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E Pur Si Muove

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: E Pur Si Muove

#761

Post by geebee »

nostrademons wrote: post #662
jdtang13 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America, you can criticize the government but cannot talk at all about controversial social issues. Many Americans abide by the rule: "do not talk about politics and religion among polite company." I've known people who have legitimately ended friendships over political opinions. Such a thing is almost unheard of in China. In China, you cannot criticize the government but you can talk all day about social issues,…

You can certainly talk about controversial social issues in America, you just have to be prepared for people to not like you. I think you may be running into another facet of American culture and misinterpreting interactions through that lens. In America, you pick your tribe. If you don't like someone, don't hang out with them! Friendships tend to come and go based on your circumstances of the moment, and if they fad…

You could end up getting fired, though.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#762

Post by perl4ever »

prepend wrote: post #609
perl4ever wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bigot, by what I think is a reasonable definition, is someone whose prejudices are resistant to contrary evidence. If someone is irrational in that way, then it is rational for me not to trust them, especially if their prejudices concern me directly. The fact that everyone, including me, has their own prejudices is not germane. If someone is angry about something all the time that really (from my POV) shouldn't con…

That’s an interesting perspective. Do you feel the same about other groups than bigots? What about people with mental illness? Would you not want to work with a schizophrenic in case they forget to take their meds? Do you think religious people are irrational? Are you one those people who freak out when a Muslim steps onto the subway? It seems like your line of reasoning would mean you don’t want any Muslims working…

There are so many questions and assumptions here that I don't see the point in trying to unravel them all.

Instead, I'll just say neither schizophrenics nor Muslims are necessarily bigots.

Also, you're assuming I'm neither schizophrenic nor Muslim, which is funny. How do you know?

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#763

Post by Houshalter »

dguaraglia wrote: post #725
Houshalter wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems perfectly plausible to me that it's biological. E.g. identical twins have similar personality measures. But it does it matter? Even if it is cultural, it still disputes the feminist argument that the disparity is due to sexism in tech. Or the effectiveness of Google's diversity programs that Damore was arguing against.

> Even if it is cultural, it still disputes the feminist argument that the disparity is due to sexism in tech. This sentence contradicts itself. If it is cultural, then it'd be most likely based on sexist stereotypes that we force on our kids from an early age (mind you, when I say sexist I don't mean in the "actively nasty towards a gender" way, but in the "you define people by their gender even before you know them…

You've done a bait and switch on me. I'm talking about personality types. Maybe you can argue that women are less likely to be e.g. introverts, because of culture. But that has nothing to do with the tech industry and they can't change that.

And that was basically Damore's argument. You have personality types like INTP being vastly overrepresented among programmers, yet 4 times less common among women. You have the same percentage of young girls interested in computer science at a young age as work in the tech industry. You have studies trying to raise kids as neutrally as possible and still finding boys prefer trucks and girls prefer dolls. It's definitely not culture.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#764

Post by Houshalter »

dguaraglia wrote: post #729
Houshalter wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not convincing me when your argument is literally "it doesn't matter if he's right, it's illegal to talk about it." Which isn't true anyway. As I said, his opinions were nowhere near that extreme and are basically just "women have statistically different interests than men." He never said the women in tech were less interested or capable or should be treated any differently.

> "it doesn't matter if he's right, it's illegal to talk about it." I never said it was illegal. I said it was stupid to do it at work. There's a lot of things that while not illegal, are stupid to do at work and will get you fired. > his opinions were nowhere near that extreme and are basically just "women have statistically different interests than men." He never said the women in tech were less interested or capab…

It's a double standard. Feminists with far more extreme beliefs can talk about their opinions at work. Not only that, but actually have them become official policy. Even policies that intentionally discriminate against men, which is insane.

But if you dare to object to it... Against policies that are actually sexist and actually relevant to your work. Make an actual scientific case for your side. Then somehow you are an evil sexist that wants to discriminate against minorities.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#765

Post by stevenwoo »

Diederich wrote: post #339

Shortly prior to the recent US presidential election, I worked next to a nice, smart young man from California who went to a well-known progressive university in the bay area. Politics was very rarely discussed at work, but in the weeks before the election, there was some cross talk in the isles. He trusted me enough to message me privately that he was planning to vote for Trump. At that time, I was quite anxious abo…

Trump used and continues to use racial dog whistles in his speeches and official tweets. It's part of the reason 90-95 percent of African Americans vote for anyone else over a GOP candidate given the opportunity - if you hear it, it's hard to accept anything else from that speaker. Trump got close to the same vote percentages as historical GOP presidential candidates, Trump is not special in that people departed from their normal behavior to vote for him in some large silent wave.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#766

Post by stevenwoo »

reednj wrote: post #634
mikeash wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, most of the deplorables would just find new reasons to hate Democrats, because their party preference is rooted in tribalism rather than in policy, and you'd scare off lots of lefties who don't think the state should be outlawing important medical procedures.

