4 ms·

Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor

52 points by spindritf 12y ago

aristus 12y ago
This is a tactic that I've yet been able to counter effectively. It's more about mixing levels of rigor. Case in point: a tech company releases diversity numbers. A reasonable point is to ask for a breakdown into tech, admin, support, etc. Often in these companies the diversity is shoved into sales and marketing. But then another commenter will ask about the diversity of the candidates, and speculate that they are identical to the company's hires, and then "prove" that the company's practices are unbiased. So then you point out that a company is not a blushing maid, that they choose the people they recruit, project an image that influences self-selection, and heavily encourage people to refer their friends. And then you get attacked for demanding too much rigor. What the argument is really about is whether there is a problem to fix. The diversity numbers clearly indicate that there is. But people who like to believe there is not alternately dig trenches and build walls of rigor to block the debate.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  What the argument is really about is whether there is a problem to fix. The diversity numbers clearly indicate that there is. You can't draw a normative conclusion from a positive claim alone. You additionally need some normative axiom. No fact can tell you what you should do. In the discussion you cite, the disagreeing parties have different normative axioms. Some people believe in statistical equality as an end goal, whereas others have equal treatment. If you believe in statistical equality (as I think you do), then the facebook numbers are a problem to fix. If you believe in equality of treatment (as I suspect the others do), then you can draw no conclusion - the numbers do not directly imply anything about equal treatment. Similarly, consider a debate between a "meat is murder" activist and a carnivore. No one disagrees that animals are killed - the only disagreement is over whether that's a bad thing.
  - aristus 12y ago
    A good example of the debate and tactics I'm describing. :) If you agree that women are not somehow less mentally capable than men, then the fact that technical jobs are 85% dominated by men should be a concern. Not just for "normative" reasons or "statistical equity", but simply that there are a lot of talented people being excluded for one reason or another. If not, you should explain WHY not. Anomalies demand explanation. You dismiss the numbers because of an assumed equality of treatment and saying, well, I don't see anything therefore it's not a problem... and if it is, it's somebody else's problem. That's exactly the mismatch of rigor I'm talking about. You put the burden on others to "prove" that something is amiss, then when they do, demand more.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      Claiming that "a lot of talented people being excluded for one reason or another" is a positive claim. It's merely a fact about the world. If you are against this, that's a normative axiom (or possibly a normative conclusion derived from another normative axiom). As for the undue rigor involved, it's you who seems to be demanding a lot: you demand proof that men and women are statistically unequal merely to admit it as a possibility. More precisely, let A = "women are unequally treated" and B = "women are not statistically equal to men" (at the point of application for Facebook employment). The diversity numbers imply A || B. You are assuming that B is false because there is no proof it is true, and therefore concluding A must be true (since A || B and !B => A). But strangely, you are not asserting that A is false without a rigorous proof that A is true (which would imply B). That's the fundamental asymmetry that Scott Alexander is talking about. The people you disagree with are merely saying "A || B, we don't know which."
      - aristus 12y ago
        "We don't know which", and will stop there. That's fine. All I ask is you be explicit about where you stand: on the side of the status quo, not wrapped in the flag of math as you would like pretend, but simply content with the way things are, and utterly incurious about how to change it. [edit] For fuck sake - if you had noticed a 50% imbalance in CPU usage on your server farm, surely you'd spend some time trying to understand it. What the hell is wrong with so many people who are busy inventing facile excuses and dredging up mathy reasons why to NOT recognize the problem as a problem and looking into why it might exist?
- im3w1l 12y ago
  So basically it goes like this. 1. Hypothesis: Women are discriminated in tech. 2. Argument: There are less women in tech. (shows number of women in tech) 3. Counter argument: There are less applicants.(shows number of applicants, number of uni students) 4. Counter counter argument: They self-select out of tech because of the discrimination. Afaik, there is solid evidence for points 2&3. What is the evidence for 4?
cadlin 12y ago
Since this seems to be the overall point >But when other people are totally happy to talk about speed and blood pressure and comas and the crime rate, and then suddenly switch to a position that we can’t talk about IQ at all unless we have a perfect factor-analytical proof of its obeying certain statistical rules, then I worry they’re just out to steal cows.... But when people never even begin to question the idea of different cultures but make exacting demands of anyone before they can talk about different races – even though the two ideas are statistically isomorphic – then I think they’re just out to steal cows. There is of course, the opposite problem, which is that people take things like IQ and infer wild conclusions, usually in the service of white supremacy. An example of this is the MAO "Warrior Gene." There are several studies showing a weak correlation between a variant of the gene and violence. Black Americans have this gene more often. There is a specific, very bad, study that is often quoted. It cherry picks its data, and still can't achieve a significance of p > .05.[1] Yet it is often brought up as indisputable proof of the savage nature of black people. It's ridiculous, and IMHO, much worse than the tendencies criticized in the blog post. [1] http://www.soc.iastate.edu/staff/delisi/MAOA%202013.pdf http://www.soc.iastate.edu/staff/delisi/MAOA%202013.pdf
- api 12y ago
  Side note... Funny thing about white supremacy. If you go on raw IQ statistics alone, then whites are certainly not the master race. That title would belong to Asians and Ashkenazi Jews. But then again I'm a skeptic of IQ = everything.
  - tormeh 12y ago
    It's a benchmark for the brain. It's not close to everything, but it measures something and that something is significant. I'm sure you agree, but I need to get it out.
    - wavefunction 12y ago
      IQ is only significant within its own context and that significance is functionally limited even within that context: an individual requires an IQ above a certain threshold to not be considered "developmentally delayed" but above a certain threshold, it also doesn't mean much. By context, I mean that IQ has meaning for the way life is for humans right now, but given a return to an earlier context (hunter-gatherer) or a transition to a new context (say some high-tech utopia where computers do the heavy thinking), it becomes functionally meaningless.
dllthomas 12y ago
While I agree with the admonishment (see also http://lesswrong.com/lw/km/motivated_stopping_and_motivated_continuation http://lesswrong.com/lw/km/motivated_stopping_and_motivated_...), I think the PBS example is bad. The question of how we trade off different methods of achieving broadly humanitarian ends is a different question than how we trade off broadly humanitarian ends against different ends. If the only case being made for the air strikes is humanitarian, then it makes sense to see if it's reasonable humanitarian bang for the buck. Of course, there are other ends that the air-strikes might serve, though I have no sufficiently informed opinion on their effectiveness (or counter-productiveness).
incision 12y ago
Personally, what concerns me most often in argument these days isn't any sort of peer to peer inconsistency, but that argument often takes place in and is hurt by the broadcast mesh of blog posts, responses to blog posts, comment sections and tweets. In isolation, any two peers are either going to fail to negotiate entirely or converge in short order. There's little hope for convergence of vocabulary or context much less rigor among the chatter of a hundreds, thousands or millions of nodes trying to dictate the protocol. More likely, you end up with a split brain where each island establishes its own consensus totally apart from the other.
true_religion 12y ago
> they’re just out to steal cows. What does this idiom mean? I've never heard of it before.
- qianyilong 12y ago
  The reason you haven't heard of it is that it is a new phrase that he just made up in the article to refer you back to the case of the philosopher selectively applying logic so he can take his neighbors cow and justify it by this being a new cow. It basically means that you are grasping at whatever logic supports your pre-existing desire/belief rather than using logic to determine your desire/beliefs.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
im3w1l 12y ago
I think it is interesting to note that machine learning is succeeding where the philosophers failed, in defining common sense notions like these.

