JDN 2456120 EDT 16:35.

If you follow the feminist blogosphere at all, you have probably read the post about Schrodinger's rapist. And if you haven't, you should; because it's a very important post, and it's so close to right that it's unbelievably tempting even to me. And yet, it leads us to a very, very dark place.

This dark place is the place where every man is guilty until proven innocent, where the already wide trust gap that presently damages our society, our relationships, and our economy widens to the point of utter catastrophe. Every interaction becomes a conflict, and “love is a battlefield” becomes all too literal. If you goal is to reduce rape, believe me: Treating every man as a rapist is not the way to do that. It antagonizes men so fundamentally that some who were on the borderline may well become rapists just out of rage. And those of us who wouldn't? We'll be crying in a corner somewhere because people treat us like criminals for things we haven't done and would never consider doing.
Equality does not mean that every group of people is the same on all statistical dimensions. If it did, it would be dead; that sort of “equality” is simply far too much to hope for. All sorts of statistical differences exist, between men and women, American and Chinese, white and black, young and old, Christian and atheist, and so on. Indeed, how could they fail to? If there were no differences at all, we wouldn't even be able to identify people as members of one category or another.

Equality means you treat people as individuals, with dignity and rights. It means life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness—and it means innocent until proven guilty.

The concept of “Schrodinger's rapist” undermines the dignity of men; it treats us as a group—as a stereotype. It's sexism, plain and simple. I thought feminists were against that?

Ask yourself: Is it all right to treat black men as Schrodinger's Mugger because black men are more likely to commit mugging? Is it acceptable to treat Hispanics as Schrodinger's Illegal Alien as Arizona does? Is it acceptable to treat gay men as Schrodinger's AIDS Carrier because MSM are at elevated HIV risk? No? That's unfair, you say? Well now... explain to me how treating me as a potential rapist because men are the majority of rapists is any different.

Men are a privileged category? Okay, that's a difference. But just because you're privileged in some ways doesn't mean that it's fair game to discriminate and stereotype against you any time we want. Surely you agree that two wrongs don't make a right? Just because men get some extra rights women don't get doesn't mean we can go around taking other rights from men to “compensate”.

Yes, there are a lot of rapists out there; about 4-5% of men. I'm as scared by that fact as you are. But that means that 95-96% of men are not rapists, which is actually better than you can say for the percentage of black men who aren't muggers and the percentage of Hispanic people who aren't illegal immigrants. Rape is a more serious crime (in fact I'm not sure illegal immigration should even be a crime), so maybe we should be more cautious; but that cuts both ways—we should also be more cautious about treating someone as though they are the sort of person who would commit such a serious crime.

And if you're thinking, “No, Schrodinger's Rapist only applies when you first meet someone, not once you get to know them” you have a really weird concept of how rape works. Over 80% of rape victims know their assailants. One of the most common and serious forms of rape is marital rape, which, as it sounds like, occurs within marriage or another long-term serious relationship. No, if you really live up to Schrodinger's Rapist, you'll have to continue to treat every man as a potential rapist all the time, for the rest of your life. Is that really how you want to live? Indeed, wouldn't a life like that be about a hundred times more painful and traumatic than actually getting raped?

Should women take precautions to defend themselves against rape? Yes, they should. Indeed, I've said so myself, and oddly sometimes feminists get offended by that too (you can't win with some people). But the precautions you take have to be balanced against respecting the dignity and rights of people around you, and that means not treating everyone you meet like a potential criminal. Don't judge a man's every move as if he is a predator about to strike; you will never, ever be able to feel genuine trust and affection for any man as long as you behave that way. And men will most likely hate you as a result, and probably be right to do so.
Instead, how about this? Avoid situations where we know that rapes are especially likely, like parties with uncontrolled alcohol and drug use. (They're not good places to be in general!) Carry a weapon like pepper spray (or whatever is legal in your jurisdiction). And if anyone does actually try to rape you, report it immediately. I cannot stress this last one enough. The CDC has a number of other science-based recommendations.

Some other common precautions are actually silly. There's no evidence that how you dress has any significant impact on your chance of being raped, though conservative dress may help your case in court (it shouldn't, but it does). The vast majority of rapes are not committed by strangers in dark alleys, so while dark alleys aren't a great place to be, you're very unlikely to get raped in one. You don't actually need to worry about telling a friend where you will be, because the rates of kidnapping and murder are vastly smaller than the rates of sexual assault. 4-5% of men have committed rape. 0.005% of men have committed homicide. You are literally a thousand times more likely to be raped. (And even then, over 75% of women are never raped. You will probably never be raped. Not that 25% isn't a scary huge number; I'm just saying, it's actually still a minority.) Also, men are much more likely to be murdered than women are. If you think “woman kidnapped, raped and murdered” is a common phenomenon, you may be falling victim to the media bias TV Tropes calls “Missing White Woman Syndrome.” It's actually something that almost never happens, but when it does happen, the media leaps on it and reports it as if it were the most important thing in the world.

