I’ve mentioned before that both sides of this conflict see a clear precedent of unconstitutional action by their opponents that would destroy everything they care about if left unchecked. All of the processes described by OP would be taken as a coup by the side targeted by them.
I’ve recently noticed a recent surge in very partisan posts on LessWrong, generally similar in tone and content to this one, in which one side’s perspective is presented as unassailable fact and the other’s is not mentioned. This is dangerous, both in the sense that we have seen many communities elsewhere[1] lose the things that made them unique after being taken over by partisan political content, and in the very literal sense that American politics is at a breaking point right now, and encouraging unwise action could have very real consequences for very large numbers of people. “The military should renounce the elected president and fight against the government” is not something to say lightly, and, regardless of who won the resulting conflict, life would be perilous and uncomfortable for everyone living in America for several decades thereafter.
I realize this probably isn’t in line with the sentiments of most of the comments section on this post, but I would ask that you consider an extension of Chesterton’s Fence: “Do not, directly or indirectly, declare a large group of people to be your enemy until you can explain, from their perspective, why they are doing what they are doing.”
I was really trying to write this post largely from a “what would be the options for the judicial branch” in a generic way where it would apply to many presidencies, and trying to keep specific partisan judgements out of it.
To be clear, I do think pretty scary things are happening with U.S. democracy right now, and my motivation and attention is driven by what makes sense to do about a Trump presidency, but I still think it’s usually best to keep things focused on more general principles that could apply to many situations.
“The military should renounce the elected president and fight against the government” is not something to say lightly, and, regardless of who won the resulting conflict, life would be perilous and uncomfortable for everyone living in America for several decades thereafter.
Totally! And just for the sake of clarity, I absolutely do not think the current military should renounce the elected president and fight against the executive branch (you used the word “government” but to be clear, the supreme court and the states are also the government!). I do think what the actual military is supposed to do from a constitutionalist perspective when different parts of the government disagree and give conflicting orders is quite important and a pretty tricky question that I didn’t know the answer to before I researched and wrote this (and still have a lot of uncertainty on).
you used the word “government” but to be clear, the supreme court and the states are also the government!
In British English, “the government” means the executive branch, and the entire thing (including the judiciary and the legislature) is called the state.
And while I have your attention allow me to echo the person you are replying to, namely, it would be ideal if a reader could not even tell from your comments which party you prefer (since you run the site) and great grandparent is pretty strong evidence for which one.
Why… would that be ideal? I certainly do not consider my opinions on policy and politics to be forbidden on this site? The topic of politics itself should be approached with care, but certainly it would be if anything a pretty bad violation of what I would consider good conduct if people systematically kept their opinions on politics and policy hidden. Those things matter!
My worry is one or two people loyal to the red team leave the site, which makes people on the blue team feel more free to use the site to criticize the red team, causing more red teamers to leave (and attracting blue-team zealots who filter everything through an ideological lens) in a positive feedback loop ending in a site with the same problem as Bluesky already has and many subreddits already have, namely, the zealots produce large quantities of low-quality writing, which drowns out the high-quality contributions and discourages many who can make high-quality contributions from even starting to contribute.
ADDED. Since LW is currently very far from Bluesky, perhaps it would’ve been more persuasive for me to argue that if LW were to start to have even half as many low-effort political comments as Hacker News, many would probably stop reading LW, or at least that is my worry.
Yeah, definitely agree. I just think the standard of “admins should comment in a way that makes it impossible to tell what their political opinions are” is not the best tool to achieve this. I think it’s better for people to be open about their views, and also try really hard to be principled and fair.
please don’t even imply that it is natural for a LW reader to prefer one of the US political parties over the other.
On what grounds? There’s always been a norm on LW of treating some highly controversial questions as basically settled. Good-faith disagreement will still be heard and engaged with, but it’s normal to, for example, take atheism for granted. The same goes for values-based disagreements; it’s taken for granted that some versions of the future are obviously preferable to others. So if one US political party is, factually, working against the values of most LW readers much harder than the other one, why is it off-limits to make comments discussing the implications of that?
Yes, I’ve read it, and it doesn’t say what you seem to be implying it says.
If you want to make a point about science, or rationality, then my advice is to not choose a domain from contemporary politics if you can possibly avoid it.
