Rejecting Rationality

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Israel and The Moral Condemnation Of The Left

So there is a long-standing inclination on the left to morally condemn Israel for its treatment of Palestinians. In response many jews allege this reflects anti-semetic prejudice which in turn is criticized by more moderate elements who argue that criticism of Israel should be seen as legitimate, e.g., this piece. Ultimately, I agree that the criticism of Israel isn’t a result of anti-semitism in that it doesn’t reflect a personal animosity towards jews or those of jewish descent but I think it’s important to point out that this isn’t a position the left-leaning groups responsible for the strident moral criticism can themselves adopt.

It very much is true that Israel is subject to strong moral condemnation disproportionate to it’s moral culpability and that the same people who call Israel (and often jews who support Israel) monstrous won’t even admit that much worse behavior by other nations is just as wrong much less call them out on it. The reason Israel is subjected to this kind of special criticism is easily explained by factors besides animosity towards jews. Unlike many muslim countries Israel is seen as part of the liberal western world and thus evaluated against higher standards (same way people go crazy on twitter about seeing anti-gay prejudice in the US even while Russia and Uganda have enshrined such prejudice into law). Also, the widespread awareness and outrage about the issue among Muslims worldwide (substantially facilitated by authoritarian regimes in Arab world for self-serving and anti-Semitic reasons) combined with the left-wing view of Muslims as a victimized minority (largely true in west even while Muslims are the oppressors of non-Muslim minorities through much of the world) explains why this issue is salient to many people on the left in a way that other kinds of bad behavior are not. So the individuals making the criticisms aren’t driven by any animosity of their own to Jews. Indeed, part of the reason Israel comes in for so much criticism is partly the fact that many people on the US left implicitly regard Jews as just another type of white person (while opinions are split on whether semites are white the stereotypical Jew looks like Seinfeld for most Americans).

So it is true that Jews and Israel come in for a degree of criticism similarly situated non-Jews and non-Jewish countries do not. Some of that is purely accidental (other western countries don’t live next to people committed to killing them and willing to resort to terrorism, existence of a US Muslim community), some is a result of arguably positive stereotypes of Jews as just another white person rather than a vulnerable minority and some is downstream of genuinely anti-Semitic attitudes prevalent in Arab countries and pushed by their governments. I personally don’t think that this makes those criticisms anti-Semitic simply because those offering them lack the animosity towards Jews that would make them particularly morally blameworthy.

However, I think it very much does matter that by the standards publicly accepted by the left this does render this criticism of Israel anti-semetic.. The left isn’t willing to accept a similar explanation of motives as exculpatory in other contexts, e.g., spouting (even accurate) critiques of black culture that you don’t apply to similar situated behavior by whites isn’t excused by pointing to the fact that it’s just the criticisms that were made salient to you growing up or being a teacher who gives Asian students lower effort grades because you assume they are inherently smarter even though it’s a positive stereotype. So at the very least those making the accusations of anti-semitism are on solid ground relative to the norms that are apparently endorsed in the contexts they usually live and work in.

I agree this, if accepted, has the unacceptable consequence of insulating Israel from deserved criticism. That’s why we need to abandon this absurd moral standard and just expect people to update without bias. That’s a world in which you aren’t anti-Semitic for not realizing many of the properties you critique Israel for are far more widely shared or for not being aware of the role the Arab states (or the UK and other WWII allies) played in the current quagmire nor even for focusing criticism where you think it will be most effective. However, you are expected to agree that other countries are equally morally culpable (and other people) when you discover they are similarly situated.

For instance, if you argue that the Israeli state is deeply unjust because the right of return applies only to Jews or because Hebrew is given a special status in Israel (though until 2018 Arabic was also an official language) then you should be expected to condemn countries like Japan or Latvia when you find out about the special status they give to either ethnic status or native language and how they treat their minorities. Similarly, when you hear about Egypt’s role in keeping trade out of Gaza or other Arab states interests in perpetuating, not solving, the conflict you should be furious with them. Reasonable people can disagree about where criticism would be more effectively directed or argue about the total level of suffering inflicted by each such policy. Unreasonable people can confuse the total degree of suffering the Palestinians are subject to with the degree of moral culpability without being anti-semitic (e.g. Japan’s treatment of people who aren’t ethnically Japanese is far more morally outrageous than Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians because it doesn’t even plausibly motivated by a desire to save lives even though the Palestinians surely endure much more unpleasant circumstances) but there is something at least pernicious about refusing to update on such information. It might not be anti-Semitic if your refusal is motivated just by a desire to culturally conform (then again I’m sure many German nazis weren’t anti-Semitic in this sense either…though I don’t mean this as a criticism merely a remark on the limitations of racist as a proxy for dangerous or harmful).

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My basic view is that treating different races or ethnic groups differently is far more common than we want to believe and we should calibrate our level of disapproval more appropriately but there is something really disturbing about applying the rules to one group that’s been treated really badly in the past and not another.

Israel and The Moral Condemnation Of The Left was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

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A Sad Day For Google

As a former google employee I was deeply saddened, but unsurprised, to learn that Google had released new rules discouraging political debates within the company. I always felt this was one of the things which made the company great and helped make the world better. This action represents a key step undermining an important that helped keep the company from being evil. However, the blame doesn’t lie with executives or most google employees but with the broader political climate and a small number of extremists.

The fundamental problem Google faced (as our country does) is that productive dialog of this kind requires a willingness to accept opposing viewpoints as valid and for belief in the system to persist even when you lose. Despite some idiotic news coverage this isn’t a victory of corporate greed over the policy of not being evil but reflects the inherent difficulty of figuring out what is evil. While some people might think that working with the government to develop some military application is evil others could quite reasonably believe that refusing to work with the military only costs more lives. As long as people understand there really are (in this case) good people on both sides and don’t see a loss as a fundamental failure of the system this kind of internal discussion is productive. Unfortunately, however, in recent years there has been an increasing willingness of some employees to appeal their losses to the media imposing huge PR risks (and probably making the discussions less open/frank). Ultimately, the net result isn’t that the people who want google to eschew military applications or work in China get their way but that now they don’t even get (as much of a) change to make their case and change minds.

To see why it’s essentially impossible for Google to encourage such frank discussion in the current political environment just consider the Damore affair. Damore didn’t get the science exactly right and offered speculations that fell short of full academic rigor but Google can’t possibly enforce a neutral rule that people who make claims about STEM gender differences without a fully footnoted bibliography get fired. They’d need to also fire every person who says that the paucity of female programmers reflects discrimination (or implies it by demands to rectify the situation). While I favor calling out both Damore and everyone who assumes, without strong evidentiary support, that the gender gap must be primarily caused by discrimination (without substantial evidence) that would draw even more fire. I don’t cheer Damore on but I also don’t see any way to formulate a neutral rule that merely specified a standard of evidence on the subject without disastrous consequences.

While I think one can say a lot in favor of discouraging any discussion on issues of race, gender etc.. at the office I’d note that this is incompatible with the oft-pushed idea that we should be having a conversation about these ideas and suggests that Google was misguided to encourage employees to discuss corporate policy regarding gender balance in the first place.

