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The Kolmogorov option

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Re: The Kolmogorov option

#351

Post by Bartweiss »

scandox wrote: post #173

I want to say this as respectfully as I can, but it isn't easy: the quality of discourse on these topics is really low on HN. At the same time I do think it's really important for them to be discussed. Time and again, though, I'm disappointed by how reductive and unmeditative these discussions are. I'm also surprised by how angry people seem. This is a site used by a lot of very smart people, but I think there is an…

I strongly agree with this.

In the past, I've valued HN as source of uncommonly good discussion. I still feel that way about how pure-tech topics are handled here, and I think HN remains better than 90% of other discussion fora for politics. (Twitter, anyone?) But "better than 90% of alternatives" is completely compatible with "reductive, vicious, and uninformed".

A particular frustration of mine: the scattering of dialogue across multiple comment trees over multiple posts. There are snippets of quality discussion, but they're broken across ~8 different posts. There's no particular way to find them when they're not highly voted, or keep the quality high after they become popular.

Meanwhile every single post has multiple instances of "The original essay is clearly inaccurate, so..." "Sources?" (Or conversely: "Is clearly backed by science, so..." "Sources?") I'm not sure either person in the exchange is behaving badly - the first person wants to make a conditional point without litigating the condition, the second person doesn't want to concede something uncited as objective fact. But the result is that every post is full of horrible, discussion derailing fights over whatever sources two random people can throw at each other.

However one feels about a given exchange, it ought to be fairly obvious that replaying the dispute fifty times with varying sources and no acknowledgement of the other instances is a terrible way to make any kind of progress.

I don't know what can be done about it within the HN format, though.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#352

Post by jacalata »

beaconstudios wrote: post #281
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say you were. I said that you mentioned "cultural marxism" which you think is a perfectly reasonable thing for someone to mention, as it simply means, according to you, that there is some linkage between modern progressive thought and Marxism. And I asked if you think the person who wrote the memo was using it in the same way. That seems to be the position the other replies are going for. Just no-one seems t…

OK, well I'm glad you're just inquiring genuinely. It's hard not to get defensive when you trot out some pretty horrible characters. I'm in strong agreement that discrimination against gays, minorities and women is bad. I think most reasonable people are. My issue with the progressive movement is how it doesn't seem to want to stop in the middle by just stopping racism, but instead wants to flip it over by making dis…

> It's hard not to get defensive when...

I thought classical liberals were incapable of emotional involvement in a rational discussion.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#353

Post by Bartweiss »

sounds wrote: post #306
jancsika wrote: post #251

Two things: * for a society that enjoys even minimal levels of freedom of speech, the Kolmogorov option isn't easily distinguishable from opportunism or careerism. * for a society like the U.S. that enjoys minimal levels of freedom of speech, what is an example of an unspeakable truth ? Charles Murray's research exists. Brendan Eich is still rich. Richard Stallman has an extremely unpopular opinion about child porn o…

Here are three unspeakable truths for the United States. Bringing them up is a risk: there is almost no chance for calm, composed conversation. 1. The US Federal Government is not held accountable to the Constitution any more. 2. Income inequality is back to 1930's levels. Beside US Federal Government solutions, across-the-aisle solutions are attacked by corporations and large news sources. 3. Belief systems, their m…

I'm pretty sure you can find all of those positions in national newspapers today. You can also openly advocate for them at a lot of workplaces without significant backlash.

"People feel strongly and argue with you" is a vastly different thing than the Kolmogorov situation. (Which, again, was "you're punished harshly and no debate happens at all".)

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#354

Post by moduspol »

jacalata wrote: post #341
cderwin wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think it is debatable. Just the fact the the memo and the firing were so controversial, in both directions, implies that a number of strong critical thinkers are on both sides of this issue. Assuming that is the case, it's not reasonable to use the memo as evidence of a lack of critical thinking. And I think we all know Google didn't fire him because they believed him to be incompetent. In fact, Google…

Climate change is controversial. That doesn't indicate that there are strong critical thinkers on either side.

Apparently the idea that there are biological differences between men and women that could result in unequal outcomes is also controversial.

Although, to your point, that doesn't really require critical thinking. It just requires impressive mental gymnastics to dispute.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#355

Post by jacalata »

akvadrako wrote: post #137
pjc50 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damore is himself deeply buried in identity politics, as can be determined by his use of the codeword "Marxist intellectuals" in one of his footnotes.

I disagree. He seemed to be trying to avoid identity politics as much as humanly possible, without mincing words. And I'm not sure which identity you think he is supporting.

The male biologically suited to being in tech, obviously.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#356

Post by jonloldrup »

Certhas wrote: post #136
benchaney wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be obvious that anyone arguing against having a rational discussion is wrong about being in that camp.

Not obviously. Or at least not if we're talking about having public rational discussions about it. The validity and correct interpretation of evidence is extremely hard for a lay audience to judge. Putting a climate scientist and a climate science denier on a podium to have a rational discussion is not likely to lead the audience to a more rational decision. Ditto for creationists. Does this concrete case fall into t…

> For example, it selectively cites a tiny corner of the > research literature, conveniently ignoring the mountains > of evidence that don't fit the stated thesis.

You really should provide some sort of reference on that claim.

I would say, that the consensus among psychologists in academia is the opposite of what you suggest: A majority of those people would admit that genes have a significant influence on differences in human behaviour, interests, capabilities etc.

