You are on record as saying that you don’t like the level of political discussion on this site. Adding more political discussion from your favored side is not an intervention likely to decrease the frequency of political discussion on this site.
You think this post (and the comments in response) raise the level of political discourse on this site?
I think this post is about on par (in terms of quality) with other recent posts. Konkvistador has explicitly said that he thought those posts were lowering the quality of discussion here. My question for him is why he thinks this post will do better, as opposed to presenting a viewpoint he agrees with—a reasonable but very different goal.
Note that I quoted the part that was not that far away of some of my policy preferences and more explicitly questioned the instrumental usefulness of democracy in a comment not at the centre of discussion (opening post).
I stated it because I wanted to share that the article caused me to update away from “Moldbug has a lot of insight into the failure of democratic government” towards “Moldbug has a lot of insight into the failure of democratic government in SF and may be wrong about other places”.
My question for him is why he thinks this post will do better, as opposed to presenting a viewpoint he agrees with—a reasonable but very different goal.
In theory we should be more reasonable when discussing means rather than goals since clippy and a baby eater can both easily agree on which strategy is paper-clip-maximizing given the same information and resources. I honestly didn’t expect this article to be seen as being partisan or political because the author explicitly endorses the goals San Francisco seems to pursue and just criticizes the means by giving examples of how they don’t seem to be working well.
Despite its good intentions, San Francisco is not leading the country in gay marriage. Despite its good intentions, it is not stopping wars. Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, its homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s. Despite its spending more money per capita, period, than almost any city in the nation, San Francisco has poorly managed, budget-busting capital projects, overlapping social programs no one is certain are working, and a transportation system where the only thing running ahead of schedule is the size of its deficit.
I find it amusing that if I was to write out a well argued or researched post questioning whether any particular item among these should be a goal for San Francisco to work towards it would probably be considered less political. This seems to indicate that doing politics, at least here, is not only not about policies as Robin Hanson says, but it may not be about values either.
In theory we should be more reasonable when discussing means rather than goals since clippy and a baby eater can both easily agree on which strategy is paper-clip-maximizing given the same information and resources.
You might think so, but when the means include getting the compliance of other people, I’ve seen some very nasty flame wars. My theory is that most people’s models for getting people to comply are established early in life, emotionally fraught, and not reconsidered. Almost any method can look as though it works some of the time.
If anything we used to talk about politics in the sense I did, giving real world examples of possible institution failure or success, much more in the old Overcoming Bias days. And while before karma the worst comments where much worse and before Politics is the Mindkiller we where less careful about how we approached it, I would say we where still less mindkilled and more capable of discussing it.
In the example thread TimS gave the goal was already assumed and not made explicit, this would be less of a problem if it was an academic exercise rather than directly tied to changing the LW community. And I should emphasise that since I don’t believe in most kind of political activity a citizen is supposed to engage in the governing style of SF for me really is an academic question with little real world implications beyond tangential lessons on how to organize a non-profit or for-profit company.
Recall that in my recent comment I also stated I was distressed no one else wrote the arguments I did. I believe we are seeing evaporative cooling of users belonging to ideologies besides the dominant one. This is I think bad for our explicit goal of “refining the art of human rationality”. I should emphasise see little evidence of quality thinkers and rationalists who used to disagree having changed their mind in the direction of it as much as given up on the site.
If you check my older comment history especially on the Rational Romance thread I have changed my position on how best to deal with this several times I think based on reasonable grounds. I don’t think it is an easy question partially because I mistrust myself on it. So your input on the issue would be most welcomed! Maybe even a new open thread discussion so we clear away the object level baggage from here.
Also unless we are capable of discussing San Francisco’s governance and competence at achieving a set of goals its inhabitants or employees would like it to, I can’t see how we could be capable of talking about economics at all.
And we really should because that field is where so many of LW’s assumptions and data about human minds as well as strategy come from!
Recall that in my recent comment I also stated I was distressed no one else wrote the arguments I did. I believe we are seeing evaporative cooling of users belonging to ideologies besides the dominant one.
Given that other users are worried about apparently the same thing in respect to certain classically non-dominant ideologies, this seems more likely to be some variant of the hostile media bias effect than anything else.
Why assume both are wrong rather than just one of them being wrong? Also we do have weak statistical evidence that LW has been drifting in the direction I think it has and strong evidence the positions I talk about are a vulnerable minority here to begin with (see Yvain’s polls).
Why assume both are wrong rather than just one of them being wrong?
Because the prior given the standard cognitive biases here is that these sorts of claims in general are so inaccurate that the impressions from people are barely informative if at all.
we do have weak statistical evidence that LW has been drifting in the direction I think it has
I would agree with a slightly modified version of this. On LessWrong libertarian politics is the neutral baseline of economics and liberal politics is the neutral baseline of morality. All other options are “mindkilling”.
In addition to this I will note our similarity to academia. Much of the tribal attire of “libertarians” is endorsed among economists and much of the moral tribal attire of “liberals” is endorsed by bioethics and philosophy. Not that these are necessarily good signals…
It’s annoying and stupid, as it precludes any attempt to use the supposedly superior powers of rationality found hereabouts on quite a range of actual practical problems. Worse yet, whenever someone does try, the proscription proves well-founded. Sigh.