52 points by spindritf 12y ago

This is a tactic that I've yet been able to counter effectively. It's more about mixing levels of rigor. Case in point: a tech company releases diversity numbers. A reasonable point is to ask for a breakdown into tech, admin, support, etc. Often in these companies the diversity is shoved into sales and marketing. But then another commenter will ask about the diversity of the candidates, and speculate that they are identical to the company's hires, and then "prove" that the company's practices are unbiased. So then you point out that a company is not a blushing maid, that they choose the people they recruit, project an image that influences self-selection, and heavily encourage people to refer their friends. And then you get attacked for demanding too much rigor. What the argument is really about is whether there is a problem to fix. The diversity numbers clearly indicate that there is. But people who like to believe there is not alternately dig trenches and build walls of rigor to block the debate.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
What the argument is really about is whether there is a problem to fix. The diversity numbers clearly indicate that there is. You can't draw a normative conclusion from a positive claim alone. You additionally need some normative axiom. No fact can tell you what you should do. In the discussion you cite, the disagreeing parties have different normative axioms. Some people believe in statistical equality as an end goal, whereas others have equal treatment. If you believe in statistical equality (as I think you do), then the facebook numbers are a problem to fix. If you believe in equality of treatment (as I suspect the others do), then you can draw no conclusion - the numbers do not directly imply anything about equal treatment. Similarly, consider a debate between a "meat is murder" activist and a carnivore. No one disagrees that animals are killed - the only disagreement is over whether that's a bad thing.
- aristus 12y ago
  A good example of the debate and tactics I'm describing. :) If you agree that women are not somehow less mentally capable than men, then the fact that technical jobs are 85% dominated by men should be a concern. Not just for "normative" reasons or "statistical equity", but simply that there are a lot of talented people being excluded for one reason or another. If not, you should explain WHY not. Anomalies demand explanation. You dismiss the numbers because of an assumed equality of treatment and saying, well, I don't see anything therefore it's not a problem... and if it is, it's somebody else's problem. That's exactly the mismatch of rigor I'm talking about. You put the burden on others to "prove" that something is amiss, then when they do, demand more.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    Claiming that "a lot of talented people being excluded for one reason or another" is a positive claim. It's merely a fact about the world. If you are against this, that's a normative axiom (or possibly a normative conclusion derived from another normative axiom). As for the undue rigor involved, it's you who seems to be demanding a lot: you demand proof that men and women are statistically unequal merely to admit it as a possibility. More precisely, let A = "women are unequally treated" and B = "women are not statistically equal to men" (at the point of application for Facebook employment). The diversity numbers imply A || B. You are assuming that B is false because there is no proof it is true, and therefore concluding A must be true (since A || B and !B => A). But strangely, you are not asserting that A is false without a rigorous proof that A is true (which would imply B). That's the fundamental asymmetry that Scott Alexander is talking about. The people you disagree with are merely saying "A || B, we don't know which."
    - aristus 12y ago
      "We don't know which", and will stop there. That's fine. All I ask is you be explicit about where you stand: on the side of the status quo, not wrapped in the flag of math as you would like pretend, but simply content with the way things are, and utterly incurious about how to change it. [edit] For fuck sake - if you had noticed a 50% imbalance in CPU usage on your server farm, surely you'd spend some time trying to understand it. What the hell is wrong with so many people who are busy inventing facile excuses and dredging up mathy reasons why to NOT recognize the problem as a problem and looking into why it might exist?
im3w1l 12y ago
So basically it goes like this. 1. Hypothesis: Women are discriminated in tech. 2. Argument: There are less women in tech. (shows number of women in tech) 3. Counter argument: There are less applicants.(shows number of applicants, number of uni students) 4. Counter counter argument: They self-select out of tech because of the discrimination. Afaik, there is solid evidence for points 2&3. What is the evidence for 4?

