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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3261 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 9, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I cleaned up your narrative-crafting argument a bit:

  1. Narrative-crafting ability (a complex form of deception) is correlated with falsehood in the speaker’s statements.

  2. IQ is correlated with narrative-crafting ability.

  3. Jews have high IQ.

  4. Therefore, jewishness of the speaker is correlated with falsehood in the speaker’s statements.

Logically sound so far?

  1. Knowledge, as well as science and art ability, is correlated with truth in the speaker’s statements.

  2. IQ is correlated with knowledge, as well as science and art ability.

  3. Jews have high IQ.

  4. Therefore, jewishness of the speaker is correlated with truth in the speaker’s statements.

I'd like to know exactly which of those statements do you disagree with. We'll call the two sequences A and B. (1A, 2A, etc)

It's a well-known property of correlation that it's not transitive in general.

See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vfb5Seaaqzk5kzChb/when-is-correlation-transitive

I'm dropping in from sorting by new comments.

Is it fair to think of this geometrically, as a, b and c being three lines, with a and c being perpendicular and b lying in between, such that the correlation between the pairs a&b and b&c are positive, yet a&c have zero correlation?

|/_ for a quick representation

That is a good question and exposes that I'm a little out of my depth. But I've spent a happy half hour writing some crude dice rolling simulations, so what follows is partially checked (I'd like to draw some scatter plots too!)

Consider a data generating process using a red d6 and a green d6, where d6 is jargon for the ordinary cubical die with 6 faces. We regard the red and green dice as generating the red and green random variables. A third, yellow random variable is generated by adding together the red and green rolls.

Then red and yellow have a correlation of 0.7 (Will checking with pencil and paper discover that this is 1/√2 ?). Yellow and green also have a correlation of 0.7. Red and green have a correlation of 0.00506. Now I'm regretting writing a dice rolling simulation, rather than a computation using distributions. That has to be really 0.

But lines don't really work. Two of the scatter plots have lines at a definite slope, but red versus green is just a filled in square showing zero correlation.

I'd really like to get the third correlation to be negative rather than zero, to make the point about non-transitivity more strongly. Can I do that with dice? Yes.

Roll five dice, A,B,C,D,E. Generate three random variables

Red = A + B + C

Yellow = A + B + D + E

Green = - C + D + E

Red and yellow share A and B giving them a correlation of 0.57. Yellow and green share D and E giving them a correlation of 0.59 (it has to be the same, but I'm out of time to do the computation exactly)

Meanwhile Red and Green share C but with C subtracted from Green, for a correlation of -0.3

That is shocking. Red correlates positively with yellow. Yellow correlates positively with green. But red and green have a negative correlation.

Now we have reached the point where I really need scatter plots. I think the Red/Yellow plot and the Yellow/Green plot are basically the same (there is an offset because the red mean is 10.5 and the green mean is 3.5, but I don't think that matters). Red/Green contrasts by sloping down rather than up. It doesn't lie between Red/Yellow and Yellow/Green at all.

Non-transitive dice make my head hurt, but thank you for going to such lengths to answer my question!

Valid point.

“likely” to be correlated, “must be” only if the two are strong enough.

IQ correlates with knowledge too, and the ability to create great art and science. That correlates with Truth in the speaker’s statements.

Narrative-crafting ability (a complex form of deception) is correlated with falsehood in the speaker’s statements.

IQ is correlated with narrative-crafting ability…

The idea of capital-T truth and «signals» that you present here is rife with utterly childish essentialism, the pinnacle of muddled Westoid thinking where Truth and Good are One through Jesus or whatever and is-ought distinction is made up by the Devil.

Either that, or this is utter mockery, I'd be tempted to shank you for such a bad faith tactic (which is why people generally don't attempt this kind of Ancient Greek sophistry in person).

Intelligence is causally related to the ability to discover «truth». It is correlated with success in achieving one's goals, because discovery of truth aids in pursuing one's goals. Particularly verbal intelligence is correlated with success in achieving goals in the verbal domain, obviously. What does it mean for something to be true, though? It means simply that it satisfies some relevant constraints. «Do dark matter axions form a condensate with long-range correlation?» is a question for which, presumably, there exists a True answer. «How do I denigrate white people from the position of authority in particle physics» is a question that has some True answers as well. Her answers to both of those questions, Chanda expresses as academic publications, as befits her prestigious role. It is not clear why she thinks the latter is a question worth asking and being answered. @SecureSignals offers his opinion on that. You bristle at his suggestions. But it must have a True answer regardless.

Lies can be true answers to questions. At the same time, Truth isn't an essence, there are no particles of Truth, no single dimension of Truth-Affinity (no matter how much you want to be on top of it), and meditating on correlations of being able to ascertain Truth will get you only a very small part of the way toward good priors. People's interest in enlightening you is not, in fact, causally related to how much they know.

I’m sorry, due to your failure to provide a clear answer like 4B, you’ve failed the test too.

What does it mean for something to be true, though?

You are lost. Shame that people from the developing world have not yet developed immune defenses against this crap.

Well, if you have understood that I argue [against] 4B, why do you feel the need for this laughable, adolescent attempt at condescension?

I see you just trying to weasel out of this. You are not used to losing the debate so one-sidedly, I figure. Well start getting used to it, you're corncobbing yourself out of pure obstinacy, this really looks very childish.

I also disagree with 1A, on this account 4A does not follow, likewise for 1B. Your entire correlative logic is worthless, it does not correspond to reality, because a) truth on all political matters is abundant and b) content of statements is determined by intention regarding their effects, which instrumentally calls for basically any combination of truths and falsehoods in a given situation for a given speaker. Again, your syllogism gotcha game is eristic, as bad as Greek stuff (and even Greks knew that the proper response to it is silent violence), and your idea of truth is undifferentiated to the point that you don't seem to distinguish Truth from Good. Your epistemology is millenia out of date.

