
Questions you can't ask - quoderat
http://www.michaelalanmiller.com/?p=386
======
hugh
There should be a word for the phenomenon whereby people try to make things
sound more interesting than they really are by pretending they're disallowed,
banned or censored. The phenomenon is common enough and annoying enough that
it'd be great to say "Oh, that's just [insert new word here]".

In this case, these questions aren't really "questions you can't ask". It's
true that people are a little over-touchy on a few of them, but most of them
are just fairly dull questions which are rarely asked because either:

(a) They're dumb suggestions (active population control, abolishing
corporations)

(b) They're based on false assumptions (e.g. people are "anti-sex", whatever
that means), or

(c) We're sick of the question already

A couple of the others (rights of AI, why people make decisions subconciously
and then make rationalizations) are questions which get asked all the time.

~~~
dcurtis
I have never heard anyone ask about AI rights or free will/rationalizations to
a politician.

What makes you think they get asked all the time?

~~~
unalone
It's because neither one is an ISSUE for a politician. What laws could
POSSIBLY require thought as to either one?

AI rights? Yeah, save my Roomba.

Free will/rationalizations? Let's just assume that nobody has a choice in
anything. Where's that lead us then? Nihilism? Dude, how exhausting would THAT
be?

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andreyf
1\. No. First, because we don't know how genetics really works. Second,
because it violates an individual's freedom.

2\. Genetic and social aren't separate things, but parts of an evolutionary
continuum. Google the Baldwin Effect. Yes, there are many theories. Read any
book about evolutionary psychology.

3\. No.

4\. Citation, please.

5\. No.

6\. Yes, but not what you're thinking. No.

7\. Stupid question.

8\. Yes. None.

9\. Nothing.

10\. Nothing, none.

11\. No. Market economics.

12\. Evolution. That they aren't what they at first seem.

What a load of crap.

~~~
mattmaroon
Agreed. A cursory examination of EP would answer a lot of these questions, and
most of the rest are just kinda dumb. For instance, does anyone think IQ does
not exist? IQ is just a test score. That's like saying 1600 doesn't exist.

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pjackson
Touchy topics, to be sure. I think they all can and should be asked. Whether
each is really worth of much debate is a different question.

Most are worth debating, some aren't: depending on your audience. I think most
people think these are things you "can't ask" because many folks lack an
intelligent, informed opinion on the topic, and therefore resort to emotional
closed-minded positions that result in little exchange of ideas.

So, intelligent people think: "Maybe I can't ask that question."

------
speek
_8\. If AI can be created, should it be? What rights would it have?_

What's wrong with this one? Maybe I live in my own mind, but this question
seems to be asked a lot in my group of people.

~~~
Philosophaster
That one struck me as well. I don't know anyone who considers that "off-
limits."

The eugenics and race ones are the touchiest in my experience.

~~~
Alex3917
I don't see why eugenics should be a touchy issue. It's no different than any
other argument between science and religion. The idea that the human race can
be improved through eugenics is a purely religious belief, and I see no reason
why any rational person would support it.

~~~
byrneseyeview
_The idea that the human race can be improved through eugenics is a purely
religious belief, and I see no reason why any rational person would support
it._

The idea that unlike all species, humans cannot be selectively bred for
various traits, is a purely religious belief, and I see no reason why any
rational person would support _it_.

~~~
Alex3917
In almost every case, animals bred for specific traits end up with severe
physical, mental, and emotional problems. The idea that humans are the one
species that won't encounter these problems is a purely religious belief.

~~~
hugh
OK, everybody: stop calling views you disagree with "a purely religious
belief". None of the ideas mentioned above is a "purely religious belief",
even though several of them are half-wrong and the others are half-right.

Animals bred for specific traits don't almost-always wind up with severe
problems, unless said breeding is done over-zealously (trying to do too much
in too few generations) or deliberately for traits which aren't necessarily
beneficial to the animal. All modern-day farm animals are the product of a lot
of selective breeding over the past few thousand years, and they don't have
"severe" problems.

~~~
Alex3917
"OK, everybody: stop calling views you disagree with 'a purely religious
belief'."

If you take the position that the human race can be improved through eugenics
and call it a scientific belief then the burden is on you to produce the
science. I'm not taking the position that eugenics absolutely can't work,
rather I'm taking the position that the science to support eugenics just isn't
there so people who do support it support it on other grounds. If you can
produce some books or journal articles making the case that eliminating intra-
species biodiversity can make that species as a whole more resilient then I'd
gladly recant.

