21 Comments

Here here.

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Well, kind of.

I mean, it's potentially just an intellectual-cop-out marginally better than simply acknowledging that it is indeed just your intuition at play — the reason being, it is contingent on someone coming along who has A) the time and B) expertise* to take up your informal 'bet' and conjure up a well thought out and researched response, that would likely take considerate time and effort.

*(perhaps also C), the care to do so)

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Oh I see, you mean that it is cognitively similar for those who *accept* paternalism, that it's borne out of respect for the dominators/busybodies in both cases.

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Then I'm not sure what your claim is. Are you just saying they're analogous in terms of economics/results?

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perhaps not explicitly, but it seems to be implied

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I have not made claims about proximate mental causes.

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Are you claiming that the urge to dominate is "cognitively" the same as the urge to be a busybody? That they would appear the same under an fMRI scanner?

I don't think this is right. E.g. men are more likely to have the urge to dominate, yet women are more "busybody-style" authoritarian in politics (at least in liberal democracies where outright fascism is not an option). So I think these forms of authoritarianism (dominant vs. gentle) are, while consequentially/economically the same, cognitively different.

Better hypotheses for busybody behavior:

1) It's a hack, i.e. you convince yourself that you really have done something good for someone else. This would explain the gender correlation too, because it aligns with how women measure their self-worth.

2) It's a form of social cohesion, i.e. people "gently" forcing others to do things is a way of bonding in tribal societies, and the instinct carries over.

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Afraid you'd need to address the issues raised about sample bias and phrasing to make it a bet I'd be interested in.

Offering to bet without addressing these issues does seem like a convenient way of quietly ignoring quite reasonable critiques.

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I'm willing to bet on the questions as phrased here. If you want to offer to bet on other phrasings, it is up to you to propose them.

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No bet then I guess :)

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Okay. The point is that "control freak" is a negative term. How does having compared it to positive and negative things help here?

"Do-gooder" is an obviously negative term also btw...

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yes

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What's "it" in this sentence? A "control freak"?

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My point is that basing your blog post on twitter polling that's less than rigorous and stating your willing to bet the results would hold in more rigorous surveys is little better than just blogging based on your intuitions.

If you can come up with a way of polling that deals with the issues I've raised, I'd happily bet that the results would be at least significantly less conclusive.

Open to suggestions about how you might do this?

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In two polls, I compare it to a thing that seems positive and to a thing that seem negative.

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I'm making an offer to bet. That is much more than stating my intuition.

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