You are lost.

Whatever helps you sleep at night. I do hope you will grow up and learn to read, though.

Dude, admittedly you are being provoked (and @fuckduck9000 is almost certainly on the path to bannination) but you know better than this. You right now have a mod sheet that is getting almost long enough that we have to scroll down, and it's about 50% AAQCs, 50% antagonism like this. The AAQCs count for a lot, which is why you haven't eaten a ban yet, but that doesn't mean you can just react like this with impunity. You need to chill, even when someone is baiting you, or you will get a time-out.

I do know better than this. Also I do not believe he is "baiting" or "provoking" me in the sense of calculatingly putting on an act to elicit emotional reaction, I take his line of action as essentially sincere (if supported by intellectually disingenuous arguments, as I've claimed a few times by now) expression of contempt for my object-level worldview and general epistemology; a feeling I mostly reciprocate. He explicitly threw down the gauntlet with this subthread, but despite that I'd be willing to speak more courteously if there were no affected postures of domination and schooling one's lesser («you have failed the test» etc).

You can see I have the same cringeworthy failure mode, and perhaps it would be fair of me to cut him some slack for this reason. But I am constitutionally not fair-minded enough for that, so it is impossible to continue this in a dignified manner, therefore I'll just block @fuckduck9000 for the time being. (Sorry man, you can take this as a win if you see it this way).

Because of the hostility, him, me, @SecureSignals, @FCfromSSC, @Primaprimaprima are missing an opportunity for more fruitful exploration of the question of our alleged «postmodernism». Hermeneutics of suspicion, critical theory (as a method, not contemporary politicized doctrine) and conflict theory (Scott's simplified reinvention of the latter for grey tribe techies who haven't engaged with prog-coded writing) and other adjacent takes are close to the heart of the Culture War problem. A pity.

When have I stood in the way of you guys exploring anything? I just responded to people responding to me. You threatened to block prima a few days ago. I guess when there are no mistake theorists left, you'll be banning and blocking each other.

I thought his answer was fine. I was somewhat curt.

Narrative-crafting ability (a complex form of deception) is correlated with falsehood in the speaker’s statements.

My assumption is that narrative-crafting ability is correlated with the ability to influence public perception. Just like I'm not calling Superman a "false narrative" or whatever, the "truth or falsehood of Superman" is not my point, the ethnically-motivated influence on American public consciousness is my point.

  1. Narrative-crafting ability is correlated with the capacity to influence public consciousness on religious, political, and moral dimensions.

  2. Jews are better at Narrative-crafting, owing partially to intelligence and partially to other cognitive traits and behaviors that make them distinct from the average White Gentile.

  3. Jews in these cultural institutions are influenced by their identity, and their bias in the generation of culture takes the form of moralizing Jewish identity and vigorously defending it while simultaneously demoralizing White identity and criticizing it.

  4. #3 often times takes esoteric form, like Superman, or Nerd/Jock tropes, endless Holocaust content in Hollywood and in schools, or even the Bee Movie... there's a whole thread here on the trope of "non-whites as successor to whites" described here which has been Hollywood's favorite theme in the past few years.

  5. While any one of these cultural outputs in Hollywood, academia, popular culture alone won't convince someone to jump off a bridge, all of them combined together, with a certain bias, certainly can convince the masses of very wrong premises to be true without second thought, so true as to be completely unquestionable.

  6. Therefore, many closely held truths, in particular surrounding race and White identity, are simply a function of the most memetically powerful propaganda, and the source of that propaganda has an ethnic bias in favor of Jewish identity and against White identity. Basically, narrative-crafting ability correlates with the speaker's ability to insert his biases into the public consciousness in the form of art, culture, and academic study.

IQ correlates with knowledge, but it can also correlate with a talent for deceiving other people with false or self-serving narratives. If you accept identity-driven bias, you have a responsibility to try to discern truth from deception or motivated reasoning, you can't say "whatever the highest IQ person says must, on average, be the most correct." If the highest IQ person has a bias then it is, on average, going to be wrong in a predictable direction.

Narrative-crafting ability (a complex form of deception) is correlated with falsehood in the speaker’s statements.

My assumption is that narrative-crafting ability is correlated with the ability to influence public perception. Just like I'm not calling Superman a "false narrative" or whatever, the "truth or falsehood of Superman" is not my point, the ethnically-motivated influence on American public consciousness is my point.

IQ correlates with knowledge, but it can also correlate with a talent for deceiving other people with false or self-serving narratives. If you accept identity-driven bias, you have a responsibility to try to discern truth from deception or motivated reasoning

You're contradicting yourself in the same comment now. You just said truth and falsehood is not your point.

I should do these syllogism-type traps more often, they're neat.

So you don't even engage with my argument? I am not contradicting myself, my point is that narrative-crafting correlates with the ability to have the speaker's biases be internalized in public consciousness, those who are consumers of those narratives, that argument does not rely on the premise "Narrative-crafting ability is correlated with falsehood in the speaker's statements." Somebody who is poor at narrative crafting could have no less bias than than the person good at narrative crafting, but the latter gets to make his own biases "common sense" that could be no other way.

The correlation you are proposing is not my argument. IQ correlating with "a talent for deceiving other people with false or self-serving narratives" is not equivalent to "narrative-crafting ability is correlated with falsehood in the speaker's statements", it means the speaker is more effective at signal-boosting his own particular biases and falsehoods as common sense or collectively-held truths.

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