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).
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.