Edit: We reached our deadline on May 1st. Site is live.
Some of you may recall the previous announcement of the blog. I envisioned it as a site that discusses right wing ideas. Sanity but not value checking them. Steelmanning both the ideas themselves and the counterarguments. Most of the authors should be sympathetic to them, but a competent loyal opposition should be sought out. In sum a kind of inversion of the LessWrong demographics (see Alternative Politics Question). Outreach will not be a priority, mutual aid on an epistemically tricky path of knowledge seeking is.
The current core group working on making the site a reality consists of me, ErikM, Athrelon, KarmaKaiser and MichaelAnissimov and Abudhabi. As we approach launch time I’ve just sent out an email update to other contributors and those who haven’t yet contributed but have contacted me. If you are interested in the hard to discuss subjects or the politics and want to join as a coauthor or approved commenter (we are seeking more) send me a PM with an email adress or comment here.
This is a great idea. We should create rationalist blogs for other political factions too, such as progressivism, feminism, anarchism, green politics and others. Such efforts could bring our programme of “raising the sanity waterline” to the public policy sphere—and this might even lay some of the groundwork for eventually relaxing the “no politics at LW” rule.
I don’t expect LessWrong itself to become a good venue to discuss politics. I do think LessWrong could keep its spot at the center of a “rationalist” blogosphere that may be slowly growing. Discussions between different value systems part of it might actually be worth following! And I do think nearly all political factions within such a blogosphere would find benefits in keeping their norms as sanity friendly as possible.
Yes, the issue-position-argument (IPA) model was developed for such purposes, and similar models are widely cited in the academic literature about argumentation and computer support for same, etc. (One very useful elaboration of this is called TIPAESA, for: time, issue, position, argument, evidence, source, authority. Unfortunately, I do not know of a good reference for this model; it seems that it was only developed informally, by anonymous folks on some political wikis.) But it’s still useful to have separately managed sites for each political faction, if only so that each faction can develop highly representative descriptions of their own positions.
I hold more liberal than conservative beliefs, but I’m increasingly reluctant to identify with any position on the left-right “spectrum”. I definitely hold or could convincingly steelman lots of beliefs associated with “conservativism”, especially if you include criticism of “liberal” positions. Would this be included in the sort of demographic you’re seeking?
Having read Yvain’s excellent steelmanning and subsequent critique of conservatism on his blog, I wonder what else can be usefully said about the subject.
EDIT: changed wording a bit. Hopefully someone will reply, not just silently downvote.
Yup, no way there could be anything more to say on the subject of a huge and varied group of ideologies.
More seriously, what about, y’know, counterarguments? Steelmanning is all very well, but this would involve steelmanning by people who actually ascribe to conservative positions.
More Right
Edit: We reached our deadline on May 1st. Site is live.
Some of you may recall the previous announcement of the blog. I envisioned it as a site that discusses right wing ideas. Sanity but not value checking them. Steelmanning both the ideas themselves and the counterarguments. Most of the authors should be sympathetic to them, but a competent loyal opposition should be sought out. In sum a kind of inversion of the LessWrong demographics (see Alternative Politics Question). Outreach will not be a priority, mutual aid on an epistemically tricky path of knowledge seeking is.
The current core group working on making the site a reality consists of me, ErikM, Athrelon, KarmaKaiser and MichaelAnissimov and Abudhabi. As we approach launch time I’ve just sent out an email update to other contributors and those who haven’t yet contributed but have contacted me. If you are interested in the hard to discuss subjects or the politics and want to join as a coauthor or approved commenter (we are seeking more) send me a PM with an email adress or comment here.
This is a great idea. We should create rationalist blogs for other political factions too, such as progressivism, feminism, anarchism, green politics and others. Such efforts could bring our programme of “raising the sanity waterline” to the public policy sphere—and this might even lay some of the groundwork for eventually relaxing the “no politics at LW” rule.
As I wrote before:
I don’t expect LessWrong itself to become a good venue to discuss politics. I do think LessWrong could keep its spot at the center of a “rationalist” blogosphere that may be slowly growing. Discussions between different value systems part of it might actually be worth following! And I do think nearly all political factions within such a blogosphere would find benefits in keeping their norms as sanity friendly as possible.
I would like to see one site to describe them all. To describe all those parts which can be defended rationally, with clear explanations and evidence.
Yes, the issue-position-argument (IPA) model was developed for such purposes, and similar models are widely cited in the academic literature about argumentation and computer support for same, etc. (One very useful elaboration of this is called TIPAESA, for: time, issue, position, argument, evidence, source, authority. Unfortunately, I do not know of a good reference for this model; it seems that it was only developed informally, by anonymous folks on some political wikis.) But it’s still useful to have separately managed sites for each political faction, if only so that each faction can develop highly representative descriptions of their own positions.
“Approved Commenter” sounds pretty thought police-ey
so sign me up!
That would seem to fit with the theme rather well.
James Goulding aka Federico formerly of studiolo has joined us as an author.
I hold more liberal than conservative beliefs, but I’m increasingly reluctant to identify with any position on the left-right “spectrum”. I definitely hold or could convincingly steelman lots of beliefs associated with “conservativism”, especially if you include criticism of “liberal” positions. Would this be included in the sort of demographic you’re seeking?
* checks e-mail *
Yeah, you didn’t.
Having read Yvain’s excellent steelmanning and subsequent critique of conservatism on his blog, I wonder what else can be usefully said about the subject.
EDIT: changed wording a bit. Hopefully someone will reply, not just silently downvote.
Yup, no way there could be anything more to say on the subject of a huge and varied group of ideologies.
More seriously, what about, y’know, counterarguments? Steelmanning is all very well, but this would involve steelmanning by people who actually ascribe to conservative positions.
I predict this will not occur.