
The Kolmogorov option - apsec112
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3376
======
habitue
Let's say this is about the Google memo. And let's say, for the sake of
argument, you're a person who thinks Damore had some good points and some bad
points but you think the hysterically censorious response to him was way over
the line. But you don't want to become a pariah yourself, so you stay quiet
about it. The argument Damore was making was fiddly, kind of subtle and takes
a long time to explain, it's not worth the trouble you're going to get into.
You take the Kolmogorov option and decide to wait out this insane time period.

Only it turns out, when you don't decide to argue for that subtle and
qualified defense of Damore, a bunch of alt-right internet trolls make some
terrible fallacious defenses of things he didn't say. Suddenly, the original
censorious instincts seem much more righteous and justified. After all, "Now
there are only full-throated red-pillers arguing in Damore's defense! We were
right all along!"

Now there are two sides to this issue, and they're both identity politics and
brain-dead shouting. Because no one stopped and offered a third option:
actually discussing his argument, acknowledging where he was right, and
discussing what he got wrong.

~~~
pavlov
_Because no one stopped and offered a third option: actually discussing his
argument, acknowledging where he was right, and discussing what he got wrong._

You're assuming Damore's argument exists in a vacuum. But it doesn't. It had a
stated purpose of changing HR and hiring policies at Google, and with that,
the unavoidable implication that some of Damore's colleagues actually
shouldn't be with the company.

When you throw that kind of poison grenade into a work environment and back it
up with unsupported biological claims, it's not a surprise that any good
points in the argument will be ignored.

I'm reminded of Wiio's law, "All human communication fails except by
accident." [1]

If you want to make a subtle point, you must communicate it very clearly --
for some reason many writers like Damore take the opposite approach. And if
you want an argument to be debated from first principles, isolate it from
real-world consequences like stepping on established workplace legislation.
(Damore's firing was unavoidable under current US law.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio%27s_laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio%27s_laws)

~~~
Banthum
Google's "pro-diversity" hiring policies also have the unavoidable implication
that some of Damore's colleagues actually shouldn't be with the company.

The broader patriarchy/privilege theory behind those "pro-diversity" policies
has the unavoidable implication that many of those white male colleagues
really shouldn't have their careers (and many other rewarding parts of their
lives) at all, because they are based on 'oppressing' others.

There are poison grenades being thrown constantly by every side; only a severe
double standard would allow someone to ignore this.

The real solution is to realize that _any_ criticism of hiring policies
(including criticism by 'diversity' advocates) means _someone_ shouldn't have
been hired. And then, to act like an adult and deal with it rationally
anyways.

>unsupported biological claims

The claims are very well-supported by decades of research. Some journalistic
outlets removed the links to Damore's sources from the copies of the memo they
redistributed, to make the claims look unsupported. Don't fall into that trap.

If you want to see some of the research, Pinker has your back:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mYeZ9by-
eM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mYeZ9by-eM)

Damore was very clear, neutral, and professional. But, there is no way in any
universe Damore could have delivered that message where you would not
criticize it like this. No matter how careful he was, you'd simply set the bar
further out, increase the emotional sensitivity even more, engage in even more
aggressive mind-reading and hostile misinterpretation. His writing could
never, ever, in any form, never meet your ever-shifting standard because your
standard is designed to be impossible to meet.

The reality is that you want him to be silent and you'll seek any excuse for
him to suffer for questioning beliefs you see as morally obligated.

Saying, "He can of course question, but he has to do it better," while
actually having impossible standard, is just a way to look/feel like you're
being open when you're not.

It actually resembles behaviors you see in abusive relationships - the
impossible standard that shifts every time it's met.

~~~
pavlov
_Damore was very clear, neutral, and professional._

He wasn't professional because it is _not his job_ to debate this at work! I
don't understand how this very simple point gets lost. A public corporation is
not a democracy.