> Unfortunately, most of the deplorables would just find new reasons to hate Democrats That is objectively false - Trump won because white voters in the rust belt swung 25 points from Obama to Trump. If you were right that they voted only Republican out of tribalism then Obama would never have won those states.

Trump would have lost if he lost 80,000 votes in three states that could swing the electoral college. That doesn't sound as big a swing as 25 points.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#767

Post by bduerst »

ghostcluster wrote: post #744
beachy wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaning in from outside the US, the path forward is obvious. "Progressives" should embrace guns and reject abortion. That would make them palatable to these mysterious deplorables that seem to hold sway over the US political system, giving them access to the halls of power. Then said progressives, having kept their powder dry, could expend it on what really matters - convincing the deplorables that science is a thing…

Are you kidding? Progressives openly reject science when it doesn't fit their ideology. We saw that with the response to Damore.

You don't know why Damore was fired and neither does anyone else publicly know. His 'manifesto' is a poorly written rant that leaves holes for people to project their ideology onto, like you are right now. What he wrote was neither progressive nor even conservative, but a naive, meandering diatribe with cherry-picked evidence, all of which would have been water under the bridge if it wasn't blown up by a slow press cycle.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#768

Post by nostrademons »

geebee wrote: post #761
nostrademons wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can certainly talk about controversial social issues in America, you just have to be prepared for people to not like you. I think you may be running into another facet of American culture and misinterpreting interactions through that lens. In America, you pick your tribe. If you don't like someone, don't hang out with them! Friendships tend to come and go based on your circumstances of the moment, and if they fad…

You could end up getting fired, though.

So then you get fired, and get another job. Or found a company that ends up dominating the company you got fired from, as the heads of IBM, Apple, and Pixar all did.

American business culture is the same as social culture: association is voluntary, and once either party no longer finds it worthwhile, bye. The flip side of that is that there's relatively little judgment attached to being fired. Future employers may ask a few extra questions to try to determine whether the factors that got you fired from your last job are likely to impact your performance in the next one, but if it really is a matter of cultural mismatch (like a difference in political opinions would be), then you can basically be sure that there is some company out there that doesn't care.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#769

Post by shkkmo »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #722
prepend wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you certainly have a lot of experience and impressive education, I’m not sure how this shows how willing people are to commit violence. Or whether this is a significant probability. Or even an attention worthy probability. Through your studies have you been able to identify evidence for a range or risk / odds ratio difference of haters to commit violence vs the standard population? This is certainly hard to qua…

No, I am not unwilling to discuss this. I just sometimes hit my limit for putting up with being dismissed and treated with contempt on HN for being the wrong kind of nerd. As I already stated as clearly as I know how, violence is not required to do serious harm to a person. To try to elucidate: I have a life threatening medical condition and was also homeless for nearly six years. I was quite open about that on HN an…

> Marginalized people with any kind of survival instinct are wise to give a wide berth to anyone giving voice to open hostility to their kind. Such people can have a great deal of power to help them into the grave without ever lifting a finger to commit violence, sometimes simply by not lifting a finger to help when they need it.

This makes no sense. Avoiding people whom you perceive as having hostility in their words is not a good strategy for finding a support network. A good strategy to is find people who have demonstrated that they are willing to 'raise a finger' and including them in your life. While there is a negative correlation between those two groups, excluding the former group from your search for the latter will limit your ability to build a strong support network.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#770

Post by edmccard »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #741
ihm wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's clear who will have access to these technologies once they exist -- those who can pay the most. Access to such technologies will probably also give the user better economic outcomes, so there's a very legitimate fear that such technologies will significantly widen the already wide chasm separating rich from poor. The kind of argument you're making only stands to benefit those who will get access to these tec…

I'm not rich and yet I'm making the argument, because it seems to me that a) life-improving inventions that can scale eventually scale to everyone, even if initially they were limited to the well-off, and b) (and this may be controversial) all in all, still I find it strictly better to have a part of the population with access to life extension than nobody with access to it.

>still I find it strictly better to have a part of the population with access to life extension than nobody with access to it.

But that's already the case. There are people right now who will live longer than others because they have access to better healthcare.[1] Why should it be strictly better (addressing only your point b) for the situation to change from "people with an average lifespan plus people who live 10 years longer" to "people with the same average lifespan plus people who live 20 years longer"?

Or in other words, is longevity some sort of unalloyed good? Is arithemtic the only tool needed to judge the merits of life extension? Another comment asked us to consider what would happen if Einstein were still alive; maybe there are some other people whose continued existence would not have been a net benefit to humanity?

[1]Yes, as mentioned elsewhere in these comments, people on welfare have access to some healthcare, but after going from a premium employer-paid insurance plan to what's available under my state's Medicaid expansion, I can guarantee that the former has a higher standard of care.

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