~~~
byrneseyeview
I would argue that eugenics is a valid belief so long as there is at least one
trait that 1) is desirable, or correlated with something desirable (e.g.
resistance to a disease, stronger work ethic, lower criminality, resistance to
sunburns) and 2) is heritable.

So I think I've got one! Skin color: people with darker skin are less likely
to get sunburns, and darker skin appears to be heritable. So a smart
eugenicist who believes that resistance to sunlight is an important trait
would encourage darker-skinned people to breed more, at the expense of those
of us with lighter hues.

I'm sure there are other examples. But given that humans are an evolved
species, all I'm saying is that we might be able to outguess chance and know
which traits could be useful down the road. In a country with a solid welfare
system, the ability to delay gratification is a bad one for your future genes
-- if you're busy going to school instead of having unprotected sex, you'll
have fewer kids (and they'll have fewer kids, later in life, too). So maybe a
eugenic policy would be to subsidize people who have kids above the
replacement level after getting their degrees, or who get sterilized if they
have a kid when neither parent is employed.

~~~
Alex3917
"So a smart eugenicist who believes that resistance to sunlight is an
important trait would encourage darker-skinned people to breed more, at the
expense of those of us with lighter hues."

You can't just select for one trait and leave everything else untouched. DNA
doesn't work that way. Pick up a copy of Animals In Translation the next time
you're in the bookstore and skim the chapter on single trait selection, I
think it's ch. 4.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Of course you can't select for one trait and expect everything else to stay
constant. But you can expect that if the trait is significantly positive, and
you screen for recessive disorders, selecting for it can be net beneficial.

~~~
Alex3917
I think there are a few basic issues here:

1) Selecting for any single trait, even without recessive disorders, is going
to select for other traits as well. For example, selecting for IQ might make
individuals more prone to heart disease. Humans are pattern matching machines,
and most of the things we consider to be human traits aren't controlled by a
simple genetic switch that can be flipped on or off. Even selecting for
something as simple as skin color can cause all sorts of problems. For
example, most black people are lactose intolerant. Even if it isn't melanin
that causes this, selecting for this one trait is going to bring with it all
the other traits of the population.

2) Even if there are some traits you can select for without damaging the
individual, that doesn't mean society as a whole will be better off. Societies
are an emergent phenomenon and you it's impossible to predict what a society
will be like based on it's component parts.

3) Who gets to decide what's good and what's bad for an individual? Who gets
to decide what's good and bad for a society? What if something good for a
society is bad for the individual, or vice versa?

4) Eliminating massive amounts of biodiversity within the species makes humans
more vulnerable to extinction. Furthermore, evolution happens in S-curves. By
selecting the "best" individuals you are almost certainly eliminating whatever
mutation would start the next S-curve. Look at peacocks for example. Each
female peacock wanted to mate with the male with the biggest tail. So male
peacocks evolved to all have really big tails. That's why today the only place
you ever see peacocks is in the zoo. This is just a case of premature
optimization; in this case they've basically optimized themselves out of
existence.