~~~
jlborxes
The context of his memo is an internal gender studies mailing list, which is
supposed to serve exactly these kinds of discussions. It's not like he sent
this document to unsuspecting employees.

~~~
xgk
It's hard not to be reminded of Mao's _Hundred Flowers Campaign_ (百花运动) [1]
and _Anti-Rightist Movement_ (反右运动) [2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
Rightist_Movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Rightist_Movement)

------
my_first_acct
Certain topics, that otherwise might be interesting to discuss, are surrounded
by minefields. One such topic is the distribution of intellectual ability
within subgroups of the population. In contrast to the minefields that
Kolmogorov deliberately avoided, this minefield was not put in place by a
repressive government. Nor was it secretly put in place overnight by a fanatic
band of social-justice zealots.

My observation, which I will offer without citation, is that this particular
minefield was put in place, mine by mine, over a period of decades, through a
process of fairly broad societal consensus.

To those who suggest clearing the minefield, thus permitting this topic to be
discussed freely in public, I will invoke the principle of Chesterton's fence
[1]: Before you talk of removing the mines, you need to show that you
understand why the minefield was created in the first place, and you need to
explain why now is the time to remove it.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence)

------
tpeo
Besides ideological self-righteousness, Aaronson left out one important
component of oppressive regimes, which I think is actually far more important:
it takes a relatively large amount of people to topple a regime, while small
groups as well as individuals do nothing but expose themselves by rebelling.
So no individual with any regard for his own personal safety has any incentive
to rebel, and will instead go along with the flow for as long as it's
tolerable to him.

But this, on the other hand, would create an odd situation where actually the
vast majority of people might actually wish for rebellion, but none of them
actually acts out on that wish. Which I also think is actually much more
likelier than what he's putting forward. True crusaders are rare, most of
people are "just following orders".

~~~
jacalata
I don't think you need something as serious as an oppressive regime to get
into this state. It sounds like an instance of the Abilene paradox -
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox)

~~~
jwilk
Non-mobile link:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox)

------
softbuilder
What I find myself wanting to fight is not the prevailing views on a topic,
it's the willingness to lie and mislead to promote those views. I saw that
this past week with the Google memo situation. I also saw a shocking amount of
it last year with the US election. Sloppy journalism feeds the people who seem
to want to believe the worst in everything, who in turn feed entire social
networks. Eventually sufficient people have heard a thing that the network as
a whole believes it. Individuals have little influence. I suppose public
consciousness (and social media in particular) could be thought of as a big
NN.

~~~
akvadrako
Some of the worst offences are these new "fact-checkers" which all seem
heavily biased towards the left. When so many people are committed to a
motivated and shallow version of the truth, it's hard to find the people who
care ONLY about the truth.

~~~
wfunction
Links to support this claim?

~~~
Boothroid
Here's a starting point:

[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=snopes+political+bias](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=snopes+political+bias)

~~~
Micoloth
Jesus, who writes this kind of crap?

~~~
Boothroid
Such a powerful argument you make.

------
mseebach
I don't know anything about Kolmogorov, so I can't evaluate the assumption
that he obviously saw through the lies and was horrified by the brutality -
but I will note that a great number of prominent intellectuals, who were in
absolutely no private danger from the soviet regime whatever they'd believe
and say, and who definitely had access to information about the brutality, who
still chose to support and defend the regime.

Without evidence to the contrary, it's plausible that Kolmogorov simply
supported his government and found the brutality to be acceptable collateral
damage.

If we've learned anything from the 20th century, one thing should be the
lesson that even very smart people can be found supporting extreme brutality
in support of an ideology.

~~~
johanvts
I wondered the same thing, there is an excellent book on this topic called
"The reckless mind" that might interest you if you didn't already read it. I
portrays great thinkers who got swayed by totalitarian systems and asks why.

~~~
crocal
Thanks for the tip, it looks really interesting.

------
wisty
A bit of game theory might be useful -
[https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/c...](https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-
journal/1994/5/cj14n1-13.pdf)

Riots and revolutions are difficult to start because of a number of obstacles:

* It is not clear how many sympathizers you have.

* Even if you believe you have the numbers, being the first to act may result in you being made an example of by the authorities.

It's smarter then to rely on more ambiguous signals. Playing stupid is a good
way to do this. The problem is, the people who want to "stick it to the man"
are generally young people who still process emotions with their amygdala -
they can't keep their ego in check and pretend they don't realize they are
contradicting the official doctrine.

It's fun to think you can be like Martin Luther, nailing The 95 Theses to the
church door. We only hear about Martin Luther because of a quite literal
survivor bias. Also, Luther survived because he claimed to not be challenging
the Vatican's authority, but simply having a scholarly debate. He was also
quite lucky that the secular authorities were lenient (perhaps for political
reasons - there were lessor nobles who weren't so keen on the Holy Roman
Emperor's authority).

~~~
idlewords
Since I presume you're a techie, it's funny that you overlook the main reason
for Luther's success, which was technological—the invention of the mass-
printed pamphlet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_during_the_Reformat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_during_the_Reformation)

I would also urge you to resist the lure of game theory in analyzing human
behavior. It's a toy model that gives toy insights.