A Sad Day For Google was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

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Human Subject Rules As A Violation Of Academic Freedom

I don’t know what I think of Boghossian’s hoax. I’m fully convinced these subjects fundamentally lack any truth-relevant standards. However, I haven’t actually read the papers in question and some of the rebuttals have claimed that the papers made observational claims. Peer review isn’t meant to challenge those kind of claims but it is meant to reject nonsense. So, before I settle on a view about the hoax I’d need to see if the papers themselves were obviously absurd even taking the factual claims for granted. However, how you feel about the underlying hoax doesn’t really matter here. There is no question that the hoax was undertaken as a rhetorical tactic to demonstrate the intellectual weakness of certain academic disciplines via the normal practice of submitting journal articles (even if there was dishonest intent). Moreover, many prominent academics praised it as an important contribution. Even if you think this was a pointless, dishonest and mean spirited attack on these disciplines it is well within the traditional academic role. This makes the use of human subject experimentation rules to punish Boghossian for his antics raises serious academic freedom concerns.

While Boghossian’s punishment was, in one sense, a slap on the wrist the particular form it took (essentially a complete ban on participating in human subject research) is very concerning. It is suggestive (though not conclusively) of a desire to bar him from doing further work on this question and not just a desire to see the niceties of IRB review followed. Regardless of the motives of his punishment the value laden choice to apply human subjects rules to a context where they are generally not applied raises concerning questions about academic freedom.

To illustrate the fact that we don’t normally think of human subject rules as being applicable to interactions with other academics in anything resembling normal practice consider the following examples.

Consider the case of Professor Wood debunking N-rays by surreptitiously removing part of the apparatus (without effect) to show it was a hoax. If this episode happened today should we punish Wood for performing an experiment on professor Blondlot without his knowledge? As this episode illustrates, misrepresentations in academic discussion have a long history and as such shouldn’t just be pushed outside the protections of academic freedom.

But maybe you’d object that Boghossian’s research was systematic in a way that Professor Wood’s was not. In that case consider Nosek’s Open science Collaboration. This collaboration literally asked people (other researchers) to perform a task (replicate these existing results) and published papers evaluating the percentage of those tasks that succeeded (successful replications). The project was expressly designed both to prompt researchers in the field to engage in these representations (so wasn’t merely observational) and then to do a systemic evaluation of how the researchers performed (successful replications or not). That’s the archetypal structure of research that requires IRB approval in other contexts.

Or what about going to a philosophy conference and asking your colleagues how they feel about some interesting moral dilemma you thought up. Is it human subjects research to write a philosophy paper noting that this dilemma seems to divide philosophers in such and such a fashion? Does making sure you ask a wide range of colleagues mean it suddenly qualifies? What if your goal is to write a paper arguing that other philosophers are deeply confused about some issue? Surely we don’t want to be running to an IRB every time we get a gestalt sense of what our colleagues believe or accept as evidence. Is it somehow that one is being inexact and summarizing a gestalt sense one’s colleagues believe that saves ones from needing IRB approval?

In that case consider all the conferences, such as the American Geophysical Union meeting, which have taken to releasing the race/gender breakdown of submitted/accepted papers to facilitate analysis and publication. That’s an archetypal experiment which any IRB would deny in another context. The reviewers (subjects) surely didn’t give meaningful consent as they risked professional consequences if they tried to back out after being informed the data summarizing their behavior would be released, if they were informed at all. I mean imagine what your colleagues would think of you if you backed out after finding out that your work would be statistically analyzed to determine racial and gender fairness. Worse, the research would convey potentially highly disturbing information directly to friends and colleagues aware of your status as a subject (perhaps even able to infer how you affected the data if conference organizers gossip).

I’m not saying that any of these behaviors is comparable to Boghossian’s misrepresentations. But I think they show that the choice to apply the human subject rules to Boghossian was highly value laden. Indeed the case with Wood shows we approve of this behavior when we believe the victims truly are charlatans suggesting it’s the belief that grievance studies researchers aren’t charlatan that is driving this application. No matter how wrong you may think that conclusion may be, not being punished for advocating (even in a mean, disrespectful and unpleasant way) for an incorrect view is at the heart of academic freedom.

I mean if universities can use human subjects research ethics as an excuse for condemning Boghossian in this situation I see no reason why they couldn’t do the same next time a philosopher talks to a bunch of colleagues at the APA to get a sense of their view on some controversial topic, e.g., the argument that we have a moral obligation to abort the disabled. I happen to be a fan of what Boghossian was trying to do (even f I might quibble with his implementation) but even if you aren’t you should recognize the potential to apply human subjects rules to do an end run around academic freedom guarantees and use their interactions with other academics, attempts to achieve more transparently on racial/gender fairness and other normal aspects of academic life as an excuse to apply them to controversial academics.

For instance, even though it’s a normal practice to get widespread feedback on a philosophical puzzle or argument from colleagues and reference the overall nature of those opinions in subsequent papers one can easily imagine that in the face of a public controversy about a philosopher advancing a a version of the (very philosophically reputable) argument that women have a moral duty to abort a disabled fetus the same excuse might be used. Just gather evidence that they had indicated their intent to poll colleagues about this argument at the conference (say because they planned to write a paper arguing that philosophers are insufficiently responsive to unpopular moral views) and use that to claim it was a systematic investigation of human subjects.

Peter Boghossian on Twitter

Attached is the outcome of Portland State University’s disciplinary investigation into my Grievance Studies probe. (1)

Human Subject Rules As A Violation Of Academic Freedom was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

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Standing and The Border Wall

So I was initially aghast at the opinion granting the government a stay in Trump v. Sierra (the emergency funding for the wall case). How could the court have done something so obviously wrong. But then I went and read the briefs and came out with a different view.

However, a key caveat here is that it’s only reasonable if Judge McFadden’s decision decision the House lacked standing to challenge is overturned on appeal. If the Supreme Court upholds that then, precedent or no, they’ve endorsed the position that the president could just start spending money without the fig lead of an excuse and no one could challenge it.

First, the court’s stay wasn’t based on whether or not the expenditure was unlawful (obviously yes IMO) but the court’s conclusion that the plaintiffs probably lacked standing. Personally, I would have voted with Bryer to allow the transfer of money but not the start of construction (thus avoiding harm to both parties) but the fact that they convinced Breyer to at least stay the injunction on the transfer of money suggests there was a pretty good argument for this point of view. And, indeed, after reading the briefs (there is only a super short opinion as it was an order) I came away thinking that this was a plausible outcome.

The most important point here is that the court has a long held rule for prudential standing that the interests of the plaintiffs raising a statutory challenge has to fall within the zone of interests the law was intended to protect. For instance, in Tax Analysts the court denied standing to an oil company seeking to challenge an IRS ruling that gave competitors tax benefits it argued were barred by law. I think it’s a stupid rule (uniform application is always an interest of the legislature).