[my emphasis, here and below]
I’m not saying that I think we should be apolitical, or even that we should adopt Wikipedia’s ideal of the Neutral Point of View. But try to resist getting in those good, solid digs if you can possibly avoid it.
Eliezer’s main point was that we should avoid unnecessary politics, especially cheap political digs that may please some readers but risk needlessly alienating others. Here, the thing being discussed is inherently political and inseparable from the partisan divide.
I do want to avoid gaslighting people. LessWrong and LessWrong 2.0 under my management has discouraged U.S. politics content for many years. We stopped around 4-5 years ago, as politics started being more relevant to many people’s goals on the site, though we still don’t allow it on the LW frontpage unless it tries pretty hard to keep things timeless and non-partisan.
Politics is the Mind-Killer: still applies; protects this forum from redditification and encourages us to avoid pointlessly alienating people/making enemies of each other.
US politics posting allowed/discouraged/banned: I’m not too fussed about where you set this dial. But if political discussion is going to happen here, I think it would be bad if you/we got pressured into bothsidesism (which could happen if PitMK is misrepresented as a prohibition on openly taking partisan-coded positions).
I greatly appreciate the context you provided in the linked comment, and in general the attempt to explain why an underrepresented side views their choices as reasonable or necessary. I want to do what I can to support you continuing to bring up counterpoints and things people are missing.
This particular post reads to me as president-neutral, in that you could post it on a conservative-leaning forum under a democratic president and it would look equally in tune with local culture. Maybe I’m wrong about that, it’s easy to read things that match one’s own worldview as neutral, in which case I’m asking for specifics on what makes this not neutral.
One guess, based on your other comment, is that Habryka takes the legitimacy of the court for granted, in which case I’d like to dig into more detail on that.
I think it is very easy to read into a post like this and essentially fall into the very behavior you’re ascribing to the author. Regardless of the OP’s view, the post is not naming names but is very topical. It’s worth considering.
But I do agree that whoever is getting told their actions are unconstitutional will typically see that as an attack if they truly believe they are doing something within their powers. But I also suspect any that refuse to accept a Supreme Court ruling never cared about the Constitution or the checks and balances that were implemented in the Constitution. It’s simply a case of someone refusing to accept they are not a good judge of their own case which is pretty much at the heart of any rule of law society.
I’ve mentioned before that both sides of this conflict see a clear precedent of unconstitutional action by their opponents that would destroy everything they care about if left unchecked. All of the processes described by OP would be taken as a coup by the side targeted by them.
I’ve recently noticed a recent surge in very partisan posts on LessWrong, generally similar in tone and content to this one, in which one side’s perspective is presented as unassailable fact and the other’s is not mentioned. This is dangerous, both in the sense that we have seen many communities elsewhere[1] lose the things that made them unique after being taken over by partisan political content, and in the very literal sense that American politics is at a breaking point right now, and encouraging unwise action could have very real consequences for very large numbers of people. “The military should renounce the elected president and fight against the government” is not something to say lightly, and, regardless of who won the resulting conflict, life would be perilous and uncomfortable for everyone living in America for several decades thereafter.
I realize this probably isn’t in line with the sentiments of most of the comments section on this post, but I would ask that you consider an extension of Chesterton’s Fence: “Do not, directly or indirectly, declare a large group of people to be your enemy until you can explain, from their perspective, why they are doing what they are doing.”
(see the comments, in which many very Reddit users, most of them left-leaning, lament what has become of much of their website)
I was really trying to write this post largely from a “what would be the options for the judicial branch” in a generic way where it would apply to many presidencies, and trying to keep specific partisan judgements out of it.
To be clear, I do think pretty scary things are happening with U.S. democracy right now, and my motivation and attention is driven by what makes sense to do about a Trump presidency, but I still think it’s usually best to keep things focused on more general principles that could apply to many situations.
Totally! And just for the sake of clarity, I absolutely do not think the current military should renounce the elected president and fight against the executive branch (you used the word “government” but to be clear, the supreme court and the states are also the government!). I do think what the actual military is supposed to do from a constitutionalist perspective when different parts of the government disagree and give conflicting orders is quite important and a pretty tricky question that I didn’t know the answer to before I researched and wrote this (and still have a lot of uncertainty on).