~~~
wisty
Mass communication was also a factor, but probably not one that Luther would
have grasped until he was already committed. And he wouldn't have printed any
pamphlets if the local authorities executed him immediately.

As for game theory being a toy model, every model of human behaviour is a toy
model. I'm not sure if game theory is a particularly bad one.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think the conclusion from that argument, which I'm honest-to-god surprised
to see 'idlewords making, is that if not Luther, then it would be someone else
a month or a year later, because a) the forces that shaped Luther were present
in other places, and b) it's the printing press that made the Reformation
stick (there were earlier attempts, which failed).

------
scandox
I want to say this as respectfully as I can, but it isn't easy: the quality of
discourse on these topics is really low on HN.

At the same time I do think it's really important for them to be discussed.

Time and again, though, I'm disappointed by how reductive and unmeditative
these discussions are. I'm also surprised by how angry people seem.

This is a site used by a lot of very smart people, but I think there is an
element of people transferring the confidence of their domain expertise from
one area into another, without noticing that they've crossed that border.

I think people need to approach these topics with a humility they wouldn't
need to bring to say, hashing algorithms or distributed databases.

edit: typo

~~~
Bartweiss
I strongly agree with this.

In the past, I've valued HN as source of uncommonly good discussion. I still
feel that way about how pure-tech topics are handled here, and I think HN
remains better than 90% of other discussion fora for politics. (Twitter,
anyone?) But "better than 90% of alternatives" is completely compatible with
"reductive, vicious, and uninformed".

A particular frustration of mine: the scattering of dialogue across multiple
comment trees over multiple posts. There are snippets of quality discussion,
but they're broken across ~8 different posts. There's no particular way to
find them when they're not highly voted, or keep the quality high after they
become popular.

Meanwhile every single post has multiple instances of "The original essay is
clearly inaccurate, so..." "Sources?" (Or conversely: "Is clearly backed by
science, so..." "Sources?") I'm not sure either person in the exchange is
behaving badly - the first person wants to make a conditional point without
litigating the condition, the second person doesn't want to concede something
uncited as objective fact. But the result is that every post is full of
horrible, discussion derailing fights over whatever sources two random people
can throw at each other.

However one feels about a given exchange, it ought to be fairly obvious that
replaying the dispute fifty times with varying sources and no acknowledgement
of the other instances is a terrible way to make any kind of progress.

I don't know what can be done about it within the HN format, though.

~~~
unityByFreedom
> I don't know what can be done about it within the HN format, though.

It's not the HN format. The nature vs. nurture [1] debate is one of the oldest
in psychology. It's a spectrum, and we're not sure about a lot of things, so
people discuss it often in the hopes that someone will provide research
answering some new part this fundamental question of our lives. It's been
going on for centuries.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture)

------
jfoutz
My only complaint is the 'truths everyone knows' but doesn't say. Most people
just don't care. there are a few thousand people that think deeply about
worldview A, and a handful of others that think deeply about worldview B.
Everybody else is worried about milking their cow, or pilgrimage to the holy
land, or picking the kids up from soccer practice.

When worldview A is dominant, problems are framed in terms of A. It's
literally hard to have those 'hey, that's funny' moments. And when I do, it's
easy to dismiss them. I haven't thought as deeply as the worldview A people,
i'm probably forgetting some minor detail. Worldview B people are trained
scientists, who spend years honing the 'hey that's funny' detector. I can't
compete with that.

Maybe i'm weird. I don't think so. I've had my insights about programming
problems, but there are so many topics where i'm simply ignorant. There are so
many subjects where i'm a fish, i can't see the water.

The author brought up sexual orientation. I am not a human sexuality
researcher. I don't care to be one. My information comes from the culture i
live in. I was incredibly happy for friends that were able to marry. If i
lived a hundred years ago, i _strongly_ doubt i would hold that same view.

I agree with the author, because culture creates defaults. Push culture when
you can. Make better defaults. Most people don't change the factory settings.
They are lazy. Or busy. Or really just don't care.

~~~
TeMPOraL
This sounds like "epistemic learned helplessness" \- in which you realize
that, in domains you're not a specialist in, you can't really discriminate
between convincing-sounding arguments of different smart people, so you give
up trying and default to whatever is the current majority consensus.

See
[http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html](http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html).

~~~
jfoutz
Although i'm probably guilty of that as well, that's not quite the point i'm
trying to make. The first example about _Ages of Chaos_ is a good one. I've
never read the book. I've never read the crackpot theories on either side.
It's probably a fascinating story. But it's just not relevant to my life. I've
never tried to discriminate between those crackpot arguments, so i don't think
i've even reached the giving up stage.

