played by so called "leaders" in community and how tolerant they are as well, by the way. And I know for a fact that Elizer isn't one of them. Then again, what else do you expect from a guy who tries to edit his own Wikipedia page. > If the criticism can indeed apply to all groups, then it effectively applies to none, because it doesn't provide a way to discriminate different groups. I'd happily accept this if you specifically mention which criticism in the parent link can be applied to all. The critique is very, very specific. It starts by defining what Bayes Theorem is, what LW and their ilk think about it, more of their pseudo-intellectual talk, the cult of personality, the AI apocalypse doomsday scenarios, etc etc.
Zarel 11y ago
This was posted on the Less Wrong Facebook page recently, where the reaction was mostly "There's no substantive criticism in this article, only mudslinging". Other reactions include "I was raised in an actual cult, and the differences I see include that LW encourages debate and EY is frequently criticized." Some commenters did agree with at least parts of the article, though. Even the ones that agreed said it seemed to be more "personal attacks" than "excellent takedowns", though. I personally think it seems kind of... "smug", I think, is the word I want to use? "Smug" writing isn't necessarily wrong, but it generally seems to have other priorities than discovering the truth. I disagree that I'd eventually acquire a taste for this "vicious" kind of writing - I've read smug writing that I otherwise agree with, and it still makes me uncomfortable.
- RodericDay 11y ago
  I don't want this to get too meta, but I like the style of your post. If you're bored, could you tell me what you think about this article? http://gawker.com/on-smarm-1476594977 http://gawker.com/on-smarm-1476594977
  - Zarel 11y ago
    That is a very long article... The point seems to be that while there's been a lot of criticism of snark (too much negativity), smarm (too much positivity) is also bad. It seems to me that the way he describes them, snark and smarm are pretty similar: snark is being smug (acting unnecessarily superior) about someone else doing something wrong in judgment (like being ignorant or making a bad decision), while smarm is being smug about someone else doing something morally wrong. I would probably mostly agree with the idea that smarm is bad, although I'm not sure I would have spent 30 pages on it. He defends snark as criticism of smarm, but I think it's important to note that while criticism or negativity itself isn't necessarily wrong, it's the smugness that makes it bad. I'd probably describe smugness as criticism mainly for looking good to your ingroup, and for making your target feel bad. For instance, I can imagine a good teacher criticizing me, but I can't imagine a good teacher being smug about it. Being smug seems correlated with impure motives, which decreases the accuracy and diminishes the trustworthiness of the criticism, to me.
senekerim 11y ago
This is written by a person who doesn't know what he's talking about. Any time people diss Bayesian stats and name Yudkowsky in their argument (a controversial guy without a high school degree), they haven't got a clue what they are saying. Bayesian stats is a solid mathematical theory. It is used everywhere in academia and industry, is the foundation of a lot of AI & Machine Learning research, powers many technologies that, among other things, allow you to locate this thread on the Internet and post that ignorant link here. Please stop promoting BS.
cbd1984 11y ago
This is why people don't take philosophers seriously: They apparently can only attack strawmen, and badly at that, using emotion in place of reasoned arguments.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

I've seen this type of writing before. It's a kind of twisted pseudo-criticism you write against a group you dislike. You can compose stuff like this against any group. It sounds believable from the outside, especially if you start sceptical to begin with. But take a closer look - it's actually full of ad-hominems, cherry-picking facts and presenting them in worst light possible. I've been a part of several groups that were targeted by such prose - first the religious group I grew up in, that is a minority in my country; then the school I went to. My university year used (a very lite version of) such criticism against another, so I've seen it from the other side as well. Hell, people write shit like this about HN! It's hard to defend against such criticism. You'll get boggled down in refuting specific accusations, but this is something you can never win. The only winning move is to ignore it completely. Personally, I shun and shame people who write such stuff, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with their victims. Dishonesty is a poison that destroys societies. TL;DR: this text is harmful, malicious bullshit. If it at least offended people with style, there would be something to save it.