Haidt & Jussim, May 16, 2016, Hard Truths about Race on Campus. Wall Street Journal. http://www.businessforum.com/WSJ_Race-on-Campus-05-06-2016.p...

Jussim, L. (2017). Why do Girls Tend to Prefer Non-STEM Careers? Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...

Jussim, L. (2017). Gender Bias in STEM or Biased Claims of Gender Bias? Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/ge...

Ceci & Williams (2011). Understanding current causes of women’s underrepresentation in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 3157-3162. http://www.pnas.org/content/108/8/3157.full

Duarte et al (2015). Political diversity will improve social psychological science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, doi:10.1017/S0140525X14000430, e130 https://journals.cambridge.org/images/fileUpload/documents/D...

Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate. New York: Penguin Books https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0...

Wang et al (2013). Not lack of ability but more choice: Individual and gender differences in choice in careers in science, technology, engineering and math. Psychological Science, 24, 770-775. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797612458937

Williams & Ceci (2015). National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112, 5360-5365. http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract

(this list was copied from http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-... I have myself read 'The Blank Slate' by Steven Pinker. A very recommendable book)

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#357

Post by Bartweiss »

jancsika wrote: post #251

Two things: * for a society that enjoys even minimal levels of freedom of speech, the Kolmogorov option isn't easily distinguishable from opportunism or careerism. * for a society like the U.S. that enjoys minimal levels of freedom of speech, what is an example of an unspeakable truth ? Charles Murray's research exists. Brendan Eich is still rich. Richard Stallman has an extremely unpopular opinion about child porn o…

I agree that taking the Kolmogorov option is justifiable in direct proportion to the risk of your situation and the difficulty of causing change. Appealing to it in the US today is vastly less convincing than appealing to it in the USSR of the 50s and 60s.

That said, I'd also note that writing an article like this inherently means not taking the Kolmogorov option. This is a clear case of "do it, don't say it" - Kolmogorov himself would have been risking his life by publishing a piece like this, since it raises an air of "I might have unacceptable views I'm not announcing".

(I'm not sure where the Trump bit comes in here - it seems like Aaronson's one mention of him is in exactly the opposite direction of yours.)

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#358

Post by brighteyes »

geofft wrote: post #349
brighteyes wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of his claims are supported by the linked documents, some are not. Again, there are so many, any conclusion of "100% are supported" or "100% are not" is going to be false.

Can you name one claim that is relevant to diversity at Google that is supported by any of the linked documents? I do agree (and admit as much in that comment!) that there are claims that he correctly cites, e.g. "Women score higher for 'neuroticism' as defined by psychology." My contention is that none of those claims are relevant to any plausible thesis of the document. (I think that saying "there exist irrelevant…

Sure, here is a concrete example of a linked document that supports his position http://www.bradley.edu/dotAsset/165918.pdf and the references therein. In particular,

> sex differences in personality traits can be detected in early childhood [..] and remain fairly constant across adulthood [..] The effects of these sex differences lead to predictable differences in men’s and women’s leisure behaviors, occupational preferences, and health-related outcomes [emphasis mine]

Overall I think it's possible for reasonable people to disagree on whether group differences in neuroticism and agreeability or an affinity to people vs. things etc. etc. are or are not not relevant to the thesis. I respect your point of view that they do not. I'm just saying a reasonable argument can be made for the other side too.

(To be clear, he also makes several bad arguments, I'm not defending him. I'm just saying that some of his claims are supported by science.)

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#359

Post by jfoutz »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #99
jfoutz wrote: post #16

My only complaint is the 'truths everyone knows' but doesn't say. Most people just don't care. there are a few thousand people that think deeply about worldview A, and a handful of others that think deeply about worldview B. Everybody else is worried about milking their cow, or pilgrimage to the holy land, or picking the kids up from soccer practice. When worldview A is dominant, problems are framed in terms of A. It…

This sounds like "epistemic learned helplessness" - in which you realize that, in domains you're not a specialist in, you can't really discriminate between convincing-sounding arguments of different smart people, so you give up trying and default to whatever is the current majority consensus. See http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html .

Although i'm probably guilty of that as well, that's not quite the point i'm trying to make. The first example about _Ages of Chaos_ is a good one. I've never read the book. I've never read the crackpot theories on either side. It's probably a fascinating story. But it's just not relevant to my life. I've never tried to discriminate between those crackpot arguments, so i don't think i've even reached the giving up stage.

Another example might be best player of $sport for $season. Lacking this knowledge has left me out of some conversations. That momentary exclusion hasn't been enough incentive to actually try to form an opinion. I just don't care enough. So i'm stuck with the factory settings. Someone names a player who's name i vaguely recognize, so i smile and nod and wait for the conversation to progress. or go do something else.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#360

Post by foldr »

Banthum wrote: post #223
foldr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If I understand things correctly the argument by feminists etc is something along the lines of "there are no differences between men and women, and thus any difference in outcome must be due to discrimination. Really? Could you give a reference to anyone ever actually making this argument?

Professor Nicholas Matte states it in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kasiov0ytEc Not a really exotic belief in the core social justice circles. Though advocates tend to avoid stating it outright, since it's so easy to attack and so ridiculous. So it's generally left implicit. E.g. They'll just say, "X field is only 30% women, we must fight the sexism that causes this", leaving it as an unstated assum…

Could you provide a quote, rather than linking to a 50 minute video?
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