The Kolmogorov option

One problem with creating an island of reason in what is apparently a sea of chaos is that the values that are cherished: reason, truth, rationality and merit are quite possibly the very things the regime is trying to suppress - or at least use a fuel for their outrage in order to promote their views and desire to be seen and hear at the expense of everything else.

The problem I see here now is that the regime is much more distributed with no apparent central authority to work against, however quietly. Comparisons have been made with the Soviet Union, the Vatican and the Nazis but they were all based on an ideology. Social outrage, social signaling and self-righteousness are more fundamental characteristics of humans' group behaviour than politics and for that reason it will be much harder to oppose and even harder to change.

A more apt example might be the effort it took/will take to topple slavery - which despite the change won in the Americas still unhappily exists today in other forms. Other fundamental beliefs can be so deeply rooted in culture that they persist for many hundreds of years and change, even it if is superficial, can take a very long time.

I actually think Galileo vs. religion is a quite fitting analogy for these kinds of issues today. There is a prevailing ideology that, if you are seen as disagreeing with it, and if you doing so is visible enough, can get you ousted from polite society. This ideology has a set of dogmatic views about the world which may not be challenged, some of which are seen as axioms of morality. Even though a good argument can be made for both sides of the fence based on the observable evidence available, the standard of proof for one side[1] is set insurmountably high, while just-so stories are widely accepted justifications for the other. Instead of looking for hypotheses that best describe the evidence available to us, we add epicycles to the models dictated to us by the orthodox view whenever discrepancies to reality get too obvious.

Damore is not "literally" Galileo, he does not fear for his life or freedom, he did not publish an original work but instead summarized thoughts that have been around elsewhere, so it is not a perfect analogy, of course.

[1] Standard of proof, but also otherwise standard it is held to: The worst possible interpretation of the document is being discussed, after liberal reading between the lines, looking for dog-whistles, and a telephone game of bad faith summaries. Case in point: > 'manifesto' accusing his colleagues of having inferior genes

I wrote the present comment to 1) teach something about mathematics and probability 2) share enlightenment.

In summary this comment should change your thinking about all subjects, forever.

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   Program of study for this comment:

   1.  Read section 1 (approx. 1 hour.)
   Goal: improve your mathematical reasoning.
   
   2.  30 minute break.
   
   3.  Read section 2 (approx 5 minutes).
   Goal: enlightenment.

1. The most important mathematical video you will ever see in your life.

Firstly, unless you are a practicing mathematician this is the most important mathematical video you will ever see in your life. It is purely about mathematics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrK7X_XlGB8

Watch it. Suppose that you take an hour and learn this. You have just improved your rational thinking forever.

-

Break. Please now take a 30-minute break. During this time you can reflect and assimilate the knowledge you have learned.

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2. The most important social insight you will read in any comment.

This section requires you to understand section 1. Next, suppose that you are perfectly rational. If I present you a (fair) coin and ask you to judge whether it is fair, after, say, thirty or forty flips you will conclude that it is fair.

If I give you the same coin but also the knowledge that it was drawn from an infinite bag with 1 fair coin in it -- for example, let's say coins are numbered, I select a real number between 0 and 1, and only the coin with the exact value 0.5 is fair, any other coin is unfair, weighted - then even given hours, days, weeks, or years of flipping, you will come to me with the same conclusion: there is a 0% chance that the coin is fair and 100% chance that the coin is weighted. This includes your running every test for randomness, flipping it millions of times and analyzing the result, anything you want.

So let's look at what happened. You have been moved from being able to quickly decide whether a coin is fair, to being completely unable to accept that the coin is fair. No matter how much evidence you can collect, you can only conclude with 100% certainty that the coin is unfair.

The only thing that changed is the understanding of the population it was drawn from.

Why is this a problem? For the simple reason that the coin labelled 0.5 exists.

If you reflect on the plight of coin 0.5 you forever understand why it is very wrong to talk about the bag from which it was drawn or how.

The problem with the line of argument you've been making is that it involves judging the argument's worthiness of defending solely on the response to it. People are often so ideologically driven that there's no means -- no better way of putting the points -- to get them to respond reasonably to something they don't like.

Well..

Your comment was marked as "dead" and I just vouched for it, so does that count as not trying to censor every idea that disagrees with me? ;)

But I'm not convinced. There have been plenty of racists with arguments they consider rational. I think they are factually wrong, but surely the real point is "what you are saying is offensive and immoral" rather than try to argue that (eg) the costs associated with keeping black slaves is too much for the income the bring.