I'm more curious about the following hypothetical candidate/interview:
In casual conversation the candidate reveals he's a member of an online forum, the subject matter of which regularly revolves around elaborate torture scenarios, freezing the heads of the recently deceased, making decisions on behalf of our counterparts in parallel worlds and the pressing concern that thinking machines may either harvest our atoms for their strange alien purposes or trap us in a virtual Hell for the rest of eternity. He also emphasises the point of this forum is about having as accurate an understanding of reality as possible.
I think anti-discrimination law has a different idea of what constitutes "religion" than we do.
If you use loaded terms and concentrate weirdness without explaining any of it, you're going to get something that looks bad. But doing that is dishonest. Why would the same person both mention that they're a member of a community and lie in a way that makes it look bad?
Even if I worded a description of LW quite carefully, I'd eventually get to something which would be intractable to some everyday dude off the street. My guess is that those intractable topics would include cryonics, MWI QM and existential risk posed by AI.
When they walk away from that conversation, the intractable parts are what they'll remember, and how they'll characterise it. I don't have to lie or misrepresent in any way, shape or form. I just have to be not careful enough.
Agreed, I tried to explain Less Wrong to my father and now he thinks we're some doomsday cult concerned that AI's will wipe out humanity and rearrange our atoms in smiley faces. He concluded that everyone here has "way to much imagination" and now he won't listen to anything that comes from this blog.
I tend to explain it as "a blog about rationality started by transhumanists. Has weird and stupid bits, but is mostly good really. The comment moderation system actually works. Addictive." That is: upfront about the weirdness, then in with the good stuff. I suppose it helps that these are people who can expand the word "transhumanists".
What if you are a conservative catholic, and you learnt during a job interview that someone was a member of a website that seems to be some crazy end-of the world anti-religious cult?
Would that be a justifiable reason not to hire?
Would you support making it legal to refuse employment for reasons like that?
If I upvote someone who independently made the same point as me, under TDT am I abusing the karma system? :-)
I think you are abusing the karma system by making jokes that are hard to leave unupvoted. Please enjoy my upvote.
It is usually weird religious minorities like atheists that benefit most from laws prohibiting religious discrimination.
As for the country club question, I certainly feel a desire to punish this person for views I find repugnant but that isn't a very good grounds for not hiring him. As long as his membership isn't going to interfere with his ability to do the job I'd like to think I would hire him. To do otherwise seems like ineffective business practice.
This is a tangent, but I'm interested in understanding better what beliefs are seen as "repugnant" in that they evoke the psychology of disgust and contamination, and what beliefs are merely seen as untrue and/or dangerous.
As long as his membership isn't going to interfere with his ability to do the job I'd like to think I would hire him.
Least convenient possible world. His beliefs will not interfere with his ability to do his job. How bad of a group does he have to be a member of before you're willing to forgo hiring?
I wouldn't forgo hiring anyone because of their political/social beliefs (assuming I live up to my own standards).
Now go the other way. What are the least offensive political/social beliefs someone could hold that would lead you to not hiring them?
Are you really willing to bite that bullet? What if the person was a member of an anti-vaccination group? Or a racist group?
My answer to your question is, "It depends." because really it does depend on a lot of other things, such as how many other comparable candidates there are. Given typical circumstances, I draw the line just before enthusiastic religious belief, like in my hypothetical. If it was an easy decision, I wouldn't be posting about it.
This is getting cartoonish since it is extremely unlikely that the most qualified candidate for a given position maintains membership in an avowedly racist organization. But yes, again with the proviso that the candidate's beliefs somehow don't impact their ability to do the job, I would hire racists. Why wouldn't I exactly? Just as a way of saying "Booo racism!" or "Booooo religion!"? Who is even reading my signaling other than myself? Am I supposed to think that by depriving a highly qualified person of a job opportunity, and thereby hurting myself, I will damage the group they are a member of or lead them to rethink their beliefs?
My answer to your question is, "It depends." because really it does depend on a lot of other things, such as how many other comparable candidates there are. Given typical circumstances, I draw the line just before enthusiastic religious belief, like in my hypothetical. If it was an easy decision, I wouldn't be posting about it.