In British English, “the government” means the executive branch, and the entire thing (including the judiciary and the legislature) is called the state.
And while I have your attention allow me to echo the person you are replying to, namely, it would be ideal if a reader could not even tell from your comments which party you prefer (since you run the site) and great grandparent is pretty strong evidence for which one.
Why… would that be ideal? I certainly do not consider my opinions on policy and politics to be forbidden on this site? The topic of politics itself should be approached with care, but certainly it would be if anything a pretty bad violation of what I would consider good conduct if people systematically kept their opinions on politics and policy hidden. Those things matter!
My worry is one or two people loyal to the red team leave the site, which makes people on the blue team feel more free to use the site to criticize the red team, causing more red teamers to leave (and attracting blue-team zealots who filter everything through an ideological lens) in a positive feedback loop ending in a site with the same problem as Bluesky already has and many subreddits already have, namely, the zealots produce large quantities of low-quality writing, which drowns out the high-quality contributions and discourages many who can make high-quality contributions from even starting to contribute.
ADDED. Since LW is currently very far from Bluesky, perhaps it would’ve been more persuasive for me to argue that if LW were to start to have even half as many low-effort political comments as Hacker News, many would probably stop reading LW, or at least that is my worry.
Yeah, definitely agree. I just think the standard of “admins should comment in a way that makes it impossible to tell what their political opinions are” is not the best tool to achieve this. I think it’s better for people to be open about their views, and also try really hard to be principled and fair.
On what grounds? There’s always been a norm on LW of treating some highly controversial questions as basically settled. Good-faith disagreement will still be heard and engaged with, but it’s normal to, for example, take atheism for granted. The same goes for values-based disagreements; it’s taken for granted that some versions of the future are obviously preferable to others. So if one US political party is, factually, working against the values of most LW readers much harder than the other one, why is it off-limits to make comments discussing the implications of that?
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-is-the-mind-killer
Yes, I’ve read it, and it doesn’t say what you seem to be implying it says.
[my emphasis, here and below]
Eliezer’s main point was that we should avoid unnecessary politics, especially cheap political digs that may please some readers but risk needlessly alienating others. Here, the thing being discussed is inherently political and inseparable from the partisan divide.
I do want to avoid gaslighting people. LessWrong and LessWrong 2.0 under my management has discouraged U.S. politics content for many years. We stopped around 4-5 years ago, as politics started being more relevant to many people’s goals on the site, though we still don’t allow it on the LW frontpage unless it tries pretty hard to keep things timeless and non-partisan.
Fair, but I see this as two distinct things:
Politics is the Mind-Killer: still applies; protects this forum from redditification and encourages us to avoid pointlessly alienating people/making enemies of each other.
US politics posting allowed/discouraged/banned: I’m not too fussed about where you set this dial. But if political discussion is going to happen here, I think it would be bad if you/we got pressured into bothsidesism (which could happen if PitMK is misrepresented as a prohibition on openly taking partisan-coded positions).
Spending the better part of two decades harping on about how precisely that is the mind-killer makes it a little tricky to reverse that position.
I greatly appreciate the context you provided in the linked comment, and in general the attempt to explain why an underrepresented side views their choices as reasonable or necessary. I want to do what I can to support you continuing to bring up counterpoints and things people are missing.
This particular post reads to me as president-neutral, in that you could post it on a conservative-leaning forum under a democratic president and it would look equally in tune with local culture. Maybe I’m wrong about that, it’s easy to read things that match one’s own worldview as neutral, in which case I’m asking for specifics on what makes this not neutral.
One guess, based on your other comment, is that Habryka takes the legitimacy of the court for granted, in which case I’d like to dig into more detail on that.
I think it is very easy to read into a post like this and essentially fall into the very behavior you’re ascribing to the author. Regardless of the OP’s view, the post is not naming names but is very topical. It’s worth considering.
But I do agree that whoever is getting told their actions are unconstitutional will typically see that as an attack if they truly believe they are doing something within their powers. But I also suspect any that refuse to accept a Supreme Court ruling never cared about the Constitution or the checks and balances that were implemented in the Constitution. It’s simply a case of someone refusing to accept they are not a good judge of their own case which is pretty much at the heart of any rule of law society.