The epistemic consequences of “skin in the game” are hard to consider fairly and effectively, for sure. AFAICT typically when someone has a personal stake in a discussion outcome, the life situation that gives them that stake imparts *both* insight and bias. And the two are very difficult to disentangle. And our soldier mindset leads us to see only the insight when we agree with the person, and only the bias when we disagree.
Thus we get “standpoint epistemology” that can correctly advise us to listen for the insight of the most-affected people, but can also discount their bias and irrationally make their group membership a trump card. And on the other hand we get arguments of the form “you’re just saying that because you’re an X”. And more complicated soldier rationalizations like “you say my belief Y is biased against members of group X, but that can’t be right, because here’s this member of group X I found on YouTube/Substack/etc espousing Y”— and rationalizing counterarguments like “well that person isn’t *really* a valid member of group X” or “they must be self-hating/internalizing anti-X bias”— and on and on.
I don’t have a good solution, but it’s a problem I wish Galef had spent more time considering.
Oh, and on reflection, that reminds me of another book you might like to review if you haven’t already read it: Jacob Levy, _Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom_. Levy’s definition of rationalism is not the Julia Galef/Bay Area one, but there’s a connection that I think goes to your critique of rationalists thinking they’re more dispassionate than others. As I understand Levy’s thesis, the rationalist position is basically “the local people are hopelessly biased, so freedom from their bias requires a uniform centralized rule” while the pluralist one is “the local people have key insights the central authority can never have, therefore freedom requires that we trust them to make decentralized rules.”
(Disclaimer of personal bias: Levy and I are cordial acquaintances because we went to the same high school five years apart, so run into each other at reunions. Also, I owe some of my earliest political education to him, in that the first thing I remember reading about libertarianism was his now-cringey teenage op-ed in a back issue of our school newspaper endorsing Ron Paul’s 1988 presidential campaign.)
The epistemic consequences of “skin in the game” are hard to consider fairly and effectively, for sure. AFAICT typically when someone has a personal stake in a discussion outcome, the life situation that gives them that stake imparts *both* insight and bias. And the two are very difficult to disentangle. And our soldier mindset leads us to see only the insight when we agree with the person, and only the bias when we disagree.
Thus we get “standpoint epistemology” that can correctly advise us to listen for the insight of the most-affected people, but can also discount their bias and irrationally make their group membership a trump card. And on the other hand we get arguments of the form “you’re just saying that because you’re an X”. And more complicated soldier rationalizations like “you say my belief Y is biased against members of group X, but that can’t be right, because here’s this member of group X I found on YouTube/Substack/etc espousing Y”— and rationalizing counterarguments like “well that person isn’t *really* a valid member of group X” or “they must be self-hating/internalizing anti-X bias”— and on and on.
I don’t have a good solution, but it’s a problem I wish Galef had spent more time considering.
Oh, and on reflection, that reminds me of another book you might like to review if you haven’t already read it: Jacob Levy, _Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom_. Levy’s definition of rationalism is not the Julia Galef/Bay Area one, but there’s a connection that I think goes to your critique of rationalists thinking they’re more dispassionate than others. As I understand Levy’s thesis, the rationalist position is basically “the local people are hopelessly biased, so freedom from their bias requires a uniform centralized rule” while the pluralist one is “the local people have key insights the central authority can never have, therefore freedom requires that we trust them to make decentralized rules.”
(Disclaimer of personal bias: Levy and I are cordial acquaintances because we went to the same high school five years apart, so run into each other at reunions. Also, I owe some of my earliest political education to him, in that the first thing I remember reading about libertarianism was his now-cringey teenage op-ed in a back issue of our school newspaper endorsing Ron Paul’s 1988 presidential campaign.)
Absolutely love this -- LOTS to think about (and lots of things to look up!)
Sorry I’ve been so silent recently - life ya know.
I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Hope the busy stuff has been fun.
You know busy stuff..some fun, some necessary