Also I just plain enjoy well written and well thought out defences of Libertarian economic and Liberal moral positions I disagree with that only happen when they actually get challenged. I recommend Yvain’s blog for the latter btw.
You are on record as saying that you don’t like the level of political discussion on this site. Adding more political discussion from your favored side is not an intervention likely to decrease the frequency of political discussion on this site.
The level and the frequency are two different things.
You think this post (and the comments in response) raise the level of political discourse on this site?
I think this post is about on par (in terms of quality) with other recent posts. Konkvistador has explicitly said that he thought those posts were lowering the quality of discussion here. My question for him is why he thinks this post will do better, as opposed to presenting a viewpoint he agrees with—a reasonable but very different goal.
Note that I quoted the part that was not that far away of some of my policy preferences and more explicitly questioned the instrumental usefulness of democracy in a comment not at the centre of discussion (opening post).
I stated it because I wanted to share that the article caused me to update away from “Moldbug has a lot of insight into the failure of democratic government” towards “Moldbug has a lot of insight into the failure of democratic government in SF and may be wrong about other places”.
Presumably Konkvistador is posting with that intent.
And I’m trying to alert him that he may not have achieved that intent. Further, the intent and the action may be hopelessly mismatched.
In theory we should be more reasonable when discussing means rather than goals since clippy and a baby eater can both easily agree on which strategy is paper-clip-maximizing given the same information and resources. I honestly didn’t expect this article to be seen as being partisan or political because the author explicitly endorses the goals San Francisco seems to pursue and just criticizes the means by giving examples of how they don’t seem to be working well.
I find it amusing that if I was to write out a well argued or researched post questioning whether any particular item among these should be a goal for San Francisco to work towards it would probably be considered less political. This seems to indicate that doing politics, at least here, is not only not about policies as Robin Hanson says, but it may not be about values either.
You might think so, but when the means include getting the compliance of other people, I’ve seen some very nasty flame wars. My theory is that most people’s models for getting people to comply are established early in life, emotionally fraught, and not reconsidered. Almost any method can look as though it works some of the time.
This.
If anything we used to talk about politics in the sense I did, giving real world examples of possible institution failure or success, much more in the old Overcoming Bias days. And while before karma the worst comments where much worse and before Politics is the Mindkiller we where less careful about how we approached it, I would say we where still less mindkilled and more capable of discussing it.
In the example thread TimS gave the goal was already assumed and not made explicit, this would be less of a problem if it was an academic exercise rather than directly tied to changing the LW community. And I should emphasise that since I don’t believe in most kind of political activity a citizen is supposed to engage in the governing style of SF for me really is an academic question with little real world implications beyond tangential lessons on how to organize a non-profit or for-profit company.
Recall that in my recent comment I also stated I was distressed no one else wrote the arguments I did. I believe we are seeing evaporative cooling of users belonging to ideologies besides the dominant one. This is I think bad for our explicit goal of “refining the art of human rationality”. I should emphasise see little evidence of quality thinkers and rationalists who used to disagree having changed their mind in the direction of it as much as given up on the site.
If you check my older comment history especially on the Rational Romance thread I have changed my position on how best to deal with this several times I think based on reasonable grounds. I don’t think it is an easy question partially because I mistrust myself on it. So your input on the issue would be most welcomed! Maybe even a new open thread discussion so we clear away the object level baggage from here.
Also unless we are capable of discussing San Francisco’s governance and competence at achieving a set of goals its inhabitants or employees would like it to, I can’t see how we could be capable of talking about economics at all.
And we really should because that field is where so many of LW’s assumptions and data about human minds as well as strategy come from!
Given that other users are worried about apparently the same thing in respect to certain classically non-dominant ideologies, this seems more likely to be some variant of the hostile media bias effect than anything else.
Why assume both are wrong rather than just one of them being wrong? Also we do have weak statistical evidence that LW has been drifting in the direction I think it has and strong evidence the positions I talk about are a vulnerable minority here to begin with (see Yvain’s polls).
Because the prior given the standard cognitive biases here is that these sorts of claims in general are so inaccurate that the impressions from people are barely informative if at all.
Can you expand on this?
But libertarian politics is the neutral baseline; it’s other politics that is mindkilling.
I laughed. But Moldbug is authoritarian, not libertarian. Any government, for-profit or otherwise, with absolute power is not liberty friendly.
I would agree with a slightly modified version of this. On LessWrong libertarian politics is the neutral baseline of economics and liberal politics is the neutral baseline of morality. All other options are “mindkilling”.
In addition to this I will note our similarity to academia. Much of the tribal attire of “libertarians” is endorsed among economists and much of the moral tribal attire of “liberals” is endorsed by bioethics and philosophy. Not that these are necessarily good signals…
It’s annoying and stupid, as it precludes any attempt to use the supposedly superior powers of rationality found hereabouts on quite a range of actual practical problems. Worse yet, whenever someone does try, the proscription proves well-founded. Sigh.
Does this happen for issues besides feminism?
I agree.
Also I just plain enjoy well written and well thought out defences of Libertarian economic and Liberal moral positions I disagree with that only happen when they actually get challenged. I recommend Yvain’s blog for the latter btw.