cadlin 12y ago

Since this seems to be the overall point >But when other people are totally happy to talk about speed and blood pressure and comas and the crime rate, and then suddenly switch to a position that we can’t talk about IQ at all unless we have a perfect factor-analytical proof of its obeying certain statistical rules, then I worry they’re just out to steal cows.... But when people never even begin to question the idea of different cultures but make exacting demands of anyone before they can talk about different races – even though the two ideas are statistically isomorphic – then I think they’re just out to steal cows. There is of course, the opposite problem, which is that people take things like IQ and infer wild conclusions, usually in the service of white supremacy. An example of this is the MAO "Warrior Gene." There are several studies showing a weak correlation between a variant of the gene and violence. Black Americans have this gene more often. There is a specific, very bad, study that is often quoted. It cherry picks its data, and still can't achieve a significance of p > .05.[1] Yet it is often brought up as indisputable proof of the savage nature of black people. It's ridiculous, and IMHO, much worse than the tendencies criticized in the blog post. [1] http://www.soc.iastate.edu/staff/delisi/MAOA%202013.pdf http://www.soc.iastate.edu/staff/delisi/MAOA%202013.pdf

api 12y ago
Side note... Funny thing about white supremacy. If you go on raw IQ statistics alone, then whites are certainly not the master race. That title would belong to Asians and Ashkenazi Jews. But then again I'm a skeptic of IQ = everything.
- tormeh 12y ago
  It's a benchmark for the brain. It's not close to everything, but it measures something and that something is significant. I'm sure you agree, but I need to get it out.
  - wavefunction 12y ago
    IQ is only significant within its own context and that significance is functionally limited even within that context: an individual requires an IQ above a certain threshold to not be considered "developmentally delayed" but above a certain threshold, it also doesn't mean much. By context, I mean that IQ has meaning for the way life is for humans right now, but given a return to an earlier context (hunter-gatherer) or a transition to a new context (say some high-tech utopia where computers do the heavy thinking), it becomes functionally meaningless.

dllthomas 12y ago

While I agree with the admonishment (see also http://lesswrong.com/lw/km/motivated_stopping_and_motivated_continuation http://lesswrong.com/lw/km/motivated_stopping_and_motivated_...), I think the PBS example is bad. The question of how we trade off different methods of achieving broadly humanitarian ends is a different question than how we trade off broadly humanitarian ends against different ends. If the only case being made for the air strikes is humanitarian, then it makes sense to see if it's reasonable humanitarian bang for the buck. Of course, there are other ends that the air-strikes might serve, though I have no sufficiently informed opinion on their effectiveness (or counter-productiveness).

incision 12y ago

Personally, what concerns me most often in argument these days isn't any sort of peer to peer inconsistency, but that argument often takes place in and is hurt by the broadcast mesh of blog posts, responses to blog posts, comment sections and tweets. In isolation, any two peers are either going to fail to negotiate entirely or converge in short order. There's little hope for convergence of vocabulary or context much less rigor among the chatter of a hundreds, thousands or millions of nodes trying to dictate the protocol. More likely, you end up with a split brain where each island establishes its own consensus totally apart from the other.

true_religion 12y ago

> they’re just out to steal cows. What does this idiom mean? I've never heard of it before.

qianyilong 12y ago
The reason you haven't heard of it is that it is a new phrase that he just made up in the article to refer you back to the case of the philosopher selectively applying logic so he can take his neighbors cow and justify it by this being a new cow. It basically means that you are grasping at whatever logic supports your pre-existing desire/belief rather than using logic to determine your desire/beliefs.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

im3w1l 12y ago

I think it is interesting to note that machine learning is succeeding where the philosophers failed, in defining common sense notions like these.