This puts the plaintiffs in a tough spot since they are obviously not within the zone of interests protected by section 8005 (the law that allows the DoD to transfer money in an emergency) so they argue that it’s a constitutional violation of the spending clause since that means the government is spending money without congressional authorization. However, this is a dubious move as in some sense all government actions in violation of a statute are unconstitutional1. I think the fact that any claim of statutory violation could be turned into a constitutional violation to be a reducto of the supreme court’s precedent but the precedent is what it is. Indeed, there is some pretty explicit precedent in Dalton that seems to establish that when the executive makes a decision in a way that violates some constraint congress placed on that decision it doesn’t thereby become a constitutional violation (in the sense that’s relevant for standing). Specifically, the court held that

Our cases do not support the proposition that every action by the President, or by another executive official, in excess of his statutory authority is ipso facto in violation of the Constitution. On the contrary, we have often distinguished between claims of constitutional violations and claims that an official has acted in excess of his statutory authority. See, e. g., Wheeldin v. Wheeler, 373 U.S. 647, 650-652 (1963) (distinguishing between “rights which may arise under the Fourth Amendment” and “a cause of action for abuse of the [statutory] subpoena power by a federal officer”); Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388, 396-397 (1971) (distinguishing between “actions contrary to [a] constitutional prohibition,” and those “merely said to be in excess of the authority delegated . . . by the Congress”).

I think this distinction is kinda arbitrary and unreasonably provides the (arguably more important) rights protected by structural features of the constitution less protection than explicitly named rights. The plaintiffs try to distinguish Dalton by suggesting it applies only when the decision is ultimately relegated wholly to the discretion of the president but I think this misreads Dalton2.

The government also argues the constitutional violation would occur when the money is transferred between accounts not when it is spent. This feels too clever by half since the intent of section 8005 is obviously to prevent the expenditure of funds on projects congress disapproves of not to change DoD accounting procedures3.

Finally, even if we accept that the challenge should be considered based on a constitutional violation there is some debate over whether the zone of interests test still applies.

The government argues that it does based on an absurdly strained reading of the phrase “statutorily created” arguing that because the courts of equity are a creation of congress that any cause of action arising out of them are statutorily created. Frankly, that’s absurd (if that was true what function does “statutorily created” have?). But from a structural point of view it’s not implausible to think that for derivative constitutional claims, i.e., constitutional claims that arise because a statutory constraint is violated, that the zone of interests test still applies and that zone of interests is determined by those specified in the statute. Indeed, if one accepts the principle behind the zone of interests tests it seems like it applies just as strongly here (though if you, like me, don’t one would want to limit it’s application).

I’d note that the government’s argument that the transfer of funds here was legal is just absurd. It relies on a technical distinction between the budget item in the DoD and the funding of the very same project via DHS (which congress denied). That’s ridiculous and would let the president fund absolutely anything just by changing the names or agencies under which it was funded.

I mean why can’t the competing business in Tax Analysts just allege that issuing their competitors a refund (after estimated tax payments) based on this interpretation is an expenditure without congressional authorization or just generally rely on the fact that the constitution vests legislative authority with congress to challenge any contrary administrative ruling. ↩

Specifically, in Dalton the president’s only power was to either accept in whole or reject in whole a proposal by a commission on what military bases to close and the plaintiffs alleged the commission’s proposal was crafted in violation of law. I can’t see how the fact that the president ultimately had to approve or reject is relevant to the standing. ↩

To steelman the argument as best I can consider this. Imagine the Trump admin had refused to say on what exact pieces of land it was planning to build the wall on before transfering the money. In that case the plaintiffs could surely not claim injury when the transfer happened (the mere fact that the government might do something isn’t enough) and surely standing can’t turn on what you believe the government plans to do with the money. However, I’d respond that in this case if the defendants would (if they otherwise would have had standing) gain standing when that money was spent (or about to be spent) in a way that injured them. ↩

Standing and The Border Wall was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

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Effects Of Internet Dating

Everyone talks about social media increasing polarization. I wonder if our ability to pre-screen our romantic partners has something to do with it as well. We can now ensure we don’t ever have to date people we don’t want to.

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Effects Of Internet Dating was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

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Benefits Of Hypersonic Missles

I don’t understand why all the press about hypersonic missiles has only focused on their risks. Some risks are real but there are also strategic benefits and it irks me that it seems like the media is just reasoning based on their gut level feeling that a new fancy weapon must be bad. I’m sure experts have considered both costs and benefits and I’d love to see them but articles that don’t even stop to refute potential benefits irk me. Much like tech workers who refuse to work on military applications on principal rather than weighing the pros and cons of helping the US acquire that particular tech.

Despite claims that they undermine deterrence it seems to me the exact opposite is true for the major nuclear powers. If anti-ICBM defenses destabilize deterrence it stands to reason tech which can’t be defended against could improve deterrence.

The expense and technical difficulty of hypersonic weapons means that only the major powers will likely be able to build them. So now we get the best of bost worlds in that we can build out full anti-ICBM tech to reduce the danger of attacks from rogue nations like NK (unlikely to be able to afford a massive barrage or a huge number of decoys) without undermining the balance of nuclear deterrence with the other major powers. Indeed, the sheer speed of hypersonic weapons offers the tantalizing possibility of anti-ICBM weapons that could impact during boost phase provided they were stationed nearby (e.g. in SK).

These missiles don’t force decisions about counterattack to be made within the short window before striking since the major powers can still counterstrike with missles housed safely on nuclear subs, hidden in silos in their vast empty fields and scrambled to wait in the air. Using hypersonic weapons as second strike weapons ensures that a relatively small number of nukes scattered on subs, scrambled into the air or placed in a few of our minutemen silos provide an effective MAD style deterrence against great powers.

The fact that hypersonic missiles potentially render aircraft carriers and other capital ships useless isn’t all bad. China inevitably will develop its own aircraft carriers if they remain useful meaning both countries will spend massive amounts of money to remain on par. Far better if we remained on par without the capital ships given that whenever we need to project airpower against distant weaker states (e.g. UN approved bombings etc..) we can use the hypersonic missiles to project power. It potentially harms our strategic position re: russia but it’s not totally obvious to me if it’s a net harm or benefit.

Hypersonic Missiles Are Unstoppable. And They’re Starting a New Global Arms Race.

At War The new weapons – which could travel at more than 15 times the speed of sound with terrifying accuracy – threaten to change the nature of warfare. A Mach 14 Waverider glide vehicle, which takes its name from its ability to generate high lift and ride on its own shock waves.

Benefits Of Hypersonic Missles was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

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College As Education

Harvard’s recent decision to rescind it’s offer of admission to Kyle Kashuv really bothers me for a number of reasons. The fact that adolescent boys will egg each other on to do stupid shit shouldn’t surprise anyone. Indeed, any guy who tells you that they are sure they wouldn’t have done something equally offensive (though perhaps not online) at that age in the right circumstances (deliberately being extreme in what was foolishly assumed to be a private context) isn’t telling the truth. The admissions department at Harvard knows this and deliberately chose to put headlines over their supposed goal of educating admitted students. There isn’t any actual evidence this student is racist. Just someone who showed bad judgement like other adolescents. Harvard is willing to admit confessed violent criminals so the idea that this conduct was just too extreme is absurd.