I think we're gonna start bumping up against terminal values pretty soon. I don't see how not hiring the enthusiastically religious is an efficient use of the lost income that results from your inefficient hiring practices.
This is getting cartoonish since it is extremely unlikely that the most qualified candidate for a given position maintains membership in an avowedly racist organization.
What would you do if a large percentage of population had such membership, so that it became quite likely?
Even if I only cared about economics, their beliefs affect how well I can do my job. I doubt I could sit across from an antivaxxer and get anything useful done. How picky one can be is determined by the number and quality of candidates.
My quality of life is also affected by the people I interact with daily. To use a silly example: I hate brussel sprouts. If someone said, "Oh I love brussel sprouts! I cook them every day at lunch!" that would affect how much time I'd want to spend around that person.
These seem like arguments that could conceivably be used to defend any kind of discrimination in the workplace. I suppose the justifications for making some groups protected and others not are meta and involve things like the Veil of Ignorance so we won't go into them. But this makes discussing workplace discrimination on the object level seem pretty boring to me since the criteria for when discrimination is acceptable appear almost totally subjective.
I am bothered by how "discrimination" has become an inherently offensive word. Choosing an employee among many is by definition an act of discrimination; what matters is what you base your discrimination on - whether it's something relevant to their role or not.
Mere lexical conservatism? Not quite. Policy discussions should revolve around which type of discriminations are permissible and which are sufficiently harmful that they should be banned; but the "discrimination = bad" has made this step all but impossible.
Hence you get people honestly, and correctly, arguing that to favour younger, or older, people is a form of discrimination. But then, rather than asking "did this employer have a legitimate reason for preferring a particular age group for the job?" (hopefully followed by "is it going to be harmful if people keep doing it?" and "do we have the means to stop it?"), they just slap the label "ageism" on it and are convinced that they have just proved that it's a Bad Thing®.
This is getting cartoonish since it is extremely unlikely that the most qualified candidate for a given position maintains membership in an avowedly racist organization.
Worst possible worlds do tend to be cartoonish.
I doubt I could sit across from an antivaxxer and get anything useful done.
-chuckles-
Well how in the world will I get any work done with a woman in the office? Clearly my misogyny makes it ok for me to discriminate against women. ;)
Transexuals pick their gender based on their feelings, and they fully have a right to do that in my opinion. But lets say that currently the costs for that kind of change are too high for most people and pick a different example:
How in the world will I get any work done with a commie in the office? How in the world will I get any work done with a atheist in the office? How in the world will I get any work done with a eugenicist in the office? How in the world will I get any work done with a republican in the office? How in the world will I get any work done with a Jew in the office? ect.
Are you really willing to bite that bullet? What if the person was a member of an anti-vaccination group? Or a racist group?
I'm pretty much with Jack in that in principle, I would avoid discriminating on group affiliation / ideology, except when it could be expected to directly affect job performance; I wouldn't hire a member of an anti-vaccination group as a doctor, or a racist as a human resource manager.
Also, someone who brings up "... and as I was saying at the Klu Klux Klan meeting the other day ..." at a job interview probably isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. More generally, mentioning member of a controversial group at a job interview is a sign of lack of social skills (especially the social skill known as "lying"), which would probably impact job performance (again, it depends of the job. Crazy opinions for say graphic artists are not very surprising or very problematic).
I wouldn't hire [...] a racist as a human resource manager.
Nearly all jobs involve interacting with other people, who may be of the race that the racist would have a problem with. Would you be willing to hire a racist for any such job?
Crazy opinions for say graphic artists are not very surprising or very problematic.
What classifies jobs into this group where crazy opinions aren't a big deal?
What if the person was a member of an anti-vaccination group? Or a racist group?
This person is sending very bad signals about himself, signals most people will not ignore. But they don't actually say anything about his job performance (in this hypothetical case)!
Incredible, I'm very lucky he is probably severely undervalued in the labour market. By hiring him I am getting a bargain.
