Was this downvoted because of the topic, or because of my thoughts on it? If the latter, perhaps I should have just posted the discussion topic on its own, because it is something I’d like to have/see a real discussion about.
You mix two topics. The political topic of moving from oil based transport to electric and the general topic of greed.
There no good reason to mix those because “Politics is the mindkiller”.
If you want to talk about greed it would make more sense to look for someone who publically speaks in favor of greed. Ayn Rand’s objectivists would be an example. Find the steelman to know what you are arguing against.
If you want to talk about the economics of electrics cars, then it makes sense to not only read people in favor of electric cars and in general try to understand the moves of various stakeholders. The article you linked is near conspiracy theory.
The idea that all other car companies were hostile towards Tesla is without basis. Tesla wouldn’t have survived if Mercedes Benz wouldn’t have helped Tesla in 2008.
When you want to talk about politics opening a discussion at http://www.omnilibrium.com/ (seeded with LW people) might also be preferable to opening it on LW.
It just hit me that I may have misinterpreted “Politics is the mindkiller”. What I got from it is that “politics are often a mindkiller, but they don’t have to be”. Maybe that’s wrong. Maybe there’s something sort of inherent about politics that make them too difficult to think rationally about.
I’m skeptical that that’s true though. But it just hit me how anti-politics LW is, and this community seems pretty smart, so I’m sure there are things about that that I don’t understand. So forgive me if this is a stupid question… but why the avoidance of politics?
You mix two topics.
I didn’t mean to. I was using the political topic as an example of greed. I didn’t mean for it to be a focus of the post.
I didn’t mean to. I was using the political topic as an example of greed. I didn’t mean for it to be a focus of the post.
The article Politics is the Mindkiller says that if you can choose between a political topic as example and a less political topic, don’t pick the political topic.
It doesn’t say: “Never discuss a political topic.” If you actually want to talk about a political topic then, talk about it.
The important thing is to avoid talking about political topics when they are not the main thing you want to talk about.
Choosing a political topic makes it much harder to reason clearly and much easier to fall into the “my opponents are evil/stupid/irrational”-trap.
In this case it looks like you have fallen into that trap. You seem to have invested no effort into steelmanning. Even if it would be possible to avoid falling in that trap, your post looks like you have fallen into it and is therefore likely to be downvoted.
Was this downvoted because of the topic, or because of my thoughts on it? If the latter, perhaps I should have just posted the discussion topic on its own, because it is something I’d like to have/see a real discussion about.
You mix two topics. The political topic of moving from oil based transport to electric and the general topic of greed.
There no good reason to mix those because “Politics is the mindkiller”. If you want to talk about greed it would make more sense to look for someone who publically speaks in favor of greed. Ayn Rand’s objectivists would be an example. Find the steelman to know what you are arguing against.
If you want to talk about the economics of electrics cars, then it makes sense to not only read people in favor of electric cars and in general try to understand the moves of various stakeholders. The article you linked is near conspiracy theory. The idea that all other car companies were hostile towards Tesla is without basis. Tesla wouldn’t have survived if Mercedes Benz wouldn’t have helped Tesla in 2008.
When you want to talk about politics opening a discussion at http://www.omnilibrium.com/ (seeded with LW people) might also be preferable to opening it on LW.
I won’t use a site that refuses to put dates on posts.
This got fixed in the meantime.
Successful integration of feedback :)
It just hit me that I may have misinterpreted “Politics is the mindkiller”. What I got from it is that “politics are often a mindkiller, but they don’t have to be”. Maybe that’s wrong. Maybe there’s something sort of inherent about politics that make them too difficult to think rationally about.
I’m skeptical that that’s true though. But it just hit me how anti-politics LW is, and this community seems pretty smart, so I’m sure there are things about that that I don’t understand. So forgive me if this is a stupid question… but why the avoidance of politics?
I didn’t mean to. I was using the political topic as an example of greed. I didn’t mean for it to be a focus of the post.
The article Politics is the Mindkiller says that if you can choose between a political topic as example and a less political topic, don’t pick the political topic.
It doesn’t say: “Never discuss a political topic.” If you actually want to talk about a political topic then, talk about it. The important thing is to avoid talking about political topics when they are not the main thing you want to talk about.
Choosing a political topic makes it much harder to reason clearly and much easier to fall into the “my opponents are evil/stupid/irrational”-trap. In this case it looks like you have fallen into that trap. You seem to have invested no effort into steelmanning. Even if it would be possible to avoid falling in that trap, your post looks like you have fallen into it and is therefore likely to be downvoted.