Mod note: I’ve moved this back to personal blog. Another mod had frontpaged it.
Whether posts like this should be on personal blog is a subject of debate on the LessWrong team right now. Our last published post says we tend to put “highly divisive topics” on personal blog, and our tooltip still says “avoid political topics” which IMO this post clearly qualifies as.
My understanding Habryka and Ruby have lately shifted their conception of what they want frontpage to mean, which is to focus on timelessness rather than “is it political”. (I think Habryka says this is what he always intended, and it was a bit of a weird game-of-telephone that resulted in the current language). I personally think there is something good/pure about having the rule be about timelessness rather than politics, but I personally think in practice the “avoid politics” rule is just too important as a special case.
Sorry for that being a bit of a confusing message, but seemed good to communicate the true fact that the moderators are a bit internally divided and/or confused about posts like this.
Is the request to avoid political topics universal? As in, this shouldn’t have been on my personal blog either? Or is this just if the author wants their piece to be considered for frontpage?
Is there a respectful way to share analyses of, or ask for analyses of, world-modeling that does in fact cross over into political topics?
It’s definitely fine to post something like this on personal blog. (and, note that currently I’m in the minority opinion on the mod team that this should remain a rule. Oli and Ruby both currently lean “we should allow political topics on frontpage as long as they’re timeless.” Though I think Oli commented that this particular post didn’t feel very timeless so still wouldn’t have frontpaged it.)
I argued that we haven’t actually changed or frontpage guidelines so if we want to switch to primarily rely on timeless rather than “otherwise politicized/conflict-y”, we should wait till we’ve actually made an announcement about that.
From the “timeless” perspective, the question of “how to make it frontpage worthy” would be “explain why this question is still going to be relevant in a decade, when the current media trends have moved on.” From a political/conflict perspective, the question would be to put in some extra effort to focus the readers’ attention/frame outside of the conflict.
I think this was a reasonable question to ask, I think my own preference is “just leave this sort of thing on personal blog.” The people that I’d actually want to comment on this sort of post, if I were making it, would be people who’ve internalized a bunch of our how-to-do-politics norms. Looking at the comments here, I do indeed feel like many of them are failing to see the frame-that-they’re-swimming in, and making the discussion worse, which is a predictable result of it newcomers seeing it on frontpage.
Mod note: I’ve moved this back to personal blog. Another mod had frontpaged it.
Whether posts like this should be on personal blog is a subject of debate on the LessWrong team right now. Our last published post says we tend to put “highly divisive topics” on personal blog, and our tooltip still says “avoid political topics” which IMO this post clearly qualifies as.
My understanding Habryka and Ruby have lately shifted their conception of what they want frontpage to mean, which is to focus on timelessness rather than “is it political”. (I think Habryka says this is what he always intended, and it was a bit of a weird game-of-telephone that resulted in the current language). I personally think there is something good/pure about having the rule be about timelessness rather than politics, but I personally think in practice the “avoid politics” rule is just too important as a special case.
Sorry for that being a bit of a confusing message, but seemed good to communicate the true fact that the moderators are a bit internally divided and/or confused about posts like this.
Thanks Raemon. Two questions for admins on this:
Is the request to avoid political topics universal? As in, this shouldn’t have been on my personal blog either? Or is this just if the author wants their piece to be considered for frontpage?
Is there a respectful way to share analyses of, or ask for analyses of, world-modeling that does in fact cross over into political topics?
It’s definitely fine to post something like this on personal blog. (and, note that currently I’m in the minority opinion on the mod team that this should remain a rule. Oli and Ruby both currently lean “we should allow political topics on frontpage as long as they’re timeless.” Though I think Oli commented that this particular post didn’t feel very timeless so still wouldn’t have frontpaged it.)
I argued that we haven’t actually changed or frontpage guidelines so if we want to switch to primarily rely on timeless rather than “otherwise politicized/conflict-y”, we should wait till we’ve actually made an announcement about that.
From the “timeless” perspective, the question of “how to make it frontpage worthy” would be “explain why this question is still going to be relevant in a decade, when the current media trends have moved on.” From a political/conflict perspective, the question would be to put in some extra effort to focus the readers’ attention/frame outside of the conflict.
I think this was a reasonable question to ask, I think my own preference is “just leave this sort of thing on personal blog.” The people that I’d actually want to comment on this sort of post, if I were making it, would be people who’ve internalized a bunch of our how-to-do-politics norms. Looking at the comments here, I do indeed feel like many of them are failing to see the frame-that-they’re-swimming in, and making the discussion worse, which is a predictable result of it newcomers seeing it on frontpage.
Perfectly clear, including your caveats about moderator conversations being ongoing in the background. Thank you!