I attach no metaphysical badness to him getting paid by me because a boycott on hiring people who use their money for ill is impossible to enforce. Someone else will profit from hiring him (and I have no guarantees this person who profits won't use the difference to work against things I value).
All I am getting is a service for my money, I have no responsibility for what he actually does with the money, I mean I do usually think on ethical issues if we are moral agents.
"Member of a country club" implies deliberate choice, at adult age, with full assent.
Mentioning in passing that you're a Catholic Christian has entirely different implications - it's most likely to be a set of values you got willy-nilly from your parents, that may have little practical implications on how you go about your life and work decisions. It would be absurd to rule someone out of a position based solely on learning that they're a member of this or that religion.
Maybe a workable tactic, if you're concerned, would be to say something like "Oh, by the way, some folks on the team you'll join are practicing Satanists, are you OK with that?". Let the narrow-minded select themselves out, religious tolerance goes both ways. ;)
Voted up for an important topic.
I thought you were going to go the other direction here -- one man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens.
In other words, if we tolerate Catholics, we should tolerate holders of other opinions that we find equally outrageous and offensive -- explicit racists, for instance. Here "tolerate" means something less than "agree with" but more than "refrain from throwing in jail" -- it means we should associate with them, offer them jobs they're otherwise qualified for, etc.
There has to be some mechanism for sharing a society with people whose opinions seem truly horrible to us. We seem to do this naturally when it comes to religion, perhaps because we have a three-hundred-year-old tradition of religious toleration. But toleration more broadly is a difficult thing and it's not always obvious how far it should be taken.
For instance, for all I said above, I probably would not date someone whose beliefs bothered me (and yes, this includes devout Catholics.)
Anti-discrimination employment law seems to be geared towards preventing institutional discrimination against marginalised groups, rather than preventing individuals from exercising their personal preferences. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to view it as legislation that helps negotiate peace between warring factions of equal status.
I think -- correct me if I'm wrong -- that outside of anti-discrimination law there's also a commonly-held notion of voluntary toleration. Being an intolerant person seems to be held to be a bad thing, within certain bounds. We frown on some kinds of intolerant personal preferences -- if I refused to ride in an elevator with foreigners, you might think I was pretty creepy. (But what if I refused to ride in an elevator with people who refused to ride in elevators with foreigners?)
I agree its quite clear that tolerance in some form has become a value of most Western societies and its quite easy to argue that citizens that value tolerance to some extent make a society more pleasant to live in and perhaps even more economically successfully.
However like many of our values tolerance on the borders clashes with other values.
There has to be some mechanism for sharing a society with people whose opinions seem truly horrible to us.
This is something very important. Too many people confuse tolerance as meaning being nice to people I like but bother some other misled ignorant soul. Tolerance as something useful to society is being civil and fullfining obligations set down by the social contract with people you don't like but that otherwise fulfil their obligations.
If I were conducting interviews for a lighthouse guardian-type position, I would be fine with hiring a Nazi zoophiliac bug-chasing rapist with a scatological fixation and a fondness for Beck's beer, as long as he could do the job well. Arguably, I might even be somewhat happy to have a chance of reducing the social presence of such a distasteful person.
But if I were hiring a personal secretary, I (or whoever they will work with) would need not simply to tolerate, but to actually like the guy or gal. Good personal chemistry is a key part of that job, and if there was a law forbidding me from discriminating against, say, Scientologists I'd make a serious effort to circumvent it (hardly a difficult feat; I probably wouldn't even have to lie).
Other jobs fall somewhere in the spectrum between those two extremes, and would be treated accordingly.
Hmmm...
There are several famous, highly skilled actors who are also Scientologists. If you were casting a movie, would/should you hold that against them?
I brought up Scientologists as an example because I, personally, would feel extremely uncomfortable spending lots of time in the company of one and having to rely on them.
As a casting director, I imagine I wouldn't have to personally deal with the Hubbardite much longer, so that issue would not arise. I would, however, try to evaluate the risk of the film being harmed as a result of this trait of the actor - say, if other, more important members of the crew had similar reservations as mine which would prejudice their work; or if the actor became unreliable, cumbersome, or quit altogether due to Church obligations; or if he were [made] to spout Scientologist propaganda during interviews; and so on. So I guess I would hold it against them, although not being familiar with how cinema works I can't say to what degree.