No, he isn’t being sent to prison and his life is surely not ruined because he has to go to state school but it is a serious consequence and even if it wasn’t that just changes the extent of the damage and isn’t a justification for Harvard’s actions. Though, I’ll grant that if Harvard came back around after the controversy died down and offered to let him into the next year’s class that might make for an overall sound response. But I doubt they will do that.

Second, this further contributes to the troubling social narrative that not getting caught using bad words and otherwise signalling a certain kind of social virtue is more important than actually being good to other people. Yes, racist words can be quite hurtful but compare using the n-word in this context to making fun of a socially awkward classmate or even cheating on your significant other. If Harvard wants to condition admission on being a good person how about they start by kicking out students who were mean to their fellow classmates or their significant others. If the worst that kids do in highschool is use racist/sexist/whatever language in a context they believe won’t be seen by anyone likely to be offended that would be an infinitely better world than the one we live in now.

Third, one can reasonably infer that this past conduct surfaced as a result of Kyle’s public political positions. Using someone’s own words to counter their public arguments is certainly justified but the net effect of punishing kids for engaging in political advocacy. The exact opposite of the position that Harvard seemingly advocates. Moreover, one has to wonder if these documents would have come out (and if Harvard would have reacted as it did) if he wasn’t publicly known as the Parkland survivor with a conservative viewpoint. Moreover, the absence of any similar stories about the other contributors to that google doc having their admission to college rescinded suggests that either other schools don’t see things the same way Harvard does or raises questions of selective enforcement based on public visibility.

Fourth, it suggests that Harvard really does see it’s own admissions system as a kind of prize to be doled out for good behavior rather than a scarce resource that is allocated based on perceived benefit. If Harvard was interested in taking the best, brightest and likely future influencers and molding them for the benefit of the country this is the last thing they should do. Yes, make it clear this behavior is bad but then admit the student and mold him into a better person. Rescinding the admission just engenders bitterness and the kind of ugly emotions that led to Trump’s election.

College As Education was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

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Journalism Can Be Disrupted By Technology Too (Gasp)

So today brings yet another editorial from the journalism world bemoaning the fact that the internet has rendered traditional journalistic outlets unprofitable. And I’m sympathetic to all the people who planned their lives around this profession and are now struggling. It’s always tough when technological progress renders a bunch of jobs obsolete. And we always see the same calls for governmental protection to protect the existing jobs and businesses. The calls for regulation always have some justification but rarely does it involve this level of absurdity. I mean really? You’re going to blame monopolistic practices by Facebook and Google and ask for an exemption from antitrust laws in the same breadth.

If the problem was really some kind of monopolistic pressure from Google and Facebook I’d expect the demand to be to enforce anti-trust law against these companies? The reason that this isn’t the demand is obvious. Companies in the news business aren’t losing money because they must comply with the whims of monopolistic services. They wouldn’t be doing any better if there were 10 popular social networks and 10 major search engines. They are losing money for the simple reason that there are too many companies producing journalistic content online. The internet reduced the transaction costs to access newspaper articles to nearly zero and as long as dozens or hundreds of papers republish the same content people won’t pay for it.

I mean the complaints in the linked editorial aren’t those of a small business being squeezed by a monopolist. They are those of an industry forced to compete for customers. Neither Google or Facebook threatens these news outlets to give them a cut of their online revenue or use their ad-platforms on pain of not being featured on their sites. Indeed, the complaint here is literally the opposite: Google and Facebook are helping people find whatever news sources they want. The ad revenue Google and Facebook generate is a direct consequence of the economic (one can debate the social value) value they bring in terms of search or social networking.

Now one might worry that there will be a social cost if we cut back on the number of news outlets. That’s another discussion but even if so I’m quite wary of letting the news media suck at the government’s teat. I mean if the news industry sees it’s survival as dependent on anti-trust exemptions that makes it dangerously dependent on the continued good will of the government.

As I’ve said before I don’t actually think there is much to worry about. Eventually, the duplicated effort will be cut out of the news industry and we will see a stronger, better kind of investigative reporting rise from the ashes.

Tech overlords Google and Facebook have used monopoly to rob journalism of its revenue

Over the past decade, the news business has endured a bloodbath, with tens of thousands of journalists losing their jobs amid mass layoffs. The irony is, more people than ever are consuming news. There’s never been a greater need for factual reporting, from the White House down to the local school board.

Journalism Can Be Disrupted By Technology Too (Gasp) was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

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Why Must Genetic Enhancement Be Dystopian?

I like the idea of this oped series and I’m glad genetic modification is becoming a more mainstream topic. However, I’m very disappointed that the author took the easy (but usually inaccurate) path of projecting our current fears onto future tech rather than carefully trying to work out the novel new effects good and bad (tho the dystopian predictions never seem to get it right).

Shortcomings

Indeed, we can already dismiss some of the core presumptions of the oped as implausible. Like computer tech biotech has economies of scale and continual cost reductions so let’s try not to repeat the mistakes we made worrying about the digital divide rather than what will happen when everyone’s online. Maybe only the rich will get customized babies but once we learn how to perform the procedure the marginal cost will drop very quickly (indeed I’d guess the IVF treatment will be the major cost hurdle but not out of reach of most Americans). An oped that looked into the potential effects of conformity as a result of mass produced genetic packages would have been much more interesting. As would discussion of the potential implications of parents having the option of changing their babies apparent race.

Second, by hypothesis being genetically engineered is a huge benefit to earnings but merely because of employer reaction rather than true talent. But you can’t BOTH claim that’s true, gene modification is the cause of growing caste divides and the public gene enhancement project didn’t raise salaries since either the elites must really have some extra ability or employers are just using gene enhancement as an excuse to hire the children of elites (so it’s not the gene editing that’s driving inequality). Moreover, if private gene editing offers these great economic benefits there should be plenty of financing opportunities along the lines of the education loans that take a fraction of future earnings.

Positive Effects

Finally, either the IQ enhancement really works or it doesn’t. If it creates substantial IQ boosts we know based on what we see now that this makes huge differences in people’s ability to do various jobs and tasks. You’re not likely to see a research mathematician or physicist with an IQ below 120 and these careers have pretty objective measures of success. So people would simply be able to go check if all the major new theorems and breakthroughs in the sciences are all from genetically enhanced or not (whether it’s IQ or the result of better motivation).

If so that means society is much better off (richer, more capable more medical tech) even as a result of elites getting these modifications. Also it makes it more implausible prices haven’t dropped. In terms of changes to society the likely effects of turning one Einstein or Feynman (or even Sergey Brin and Larry Page) every 50 years into 10 a year would pretty seismic. On the other hand if you don’t see this actually making a difference in these objectively measurable fields it will eventually start to dawn on people it’s not really working at all.

This is only the most obvious and easiest to think of positive effect. Personally, I’m a big fan of the fact that it could finally bring about an end to traditional racism. The fact that parents can choose a race for their children turns race into a matter of fashion rather than a matter of ancestry. Of course, parents will often want their children to look like them but this mere possibility puts a limit on how bad the discrimination can be since if it’s bad enough you don’t put your kid through it. Moreover, once we start editing the genome I’d be shocked if we didn’t work out pretty quickly how to couple melanin production to some other uncommon nutrient or add a hook which allows it to be suppressed giving people a choice about how to present themselves. Once people can change their skin color for aesthetic effect or for a concert it will fundamentally end traditional racism.

