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Where we disagree is probably in using the language of "privilege" and related concepts. I see no point to it, and it's probably harmful in the long run. It's i

by Jach 10y ago

Where we disagree is probably in using the language of "privilege" and related concepts. I see no point to it, and it's probably harmful in the long run. It's imprecise (typically dealing only with vague averages), ignores detriments, ignores privileges when they imply the existence of detriments (i.e. there is certainly female privilege, but it is often ignored because that implies that some male privilege could be counter-balanced to some extent by some male detriment, i.e. not being a female), applies poorly to individuals (because they are so multi-dimensional), ignores complicated combinations in favor of simple ones that seem only to infer positive correlation (white cis male etc...), and is championed most loudly by means of pathos appeals. Why bother with that framework? I don't think we should stop talking about gender, or class, or race, but we ought to be more careful about it, especially when we try to assign causes, and especially when we talk about individuals. Focus more on ethos and logos. Use full data sets, talk about positive and negative, talk about interference both constructive and destructive. Make predictions and update when your predictions are falsified. Make predictions about data before you look at the data to see if your priors are well-calibrated. Talk about consequences more than feelings. For the last point, it's mostly a complaint about using a (mean) average for everything without considering whether the underlying distribution makes such a statistic worthwhile to use or not. Consider a block of houses valued roughly the same amount, then some rich dude comes in, knocks one down, builds a towering mega-house that hits the limits of what is legally allowed, and then sells it to some other rich dude. His house has bumped the (mean) average house value of the neighborhood up considerably, but no house in the neighborhood is actually worth the average. Talking about the (mean) average is then pretty useless, and no one is (literally) going to buy into one of the normal houses being worth the average of the neighborhood. The median average is much more useful, at least for property values. But even then you'll want to look at the full distribution to say whether the median is really more useful or not, and when you're buying or selling a specific individual house, you're going to want even more details about that specific house that could drastically change the valuation one way or another.

burkaman 10y ago
Do you have any suggestions for how to communicate this stuff better? I certainly understand objections to a slogan like "equal pay for equal work" or "check your privilege" or whatever, but I also understand that there are real issues affecting millions of people and discussing statistical nuances is probably not the most efficient way to solve them. I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm honestly wondering if you've seen any more effective approaches or have any ideas.
- Jach 10y ago
  If the goal is communication and truth-seeking, communicating and arguing through logos and ethos work better than through pathos, so try to move things in that direction if you can, personally I just try to not produce emotional discourse in the first place and try to not engage with it when I see it. For logos, the parties involved need to understand statistical nuances and basic probability theory if they hope to use data and studies as evidence of anything in a serious manner, otherwise they're just using someone else's authority -- which isn't necessarily bad but it's important to know yourself when you have understood at least some of the details and can see the logic yourself versus taking the study authors' word for it, or worse the media's representation of it. Brighter folks should especially understand that deductive fallacies are not necessarily probabilistic fallacies (often they can be turned to probabilistic theorems) so that discussions can flow without someone raising a fallacy and declaring victory, ruining the conversation. Another important skill is the ability to assume the other side is right, or to assume their solution is implemented, and work through what you think the consequences are, the state-changes to the world, and see if you can find something that isn't desired or perhaps to your surprise cannot find anything really distasteful. This requires a solution to be sufficiently detailed, which is also helpful -- something to help clarification is to taboo words. When I see someone use 'fascist' in any context I just replace it with 'bad'; if I were actually arguing with them I'd ask them to taboo the word 'fascist' and describe their thing without that word. In tech I've seen some PMs throw around "machine learning" like it's some seasoning that can be applied to create their product, the engineers end up having to taboo "ML" in order to figure out what exactly they're implementing in order to do what. Ethos is important because it will clarify everyone's relative personal experience, and if it's clear that's what is being done then we can stave off remarks like "anecdotes aren't data!" Similarly it can clarify people's moral perspectives. I don't find anything wrong with having vastly less (or even vastly more were that the case) women in STEM than men, knowing that you could avoid certain lines of argument and pursue others in some related discussion, but more importantly a conversation to tease out moral views lets each party know what the other considers a real issue or not and the level of urgency perceived. It would also be useful to try working out moral consequences to various actions. If you could implement some policy that would seem to benefit the welfare of ice rink sweepers everywhere right now, you might do it, but what if you had evidence from the future that the welfare of ice rink sweepers had actually decreased pretty steadily in the decades since the policy was introduced? Did you work through consequences, logical and ethical, out to at least one generation? (I always thought the Iroquois' seven generations was a bit excessive...) If the goal is efficiently solving what you see are the big problems, you need to have power to implement a solution or influence over someone who does. You're mostly wasting time talking to small fry like me on the internet. Even if they might help come up with solutions, everyone's got solutions to things already, even if most of them won't work. But no matter, if you think you have a shot at fixing your issues, you need the ability to do the fix, even if you aren't confident what your fix is yet. Arguing through pathos works very well to get a large mass of people on your side, and having a large mass of people on your side is an effective way to get and use power. Then you either implement what you think is good or take some time to talk to the rational folks about what the best solution is and implement that. (Case study: Trump.)