Admittedly it might be because I have (very mild) autism, but as long as a personal secretary was sufficently competent I wouldn't mind if I didn't get along with them.
I would hire him if there was no superior candidate when it comes to job-relevant criteria.
The secret to toleration is realizing that, generally speaking, everyone is a horrible person by your standards, and so your standards are generally not useful in determining whether or not you should associate with people (all you do is punish people who got caught). They may be useful in picking your friends- but that's an entirely separate issue from who you hire.
There's a Mencken quote- "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. " - that seems appropriate. Let's say you find out in passing that your employee's wife is hideously ugly, and you work someplace where people sometimes bring their spouses to office parties or the office itself. How strongly would you be willing to act on your desire to avoid seeing his wife at office parties?
How is this a question about anything but rationalization of the value judgements that people already possess?
You might be interested in this old comment of mine where I touched on this question from a different angle:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2d9/open_thread_june_2010_part_4/26dm
On further reflection, this post highlights an important omission in TDT (aka the categorical imperative): how do you judge the similarity of other agents to you? If each of your actions establishes a universal law, exactly how wide and universal does it become? You may think of yourself as optimizing your little corner of the world, because you feel uncomfortable around some people; or you may think of yourself bringing about a brave new world where the accursed papists must starve because nobody hires them; or maybe a not-so-brave new world where people are routinely denied jobs for ideological reasons. Right now I see no rational arguments to choose between these different perspectives.
This is one of the central open problems in our branch of decision theory. TDT is actually even weaker: it allows to express acausal dependencies, but figuring out what acausally depends on what is not part of it. Thus, in Newcomb's problem, TDT doesn't really insist on constructing the correct causal graph with platonic agent in control, even though it informally lays out guidelines that suggest that particular graph to be a good idea (for example, two identical computations are not independent, hence causal decision theorist's graph is in error).
I suspect that ADT's take on things allows inferring dependencies between "similar" agents, just as it allows inferring acausal dependencies in Newcomb variants, but I don't understand this question, and maybe ADT needs modification to account for that. For example, there could be irreducible in practice logical uncertainty about the outcome, which happens to be the main factor in bargaining power or in the extent to which one should consider other slightly different agents controllable by your decisions.
I was inspired to write this post after conversing with a real candidate for a real job.
I realize the analogy doesn't perfectly map. Having rare crazy beliefs is a bigger red flag than having common crazy beliefs. But that doesn't eliminate discrimination entirely. Given two comparable candidates, one religious and one an atheist, I'd favor the atheist.
I realize the analogy doesn't perfectly map. Having rare crazy beliefs is a bigger red flag than having common crazy beliefs.
Also, a religion has features that greatly appeal to people in a way country club membership does not and these features may lead people to become or remain members despite disagreeing with the religion's social policy. Plus, though I don't particularly like defending the Catholic church, they don't refuse membership to homosexuals or revoke the membership of couples who use birth control.
Jack:
Plus, though I don't particularly like defending the Catholic church, they don't refuse membership to homosexuals or revoke the membership of couples who use birth control.
Even the claim that "[l]eadership positions are reserved to unmarried males" isn't entirely correct, if ordinary priesthood is counted as a "leadership position." Latin Rite Catholic priests indeed have to be celibate, but there are other Catholic rites that permit married men to become priests, and married priests of other Christian denominations who convert to Catholicism can be accepted without having to renounce either their priesthood or marriage (see here) for more detail). On the other hand, even in Eastern Catholic churches, bishops have to be celibate (just like among the Eastern Orthodox). An interesting question is what would happen if a married Anglican bishop converted to Catholicism; I don't think this has ever happened, but it seems like it will soon.
I tried to make the country club a version of the Catholic church that was nicer in every way. Instead of claiming you will be tortured forever if you do those things (and don't go to confession), the country club asks you to leave.
Claiming you might get tortured forever while not doing anything materially to make sure this actually happens doesn't seem as harsh to me as asking someone to leave a club.