While a homogenous army of tall men with blue eyes and firm handshakes might seem undesirable consider the benefits of a little more homogeneity in looks. Just tweaking people so the bottom 20% of the looks bracket no longer exists (i.e. now looks better) will make a huge difference in people’s welfare and it will encourage people to focus more on things besides looks once everyone has decent looks. There are so many interesting angles for fiction on this subject to cover so why must it all retread the same ground?

A Moral Imperative

Ultimately, I’d argue that we have a moral imperative to make enhancement available as soon as possible. Yes, the intelligence boosts too but the most important reason is all the unnecessary suffering that eliminating predisposition to depression or back trouble or whatever else. After antibiotics I expect that to be the next great human health advance and putting this off because we feel uncomfortable is like denying a child a vaccine because the idea of them getting artificial chemicals injected into them creeps you out.

We aren’t ready to start o humans yet but for us to get there we need to start a focused effort on learning how to manage safe and effective genetic enhancement of lower animals, primates and ultimately humans. Even if you disagree with me on the desirability of this technology you’ve got no choice. It’s inevitable and the question the world needs to answer is whether they prefer it done by third-world doctors in back rooms or safely researched by the world’s best scientists and offered in our best facilities. I don’t plan to have children but if I was and I knew I could give them an advantage by having some illegal gene editing done in some clinic I’d give it a serious thought and there are lots of people who would take it way farther even with the risks (think beauty pageant moms). So let’s get cracking.

Opinion | It’s 2059, and the Rich Kids Are Still Winning

DNA tweaks won’t fix our problems. By Ted Chiang Mr. Chiang is an award-winning science fiction writer and the author of “Exhalation.” Editors’ note: This is the first installment in a new series, “Op-Eds From the Future,” in which science fiction authors, futurists, philosophers and scientists write op-eds that they imagine we might read 10, 20 or even 100 years in the future.

Why Must Genetic Enhancement Be Dystopian? was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

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Global Warming Before Social Programs

Is this right? Only 2 of the democratic candidates for president have come out in favor of carbon taxes? Only Delany seems to have made it a key platform. I’ve never been a big climate change hawk before but, while I’d really love to have many of the social programs the dems are proposing, we’ve got to deal with global warming sometime and, unlike all the other priorities, this one gets much more expensive the longer we wait.

So waiting on global warming means less money in the future to fund the social programs we want and harms that might offset them. A carbon tax now means revenue that we could spend on desired social programs.

Yes, I know other candidates have supported funds for R&D, renewables etc.. but, c’mon, that’s just a gesture. The government doesn’t have the money, absent a huge tax hike in which case just tax carbon, to subsidize renewables enough to make fossil fuels more expensive across the board given their superior energy density and existing infrastructure.

Global Warming Before Social Programs was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

[infiniteinjury]

What's With The Worry About Deepfakes

When I see articles like this one I’m puzzled as to why people think it will be such a big deal. For a damn long time we managed without photo or video evidence at all and it’s even easier to fake text than it is to fake photos or videos. Yes, it will take time to get used to it but once people realize that there are videos out there showing absolutely everything they’ll stop believing things just because they saw a video of it.

I mean, I do see that a video has a stronger emotional impact but I don’t see why people won’t adapt.

Deepfakes are getting better-but they’re still easy to spot

Last week, Mona Lisa smiled. A big, wide smile, followed by what appeared to be a laugh and the silent mouthing of words that could only be an answer to the mystery that had beguiled her viewers for centuries. A great many people were unnerved.

What’s With The Worry About Deepfakes was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

[theunitofcaring]

I'm an adjunct professor. What can I do to make college a less-terrible experience for students who are having the same kinds of difficulties and frustrations that you had in college?

I know that professors are often under a lot of constraints yourselves, and that it’s really hard to tell if a student is failing because they’re not trying or because they have issues that mean even really intense trying isn’t producing any results. I think it’s great that you’re thinking about this. I think the big things I’d want to highlight are:

- to the extent that you can emphasize to students that there are lots of different skills they can build a career out of in the real world - maybe with lots of varied assignments, from presentations to projects to tests to essays - it’s really valuable for students to know that it’s okay to have a lot of weak spots and that they’ll often be able to find opportunities tailored to their strengths.

- to the extent that you can make accommodations for students whenever it’ll help them do better instead of because they have a certified disability, and let students know that’s your policy, that’s something the real world offers - it’s okay to work from home, get a transcription service, get copies of the notes, etc. not because you’re disabled but just because this helps you excel - which I had trouble getting in my academic environment. Obviously some accommodations like extra time on tests can’t be available to everyone, but “if this will help you succeed, talk to me about it” might result in hearing from lots of students who need pretty small things (to wear noise-canceling headphones in class, to sit on an exercise ball, to have notes posted to the course site before class instead of after it) to succeed. Students are often not aware that it’s okay to actively strategize to succeed and to ask for the things they need (and often, it isn’t okay). But it can make a big difference. 

- your school’s mental health services are probably much worse than advertised. They still might be worth recommending if a student seems miserable, but they also might be any of too expensive, too coercive, too difficult to access, conditional on too many other things, or too hard to navigate. They might immediately threaten to expel a student. They might tell the student not to talk to their friends. I don’t know what you can do about this but I wish more people knew it.

- sometimes, a student is just - giving you nothing to work with. they’re not showing up. They’re not doing any work. If you talk to them they have nothing to say for themselves. At least some of the time, that student is me, and I was so ashamed of failing that I couldn’t even think, and I was sitting at my computer for hours trying, and trying, and trying to write one sentence of a trivial easy essay I just couldn’t write. And - there’s not necessarily anything you can do for that student, but it seems like it might be helpful to know that students might be in that situation. I know I hated the thought that everyone would reasonably assume I didn’t give a shit and wasn’t bothering to try.

[endecision-deactivated20221216]

It would have helped me to hear that I was welcome in class and that the professor wanted me to learn and get something out of their lectures, no matter how bad my grades were or how few assignments I completed. And that I would be welcome at office hours even if I hadn’t done the reading (I never did the reading). I think these things were generally true but I was often too ashamed to show up.

At a big school (maybe at any college of any size, I wouldn’t know), it’s easy to fall through the cracks and never have a mentor or even any kind of human connection. It’s definitely not your responsibility if you don’t have the bandwidth for it, but I think it’s important for students to have a mentor somewhere.

It’s reasonable to want to save your limited resources for students who are really trying, and to react with annoyance to students who aren’t turning anything in. And some of those students are probably just deciding they’d rather spend their time partying than studying, but some of them are suicidally depressed and hate themselves for not doing better. Please let them know that you don’t personally hate them too.

