My model of the LW team is that they would disagree with a lot of your cons prior to seeing your views, and seeing your views (without knowing the reasoning behind them) wouldn’t cause them to make a large update in your direction.
To a first approximation, nothing that anyone ever says to anyone, on any topic on which the target already has any sort of opinion, causes them to make a large update in the speaker’s direction. All we can hope for is small updates (assuming we do not discard the “update” model altogether—which I rather think it’s time we did; but that is a separate discussion).
Why not? You mentioned “most of the folks involved aren’t bad people” but if they are actually doing bad things surely it doesn’t make sense to let them keep doing those things just to spare their feelings?
If others, who are closer to the matter, have already spoken, and more specifically, more critically, and more plainly, then what hope do I have of stopping anyone from doing any bad things? My intent is to do what I can to nudge Less Wrong toward the direction in which I think it should go. That is all. I have no greater ambitions for this discussion.
To a first approximation, nothing that anyone ever says to anyone, on any topic on which the target already has any sort of opinion, causes them to make a large update in the speaker’s direction. All we can hope for is small updates (assuming we do not discard the “update” model altogether—which I rather think it’s time we did; but that is a separate discussion).
If others, who are closer to the matter, have already spoken, and more specifically, more critically, and more plainly, then what hope do I have of stopping anyone from doing any bad things? My intent is to do what I can to nudge Less Wrong toward the direction in which I think it should go. That is all. I have no greater ambitions for this discussion.