RodericDay 11y ago
I know you're a huge advocate for Lesswrong, but not "everybody" or "anyone" has quotes ripe for picking like Yudkowsky. Stephen Bond is not just throwing some opinion out there, he's backing it up with first-hand sources: Yudkowsky on his simplified views of why race gets brought up: > "Race adds extra controversy to everything; in that sense, it's obvious what difference skin colour makes politically". > "Group injustice has no existence apart from injustice to individuals. It's individuals who have brains to experience suffering. It's individuals who deserve, and often don't get, a fair chance at life. [...] Skin colour has nothing to do with it, nothing at all." Yudkowsky on our current societal structure, adulating the people who give him funding: > One of the major surprises I received when I moved out of childhood into the real world, was the degree to which the world is stratified by genuine competence. Yudkowsky writing short stories about a society where rape is legal, leaving himself ample room for plausible deniability, but putting it up "for debate": >> "No, us. The ones who remembered the ancient world. Back then we still had our hands on a large share of the capital and tremendous influence in the grant committees. When our children legalized rape, we thought that the Future had gone wrong." >> Akon's mouth hung open. "You were that prude?" (https://web.archive.org/web/20131206200429/http://lesswrong.com/lw/y8/interlude_with_the_confessor_48/ https://web.archive.org/web/20131206200429/http://lesswrong....) I think some well-meaning LessWrongers get caught in the crossfire, but I think the essay makes a very well grounded case for the blindspots "rationalists" have towards politics that suit the identity of people like Yudkowski.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I'm not that huge advocate of LW. I used to frequent the site, I read the Sequences and generally liked what I saw. RE parts you quoted. Of course they look bad, because they've been ripped out from context. Race: http://lesswrong.com/lw/kk/why_are_individual_iq_differences_ok/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/kk/why_are_individual_iq_differences... This is an article asking, to quote: "But why is it that the rest of the world seems to think that individual genetic differences are okay, whereas racial genetic differences in intelligence are not?". Yudkowsky seems to argue that making big controversies around whether there are, or are not, differences between "races" is missing the point; it's just one of many variables and we should focus on fixing intelligence disparities for everyone. Society: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ub/competent_elites/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/ub/competent_elites/ This blogpost is marked as controversial from the get-go. It covers a quite interesting theory IMO - that the very common meme, which says that elites are stupid and evil, is in fact wrong. Eliezer argues towards a more socially uncomfortable opinion - that elites are, in fact, smarter and better at organizing things. Given that this is a belief most people are heavily biased against, it actually may be the "thing you can't say", per PG's essay at http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html. Story: Geez. This is a sci-fi story. Moreover, it's explicitly designed to fuck with reader's moral intuitions. That's its entire point. Personally, I find it fun and insightful, but it is heavy. You can read the whole work here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/ -- And to be clear. I'm not idolizing Eliezer. He's just a man who thought a lot about some stuff, and wanted to share it. He sometimes gets it wrong (and, as opposed to many, has at least the courage to admit he was wrong). But I absolutely hate this kind of bullshit pseudocriticism when it's directed against anyone - be it my friend or enemy, be it someone I admire or despise of. Eliezer is not beyond criticism, but we can do better than that.
  - RodericDay 11y ago
    I guess I just disagree with you that they're taken out of context? 1. Bond posits Yudkowski thinks that racism is mostly due to genetic difference, and not about the deliberate, mostly political disenfranchisement of minorities. You say this is a wrong because his appraisal of the situation as being caused by genetic disparities is benevolent, and that he wants to work to "fix" it. These aren't in contradiction- to say that it's unfortunate that society is racialized, but that it's due to traits rather than politics, is better than being wantonly racist, but still a well-known form of fallacious racism. Some would say this latter one is actually worse in terms of perpetuating the situation. 2. Of course it's "controversial from the get go". He looks at the disproportionate representation of certain people in ie: tech, and concludes that it's because they're "more competent". Nothing here seems to be a counter, you're just basically saying "it's politically incorrect so it's probably right". 3. Clearly it's just a story. This point eludes exactly nobody. The whole point is that these kind of people find these questions ("is rape really bad?") really intriguing rather than obvious. It makes you wonder about the power of Bayesian reasoning- the exact point of the essay. I think you're too uncharitable to critical writers like Bond (it took me a while to acquire a taste for this vicious kind of writing), underestimating their and their audiences' understanding. As a result, you think this context adds way more than it does.
manish_gill 11y ago
If your ideas can stand on their own merit, you can defend them against criticism without resorting down to saying things like "oh it's a pseudo criticism and cherry picking facts". You're the one calling it bullshit. You even admit you wouldn't want to refute specific accusations. And then go on to call it "malicious bullshit". So, basically what you're saying is that we shouldn't listen to this criticism (which provides very valid points btw) but listen to you, when all you've done is attack the critique in a classic ad-hominem fallacy. See the problem here?
- loup-vaillant 11y ago
  Let's try: as far as I know, this bit: Under this rallying cry, Lesswrong insiders attempt to purge discussions of any political opinions they disagree with. Having hanged around LessWrong for quite some time, I'm pretty sure this point is false. How am I to show it however? Dump the whole site to show the absence of such purges? And how the inevitable counter-example? Quite a lot has been said there, we're bound to find unacceptable behaviour somewhere. All I can provide is a testimony. In other word, anecdotal evidence, which we all know to be weak. There's another way to say "pseudo criticism and cherry picking facts". It's the fully general counter-argument. If the criticism can indeed apply to all groups, then it effectively applies to none, because it doesn't provide a way to discriminate different groups.
  - manish_gill 11y ago
    Alright, lets see > Having hanged around LessWrong for quite some time, I'm pretty sure this point is false. How am I to show it however? Dump the whole site to show the absence of such purges? To refute the above statement, only one statement to the contrary would be a good start - it would provide me with enough evidence to consider your side of the story and think that perhaps the critique isn't completely fair. > Quite a lot has been said there, we're bound to find unacceptable behaviour somewhere. This can be said for any popular community. Does that mean we should not critique them? Or that some how invalidate any criticism against them? No. The thing you're missing here is not the number of counter-examples, but a general cultural trend. HN, for example, is a tech oriented community, but political discussion isn't anathema here. I can show this by reading a few posts and noticing how people are comfortable discussing differentiating political opinions here. It's not perfect argument, but it's a good start, and goes a long way towards making me appreciate the environment. Here, there is an important role played by so called "leaders" in community and how tolerant they are as well, by the way. And I know for a fact that Elizer isn't one of them. Then again, what else do you expect from a guy who tries to edit his own Wikipedia page. > If the criticism can indeed apply to all groups, then it effectively applies to none, because it doesn't provide a way to discriminate different groups. I'd happily accept this if you specifically mention which criticism in the parent link can be applied to all. The critique is very, very specific. It starts by defining what Bayes Theorem is, what LW and their ilk think about it, more of their pseudo-intellectual talk, the cult of personality, the AI apocalypse doomsday scenarios, etc etc.