Also, one last thing: I'm bisexual. I fuck men. This puts me at half the risk of rape as a woman. Put another way, that raises my odds ratio compared to straight men by a factor of 4. Yet do I treat ever man I meet as a potential rapist? No; because that would be wrong, and it would make real relationships impossible. 

JDN 2456115 EDT 18:28.

As popular behavioral economics books go, Robert Cialdini's book Influence is not as rigorous as Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow; but it is surprisingly well-researched. I would highly recommend Influence to anyone who doesn't already know much about behavioral econ, because it's a very gentle introduction that's focused around practical applications in terms of media literacy and resisting manipulation.

Cialdini focuses on six fundamental heuristics: Reciprocity, commitment, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. One thing Cialdini does really well (even better than Kahneman I would say) is emphasizing the point that these are heuristics—they are methods of judgment that are easy and fast and they work 90% of the time, but watch out for the 10%. Hence, you need to figure out when to turn them off; but you don't want to leave them off all the time, or you'll literally fail 90% of the time.

Indeed, one thing that I really liked about Influence was the way it draws a very firm line in the sand between influence that is legitimate and influence that is not: Above all, never lie. So it's all right to invite all your customers at 6:00 AM (which will enhance their desire to compete) as long as you don't tell them that you invited different people at different times. It's all right to start out with a bold offer and then offer some concessions, if you really were interested in the bold offer. It's all right to point out that your product is scarce if in fact it really is. What's not all right is lying to people.

One case where I'm not sure this is enough is in relationships. It seems to me that dealing with a friend or a significant other, you have to be held to an even higher standard. Even if you don't outright lie, there are a lot of really sleazy techniques you can use to get people to do what you want, and that's manipulating them. (See also pickup artists.) For instance, you could hook up with a lot of women at once to make them compete over you. You could withhold affection from women who won't first sleep with you. That's not lying, and it's not something more awful like rape or assault; but it's still unethical.

But if even just this practice of never lying were actually adopted in business, our economy would change radically. Right now we have laws against publicly stating explicitly false facts, which is great; don't ever take that away, we'd be back in the Wild West. But we need more than this. We need companies to not be allowed to use laugh tracks, or hire sports starts to hawk products. We need real honesty, and not just “well, I didn't actually lie...” How do you enforce that? I'm not sure, but one good way to start is the power of the market. Boycott companies that use deceptive methods of advertising, or if you can't boycott them all (you still need milk, and perhaps all the milk companies do this), then boycott the worst ones and publicly announce that you have done so. Tell all your friends, and make them tell their friends, and so on.
Realizing that lines like this can be drawn—even if it's not always easy—has given me renewed hope in combating my autism and social anxiety. I finally realized what I didn't like about so much of the advice I was getting (especially pickup-artist material). In the game of life, I couldn't win on my own, so I want the player's guide—but I don't want the cheat codes. I want to win fair and square because I really know what I'm doing, not find the buttons to push that give me total control—and thereby turn me into a Machiavellian psychopath. This is the distinction that a lot of people fail to make, and it's literally one of the most important things in the world. 

A lot of feminists insist that male sexuality is celebrated, while female sexuality is repressed.

Where does this notion come from?

Name three cases where a work of art is considered serious and a male is depicted with an erection. You can't. Once you show an erection, it's called porn. No matter what.

The same is true if you depict a woman with her vagina exposed. Her vulva are supposed to remain tastefully closed so as not to show anything. Again, otherwise it's called porn.

(The only exceptions I can think of are artifacts from ancient cultures, where we didn't make them and would feel bad destroying them because they provide information about other cultures. So for instance you can find African statues with erections, often exaggerated erections.)

Sexuality in general is repressed in our culture. It's not limited to either gender.

JDN 2456114 EDT 08:40.

It's interesting to me that my posts on feminism tend to draw the most attention and controversy. If you've read them, you'll notice that I have a very nuanced position on the issue. Some feminists even consider me a feminist. And some of those who don't, don't deserve to call themselves feminists. Political lesbians, for example, are nothing less than sexist misandrists. But that's part of the problem: I don't know what “feminist” means clearly enough to decide whether it fits me.

