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The Kolmogorov option

scottaaronson.com

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Re: The Kolmogorov option

#41

Post by fvdessen »

macrael wrote: post #34

Tell me, truly, is this a view held by many here? That, as the church denounced Galileo's observation that we turn around the sun as heretical, so too our modern PC culture suppresses legitimate inquiry into wether gender is a determinant of programming aptitude? This is a comparison worth drawing? Galileo was a scientist. He published papers, books, treatises. He devoted his life to the pursuit of the truth, found a…

I'm fascinated by sentences like "He created a textbook hostile work environment." and "Freedom of Speech is not Freedom from Consequences". I see them more and more, repeated verbatim, to justify why someone had to be removed from his social environment, or physically assaulted. Justifying physical violence from ideological reasons by repeating mantras.

I tought I wouldn't see that in my lifetime, that it was a thing of the past. Reading of totalitarian societies I always wondered how it could happen, and now we see it develop right before our eyes. It is fascinating & terrifying.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#42

Post by mjw1007 »

habitue wrote: post #33

Let's say this is about the Google memo. And let's say, for the sake of argument, you're a person who thinks Damore had some good points and some bad points but you think the hysterically censorious response to him was way over the line. But you don't want to become a pariah yourself, so you stay quiet about it. The argument Damore was making was fiddly, kind of subtle and takes a long time to explain, it's not worth…

So: subtle and qualified defence under a pseudonym; stay quiet under your own name?

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#43

Post by jacalata »

apsec112 wrote: post #38
macrael wrote: post #34

Tell me, truly, is this a view held by many here? That, as the church denounced Galileo's observation that we turn around the sun as heretical, so too our modern PC culture suppresses legitimate inquiry into wether gender is a determinant of programming aptitude? This is a comparison worth drawing? Galileo was a scientist. He published papers, books, treatises. He devoted his life to the pursuit of the truth, found a…

"Please, before you throw in your lot with him, consider how ridiculous the analogy OP made here is. The Google Manifesto is manifestly not A Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems." Aaronson doesn't mention Google or Damore.

Perhaps if you were hoping for comments here not to mention it, now was a bad time to post it.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#44

Post by defen »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #11
hyperpallium wrote: post #4

What's the hinted present-day ideology he dare not challenge?

He previously got caught up in an internet drama. It's hard to summarize, but he made a comment about how being a nerdy straight male was harder than being a woman or gay and how reading feminist books made him suicidal. He got a bit of blowback on that and so probably a reference to that: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664

He didn't say "being a nerdy straight male was harder than being a woman or gay" - he said that when he was a teenager he was so ashamed of his sexuality that he wished he were gay or a woman so that he wouldn't have what he perceived to be shameful sexual desire toward women. He was the rare self-loathing straight man, and people on the internet literally wanted to ruin his career or even kill him for admitting it. Imagine a white person who has so internalized the logic of white privilege that they are utterly ashamed of their race and wish they were black - it doesn't mean that person thinks black people have it easier than whites.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#45

Post by crocal »

tpeo wrote: post #30

Besides ideological self-righteousness, Aaronson left out one important component of oppressive regimes, which I think is actually far more important: it takes a relatively large amount of people to topple a regime, while small groups as well as individuals do nothing but expose themselves by rebelling. So no individual with any regard for his own personal safety has any incentive to rebel, and will instead go along…

Is this situation really odd? I personally believe it is the norm.

The conditions to have a rebellion are two: 1/ Sufficient people around the place dreaming/hoping/yearning for change; 2/ An unusual event that cannot be managed by "just following orders"

As soon as the two are reunited, it's like throwing a lit match in a black powder keg. The larger the keg or the more powerful the match, the more spectacular the resulting rebellion will be.

In the case of the Soviet Union, the match was Chernobyl.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#46

Post by rodgerd »

defen wrote: post #23
rodgerd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I must have missed the bit where there were secret police rounding up dissedents and sticking them in camps where they were worked to death in Texas. I'm surprised I haven't heard more about it.

The question is where he's blogging from , which is probably Texas since he's a professor at UT Austin. The beauty of his blogpost is that depending on your perspective you can choose to read as pertaining to Texas (probably going to ban most insurance coverage for abortion) or "gender stuff" (Google manifesto fallout)

But in either case, the comparison to the Soviet Union is so ridiculous as to undermine any ability to use it a resonable springboard for discussion.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#47

Post by wrinkl3 »

zem wrote: post #28

The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- Carl Sagan, "Broca's Brain"

I think what he's saying that if Kolmogorov was cautious enough to keep his unpopular opinions to himself, so can you.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#48

Post by sanxiyn »

macrael wrote: post #34

Tell me, truly, is this a view held by many here? That, as the church denounced Galileo's observation that we turn around the sun as heretical, so too our modern PC culture suppresses legitimate inquiry into wether gender is a determinant of programming aptitude? This is a comparison worth drawing? Galileo was a scientist. He published papers, books, treatises. He devoted his life to the pursuit of the truth, found a…

It's surprising how different people interpret post-1980 decline of women in computer science differently. As the article suggests, introduction of personal computer is one of the best candidate. My interpretation is that this data supports "interest, not ability" thesis of Damore, and personal computer amplified pre-existing interest difference.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#49

Post by crocal »

johanvts wrote: post #40
mseebach wrote: post #31

I don't know anything about Kolmogorov, so I can't evaluate the assumption that he obviously saw through the lies and was horrified by the brutality - but I will note that a great number of prominent intellectuals, who were in absolutely no private danger from the soviet regime whatever they'd believe and say, and who definitely had access to information about the brutality, who still chose to support and defend the…

I wondered the same thing, there is an excellent book on this topic called "The reckless mind" that might interest you if you didn't already read it. I portrays great thinkers who got swayed by totalitarian systems and asks why.

Thanks for the tip, it looks really interesting.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#50

Post by guillaumec »

I really enjoyed reading the The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about the state of mind of the population during Stalin leadership. He relates the story of a conference of the party where nobody in the room dared to be the last one to stop applauding in honor of Stalin.

After a while everybody started to realize how stupid the situation was, yet they couldn't stop clapping because they all knew that this would be a death sentence for the first one to do so.

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