If our technology today isn't even sufficiently advanced to make a college
admissions test that predicts academic performance, how are we supposed to
tackle infinitely more complicated issues like the above?

~~~
byrneseyeview
1) is simply silly, since it applies to any decision. Maybe getting a job
instead of smoking weed and playing video games all day is too stressful, and
maybe it will deprive you of a career as a video-gaming champ. But probably
not. Maybe selecting for IQ will increase heart disease -- but a high-IQ
population is more likely to deal with heart disease effectively, anyway.

2) Actually, people who model societies based on IQ (by, for example, taking a
large sample of people and then randomly removing samples until the average IQ
moves up or down a bit) have found that high IQ clearly makes things a lot
better -- income is up, unemployment down, crime way down, etc. But this is
complaint #1 again: "Why improve things without knowing all the side effects?"
Because it's worth the risk, and progress is impossible if you don't.

3) The only serious example I've proposed is a private charity. I don't think
there should be a philosophical objection to the government using eugenic
policies to counter the dysgenic effects of welfare and tax systems. If you
know that welfare makes irresponsible people breed, the only way to maintain
equilibrium is to give them a reason not to.

4) There are plenty of extinct species that are pretty humanoid, but with
smaller cranial capacities. often, it looks like the bigger-brained proto-
humans just killed them off. In general, this optimization has worked out as a
random mutation. And intelligence, unlike a peacock's tail, is about
adaptability within an environment, not sexual selection within a group at the
expense of the same. In fact, when you look at fertility rates compared to
education (the best proxy I have, sadly -- but education correlates very well
with IQ) you find that the educated ones reproduce _less_ because they spend
their time accomplishing other stuff.

 _If our technology today isn't even sufficiently advanced to make a college
admissions test that predicts academic performance_

You're referring to the low correlation between SATs and college performance,
right? And you're ignoring that schools select people on multiple criteria,
including SATs, such that everyone is at about the same level academically. So
Smith's SATs show he's great at math, but a mediocre writer. And Jones' SATs
show he's not too bright, but his admissions essay is jaw-dropping. Smith
double-majors in math and CS; Jones majors in philosophy. They can get the
same GPA even though they have different SATs, because the SAT is one of
several criteria on which they're selected. The other obvious example is a
student with high SATs and a poor GPA (smart, but no work ethic) versus the
opposite; they could perform at about the same level, in the same school, but
only because the high-SAT, low-GPA student is at the bottom of his SAT cohort,
and the other student is at the top of his.

Also, it was nice of you to just focus on college performance. As far as I
know, IQ test results predict income, fertility, crime and civic participation
better than any other variable measurable from childhood. Could be
environmental, of course, but most of the tweaks for raising IQ seem to be
temporary -- the only known ways to raise IQ into adulthood seem to be having
smarter parents and getting proper nutrition.

Of course, I don't think we should breed as a policy. It's enough to admit
that such a policy is possible, probably beneficial, but perhaps not worth the
total costs. I'm glad you're able to consider it rationally.

------
DanielBMarkham
Assuming for a minute that this is a person who honestly feels these questions
are off-limits (as opposed to just trying to crank up the old hit machine) I
think the questions say more about the questioner than the questions
themselves.

In certain circles all of these questions are on the table -- including a lot
more obnoxious questions than he thought about. In certain circles a lot more
questions are off limits (I'm thinking of the former dean of Harvard and his
simple suggestion that "Do the sexes learn differently?" would be a
provocative question. Poor schmuck)

I liked #1 the best, about evolving the human genome. The reason why is that
it seems so logical at the surface -- if people can be "bred" like cats and
dogs, why not breed them for qualities we all hold dear?

The coolest part of that question is that we immediately hit Godwin's law and
end up where all internet discussions lead -- Nazis. And for good reason! They
had the same ideas. (I won't go into trashing the entire notion. Too easy to
do. I would add that most attacks on it are a lot more emotional than rational
though)

------
nazgulnarsil
all of these focus on what the government "should" do. The government is
broken. good luck getting it to do anything.

~~~
hugh
The government is like wikipedia. Some people focus on all the things it gets
wrong, but personally I'm amazed that it works at all.

It makes glaring errors from time to time, and plenty of things it does non-
optimally, but the fact is that almost every day I get up and find that the
garbage gets collected, the streets get swept, the electricity is coming
through the wires, the police aren't demanding bribes, foreign countries
aren't invading, mobs aren't rampaging, and the little pieces of paper in my
wallet can still be reliably exchanged for physical goods. How awesome is
that?

