
Can no-discrimination be taught through technology? - dmilanp
Monkey see, monkey do (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Monkey_see,_monkey_do)<p>A lot of people in this world have grown up in bubble-like environments where discriminatory ideas and ways of living are passed on from generation to generation. A lot of times this happens without questioning anything, and marking people for life.<p>For the people in question, there is no incentive to &#x27;learn&#x27; why they shouldn&#x27;t discriminate, or to ask themselves if they are wrong acting this way.<p>Is it possible to mitigate this through technology?
Can incentives be created via technology so that this is appealing to new generations?
Can you come up with a way to do so?
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internaut
I believe you can aid people in dismissing _irrational_ discrimination. If it
is based on a logical error than it can be corrected.

Something that is true has a way of needling away at people's brains until it
gets in.

Discrimination is a very deep brain function. It is the ability to discern
patterns.

Sometimes this system results in false positives, such as when you jump at
shadows at night or get spooked because you imagine somebody to be in a room
when they're not.

But most of the time it works. That is why it evolved. It had enormous
survival value despite some of the drawbacks.

Thinking otherwise is magical thinking. Turning discrimination into an
original sin is in of itself a path towards discrimination.

In truth nobody has 'the benchmark' for reality. Nobody is consistently right
all the time.

Take CFAR - the Center For Applied Rationality.

They found a very interesting result when they studied people's opinions. They
found that when people were polled on a large variety of different questions,
that when their confidence level was 100%, that they were only right 66% of
the time. I repeat, that was for their highest confidence level.

CFAR has a program where they study rationality and have come up with a list
of ways to improve our own rationality by using clever heuristics.

[http://rationality.org/checklist/](http://rationality.org/checklist/)

Here is an excerpt:

"Reacting to evidence / surprises / arguments you haven’t heard before;
flagging beliefs for examination.

When I see something odd – something that doesn’t fit with what I’d ordinarily
expect, given my other beliefs – I successfully notice, promote it to
conscious attention and think “I notice that I am confused” or some equivalent
thereof. (Example: You think that your flight is scheduled to depart on
Thursday. On Tuesday, you get an email from Travelocity advising you to
prepare for your flight “tomorrow”, which seems wrong. Do you successfully
raise this anomaly to the level of conscious attention? (Based on the
experience of an actual LWer who failed to notice confusion at this point and
missed their plane flight.))

When somebody says something that isn’t quite clear enough for me to
visualize, I notice this and ask for examples. (Recent example from Eliezer: A
mathematics student said they were studying “stacks”. I asked for an example
of a stack. They said that the integers could form a stack. I asked for an
example of something that was not a stack.) (Recent example from Anna: Cat
said that her boyfriend was very competitive. I asked her for an example of
“very competitive.” She said that when he’s driving and the person next to him
revs their engine, he must be the one to leave the intersection first—and when
he’s the passenger he gets mad at the driver when they don’t react similarly.)

I notice when my mind is arguing for a side (instead of evaluating which side
to choose), and flag this as an error mode. (Recent example from Anna: Noticed
myself explaining to myself why outsourcing my clothes shopping does make
sense, rather than evaluating whether to do it.)

I notice my mind flinching away from a thought; and when I notice, I flag that
area as requiring more deliberate exploration. (Recent example from Anna: I
have a failure mode where, when I feel socially uncomfortable, I try to make
others feel mistaken so that I will feel less vulnerable. Pulling this thought
into words required repeated conscious effort, as my mind kept wanting to just
drop the subject.)

I consciously attempt to welcome bad news, or at least not push it away.
(Recent example from Eliezer: At a brainstorming session for future
Singularity Summits, one issue raised was that we hadn’t really been asking
for money at previous ones. My brain was offering resistance, so I applied the
“bad news is good news” pattern to rephrase this as, “This point doesn’t
change the fixed amount of money we raised in past years, so it is good news
because it implies that we can fix the strategy and do better next year.”) "

This and not a rote education, is what we need. There is an infinite number of
lies, you can't fight them all one at a time. CFAR is a great organization,
I'd go to their meet-ups in a shot if I could afford to. These are the true
crusaders for looking at the world scientifically.