by Jach 10y ago

burkaman 10y ago

Do you have any suggestions for how to communicate this stuff better? I certainly understand objections to a slogan like "equal pay for equal work" or "check your privilege" or whatever, but I also understand that there are real issues affecting millions of people and discussing statistical nuances is probably not the most efficient way to solve them. I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm honestly wondering if you've seen any more effective approaches or have any ideas.

Jach 10y ago
If the goal is communication and truth-seeking, communicating and arguing through logos and ethos work better than through pathos, so try to move things in that direction if you can, personally I just try to not produce emotional discourse in the first place and try to not engage with it when I see it. For logos, the parties involved need to understand statistical nuances and basic probability theory if they hope to use data and studies as evidence of anything in a serious manner, otherwise they're just using someone else's authority -- which isn't necessarily bad but it's important to know yourself when you have understood at least some of the details and can see the logic yourself versus taking the study authors' word for it, or worse the media's representation of it. Brighter folks should especially understand that deductive fallacies are not necessarily probabilistic fallacies (often they can be turned to probabilistic theorems) so that discussions can flow without someone raising a fallacy and declaring victory, ruining the conversation. Another important skill is the ability to assume the other side is right, or to assume their solution is implemented, and work through what you think the consequences are, the state-changes to the world, and see if you can find something that isn't desired or perhaps to your surprise cannot find anything really distasteful. This requires a solution to be sufficiently detailed, which is also helpful -- something to help clarification is to taboo words. When I see someone use 'fascist' in any context I just replace it with 'bad'; if I were actually arguing with them I'd ask them to taboo the word 'fascist' and describe their thing without that word. In tech I've seen some PMs throw around "machine learning" like it's some seasoning that can be applied to create their product, the engineers end up having to taboo "ML" in order to figure out what exactly they're implementing in order to do what. Ethos is important because it will clarify everyone's relative personal experience, and if it's clear that's what is being done then we can stave off remarks like "anecdotes aren't data!" Similarly it can clarify people's moral perspectives. I don't find anything wrong with having vastly less (or even vastly more were that the case) women in STEM than men, knowing that you could avoid certain lines of argument and pursue others in some related discussion, but more importantly a conversation to tease out moral views lets each party know what the other considers a real issue or not and the level of urgency perceived. It would also be useful to try working out moral consequences to various actions. If you could implement some policy that would seem to benefit the welfare of ice rink sweepers everywhere right now, you might do it, but what if you had evidence from the future that the welfare of ice rink sweepers had actually decreased pretty steadily in the decades since the policy was introduced? Did you work through consequences, logical and ethical, out to at least one generation? (I always thought the Iroquois' seven generations was a bit excessive...) If the goal is efficiently solving what you see are the big problems, you need to have power to implement a solution or influence over someone who does. You're mostly wasting time talking to small fry like me on the internet. Even if they might help come up with solutions, everyone's got solutions to things already, even if most of them won't work. But no matter, if you think you have a shot at fixing your issues, you need the ability to do the fix, even if you aren't confident what your fix is yet. Arguing through pathos works very well to get a large mass of people on your side, and having a large mass of people on your side is an effective way to get and use power. Then you either implement what you think is good or take some time to talk to the rational folks about what the best solution is and implement that. (Case study: Trump.)