And there are some technical/logistical things that can help students a lot even if they’re not supposed to be your responsibility. I thought my Spanish had gotten worse because I could not understand half of what my professor was saying - until on the third or fourth day of class she started wearing a mic and then I could understand her perfectly. One of the lecture halls had doors that slammed loudly and were really distracting whenever anyone came in late, and keeping them propped slightly with doorstops would have fixed it.

[infiniteinjury]

Don't put your goals ahead of your students. It might be in your interest for all of them to spend all their time on your course rather than others and you can blackmail them into doing this by assigning lots of homework and grading it so that if they don't spend lots of time they do worse than their skill level in the course reflects.

Let students whose homework weighs down their grade replace it with their exam grades. Similarly don't punish non-attendance more than necessary just because it makes you feel better to lecture to a full room.

As a prof I realize that to battle student akrasia you must have some grade component for homework and potentially attendance but minimize the extent to which that is necessary.

I now have a PhD in math from Berkeley but had course attendance been required in college I probably wouldn't have even graduated.

[infiniteinjury]

Limiting Pharmacist Discretion

I believe it’s time we stopped treating the people who dispense your prescriptions as medical professional. We should revoke the discretion given to pharmacists not to fill facially valid scripts (certainly electronic scripts) unless the computer flags a dangerous drug interaction, the pmp flags doctor shopping or the script seems to clearly contain a mistake1. The involvement of the medication dispenser as more than a glorified clerk and pill counter in filling prescriptions is a holdover from the days when the pharmacist functioned as something of a hybrid between a nurse-practitioner and sole clearinghouse for all a patient’s medications.

None of these roles for a pharmacist make sense anymore. Patients now fill prescriptions at whatever pharmacy is most convenient with no guarantee that any one pharmacy chain let alone pharmacist will process all their prescriptions2. Yes, pharmacists can access your other prescriptions via prescription monitoring programs (PMPs) but so can your doctors making your doctors, with their greater information about you, in a better position to check for dangerous interactions. Any advantage possessed by the pharmacist as a result of their narrow focus on drugs combined with the breadth of the drugs they are familiar with has been undercut by software that can automatically flag potentially dangerous interactions.

While having a second set of eyes glance over the prescription is valuable (especially running software that flags interactions with the other prescriptions listed in the patient’s PMP record) pharmacists aren’t the best way to implement such a system3. However, even if inertia means we keep employing the pharmacist in this capacity that doesn’t justify giving they discretion to refuse to fill valid prescriptions absent some indication of outright physician mistake or dangerous drug interaction unknown to them. Given this kind of discretion to pharmacists offers no benefits I can see and imposes substantial costs.

For instance, this discretion frequently ends up with pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions explicitly because the patient is uninsured patients (happened to my father just this week) and I suspect it happens for more frequently without being explicitly acknowledged. I’ve also seen just how much more difficult this discretion makes it for acquaintances who look poor or non-white to get their prescriptions filled. Furthermore, while not quite as bad as the situation with Plan B some pharmacists judgmentally decide they disapprove of certain kinds of prescriptions, e.g. opiate maintenance therapy, and make it particularly difficult to get such prescriptions filled. One might think pharmacists might at least need a good reason to refuse to fill a prescription but apparently the law says they can do so for any reason at all.

One might think this kind of discretion is necessary to reduce prescription forgery and attempts to circumvent doctor shopping prohibitions. However, the former problem is quickly being rendered obsolete with electronic prescriptions and even when we are talking about paper prescriptions refusing to fill facially valid prescriptions just sends the prescription forger out looking for a pharmacy that doesn’t care or tacitly accepts the practice to make more money. Refusing to fill the prescription covers that pharmacist’s ass or makes them feel good but doesn’t stop the drug seeking patient from filling their script. Likely, a much bigger dent in prescription forgery and related activities would be made if reputable pharmacies filled facially valid scripts after carefully checking IDs but, when suspicious, reached out to contact that patient’s prescribing physicians.

While the drug addicts will always find some pharmacy which will fill a valid script4 the same can’t be said about patients in genuine need of their medications. Poor working parents don’t have the free time or money to drive all over town trying to get their prescription filled and they don’t have the drug abuser’s contacts letting them know where they should go nor the desperate driving need of the addict.

Horribly, despite the fact that exercising this discretion seems to be primarily a harm it appears that pharmacists can refuse to dispense controlled substances for any reason. Though if the patient is disabled (as many chronic pain patients are) this may create a cause of action.

And if when asked the customer, taken as their word, indicates the doctor knew it was unusual in that way they still have to dispense ↩

For instance, when I get a prescription from a doctor I usually just fill it at whatever pharmacy is next door to that doctor so I don’t have to call an additional Lyft. ↩

Have the prescribing physician run the software to flag interactions using the same PMP data the pharmacist would use plus information from the patient’s records. Rather than having pharmacists be the second pair of eyes to look at the prescription require that each prescription also be run past someone with nurse or pharmacist training by the doctor (via an online service if they lack office staff). ↩

Among addicts there are standard percentages of the prescription given in exchange for lending money to spring it from the pharmacy prescription or driving them around to pharmacies to get it filled) ↩

Limiting Pharmacist Discretion was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

[infiniteinjury]

Decision Theory Anti-realism

With the recent flurry of posts in the rationalist community about which decision theory ( e.g. CDT, EDT, UDT etc..) it’s time to revisit the theme of this blog: rejecting rationality realism. In this case that means pointing out that there isn’t actually a well-defined fact of the matter about which decision theory is better. Of course, nothing stops us from arguing with each other about the best decision theory but those disagreements are more like debates about what’s the best programming language than disagreements about the chemical structure of Benzene.

Any attempt to compare decision theories must first address the question: what does it mean for one decision theory to be better than another? Unlike many pseudo-problems1 there is a seemingly meaningful answer to this question: one decision theory is better than another to the extent that the choices it recommends lead to better outcomes for the agent. Other than some ambiguity about which theory is better if neither dominates the other it seems like this gives a straightforward criteria for superiority: we just look at actual outcomes and see which decision theory offers the best results for an agent. However, this only appears to give a well-defined criteria because in every day life the subtle differences between the various ways to understand a choice and how to conceptualize making a choice don’t matter.

In particular, the kind of scenarios which distinguish between the various decision theories yield different answers depending on whether you want to know who you should be (i.e. total source code) to do best, how you should program an agent if you want them to do best, which decision rule should you adopt for you to do best, and what choice gives you the best outcome. Furthermore, these scenarios call into question how the supposed ‘choices’ made by the decision theory relate to our intuitive notion in a way that makes them relevant to some notion of good decision making or if they are simply demanding the laws of physics/logic give way to offer them a better outcome in a way that has nothing to do with actual decisions.

Intuitions and Motivation

I’m sure some readers are shaking their heads at this point and saying something like

I don’t need to worry about technical issues about how to understand a choice. I can easily walk through Newcomb style problems and the rules straightforwardly tell me who gets what which is enough to satisfy my intuitive notion that theory X is better. Demanding one specify all these details is nitpicking.

