Decoupling

{{LessWrong}}

Cognitive '''decoupling''' is not what happens when your polycule breaks up (that would be {{wpl|Conscious uncoupling}}). It is [[LessWrong]] rationalist jargon for considering whether a proposition is true or false separately from the ethics of acting on that proposition. The terms high-decoupling and low-decoupling seem to go back to 1998 academic paper by Keith Stanovich and Richard West but entered the rationalist community via a 2014 blog post by Sarah Constantin<ref>Sarah Constantin, [https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/do-rationalists-exist/ Do Rational People Exist?] ''Otium'', June 9, 2014  archived https://archive.ph/HPGNL</ref> and a 2018 blog post by John Nerst.<ref>John Nast, [https://everythingstudies.com/2018/04/26/a-deep-dive-into-the-harris-klein-controversy/ A Deep Dive into the Harris-Klein Controversy,] ''Everything Studies'', April 28, 2018  archived https://archive.ph/30Jg3</ref> Nerst's topic was a debate between [[E._O._Wilson#Sam_Harris_vs._Ezra_Klein|Sam Harris and Ezra Klein]]. (Klein is a co-founder of ''[[Vox (website)|Vox]]'' and came to work for the ''New York Times'', [[Sam Harris|Harris]] trained as a neuroscientist but is best known for arguing for secularism and against Islam). Rationalists tend to admire high decouplers.<ref>Sarah Constantin, [https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/do-rationalists-exist/ Do Rational People Exist?] ''Otium'', June 9, 2014 {{quotebox|Speculatively, we might imagine that there is a “cognitive decoupling elite” of smart people who are good at probabilistic reasoning and score high on the cognitive reflection test and the IQ-correlated cognitive bias tests. These people would be more likely to be male, more likely to have at least undergrad-level math education, and more likely to have utilitarian views.  Speculating a bit more, I’d expect this group to be likelier to think in rule-based, devil’s-advocate ways, influenced by economics and analytic philosophy.  I’d expect them to be more likely to identify as rational.}}</ref>

Obviously the [[appeal to consequences]] is an (informal) fallacy, and good scientists and technicians are high decouplers in their area of work. Its frustrating to watch a debate which bounces around from topic to topic without focusing on and resolving one question at a time (either "is X true?" or "if X were true, what should we do about it?"). But [[Scott Alexander]] himself pointed out some problems with decoupling in an essay on epistemic learned helplessness.<ref>Scott Alexander, [https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learned-helplessness/ Repost: Epistemic Learned Helplessness], Slate Star Codex, June 3, 2019</ref> You can't be an expert on everything, and there are lots of topics where you have no way to verify what a smooth talker is saying. If you don't rely on expert consensus for things outside your education and experience, and ask yourself questions like "why are they raising this topic?" you will be taken advantage of by one swindler after another or be pulled into [[crank magnetism]]. Someone who approaches you with an investment opportunity usually wants your money (even indirectly, as when other people buying GameStock stock raises the value of the first person's holdings of stock). Someone telling you good things about [[Amway]] is probably not doing so out of pure passion for the truth. Debates about [[Biological determinism|differences between the sexes or races]] in the United States are almost always cover for arguments about whether Black people and women are hard-done by and need help and protection. They are almost never pure academic debates that nobody involved would dream of acting upon. A person without time and technical knowledge would be very reasonable to say "this study of [[IQ]] in Botswana seems fishy" and reject it, just like they might [[Elevatorgate|refuse a date's invitation somewhere private]] without being able to prove that their date was criminal or insane. Internet race crank [[Steve Sailer]] commented on the original essay by Nerst.

Before raising topics like this, its important to demonstrate good faith and give your interlocutor reasons to trust you. And it is the interlocutor not some neutral third party who decides if that is enough. Far too many LessWrongers present human worth and ability as hierarchies, fret that technology may have made low-IQ people into [[Useless eaters|useless eaters]], complain about restrictions on biomedical research, then wonder why outsiders think their questions about [[Race and intelligence|race and IQ]] or [[eugenics]] might have an agenda.<ref>[[Scott_Alexander#Race_and_IQ|Scott Alexander]] is an easy example, but many other people in the community have spoken for one or two of the ideas on this list</ref>

Ezra Klein and Sam Harris both have successful careers writing and speaking to large audiences to try to change culture and policy. If Harris had wanted a purely theoretical discussion with a trained statistician or social scientist, he should have tried an academic conference.

In practice, LessWrongers often beg people to open-mindedly consider eugenics, [[bitcoin]], or [[Singularity|AI foom]], but not [[socialism]] or the possibility that [[climate change]] could be worse and less predictable than in the IPCC reports (a collapse of the gulf stream, for example, would cause temperatures in the UK to drop while world temperatures rose, and preparing for steady mild temperature increases could make things worse). [[Marxists]] and [[Communists]] ask people to consider these ideas in the abstract and separate from the horrors of actually existing communism in the USSR, China, Cuba, and Vietnam. Many people want you to consider their unusual ideas with an open mind, but don't extend that charity to your unusual ideas.

== See Also ==

* [[Big Bang]]: Cosmologists talk about '''thermal decoupling''' (when two parts of a system cease to be in thermal equilibrium). LessWrongers often adapt terms from math and science.
* [[James Damore]]: while Damore never denied that he wrote his paper about sexism in software development to change Google's policies, response to his essay hinged on the question whether a [[WEIRD|wealthy young white man with a US passport]] could really understand gender, race, and class relations in the United States by reading a lot of academic research in his spare time.
* [[Degrowth]]: people who want economic growth to continue often imagine '''carbon decoupling''', where growth in GDP ceases to be linked to growth in greenhouse gas emissions.

==References==
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