Another example might be best player of $sport for $season. Lacking this
knowledge has left me out of some conversations. That momentary exclusion
hasn't been enough incentive to actually _try_ to form an opinion. I just
don't care enough. So i'm stuck with the factory settings. Someone names a
player who's name i vaguely recognize, so i smile and nod and wait for the
conversation to progress. or go do something else.

------
guillaumec
I really enjoyed reading the The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
about the state of mind of the population during Stalin leadership. He relates
the story of a conference of the party where nobody in the room dared to be
the last one to stop applauding in honor of Stalin.

After a while everybody started to realize how stupid the situation was, yet
they couldn't stop clapping because they all knew that this would be a death
sentence for the first one to do so.

~~~
paganel
> He relates the story of a conference of the party where nobody in the room
> dared to be the last one to stop applauding in honor of Stalin.

For those interested of how that might look, here's a clip of people
applauding Ceausescu just one month before his fall:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk_EnsIr8lw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk_EnsIr8lw)
.

------
jancsika
Two things:

* for a society that enjoys even minimal levels of freedom of speech, the Kolmogorov option isn't easily distinguishable from opportunism or careerism. * for a society like the U.S. that enjoys minimal levels of freedom of speech, what is an example of an _unspeakable truth_? Charles Murray's research exists. Brendan Eich is still rich. Richard Stallman has an _extremely unpopular_ opinion about child porn on his website and he still does talks to people who worship the ground he walks on.

Frankly, it seems like the height of narcissism for a tenured professor to
defend not speaking out against Trump by appealing to Kolmogorov.

It would be _so_ refreshing to see the author instead appeal to Occam's razor
and just call it cowardice.

Edit: grammar

~~~
sounds
Here are three unspeakable truths for the United States. Bringing them up is a
risk: there is almost no chance for calm, composed conversation.

1\. The US Federal Government is not held accountable to the Constitution any
more.

2\. Income inequality is back to 1930's levels. Beside US Federal Government
solutions, across-the-aisle solutions are attacked by corporations and large
news sources.

3\. Belief systems, their movements and organizations, that unite the populace
against the US Federal Government are attacked by corporations and large news
sources.

I like your optimism. The US has legs. Though we're crippled, we're not out of
the race.

I like to engage in quiet, one-on-one conversations and subtly advocate for
better solutions. I think Kolmogorov was a master at that.

~~~
glenra
_Individual_ income inequality has been approximately flat for the last 50
years. The variety of income inequality that has increased is _household_
inequality, but that's mostly driven by social changes as that metric is
hugely sensitive to the nature and size of households. (
[http://www.aei.org/publication/sorry-krugman-piketty-and-
sti...](http://www.aei.org/publication/sorry-krugman-piketty-and-stiglitz-
income-inequality-for-individual-americans-has-been-flat-for-more-
than-50-years/) )

Your #3 has always been true but is arguably _less_ so today than in past
given the continuing fragmentation and loss of authority of _large news
sources_.

If your #1 is supposed to represent a change from some golden earlier
era...which era are you thinking of, exactly?

------
tristram_shandy
The difference, of course, between Galileo and Kolmogorov is that people are
aware of Galileo. Acquiescing keeps intellectuals comfortable, but that's
about all you can say for it.

There's been a few of these articles linked on HN recently, including Paul
Graham's original
[http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html), with
a more or less identical thesis (be quiet) that camouflages real message: that
the author is signalling support for the heresy, carefully.

~~~
loup-vaillant
_Which_ heresy though? I'm not sure I can link either article to any
particular issue.

~~~
backpropaganda
People are assuming Aaronson is talking about Damore's note about diversity
practices at Google.

------
TheAceOfHearts
This quote comes to mind:

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons
may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is
equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so
much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion...
Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own
teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as
refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe
them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.” ― John
Stuart Mill, On Liberty

~~~
tome
Similarly,

> I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the
> other side's argument better than they do.

> \-- Charlie Munger

------
smackay
One problem with creating an island of reason in what is apparently a sea of
chaos is that the values that are cherished: reason, truth, rationality and
merit are quite possibly the very things the regime is trying to suppress - or
at least use a fuel for their outrage in order to promote their views and
desire to be seen and hear at the expense of everything else.