I believe in small government, and I don't think the government _should_ do
many things, but you can't say that the government is incapable of doing
anything.

~~~
hectorhector
i agree, as many problems as it may have today, one only has to look at some
3rd world countries to see how radically good governance can change things and
how important it is. i'm not saying that just because we have it better than
somwhere in africa or the middle east, we shouldn't complain or try to
improve, but government, especially at the local levels, does a decent job.

------
gm
Just a bunch of nutcase, leading questions.

"If IQ doesn’t matter or doesn’t exist, then why is it the single largest
statistical predictor of life trajectory?" Who says it's the largest
predictor? Who says IQ does not exist or does not matter?

All of these "questions" were made to fit this guy's pre-conceived answers and
arguments. And why can't you ask these questions in "modern political debate
and polite society"?

Then you see the guy's blog subtitle: "Driving my truck through the flaws in
capitalism" and you realize you've wasted your time reading gibberish from a
guy people usually describe as "nutcase."

Creating questions to fit your pre-conceived answers is a cheap mental trick,
nothing even close to the Jedi mind trick :-). I figure since nobody was
asking him, he chose to ask himself the questions.

~~~
quoderat
What does my blog subtitle, which I merely found amusing, have to do with the
content of my musings and/or ideas?

You're right, some of the questions are leading -- though I really doubt you
can predict my views from them, even though I am sure you think that you can.
And, yep, it's my blog and that's the way it goes. However, they are questions
that people shy away from, even though they matter.

But, if you require peer-reviewed evidence that IQ is a pretty good predictor
of life trajectory, there's plenty of that for the IQ question you cited:

[http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intellig...](http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html)

<http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/322/7290/819>

<http://ijo.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/45/5/574>

And then, anecdotally, there's people like Feynman who didn't have a
particularly large IQ who still excelled. Make of that what you will.

I asked the questions not to satisfy my notions of their answers, but to get
them out there. If the evidence is against me, then so be it. When the
evidence changes, I change my mind. What do you do?

And, you're the first to call me a nutcase. Congrats! From you, it's a badge
of honor.

~~~
Tichy
I think the issue is not whether IQ is a good predictor of success, within the
system of it's application (for example the military screening new employees).
The issue is whether this equates intelligence.

Rephrased: there would probably be less of an issue if it IQ was really "SP"
(Success Predictor), not "Intelligence Quotient".

It might seem like the same, but I don't think it is: throw a Harvard graduate
into the middle of the jungle, and he might fare rather badly. On the other
hand, throw a perfectly successful jungle inhabitant into the middle of
Harvard and he might also fare rather badly.

~~~
dominik
_On the other hand, throw a perfectly successful jungle inhabitant into the
middle of Harvard and he might also fare rather badly._

To the contrary, I think the denizens of Harvard might fare badly, not the
perfectly successful jungle inhabitant. Professors got nothing on panthers.

~~~
Tichy
That's what I said: the professor will get eaten in the jungle, the junge
inhabitant will get run over by a car in the city.

Obviously IQ tests measure something: at the very least, they measure
performance on IQ tests. The controversy starts when people claim to measure
"intelligence".

Might be fun to design a "jungle IQ test".

------
jules
> Why is there a deep-seated, cross-cultural tendency to be de facto anti-sex,
> even among the “liberal” left? What is the genetic or social basis of this
> tendency?

Who is anti-sex? I don't know any people who are against sex. Does this
question mean something else? Or is this US specific?

~~~
yummyfajitas
Being opposed to sex is common on the American left. If you want names,
Hillary and Joe Lieberman are two prominent ones.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_mod>

~~~
hugh
I don't know of anyone who's actually opposed to sex. Plenty of people are
opposed to sex at certain places and times, between certain pairs or groups of
people, or in certain styles or orifices, or as part of a commercial
transaction, or in front of other people, but I'm pretty sure that being
opposed to sex in general is a fairly rare position.

(Insert your own "fairly rare position" joke here.)

------
biohacker42
1\. No. You try to breed for egg laying chickens and you end up with super
aggressive chickens. You select for Malaria resistance you end up with
rickets. Life is not something you can linearly improve on and there is no
goal to reach for.

2\. Uh, what?

3\. No. George Bush is a socialist.

4\. Are you sure it is, what if your dad is Prescott Bush? I'd think who your
parents are is an even better predictor then IQ.

5\. No. But you sure should stop government subsidies.

6\. All of humanity is more similar then just one tribe of chips. We are all
descendant of a handful of people (5 women) who lived ~ 80000 years ago.

7\. Maybe they have kids?

8\. Yes. None.

9\. Nothing.

10\. Difference between individuals are HUGE, difference between large groups
tiny.

11\. China.

12\. Nothing. Most people are simply more emotional then us rational geeks.