And don't get me wrong: The most extreme anti-feminists are by far the most insane people in this whole debate. I've seen these people issue rape threats at 14-year-old girls. I've heard people say that homosexuality is a mental disorder. I've heard women called “bitch” and “cunt” for the alleged crime of disagreeing with a man. I've seen this legislator who wants to hold classes to train women to be more ladylike. And while it's pretty ridiculous to call it government-sponsored rape, the transvaginal ultrasound law in Virginia is incredibly absurd.

I have a question today especially for both extreme sides, a question that can be adapted to any political debate with highly polarized views. What's your error theory? That is, where did your opponents get their ideas? If they are indeed so evil and insane, where did they come from? They didn't come from outer space!

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JDN 2456112 EDT 11:02

Any sane person, upon reading about philosophical majoritarianism, realizes that it cannot possibly be right. But as Bertrand Russell remarked on the Ontological Argument, it is very difficult to see what exactly is wrong with the argument.

One common approach is to point out all the ways in which intellectual deviants have advanced human society. Every major advance in knowledge, from Plato to Galileo to Einstein, was made by someone who didn't believe in the majority consensus. This is surely correct, but it is also a well-worn path, so I don't want to spend too much time on it.

Instead, I'd like to focus on another point that I think is equally compelling, but underrepresented: This the matter of does the majority believe in majoritarianism?

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JDN 2456104 EDT 17:36.

A review of What every BODY is saying by Joe Navarro

To explain why this book wasn't really what I was hoping for, it would help to explain what I was hoping for: I am mildly autistic, and I have difficulty picking up on nonverbal social cues, particularly in informal environments like casual conversation, friendship, and dating. So I've been looking for resources on identifying nonverbal behaviors in these sorts of circumstances: Is he interested in what I'm saying, or bored and faking a smile? Is she attracted to me, or just being polite? Do they want to be my friends, or would they rather be somewhere else right now?

Navarro's book is not that, unfortunately. He is a former FBI interrogator, and so his perspective on nonverbal behavior is focused around issues of dominance and submission, territory, anxiety, deception. And I have no doubt that the information is accurate and tremendously useful in interrogations. It would also be useful in other conflict scenarios, like court cases and Congressional hearings. It has certain applications in job interviews and business meetings.

But when it comes to dating, which is really what I was looking for, there's virtually nothing. Just a few tidbits here and there about what confidence looks like, how to tell a genuine smile from a fake one. These tidbits aren't useless, but nor are they what I really need—which is to understand what exactly I've been missing and misunderstanding in one-on-one contact for years.

It would also have been helpful to learn how to control these signals better, because I know that one of the symptoms of depression is that you tend to send out subconscious rejection signals to everyone around you. I'm sure I am doing this without being aware of it, and I would like to stop—but while Navarro talks about recognizing the signals, he doesn't talk about controlling them, and for the most part seems to think that control is difficult or impossible. (This leaves me feeling, well, a little sad.)

JDN 2456104 EDT 10:36.

I was re-watching the debate “Does God Have a Future?” with Sam Harris and Michael Shermer versus Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston (whoever that is). It was about as frustrating as I remember it, with Chopra spouting nonsense which Harris then tore into tiny pieces, only for Chopra to replace it with more nonsense.

But there was a particular moment in the debate that struck me on the second viewing. It was when the moderator turned to Michael Shermer and asked (I'm paraphrasing), “Are you just comfortable not knowing?” Shermer responded something like, “Well, yes, by temperament, I'm completely comfortable not knowing.”

No, no, no! This is not the scientific attitude, and if this really is how Shermer feels I like him less all the time (some of the rumors I've heard about his behavior toward women don't help either).

I wished I could be there to explain: No, I am so much more uncomfortable not knowing that you have no idea. There is an ache deep in my soul, an ache you may never really understand, which craves knowledge. This ache is so important to who I am, who I have always been, that the only even comparable priorities are my absolute highest values, things like survival, love, justice, goodness.

I would die for it. That's not hyperbole: If there were something I could do, right now, which would answer a truly deep scientific question like the Hard Problem or the invention of AI or the origin of the universe, and I had the choice to find it out and tell the world, but I would have to die in order to do so—I would do it. I would put my affairs in order and I would do it. The “tell the world” is a critical part, because there's no point in only me knowing if I'm just going to to die anyway. But if I get to tell the world, and then millions of people know and millions of lives get made better by the knowledge—I would do it. I might even kill for it, though this raises all sorts of moral problems I don't want to get into right now.

