Questions you can't ask

http://www.michaelalanmiller.com/?p=386

by quoderat • 18 years ago

32 52 18 years ago

speek• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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.

Alex39177• 18 years ago

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.

pjackson• 18 years ago

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."

nazgulnarsil2• 18 years ago

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

hugh6• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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.

nazgulnarsil2• 18 years ago

most of what is associated with government, utilities, police, paved roads, schools etc. are all organized by the state government. I have no problem with state government, they are efficient (compare your state taxes to federal taxes, then compare what you get in return from each) in fact they should have a lot more power. federal power is the problem.

jules2• 18 years ago

> 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?

dgabriel• 18 years ago

This, like many of the other questions in the list, is a very leading question. It appears to coyly approach the topic of legalized prostitution, possibly legal age of consent laws.

yummyfajitas3• 18 years ago

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

dehowell• 18 years ago

Nonsense. You're talking about politicians jumping on a bandwagon that earned them cheap family values points, which is neither surprising, nor indicative of the attitudes of liberals in general.

hugh6• 18 years ago

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.)

jules2• 18 years ago

Wow. They rerated GTA to 18+ because it contains a sex minigame? Violence is ok, sex is bad!?

gm2• 18 years ago

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.

quoderat2• 18 years ago

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.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.

gm2• 18 years ago

If the questions were asked honestly, then you would have cited your sources. To be honest, I really don't care about neither the IQ issue nor about the answer. I just thought the questions themselves were very leading. The answers don't matter, the way the question is asked is the whole point.

As to the comment about me... Well, ok. If it makes you happy go for it, I'm glad to help make your day better. I'll give you a badge of honor, why not?

Tichy2• 18 years ago

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.

DaniFong• 18 years ago

It's not just Feynman -- there's a rumor that someone scored the whole Caltech physics faculty and they did mostly average. I think the flaw is that IQ tests look for people to find answers that correspond to the limited, simple mental models of the test makers (other people), very quickly and accurately, which is probably irrelevant, if not actively harmful, to the values that habits that make a good scientist.

hugh6• 18 years ago

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

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.

tocomment2• 18 years ago

That's an excellent point. We do need a word. How about "romples"? I think that's free.

hugh6• 18 years ago

Let me try: "this post is pure romples".

Not bad, but I'd prefer a verb form -- to romple?

"Dude, you're rompling. Stop it."

dcurtis• 18 years ago

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?

unalone2• 18 years ago

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?

willchang2• 18 years ago

How about: Oh that's just conspiracy talk?

In any case, some of these questions are tedious and uninteresting, but some are not, and calling them dumb seems to be just a way of persuading others not to discuss them.

For example, I think active population control is one of those unaskable questions that should be discussed more. Even the crude, corruption-prone way in which the one-child policy was implemented in China seemed to have helped the nation modernize. Here in America, having children out of wedlock is linked to poverty, and our foster care system is a wreck, but we somehow don't care to entertain even the search for humane and effective policies along the lines of population control. No doubt this is because history is filled with cruel and paternalistic implementations, but this would seem to be exactly the baffle in the free flow of ideas.

andreyf• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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.

jonny_noog• 18 years ago

And here I was thinking that the Baldwin effect was some kind of theory possibly resembling or in some way modelling the interactions between Alec Baldwin and his brothers.

willchang2• 18 years ago

On 11: Population Control. I'd argue that this is a specific instance in which market economics by themselves do not suffice to solve the problem -- unless you regard it as acceptable that miscalculations on the part of parents, such as having one too many kids, should result in one of the kids being allowed to starve to death years down the road. Probably the best solutions are going to involve lots of market incentives, and what they are going to be is what the question is asking.

DanielBMarkham• 18 years ago

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)

biohacker42• 18 years ago

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.

Questions you can't ask

Related Stories