I don’t agree with the “it’s hard, so we should give up” approach to discussing controversial subjects on LessWrong. Controversial, mind-killing subjects are exactly where rationalist scrutiny is most needed.
Here’s a potential conflict in our views of LW’s purpose. I think of it as being about discussing rationality, and things that touch directly on rationality and being rational. In that case discussing controversial, mind-killing subjects is only relevant inasmuch as they cast light on rationality—they’re not inherently interesting.
I’ve posted here before about race/IQ and global warming, and for both of those I’ve felt as if I was covering territory that’s basically offtopic. This didn’t stop me from posting about them, or make me feel bad about it, but I did feel that if I had picked arguments about those topics just because I could, that wouldn’t have suited LW’s purpose. I would avoid writing a top-level post about subjects like that unless I thought it was a good way to make a compelling, more general point about rationality—otherwise I’d likely just be axe-grinding.
To me, it seems obvious that there a lot of links between pickup and rationality (both positive and negative). It’s occurred to me that perhaps I’ve been over-estimating the obviousness of those links to others who don’t have the same background in the subject matter, so I’ve tried to sketch out a bunch of them in my reply to RobinZ.
Here’s a potential conflict in our views of LW’s purpose. I think of it as being about discussing rationality, and things that touch directly on rationality and being rational. In that case discussing controversial, mind-killing subjects is only relevant inasmuch as they cast light on rationality—they’re not inherently interesting.
I’ve posted here before about race/IQ and global warming, and for both of those I’ve felt as if I was covering territory that’s basically offtopic. This didn’t stop me from posting about them, or make me feel bad about it, but I did feel that if I had picked arguments about those topics just because I could, that wouldn’t have suited LW’s purpose. I would avoid writing a top-level post about subjects like that unless I thought it was a good way to make a compelling, more general point about rationality—otherwise I’d likely just be axe-grinding.
To me, it seems obvious that there a lot of links between pickup and rationality (both positive and negative). It’s occurred to me that perhaps I’ve been over-estimating the obviousness of those links to others who don’t have the same background in the subject matter, so I’ve tried to sketch out a bunch of them in my reply to RobinZ.