There is simply no way of enforcing “sanity” standards about a political dispute that people physically fight over in the real world: we should be very clear about this. What disputes like this require is real-world mediation and negotiation skills which go far beyond Less Wrong’s scope.
The best introduction to the topic I’m personally aware of is Bernard Crick’s work In Defense of Politics, which is helpfully summarized on Wikipedia. Note that Crick describes politics as “an ethical dispute which has become public”, and that ethical disputes are an inevitable consequence of goodness and morality standards. Accordingly, virtues like adaptability and compromise are of far higher merit than any platitude about “sanity” or “rationality”.
Though perhaps LessWrong’s scope should be extended to this topic. After all, it seems to be a very serious problem for semi-evolved monkeys playing rationality games…
We could certainly encourage more discussion of the political virtues on Less Wrong—I’m talking about general concepts like mediation or compromise—and this would definitely help forestall the factionalization of Less Wrong’s userbase.
However, it would be a grave mistake to encourage “base level” political discussions on Less Wrong itself: that part should be left to specialized open politics websites, which often need to include such features as argumentation frameworks, support for clearly-defined factions, acceptance of anonymous input etc.
There is simply no way of enforcing “sanity” standards about a political dispute that people physically fight over in the real world: we should be very clear about this. What disputes like this require is real-world mediation and negotiation skills which go far beyond Less Wrong’s scope.
The best introduction to the topic I’m personally aware of is Bernard Crick’s work In Defense of Politics, which is helpfully summarized on Wikipedia. Note that Crick describes politics as “an ethical dispute which has become public”, and that ethical disputes are an inevitable consequence of goodness and morality standards. Accordingly, virtues like adaptability and compromise are of far higher merit than any platitude about “sanity” or “rationality”.
Though perhaps LessWrong’s scope should be extended to this topic. After all, it seems to be a very serious problem for semi-evolved monkeys playing rationality games…
We could certainly encourage more discussion of the political virtues on Less Wrong—I’m talking about general concepts like mediation or compromise—and this would definitely help forestall the factionalization of Less Wrong’s userbase.
However, it would be a grave mistake to encourage “base level” political discussions on Less Wrong itself: that part should be left to specialized open politics websites, which often need to include such features as argumentation frameworks, support for clearly-defined factions, acceptance of anonymous input etc.
Agreed.
yes, exactly.
True. Renamed article to “Saner”.