I mean unless one resorts to magical thinking.
Instead of claiming you will be tortured forever if you do those things (and don't go to confession), the country club asks you to leave.
Well, but the Catholic church doesn't implement the torture, it just tells you about it. The telling-about-it is itself a form of forceful persuasion in the right contexts (i.e. to young children), but in general it's still roughly comparable to being denied access to the country club.
AngryParsley:
Having rare crazy beliefs is a bigger red flag than having common crazy beliefs.
Which should lead you to ask yourself the following. You recognize certain widely held religious beliefs as false. However, this is happening in a situation where there exists a large number of people who don't share these beliefs, some of them reputable, high-status, and publicly prominent, and you are aware of their existence and exposed to various arguments they set forth against these beliefs. But could it be that there are some equally false beliefs -- perhaps even equally "crazy" by whatever criteria you use to differentiate "craziness" from mere falsity -- that you don't recognize as such, and you might be sharing yourself? In particular, are there some such beliefs that are, unlike traditional religious beliefs, universally shared by respectable people in your society, to the point where it's unwise to be on record as questioning them?
Furthermore, your post indicates that you have some criteria that you use to assign blame for the misdeeds of members and leaders of an institution to the institution itself, and by extension to those who support it and profess allegiance to it. Now, you haven't spelled out these criteria, so I can only speculate on what exactly they are, but I'd still like to ask: are you sure that you would come off as innocent if similar criteria for the assignment of blame were applied to all the institutions to which you extend your support and allegiance?
I don't think I can give very good answers to your questions. I'm much better at morality discussion closer to the object-level.
But could it be that there are some equally false beliefs -- perhaps even equally "crazy" by whatever criteria you use to differentiate "craziness" from mere falsity -- that you don't recognize as such, and you might be sharing yourself?
Sure, but I wish to have correct beliefs.
In particular, are there some such beliefs that are, unlike traditional religious beliefs, universally shared by respectable people in your society, to the point where it's unwise to be on record as questioning them?
There are lots of things I don't say, especially during job interviews.
are you sure that you would come off as innocent if similar criteria for the assignment of blame were applied to all the institutions to which you extend your support and allegiance?
Actually, yes. I'm pretty sure I am not a supporter or voluntary member of any organization that causes as much harm as the Catholic church.
AngryParsley:
Sure, but I wish to have correct beliefs.
So does everyone, at some level. But in my experience, whenever I felt superior over people because I didn't share some of their beliefs that seemed crazy to me, after several years I'd usually feel embarrassed on recollection, considering how much even stupider stuff I believed myself at the same time. From what I've observed, once you've assessed someone's character and abilities relevant to the business at hand, making conclusions based on their general religious and ideological beliefs is a fool's game, unless perhaps it's something that just screams weirdness.
I'm pretty sure I am not a supporter or voluntary member of any organization that causes as much harm as the Catholic church.
Well, that depends not just on factual questions, but also on normative questions of how exactly harm should be quantified. But still, I'd point out that the same principle applies here. You're talking about an institution that faces strong opposition by many prominent high-status people, and you've clearly been exposed to their convincingly argued accusations against it. However, are you really sure that all the institutions that command much more unanimous respect and allegiance by respectable people, and are attacked only by various disreputable fringe individuals, could not be blamed equally convincingly by a truly neutral observer?
But in my experience, whenever I felt superior over people because I didn't share some of their beliefs that seemed crazy to me, after several years I'd usually feel embarrassed on recollection, considering how much even stupider stuff I believed myself at the same time.
Same here; I get embarassed at how that moronic pretentious former-me kept feeling superior to others.
I'm pretty sure I am not a supporter or voluntary member of any organization that causes as much harm as the Catholic church.
Are you an American citizen?
One can give up citizenship and emigrate. The barrier to exit is higher but it is still at some level voluntary (although it might be that there's some point where the term voluntary shouldn't be applied and this may be above that level. I'm not sure.). Also, note that if instead of measuring harm one measures harm against good dealt, the US government might come out better than the Catholic church by some measures of harm and good.