And if you're thinking right now, “Wow, that's crazy; who dies for knowledge?” you may never understand what it is like to really be a scientist. Maybe you could be a technician, work with lab equipment or something, and people might even call you a “scientist”; but if so you are less like Einstein than you are like a PCR apparatus. If you don't understand the fundamental drive of curiosity so deep that you would do almost anything to satisfy it, you don't understand what science is really about.

If that is so, why do I say “I don't know” when asked about the Hard Problem, the origin of the universe, the ultimate source of morality? I could just answer “God” like everyone else, and then I would know, right?

Wrong. Indeed, it could hardly be more wrong. That's not knowing. That's feeling like you know. That's having a word to say in place of actually understanding anything. It is precisely my drive to really know which prevents me from accepting such a vacuous answer. It is precisely the fact that I am not comfortable not knowing that drives me to reject such a convenient and worthless explanation.

Religion is a diet pill for the mind: It sates the hunger of curiosity without providing the nourishment of knowledge. To be a scientist is to be like a starving child in the Sahara, so desperate for food that you would give anything for the tiniest morsel. And you want to hand me a diet pill so I don't feel hungry?

Religion is the answer somebody made up, hundreds or thousands of years ago (or even less, if you're Mormon or Scientologist). When like children we ask, “Why?” religion answers, “Daddy said so; now shut up and go to bed.”

Is science any better? Does it actually provide the nourishment of knowledge? Yes. In some small and imperfect way, yes. It has done so before, and it will do so again.

People used to ask, “Where did the dogs and the frogs and the trees and the people come from?”; and there were people who said “God”, and many still do. But since Darwin we didn't need that fake answer anymore, because we had a real one: Evolution is where they came from.

People used to ask, “What holds the Earth together? Why do things fall down?”; and once again, the usual answer was “God”. But since Newton (and then Einstein) we didn't need that fake answer, because we had a real one: Gravity is what holds the world together.

People used to ask, “What is lightning? What is the energy that drives our bodies?”; and so went the refrain, “God” (including “Thor”). But since Faraday we didn't need that fake answer answer anymore, because we had a real one: Electricity is what makes lightning, and also what runs through our nerves and our muscles.

People used to ask, “What makes the stars shine? Why is the sky blue?”; and of course people said “God”. But since Schrodinger or so we didn't need that fake answer anymore, because we had a real one: Quantum physics is what makes the stars shine and why the sky is blue.

This is why when people ask questions like “Where does consciousness come from?” and “What is the ultimate morality?” and “Why does the universe exist at all?” I won't accept their answer “God”. They've given me that same fake answer a hundred different times on a hundred different questions, and only by ignoring their fake answer did we manage to find a real one instead. It was only by forgoing the diet pill and desperately searching for food that we finally became fed.

So instead I have to say—and you may never fully understand the pain I feel when I say it—“I don't know.” I have to say “We're working on it.” and feel this pang of terror that we may continue to work on it for another century or another millennium and still not know. But then I find hope in the realization that no less likely, tomorrow could be the day we finally figure it out.

But don't you ever think I am comfortable with not knowing.

JDN 2456102 EDT 13:48.

In The Drunkard's Walk, Leonard Mlodinow writes in a very plain and cogent style, and his mathematical expertise is impeccable. He explains probability theory with unmatched clarity and accuracy. (He does gloss over a few technical points here and there, but one can hardly blame him for doing so in popular works.)

His vision of the world is very similar to Nassib Nicholas Taleb's (The Black Swan): Life is randomness, everything is chaos, so we might as well go with the flow. And unlike Taleb who scorns academia, Mlodinow has a keen grasp of the cutting edge in scholarship on probability. What's more, I think that this vision of the world may be a necessary corrective to an overly deterministic view that many people seem to hold, especially when they talk about “God's plan” (but even when they talk about the laws of nature). Ironically I think that people like Mlodinow and Taleb (and to a lesser extent Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers) can only feel comfortable in their vision of a random world because they have been so very fortunate. For those of us who haven't (yet?) succeeded in our lives, the idea that there is nothing we can do to change our odds is nothing short of terrifying.

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JDN 2456099 EDT 20:06.

A review of Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser by Clarisse Thorn

I've been curious about the pickup artist movement for as long as I knew it existed (which turns out to be almost as long as it has existed; it's an incredibly new thing). I think the promise it offers is one that would appeal to almost any man, and appeals most of all to mildly autistic nerds like me who can never seem to get a date. “Attract more women!” “Take more control over your relationships!” I'll admit I'm not even immune to “Have lots more sex!”

There are just two problems.

First: Like most self-help products, there are a lot of charlatans, and it's often quite difficult to tell the good advice from the bad. This is especially true in the pickup community because very few of them have, say, “M.D. Psychiatry” or “Ph.D. social psychology” after their names.