To convince you that’s not enough let me provide an extreme dramatization of how purported payouts can be misleading and the question turns on a precise specification of the question. Consider the following Newtonian, rather than Newcombian, problem. You fall off the top of the empire State building what you do as you fall past the fifth floor? What would one say about the virtues of Floating Decision Theory which tells us that in such a situation we should make the choice to float gently to the ground. Now obviously, one would prefer to float rather than fly but posing the problem as a decision between these two choices doesn’t render it a real choice. Obviously, there is something dubious about evaluating your decision theory based on it’s performance on the float/fall question. At least on one conception a decision theory is no worse for failing to indicate the agent do something impossible for them so we can’t merely blindly assume that anytime we are handed a set of ‘choices’ and told what their payoffs are we can simply take those at face value.

Yet, this is precisely the situation we encounter in the original Newcomb problem as the very assumption of predictability which allows the demon2 to favor the 1 boxers ensures the physical impossibility of choosing any number of boxes other than what you did choose. Of course, the same is (up to quantum mechanical randomness) true of any actual `choice’ by a real person but under certain circumstances we find it useful to idealize it as free choice. What’s different about the Newcomb problem is that, understood naively, it simultaneously asks us to idealize selecting 1 or 2 boxes as a free choice while assuming it isn’t actually. Thus, it’s reasonable to worry that our intuitions about choices can’t just be applied uncritically in Newcomb type problems and now I’ll hope to motivate the concern that there might be multiple ways to understand the question being asked.

Let’s now modify this situation, by imagining that we actually live in the Marvel Universe so there are a number of people (floaters) who respond to large falls by, moments before impact, suddenly decelerating and floating gently to the ground. Now suppose we pose the question of whether, as you fall past the 5th floor, you should choose to have been born a floater or not. Obviously, this question suffers from the same infirmities as the above example in that intuitively there is no ‘choice’ involved in being a floater or not but being a floater. However, we can mask this flaw by instead of phrasing the choice as between being a floater and not instead phrasing it as being between yelling, “Holy shit I’m a floater” and concentrating totally on desperately trying to orient yourself so your feet strike first. Now presuming there is a strong (even exceptionless) psychological regularity that only floaters take the first option it follows that EDT recommends making such a yell while CDT doesn’t.

However, taking a look at the situation it seems clear that the two theories are in some sense answering different questions. If I wanted to know whether or not it is preferable to be the kind of person who yells “Holy shit I’m a floater” then I should consult EDT for an answer. Instead, if I’m interested in what I should do in that situation that doesn’t seem particularly relevant. I believe this should move us to consider the possibility we haven’t asked a clear question when we ask what the right decision theory is and in the next section I will consider a variety of ways the problem we’re trying to solve can be precisified and not they give rise to different decision theories.

Possible Precisifications

Ultimately, there is something a bit weird about asking what decision a real physical agent should take in a given situation. After all, the agent will act just as it’s software dictates and/or the laws of physics require. Thus, as Yudkowsky recognizes, any comparison of decision theories is asking some kind of counterfactual. However, which counterfactual we ask makes a huge difference in what decision theory is preferable. For instance, all of the following are potential ways to precifisify the question of what it means for it to be better for XDT to be a better deciscion theory than YDT.

If there was a miracle that overrode the agent’s programming/physical laws at the moment of a choice then doing so in the manner prescribed by XDT yields better outcomes than doing so in a manner prescribed by YDT.

In fact those actual agents who more often choose the outcome favored by XDT do better than those who choose the outcome favored by YDT.

Those actual agents which adopt/apply XDT do better than those who adopt/apply YDT.

Suppose there is a miracle that overrode physical laws at the moment the agent’s programming/internal makeup is specified then if the miracle results in outcomes more consistent with XDT than YDT the agent does better.

As above except with applying XDT/YDT instead of just favoring outcomes which tend to agree with it.

Moving one level up we could ask about which performs better, agents whose programming inclines them to adopt XDT or YDT when considered.

Finally, if what we are interested in is actually coding agents, i.e., writing AI software, we might ask whether programmers who code their agents to reason in a manner that prefers choice A produce agents that do better than programmers who code agents to reason in a manner that prefers choice B.

Pushing that one level up we could ask about whether programmers who are inclined to adopt/apply XDT/YDT as true produce agents which do better.

One could continue and list far more possibilities but these six are enough to illustrate the point.

For instance, note that if we are asking question 1 CDT outperforms EDT. For the purposes of question 1 the right answer to the Newcomb problem is to be a 2 boxer. After all, if we idealize the choice as a miracle that allows deviation from physical law then the demon’s prediction of whether we would be a two-boxer or one-boxer no longer must be accurate so two-boxes always outperforms one boxing. It doesn’t matter that your software says you will choose only one box if we are asking about outcomes where a miracle occurs and overrides that software.

On the other hand it’s clearly true that EDT does better than CDT with respect to question 2. That’s essentially the definition of EDT.

To distinguish the remaining options we need to consider a range of different scenarios such as demons who punish agents who actually apply/adopt XDT/YDT in reaching their conclusions. Or consider Newcombian demons who punish agents who adopt (or whose programmers adopted one of XDT/YDT).

Ultimately, which criteria we should use to compare decision theories depends on what we want to achieve. Different idealizations/criteria will be appropriate depending on whether we are asking which rule we ourselves should adopt, how we should program agents to act, how we should program agents who program agents etc.. etc… Moreover, I’d suggest that once we’ve fully preciscified the kind of question we want to ask the whole debate about which decision theory is best becomes irrelevant. Given a fully specified question we can just sit down and compute (or do empirical analysis) and when we can’t it indicates that we’ve failed to fully specify what we are asking.

The Use of Decision Theory By Agents

As a postscript I’d note that it’s also misguided to assume that the right way to program some kind of AI agent is to have that agent adopt some kind of decision theory like framework. Many discussions of decision theories seem to presume this by phrasing questions in terms of what decision theory should an AI apply/adopt. However, there is no reason to suppose that the way to produce the behavior favored by XDT is for the agent to actually believe/apply XDT. For instance, if a demon punishes agents who have adopted XDT then the outcomes XDT prefers might be best achieved by agents which explicitly eschew XDT. More pragmatically, it’s not at all clear that the most effective way for agents to reach XDT compatible outcomes is to perform the considerations demanded by XDT. That’s a good way to implement some algorithms but not all.

The reason that decision theory is useful in normal situations (i.e. lacking Omega/Newcombian demons) is that it’s a decent heuristic to assume that the way we internally consider outcomes/make choices doesn’t affect the payout we receive. Under this assumption pretty much all ways of preciscifying the question give the same answer and it offers some good advice for programming agents. However, the usefulness of the framework once we abandon this isn’t clear and can’t simply be assumed. Thus, not only would I argue that the debate over which decision theory is best is misguided, but that we need to be more careful about the assumptions we make about applicability as well.

Thus, not only would I argue that the debate over which decision theory is best is misguided, but that we need to be more careful about the assumptions we make about applicability as well.