Interesting, and semi related - as of 2009 Nazis are recognized group which can suffer from hate crimes in Toronto. So don't yell at Adolf for wearing Swastika; you'll be violating his human rights (as interpreted by the Human Rights tribunal). Citation: http://www.mytowncrier.ca/story-15821-1-1.html
Freedom of Religion - which primarily supports minority groups such as us Atheists - originally meant that the government couldn't force you to adopt different beliefs, and that believing in X was not valid grounds for assault. It never meant that you had to hire people regardless of their beliefs.
Descrimination can be morally disturbing at times, but not all immoral behaviour necessarily needs to be legislated.
I think you do have a right to discriminate based on religion, however you must recall that this is a two way street. If you have this right expect atheists to be discriminated against as well.
I recommend you fight the right to discriminate based on religion based on selfish considerations since most of the worlds employers are religious and Atheists are for example one of the most most disliked "religious" groups in the US.
Also my own position is that all forms of hiring discrimination by private enterprise should be allowed since the market should self correct if the standards by which they discriminate are unfair. It also gives a neat symmetry that Robin Hanson commented is lacking (discriminating against potential employers).
Also my own position is that all forms of hiring discrimination by private enterprise should be allowed since the market should self correct if the standards by which they discriminate are unfair.
Suppose it doesn't; that is, it turns out that on the long term arbitrarily excluding a certain minority of the populace from consideration isn't normally a big enough inefficiency to cause significant competitive disadvantage to prejudiced employers. Would that be enough to make you wish for some form of anti-discrimination measure?
(As a follow-up consideration - gur fgngrzrag vf dhvgr boivbhfyl gehr tvira n fhssvpvragyl fznyy zvabevgl.)
I would be in favor of anti-discrimination measures for relativley large groups for which it can be proven that the basis on which they are discriminated against is unfair or untrue.
Its seems plausible to me that both conditions are to a large extent met for most of the groups that are currently protected in this fashion for a certain value of antidiscrim_policy. However I have severe reservations with the current implementation of antidiscrimination policies.
Overall the exact border where "doing something" seems worth while is hard to quantify for me because I would need to compare it to the anti-discrimination measure proposed to see if it was cost effective. But my instinct tends to tell me that such a small inefficency as to be unfixable by market incentives is going to be hard to fix in a cost effective manner by goverment intervention.
I'm fine with others discriminating against religious people (or non-religious people).
Personally, I don't feel a big desire to avoid association with religious folks, so I don't discriminate. I don't have any seriously religious friends, but I suspect that has more to do with selection effects than characteristics caused by their religious beliefs.
Downvoted. This hypothetical situation might have been an good discussion about what evidence of irrational beliefs and behavior such a club-membership implies, and to what degree such traits would make the candidate ill-suited to be your corporate minion (i.e. how to rationally make use of such a person). However, the scenario is too bare-bones and open-ended to be interesting as it stands; top-level posts should not rely on comments for elaboration to the point of usefulness. Worse, this post is asking us for our opinions on a political topic (discrimination legislation) and taking potshots at the Catholic Church, thus setting the discussion up for a mindset which is unlikely to be healthy and productive.
top-level posts should not rely on comments for elaboration to the point of usefulness
We are in the discussion section, more or less an improved open thread. This is allowed.
However, we know something about politics.
If it's OK for the religious to discriminate against people, it ought also to be OK for people to discriminate against the religious.
Let's say you are interviewing a candidate for a job. In casual conversation, the candidate mentions that he is a member of a rather old and prestigious country club. You've never heard the name of the club before.
You look up the country club afterwards, and are surprised by what you read. The club refuses membership to homosexuals. It revokes the membership of couples who use birth control. Leadership positions are reserved to unmarried males.
The candidate is otherwise competent. Under what conditions would you hire him? Would you want a law passed banning hiring discrimination based on country club membership?
(The country club is analogous to a nicer version of the Catholic church. I left out a couple bad things.)
Religious discrimination is illegal in many parts of the world, and I think that's probably a good thing. Still, keeping this at the object level (no meta-rules or veils of ignorance) it seems to me that discriminating against religious people is fine. I'm curious what other people think.