The problem I see here now is that the regime is much more distributed with no
apparent central authority to work against, however quietly. Comparisons have
been made with the Soviet Union, the Vatican and the Nazis but they were all
based on an ideology. Social outrage, social signaling and self-righteousness
are more fundamental characteristics of humans' group behaviour than politics
and for that reason it will be much harder to oppose and even harder to
change.

A more apt example might be the effort it took/will take to topple slavery -
which despite the change won in the Americas still unhappily exists today in
other forms. Other fundamental beliefs can be so deeply rooted in culture that
they persist for many hundreds of years and change, even it if is superficial,
can take a very long time.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think it's worse. Slavery was ultimately an economic problem. Here we're
fighting against "more fundamental characteristics of humans' group
behaviour". The particulars of this problem have some economic aspects, true,
but also plenty of non-economic ones.

------
fnord123
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I took
the Kolmogorov option.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I the
Kolmogorov option.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I the Kolmogorov
option.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

-With apologies to Martin Niemöller.

~~~
philh
One of the things TFA is pointing at is that the alternative might be:

First they came for the Socialists, and I spoke out, and they decided I was a
Socialist and took me away too.

~~~
fnord123
That's also correct. In some situations, we can die on our feet or live on our
knees. The choice is ours.

I am fortunate that I don't live in a regime that requires me to make this
choice.

------
thiagoharry
"As far as I can tell, the answer is simply: because Kolmogorov knew better
than to pick fights he couldn’t win."

This is documented in some place and represent Kolmogorov views, or the author
is just projecing it's own views and opinions? Because kolmogorov could just
have being neutral about the politics in its country (like the majority of
people) or perhaps even had some degree of support at the time. This opinion
"its obvious that the soviets were E-V-I-L" are opinions coming from the other
side of the cold war.

------
minipci1321
I think in his intrepretation of the Kolmogorov's life, Aaronson might be
totally missing the evolution of views of someone born in 1903 in Russia and
having lived through what followed. It is not like Kolmogorov was parachuted
overnight from some free country into the oppressive regime.

------
Tossrock
Very similar to pg's "What you can't say" essay -
[http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

------
zem
The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are
laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton,
they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

\-- Carl Sagan, "Broca's Brain"

~~~
wrinkl3
I think what he's saying that if Kolmogorov was cautious enough to keep his
unpopular opinions to himself, so can you.

~~~
zem
yeah, but he was very clearly casting the whole thing as an "emperor's new
clothes" situation with the implication that the unpopular opinions were self-
evidently true but unmentionable.

~~~
wrinkl3
He's not saying that any unpopular opinion is self-evidently true if people
oppose it with such zeal. He's saying that there exist self-evidently true
opinions that will be treated that way, and if you harbor one of those you
should choose the Kolmogorov option. How do you know you're harboring one of
those? The evidence will support it.

------
macrael
Tell me, truly, is this a view held by many here? That, as the church
denounced Galileo's observation that we turn around the sun as heretical, so
too our modern PC culture suppresses legitimate inquiry into wether gender is
a determinant of programming aptitude? This is a comparison worth drawing?

Galileo was a scientist. He published papers, books, treatises. He devoted his
life to the pursuit of the truth, found a big piece of it, and was punished by
society for it. He is one of the giants whose shoulders we stand on.

Kolmogorov sounds cut of the same cloth. He built a research center, helped
other scientists on the way up, and left a legacy.

James Damore is a junior programmer who wrote a 10 page 'manifesto' accusing
his colleagues of having inferior genes. This created a textbook hostile work
environment,[1] leading to his firing.

The amount of sympathy I've seen here is dismaying. It is illustrating just
how far we have to go until equality is the rule of the day. Please, before
you throw in your lot with him, consider how ridiculous the analogy OP made
here is. The Google Manifesto is manifestly not A Dialogue Concerning the Two
Chief World Systems.

I will say, some of the heavyweight commenters here do give me hope. tptacek
linked this graph[2] on one of the early threads on this. It's a pretty solid
rebuttal to any and all concerns that women are innately unsuited to computers
rather than that our computer culture has driven them away.

[1]: [https://medium.com/@scurphey/googles-response-to-
employee-s-...](https://medium.com/@scurphey/googles-response-to-employee-s-
anti-diversity-manifesto-ignores-workplace-discrimination-law-97c7c729cf86)

[2]:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-
women-stopped-coding)

~~~
apsec112
"Please, before you throw in your lot with him, consider how ridiculous the
analogy OP made here is. The Google Manifesto is manifestly not A Dialogue
Concerning the Two Chief World Systems."

