My guess is that it’s not that people are downvoting because they think you made a political statement which they oppose and they are mind-killed by it. Rather they think you made a political joke which has the potential to mind-kill others, and they would prefer you didn’t.
That’s why I downvoted, at least. The topic you mentioned doesn’t arouse strong passions in me at all, and probably doesn’t arouse strong passions in the average LW reader that much, but it does arouse strong passions in quite a large number of people, and when those people are here, I’d prefer such passions weren’t aroused.
Aha, thanks. That makes some sense! I generally don’t expect people to get mind-killed by (what seem like) obvious jokes, but I guess now you mention it, I should probably entertain that as possible (but maybe not on LW?)
Well, the joke does give a fair bit of information about both your politics and how widespread you think they are on LW. It might be very reasonable for someone to update their beliefs about LW politics based on seeing it. Then to what extent their conclusion mind-kills them is somewhat independent of the joke.
(I agree it’s a fairly trivial case, mostly discussing it out of interest in how our norms should work.)
Yeah, interesting. FWIW I’ve never voted in the US (I’m British), and I’ve observed and discussed politics (broadly construed) being mind-killing. I weakly assess LW consensus to be ‘obviously major candidates are all terrible’. Of course internet people don’t know these facts unless they bother to check, which is an unreasonably high bar! But I do expect LW readers to understand mind-killing, and consider it common knowledge.
Trying to learn from this thread. With the OP invoking recent US presidents as a topic of in-context flippancy and humour, it didn’t even cross my mind that the joke wouldn’t come across as being entirely about the ability of deepfakes to influence people’s opinions (I could have punctuated it with any number of flippant fake observations, and it didn’t seem important). Then the only real explanation for downvotes was mind-killed responses, but you’ve helped me realise this all wasn’t obvious, and in hindsight I should have predicted that—thanks.
Incidentally, this reminds me of the (folk?) claim about normativity along the lines of, ‘most people don’t believe the news, while believing most other people do believe the news’. Normally I think it’s part of the mind-killing process that people much too frequently respond to things on the basis of some imagined third-party response. But regarding the question of ‘is this political-flavoured sentence potentially mind-killingly potent’ I can see why it’d be worth adopting a precautionary principle. (But then why is not the OP punished? After all, it’s literally a politically-flavoured infohazard in multiple ways which I won’t spell out. I happen to think it’s an on-balance good one, but I also happen to think my throwaway remark was an on-balance good and harmless one.)
My guess is that it’s not that people are downvoting because they think you made a political statement which they oppose and they are mind-killed by it. Rather they think you made a political joke which has the potential to mind-kill others, and they would prefer you didn’t.
That’s why I downvoted, at least. The topic you mentioned doesn’t arouse strong passions in me at all, and probably doesn’t arouse strong passions in the average LW reader that much, but it does arouse strong passions in quite a large number of people, and when those people are here, I’d prefer such passions weren’t aroused.
Aha, thanks. That makes some sense! I generally don’t expect people to get mind-killed by (what seem like) obvious jokes, but I guess now you mention it, I should probably entertain that as possible (but maybe not on LW?)
Well, the joke does give a fair bit of information about both your politics and how widespread you think they are on LW. It might be very reasonable for someone to update their beliefs about LW politics based on seeing it. Then to what extent their conclusion mind-kills them is somewhat independent of the joke.
(I agree it’s a fairly trivial case, mostly discussing it out of interest in how our norms should work.)
Yeah, interesting. FWIW I’ve never voted in the US (I’m British), and I’ve observed and discussed politics (broadly construed) being mind-killing. I weakly assess LW consensus to be ‘obviously major candidates are all terrible’. Of course internet people don’t know these facts unless they bother to check, which is an unreasonably high bar! But I do expect LW readers to understand mind-killing, and consider it common knowledge.
Trying to learn from this thread. With the OP invoking recent US presidents as a topic of in-context flippancy and humour, it didn’t even cross my mind that the joke wouldn’t come across as being entirely about the ability of deepfakes to influence people’s opinions (I could have punctuated it with any number of flippant fake observations, and it didn’t seem important). Then the only real explanation for downvotes was mind-killed responses, but you’ve helped me realise this all wasn’t obvious, and in hindsight I should have predicted that—thanks.
Incidentally, this reminds me of the (folk?) claim about normativity along the lines of, ‘most people don’t believe the news, while believing most other people do believe the news’. Normally I think it’s part of the mind-killing process that people much too frequently respond to things on the basis of some imagined third-party response. But regarding the question of ‘is this political-flavoured sentence potentially mind-killingly potent’ I can see why it’d be worth adopting a precautionary principle. (But then why is not the OP punished? After all, it’s literally a politically-flavoured infohazard in multiple ways which I won’t spell out. I happen to think it’s an on-balance good one, but I also happen to think my throwaway remark was an on-balance good and harmless one.)
Mind-killed?
A Yudphemism: Politics is the Mind-Killer.