For instance, any attempt to answer what makes one programming language better than another reveals substantial disagreement about which tradeoffs are desirable and no agreed upon framework for resolving them. Indeed, we in some sense all recognize that which programming language tradeoffs are desirable is context dependent. ↩

Or in Yudkowsky’s formulation, Omega. ↩

Decision Theory Anti-realism was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

[infiniteinjury]

Legally Recognizing Digital Human Memory

We are at the point, or very near it, that our technology could virtually eliminate unsolved violent crime. For instance, suppose we all constantly captured audio with all our smart devices and uploaded it to the cloud. Our devices could update the uploaded buffer when we log into our devices later and fail to report an emergency1. Unlike biological memory this could be reliably used in court and captured even by murder victims.

Why don’t we use this kind of tech to take a bite out of crime? Well, for the moment it still might strain our bandwidth and storage resources but 5G and ever cheaper storage make this a temporary issue but even people who can afford those resources aren’t so inclined. Now one might think it’s out of fear of technical loss of privacy. What if amazon, google or some hacker figures out how to access our buffered audio?

But that’s not really a convincing worry since it’s pretty easy to secure the buffered audio more securely than our devices themselves are secured. I mean anyone who can hack our cell phones and smart speakers can just enable listening in directly while we could split the secrets to decrypt the audio between multiple big tech companies. The real problem is that we are creating a record that can be subpoenaed and used against us or our intimates without our permission.

What we need to solve this problem is some digital legal analog of biological memory. That is a class of digital records that, like biological memory, need not be produced if the creator chooses not to. Of course, it’s actually a bit more subtle because we can all be compelled to testify but when we do so we not only maintain our 5th amendment protections we can also simply lie or evade. In conjunction this prevents fishing expeditions that a digital record would allow (e.g. I’m sure my husband did something unsavory during the last 48 hours let’s subpoena his audio record so we can use it against him in the divorce).

One possibility is to only use such records as a supercharger for testimony (unless the individual who created it has died). In other words the only access to such data would be by allowing it’s creator to review the tape and indicate what happened in a deposition that would be checked for perjury/accuracy by a third party (special master?) against the actual tape. Maybe it’s not the best solution but we need something that lets us treat our digital memories like our organic ones with respect to our control over their revelation.

One might naturally worry about the friends and family members who commit a great deal of violent crime scheming to impersonate you to clear the incriminating information but if we always keep a sufficiently long buffer so as to make the failure to report us missing during that time suspicious we can at least minimize the risk. ↩

Legally Recognizing Digital Human Memory was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

[infiniteinjury]

Social Justice Extremism Comes To Mathematics

Even after reading the counterarguments it seems clear that part of the mathematical community suppressed a mathematical [article] (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf) because it was ideologically inconvenient. As detailed in the quillette piece a paper accepted for publication (and actually published online) at the Mathematical Intelligencer was yanked from publication because some mathematicians felt it’s mathematical modeling of the greater male variability hypothesis might be discouraging to prospective female mathematicians and/or be picked up by conservative media.

Obviously (if the account is close to accurate) this is a horrific violation of academic norms. If there is anything that academic freedom means it’s that ideas can’t be suppressed because they might support politically inconvenient conclusions and it appears that is exactly what happened. What makes the whole situation truly absurd is that the people complaining about the paper were the ones doing the real damage to gender equality. Obviously, one unheralded paper entertaining a greater male variability hypothesis will have a lot less of a harmful effect than even the chance of a controversy over pulling it and the subsequent attention and overreactions1. Not to mention that explaining the gender imbalance via bias and harassment is far more discouraging to potential female mathematicians than invoking a biological difference in male/female variability2.

Some mathematical blogs critisize the argument in the paper (see back and forth in comments) but don’t allege it’s absurd or incoherent. A more substantial counterargument is made in the comments at ycombinator where it is suggested that a rogue editor deliberately pushed the piece through and directed changes to make it an overtly political piece supporting his own views. However, looking at the actual [article] (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf) reveals a piece perfectly appropriate to the Intelligencer or indeed many peer reviewed journals (perhaps excepting the relatively unspecialized nature of the content)3:. Moreover, if the editor had truly gone rogue rather than just having made a decision the board disagreed with she would have been summarily fired.

Of course, at this point it’s just one isolated incident (and new facts could always emerge to change the narrative) but it’s critical to express our disapproval now so this doesn’t become acceptable behavior. Ideally, I’d like to see some kind of resolution or statement of principles at an AMA meeting so hopefully we don’t need to move to a boycott or anything. Of course, political and ideological considerations do affect what gets published all the time but it’s critical to reinforce the norm that such considerations shouldn’t matter which makes our response in the few clear cut cases like this all the more important.

What to do about the original paper is more of a puzzle. I’m tempted to say that some other periodical should publish it merely to avoid giving even an apparent victory to the forces of censorship. However, there aren’t many equivalents to the Intelligencier and maybe it really isn’t a great model (though hopefully peer review could tell us). Also, at this point publishing the paper really would send a very different politicized message that other periodicals would be understandably reluctant to send. So other than moving quickly to the end of the journal format I don’t really know what should be done about the paper.

I do not expect many women inclined to fight through group theory and differential geometry (as well as any gender specific barriers) to be deterred because some mathematicians aired an idea about gender differences in a journal. ↩

Moreover, prospective female mathematicians have no reason to believe that conditional on being the sort of woman even considering going into math they are any less likely to be good than their male colleagues. Indeed, after conditioning they might expect to be better if it is true boys are more encouraged to enter these fields as well. ↩

Indeed, the inclusion of the appendix citing support for the greater male variability hypothesis seems necessary to insulate against criticisms that it’s perpetuating an unacademic, unsupported talking point. ↩

Social Justice Extremism Comes To Mathematics was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

[theunitofcaring]

Is there room for a virtue ethicist in the EA community?

There is room for absolutely anyone who is like ‘yes, I’m curious about the most effective ways to make the world better, because I want to use that information for making the world better’, whether you want this because it maximizes global utility or it happens to be personally entertaining or you understand God to have commanded you to do it or it concords with the moral law or because all the cool kids seem to be doing it. Malaria nets don’t care about our motives, so neither should we (aside from finding sustainable sources of motivation and fulfillment, which is really important, and which I think requires different ways of approaching ethics for different people.)

if you’re up for this, a good way to make room in our community for people like you is to write about what draws you to effective altruism and what makes effective altruism valuable from your perspective. Then people who can relate to that will be able to see their perspectives reflected and connect with the people who think the way they do.

[infiniteinjury]

While I like the sentiment expressed here I'm not so sure of it's practicality. I mean to take a truly extreme example consider someone whose conception of 'a better world' is one in which more people endure suffering (either because that is a terminal value for them or they believe it is the only way to eternal salvation). No matter how well motivated they are their inclusion in the EA community can only serve to make things worse as most of us understand it (indeed they would be morally obligated to sabotoge our malaria net efforts and trick us into ineffective projects).

Now, obviously virtue ethicists aren't suffering maximizers but their notion of what makes the world better is so throughly divorced from what a utilitarian consequentialist would understand it to be it's not clear that the resulting frictions, miscommunications, and diverging goals wouldn't make things net worse.

Obviously, we should welcome them into the EA social community (making them happier) but perhaps both EA utilitarians and the virtue ethicists would be better off working on seperate charties or analysises of charities to avoid creating those frictions etc..