I just want to register my protest at this explicitly political post appearing on Less Wrong. We’ve got a marvelously politics-free space here. Let’s keep it that way. If you want to talk politics, you have essentially every other web site in the Internet to do it.
I want to register my disagreement with your protest.
Politics is one of the hardest spaces to be rational, and therefore one where rationalist have the most to offer. And a virtue of rationality is also saying true things. I think Trump is straightforwardly and unambiguously bad.
I think there’s some sanity in having a norm that you avoid talking about politics when there is little to gain, because in that case, you’re trading your sanity for nothing. But having a norm that you can never talk about politics, is the opposite of rationality from my perspective. It means you’ve lost faith in your own mental faculties to a degree where you don’t even bother trying to apply them.
Its true there are many other places I can say this. I don’t see why it matters. Those places are different from here. What I’d want to say about Trump here, would probably not be well received those other places.
All of your points are good ones. I now think my original position was an over-reaction. I’m still worried in general, but this was a carefully composed post, and i think my original position went too far.
I agree that it should be possible to make political posts here that are consistent with rational thought. But i think that we, as fallible humans, will have a hard time doing it. And an outbreak of political disagreement here would be very unfortunate. We’ve done so well thus far keeping out the toxoplasma of rage.
If you want to talk politics, you have essentially every other web site in the Internet to do it.
Are there any where “let’s ask an LLM to collect data into spreadsheet to figure out whether the claims are actually true” is within the Overton window?
It’s true that a lot of places aren’t very scientific, but as long as your results were anti-Trump (and given the problems with this idea they pretty much will be), you’ll be able to post them even in places that aren’t very scientific, since they’ll care more about the result than the method.
I just want to register my protest at this explicitly political post appearing on Less Wrong. We’ve got a marvelously politics-free space here. Let’s keep it that way. If you want to talk politics, you have essentially every other web site in the Internet to do it.
I want to register my disagreement with your protest.
Politics is one of the hardest spaces to be rational, and therefore one where rationalist have the most to offer. And a virtue of rationality is also saying true things. I think Trump is straightforwardly and unambiguously bad.
I think there’s some sanity in having a norm that you avoid talking about politics when there is little to gain, because in that case, you’re trading your sanity for nothing. But having a norm that you can never talk about politics, is the opposite of rationality from my perspective. It means you’ve lost faith in your own mental faculties to a degree where you don’t even bother trying to apply them.
Its true there are many other places I can say this. I don’t see why it matters. Those places are different from here. What I’d want to say about Trump here, would probably not be well received those other places.
All of your points are good ones. I now think my original position was an over-reaction. I’m still worried in general, but this was a carefully composed post, and i think my original position went too far.
I agree that it should be possible to make political posts here that are consistent with rational thought. But i think that we, as fallible humans, will have a hard time doing it. And an outbreak of political disagreement here would be very unfortunate. We’ve done so well thus far keeping out the toxoplasma of rage.
Are there any where “let’s ask an LLM to collect data into spreadsheet to figure out whether the claims are actually true” is within the Overton window?
Yes. Frankly, you could get that on r/science.
It’s true that a lot of places aren’t very scientific, but as long as your results were anti-Trump (and given the problems with this idea they pretty much will be), you’ll be able to post them even in places that aren’t very scientific, since they’ll care more about the result than the method.