Zarel 11y ago

This was posted on the Less Wrong Facebook page recently, where the reaction was mostly "There's no substantive criticism in this article, only mudslinging". Other reactions include "I was raised in an actual cult, and the differences I see include that LW encourages debate and EY is frequently criticized." Some commenters did agree with at least parts of the article, though. Even the ones that agreed said it seemed to be more "personal attacks" than "excellent takedowns", though. I personally think it seems kind of... "smug", I think, is the word I want to use? "Smug" writing isn't necessarily wrong, but it generally seems to have other priorities than discovering the truth. I disagree that I'd eventually acquire a taste for this "vicious" kind of writing - I've read smug writing that I otherwise agree with, and it still makes me uncomfortable.

RodericDay 11y ago
I don't want this to get too meta, but I like the style of your post. If you're bored, could you tell me what you think about this article? http://gawker.com/on-smarm-1476594977 http://gawker.com/on-smarm-1476594977
- Zarel 11y ago
  That is a very long article... The point seems to be that while there's been a lot of criticism of snark (too much negativity), smarm (too much positivity) is also bad. It seems to me that the way he describes them, snark and smarm are pretty similar: snark is being smug (acting unnecessarily superior) about someone else doing something wrong in judgment (like being ignorant or making a bad decision), while smarm is being smug about someone else doing something morally wrong. I would probably mostly agree with the idea that smarm is bad, although I'm not sure I would have spent 30 pages on it. He defends snark as criticism of smarm, but I think it's important to note that while criticism or negativity itself isn't necessarily wrong, it's the smugness that makes it bad. I'd probably describe smugness as criticism mainly for looking good to your ingroup, and for making your target feel bad. For instance, I can imagine a good teacher criticizing me, but I can't imagine a good teacher being smug about it. Being smug seems correlated with impure motives, which decreases the accuracy and diminishes the trustworthiness of the criticism, to me.

senekerim 11y ago

This is written by a person who doesn't know what he's talking about. Any time people diss Bayesian stats and name Yudkowsky in their argument (a controversial guy without a high school degree), they haven't got a clue what they are saying. Bayesian stats is a solid mathematical theory. It is used everywhere in academia and industry, is the foundation of a lot of AI & Machine Learning research, powers many technologies that, among other things, allow you to locate this thread on the Internet and post that ignorant link here. Please stop promoting BS.

cbd1984 11y ago

This is why people don't take philosophers seriously: They apparently can only attack strawmen, and badly at that, using emotion in place of reasoned arguments.