Aaronson doesn't mention Google or Damore.

~~~
cabalamat
Indeed not. Aaronson is talking about the general case when there are things
you can't say that are indeed true. This is useful, because if you can come to
correct conclusions for the general case, these conclusions will be useful in
instances of that case.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
Scott Aaronson is highly unlikely going to be siding with someone using
pseudoscience to push their victim agenda.

It's a great insult to the victims of Church oppression in the middle ages and
of Soviet policy to compare their hardships to the "hardships" of men working
at Google.

~~~
backpropaganda
Have some self-awareness, good sir.

------
myth_drannon
I'm surprised no one is mentioning Jordan Peterson and the attacks on him. He
is quite successful in defending himself speaking his truths.

~~~
jack_pp
The already huge and rising support he's getting on patreon proves that enough
people want to rebell. I believe he is doing tremendous work

------
abecedarius
There's an interesting book about that dynamic where some unknown number of
people privately doubt a core public value -- "preference falsification":
[https://www.amazon.com/Private-Truths-Public-Lies-
Falsificat...](https://www.amazon.com/Private-Truths-Public-Lies-
Falsification/dp/0674707583) I read it after the 2016 election, but it's
pretty old -- is there newer work anyone can recommend?

------
jdoliner
> if I don’t understand what is or isn’t hurtful, then I’ll defer to the
> leading intellectuals in my culture to tell me

This essay was so promising, and then turned out to be a pledge of allegiance
to the thought police.

~~~
Frondo
I think you missed the point of that one. He doesn't want to hurt other
people, but realizes he won't know all the ways he could do so accidentally.

So, in the interest of not hurting people, if he is unsure whether something
will or not, he'll defer to smarter people about what's appropriate behavior.

If you don't care whether what you say hurts others, you need do nothing, need
defer to no one any time, ever.

~~~
SamReidHughes
What he's really doing is letting himself get censored by hecklers.

~~~
Frondo
No.

If you don't care about hurting other people, do whatever you want.

If you do care about hurting other people, do your best but recognize the
limits of your knowledge--and where your knowledge is insufficient, defer to
other, smarter people.

But again, if you don't care about hurting others, do what you want.

You don't have to share his goals in life. You can have your own. It's simple,
and it's not censorship.

------
thanatropism
Yeah, but many of us, even if aspiring to be our best, will never reach the
importance of a Kolmogorov, or a Terry Tao, etc. Our optimal mix of political
iconoclasty and mathematical progress may be much much different.

There's a sense in which way the ideal mathematician (or ultramarathoner, or
classical composer...) is like a monk. Many of us are not built like that.

------
KKKKkkkk1
I'm curious about the remark that Kolmogorov was gay. This is the first time I
hear of this. As far as I can tell from Wikipedia, this claim first surfaced
in an article at The Mathematical Intelligencer from 2001. Are there any
accounts from his contemporaries that would confirm this?

------
red_admiral
> This is where you build up fortresses of truth in places the ideological
> authorities don’t particularly understand or care about

Isn't this exactly what _safe spaces_ were originally meant to be?

~~~
backpropaganda
Sure. I don't think anyone here is going to be embarrassed to call it a safe
space. But safe spaces protect you from harm from individuals. The idea here
is create spaces to protect you from the state.

------
hyperpallium
What's the hinted present-day ideology he dare not challenge?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
He previously got caught up in an internet drama. It's hard to summarize, but
he made a comment about how being a nerdy straight male was harder than being
a woman or gay and how reading feminist books made him suicidal. He got a bit
of blowback on that and so probably a reference to that:

[http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664)

~~~
strken
To add a bit more context, his comment is highly personal and deals with how
he felt ashamed of his sexuality during his childhood and teenage years. His
self-loathing was apparently so bad that he asked a doctor to chemically
castrate him. His comments need to be read in the context of his life, because
unlike the infamous memo they were highly personal, and that makes them hard
to summarise fairly.

I really like his blog, even if it's mostly beyond me. It would be a shame if
anyone drew a negative conclusion about Scott without first reading what he
wrote.

~~~
idlewords
Scott Aaronson is a wonderful human being, and seeing the attacks against him,
and how they have changed him, has been very painful.

------
kkylin
Very much off-topic: I understand the post and the present discussion are not
about Kolmogorov's scientific work, but I could not resist pointing out that
in addition to all the great things Scott mentioned, Kolmogorov also made
significant contributions to fluid turbulence
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence#Kolmogorov.27s_theo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence#Kolmogorov.27s_theory_of_1941))
and linear filtering
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_filter#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_filter#History)),
among many, many other things.

------
wuch
When I reached the comment field at the end of page, to my big surprise the
name and email have been already filled in. In fact, it seems like data of the
person last to comment have been present there. Something along the way have
gone quite wrong.

------
aatchb
So he's willing to concede space on the scientific landscape in the face of
increasingly oppressive 'political correctness'? Don't research something if
it may hurt someones feelings! Great.