Second: A lot of pickup artists are quite simply sexists, and often sexists of the highest order. A lot of the techniques they propose are irretrievably drenched in this sexism. Most disrespect women; many use women; some even outright abuse, rape, or even murder them. (The book mentions one prominent pickup artist who shot a woman in the face when she rejected him.)

  Continue reading →

JDN 2456099 EDT 11:48.

Basically, the problem with feminism is that it's too easy to call yourself a feminist. There's no admission procedure, no criteria you have to meet. 

I've even seen people list criteria for what makes a feminist, but here's the funny thing: By all those lists, I obviously qualify---and lots of famous feminists don't. 

Valerie Solanas wrote a SCUM Manifesto in which she called for the extermination of men.

This person who calls herself the femitheist wants to castrate all men.

Then there's the whole Feminist Sex Wars, where we had people like Andrea Dworkin literally arguing that heterosexual sex itself is inherently evil and must be abolished. More "moderate" (if we can call them that) sex-negative feminists argued that pornography and prostitution should be banned. (Some defined pornography as material that oppresses women, in which case there's an awful lot of porn that wouldn't even be considered "porn".) There's "cultural feminism" and "difference feminism" which reject what ought to be the fundamental axiom of feminism, namely the equality of men and women.

Much of this stuff is now called "satirical", but it's Poe's Law: Satire is indistinguishable from fundamentalism. And if people had read the SCUM Manifesto and said "great idea!" I have little doubt that Solanas would have supported their efforts to implement it. (If you're really writing satire, you make it clear, as Jonathan Swift did and Stephen Colbert does.) Dworkin has since denied the interpretation that all heterosexuality is coercive; but from the book it's pretty clear that's what she meant, and I took a Women's Studies course where this was taken seriously as a "feminist view" to be considered.

There is even a debate in feminism about whether men can be feminists. This debate is considered mainstream, and again Women's Studies classes ask you to discuss it as a serious question. This also is in violation of the fundamental axiom of equality, since it's literally saying that some people aren't allowed to do something because of their gender. (Frankly I can't call it anything less than sexism.)

Now, if feminism had clear guidelines for what you must believe to be a feminist, none of this could possibly have happened. Solanas and Dworkin would say "I'm a feminist!" and actual feminists would say, "No, you're not. You're insane. You have nothing to do with feminism. You don't even know what 'feminism' means." But instead we have people saying things like "What does feminism mean to you?" which leads us into Humpty Dumpty's world where words mean what you want them to mean.

This is why ultimately I can't call myself a feminist, even though I would fit the standard definition. I believe in egalitarianism. I even believe that gender is a fundamentally problematic notion, and ought to be replaced by a continuum or else abandoned altogether. I am appalled that women still get paid 75% of what men make for the same work. I want the Equal Rights Amendment to be passed immediately, and think it should have been passed decades ago. 

Maybe I've been spoiled by science. (Or maybe those of you who haven't experienced the scientific community don't know what you're missing.)

See, in science, you don't get to call yourself a scientist unless you're actually doing science, and doing it correctly. If you start spouting nonsense about biology and calling yourself a "radical biologist", actual biologists will reject your papers and write letters to the editor about how you're not a biologist, you're just a quack. There are no extremist ecologists---there are ecologists, who do ecology correctly, and there are non-ecologists, who don't. There are no fundamentalist physicists (actually there a few physicists who are religious fundamentalists; but they're not fundamentalists about physics.)

I often hear feminists say things like, "Any group has its extremists." But no, actually, some don't---scientists don't have extremists.

What are scientists doing differently? We exclude people who do it wrong.

It's that simple. When someone says something that contradicts everything science stands for, but calls himself a scientist, we say: "No, that guy is not a scientist. He's a quack; don't listen to him." 

But when someone says something that contradicts everything feminism is about, but calls herself a feminist, what do feminists say? "Well, she's a different kind of feminist. Too radical for my taste." Such feminist-quacks are almost always women, because feminists are afraid to repudiate anything a powerful woman says. This remains true even if she goes against everything feminism is about. (Look no further than the feminists who tongue-tied themselves over Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. Yes, they have vaginas; no, they're not on our side on this one.)

Either that, or I'm wrong about feminism, and it doesn't actually believe in equality at all. The standard definition is false; it's not "men = women" but actually "men <= women". That would explain a lot, actually; it seems more plausible every time I hear another prominent "feminist" get away with saying something appallingly misandrist. In that case, we should just give up on feminism, and go back to the original project of Enlightenment rationalism: egalitarianism.