Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor
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Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor
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Re: Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor
#2This 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.
Re: Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor
#3Since 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.
Re: Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor
#4Since 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…
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.
Re: Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor
#5Since 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…
No, that's not the overall point. The discussion went in the opposite direction: from singular debates over utilitarian charity[1], iq[2], race[3], etc to a meta level of isolated (selective) demands for rigour. The overall conclusion is in the title.
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/08/30/military-strikes-are-an...
[2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/11/does-the-glasgow-coma-s...
[3] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/12/does-race-exist-does-cu...
Re: Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor
#6While I agree with the admonishment (see also 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).
Re: Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor
#7Personally, 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.
Re: Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor
#8> they’re just out to steal cows.
What does this idiom mean? I've never heard of it before.
Re: Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor
#9Since 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…
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.
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.
Re: Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor
#10This 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 id…
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.