~~~
sanxiyn
It seems he is. It seems wise to me.

~~~
aatchb
Wise for the individual, not so much for population.

------
igravious
Quick question.

“Every mathematician believes that he is ahead of the others. The reason none
state this belief in public is because they are intelligent people.”

The others here, does it refer to other mathematicians, or other people in
general?

~~~
idlewords
Other mathematicians.

~~~
loup-vaillant
I wouldn't be surprised if a sizeable fraction, perhaps even the majority, of
mathematicians _are_ in fact ahead of all the others. They just have to be
best at their own chosen specialization.

(Also, one may need a little hubris to actually do something. I would never
have written my crypto library if I didn't started with the overconfidence
required to brave mainstream advice.)

~~~
igravious
You fool! Don't you know by now that you're not meant to roll your own crypto
:-/ (I jest, of course)

~~~
loup-vaillant
Don't worry, I survived the non-jest version as well. :-)

I reckon opposition was not as unanimous as one might expect, though. If this
thread¹ is to be believed, there's a rather wide range of opinions.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14917378](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14917378)

------
senthil_rajasek
I always thought at least in the U.S stand up comedians were the ones who did
not choose the kolmogorov option.

------
yaacov
Looks like his blog's down? Guess I'll try again in the morning

Edit: seems to be working now

------
mathzthrowaway6
_Note: as a throwaway I was unable to complete edits to this comment,
therefore please upvote (and endorse) only this version. The first version
should remain dead as a dupe._

\-----

In the spirit of the article we're discussing, I wrote the present comment to
1) teach something about mathematics and probability 2) share a bit of social
enlightenment.

In summary this comment should change your thinking fundamentally. You will
need to read it carefully but I promise it is relevant. (Please endorse it and
upvote it, if you agree.)

\--------------

    
    
       Program of study for this comment.
    
       I suggest you go through this comment as follows.
    
       1.  Read section 1 (approx. 1 hour.)
       Goal: improve your mathematical reasoning.
       
       2.  30 minute break.
       
       3.  Read section 2 (approx 5 minutes).
       Goal: social insight.
    
       4.  Generalize the insight just gained.
       Goal: make the example more practical.
    
       This is an exercise for the reader.
    

\----------

1\. One of the most important mathematical videos you will ever see.

Firstly, unless you are a practicing mathematician this is one of the most
important mathematical video you will ever see:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrK7X_XlGB8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrK7X_XlGB8)

Watch it. As a result you will improve your rational thinking forever.

-

Break. I suggest you next take a 30-minute break. During this time you can
reflect on and assimilate the knowledge you have learned.

-

2\. An important social insight.

This section requires you to understand section 1.

Next, suppose that you are perfectly rational. We will introduce an extreme
case, and you will have to generalize it yourself, to come up with the social
insight I promised.

Base (extreme) case.

If I present you a (fair) coin and ask you to judge whether it is fair, after,
say, thirty or forty flips you will conclude that it is likely fair. You can
never be sure, of course, but you will have a high confidence.

However, if I give you the same coin but also the knowledge that it was drawn
at random from an infinite bag with 1 fair coin in it -- for example, let's
say coins are numbered, I select a real number at random between 0 and 1, and
only the coin with the exact value 0.5 is fair, any other coin is unfair,
weighted - then even given hours, days, weeks, or years of flipping, you will
come to me with the same conclusion: there is a 0% chance (you will have 0%
confidence) that the coin is fair and 100% chance that the coin is
weighted.[0] If I bet you a thousand to one that it is fair, you would put any
amount of money that it is weighted: regardless of the amount of testing you
did and the results of your tests.

This includes your running every test for randomness, flipping it millions of
times and analyzing the result, anything you want.

So let's look at what happened. You have been moved from being able to quickly
decide whether a coin is likely fair, to being _completely_ unable to accept
that the coin is fair. No matter how much evidence you can collect, you can
only conclude with 100% certainty that the coin is unfair.

The only thing that changed is the understanding of the population it was
drawn from.

Okay. So why is this a problem? For the simple reason that _the coin labelled
0.5 exists._

If you reflect on the plight of coin 0.5 you will understand why it is very
wrong to talk about the bag from which it was drawn or how.

Exercise: generalize this result for finite cases.

References:

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_surely](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_surely)

------
emiliobumachar
The page appears to be down. HN hug of death, probably.

------
frinxor
Good read - thanks

------
mathzthrowaway6
I wrote the present comment to 1) teach something about mathematics and
probability 2) share enlightenment.

In summary this comment should change your thinking about all subjects,
forever.

\--------------

    
    
       Program of study for this comment:
    
       1.  Read section 1 (approx. 1 hour.)
       Goal: improve your mathematical reasoning.
       
       2.  30 minute break.
       
       3.  Read section 2 (approx 5 minutes).
       Goal: enlightenment.
    
    

1\. The most important mathematical video you will ever see in your life.

Firstly, unless you are a practicing mathematician this is the most important
mathematical video you will ever see in your life. It is purely about
mathematics:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrK7X_XlGB8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrK7X_XlGB8)

Watch it. Suppose that you take an hour and learn this. You have just improved
your rational thinking forever.

-

Break. Please now take a 30-minute break. During this time you can reflect and
assimilate the knowledge you have learned.

-

2\. The most important social insight you will read in any comment.

This section requires you to understand section 1. Next, suppose that you are
perfectly rational. If I present you a (fair) coin and ask you to judge
whether it is fair, after, say, thirty or forty flips you will conclude that
it is fair.

If I give you the same coin but also the knowledge that it was drawn from an
infinite bag with 1 fair coin in it -- for example, let's say coins are
numbered, I select a real number between 0 and 1, and only the coin with the
exact value 0.5 is fair, any other coin is unfair, weighted - then even given
hours, days, weeks, or years of flipping, you will come to me with the same
conclusion: there is a 0% chance that the coin is fair and 100% chance that
the coin is weighted. This includes your running every test for randomness,
flipping it millions of times and analyzing the result, anything you want.

So let's look at what happened. You have been moved from being able to quickly
decide whether a coin is fair, to being _completely_ unable to accept that the
coin is fair. No matter how much evidence you can collect, you can only
conclude with 100% certainty that the coin is unfair.

The only thing that changed is the understanding of the population it was
drawn from.

Why is this a problem? For the simple reason that _the coin labelled 0.5
exists._

If you reflect on the plight of coin 0.5 you forever understand why it is very
wrong to talk about the bag from which it was drawn or how.

~~~
sackofmugs
Appreciate you trying to share some insight. But from the hype, I was
expecting some kind of world changing revelation. But basically you're just
explaining the basics of bayesian statistics?

A lot of people already know this stuff. It's part of an intro course in
probability/stats that you'd take while doing a CS degree, or a course about
experiments for other science degrees.

------
CrystalLangUser
The 503 curse.

------
rodgerd
He may be a wonderful person, but if he genuinely thinks being a straight
white guy in the US is harder than being gay, he's not as clever as he thinks
he is.

~~~
kamilner
I'm not sure what about this thread precipitated this comment, but it sounds
like you'll be relieved to discover he doesn't think that.

~~~
DanBC
Possibly when zerogravitas says "It's hard to summarize, but he made a comment
about how being a nerdy straight male was harder than being a woman or gay".

~~~
Sacho
You(or GP) seem to be implying that all straight white males are nerdy, or
that being nerdy has no effect on the hardship you face in life. Which one is
it?

------
typon
This was such an incredibly self serving post that it's almost funny. Thanks
for the bravery Scott, you chose not to argue for what you believe in from
your position of immense privilege. A martyr indeed.

In any case, people like Scott and others in this thread sound so incredibly
childish when talking about "rational" argument being the antidote to the
venom of "political correctness" ruining western society. You know what's
ruining western society? Income inequality, racial discrimination, mass
consumerism, disregard for environmental destruction, etc. That this is the
hill where software engineers choose to fight their battle for western
civilization is just depressing

~~~
backpropaganda
PC is particularly harmful, since it restricts talking about controversial
topics. Most of the other topics you picked has PC problems. For instance,
income equality between the genders could be fixed if we recognize that there
are innate differences between the genders, and actively work to make the
workplace more inclusive to styles of working which would favor the other
gender. Scott Alexander also argued that the constant proclamation that "tech
has a sex problem" sends a message that tech is not for women. Such unhealthy
fixation with "women in X" is arguable harming X's diversity plans more than
helping. But this is not an opinion I'm allowed to have or discuss with you.

tl;dr: we need to fix communication which would allow us to fix other problems
of today.

~~~
typon
Do you have any evidence for your assertions?

