Meetup : West LA Meetup—Reasoning About Politics
Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup—Reasoning About Politics
When: 7:00pm Wednesday, October 10th.
Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says “Lounge”.
Parking is free for 3 hours.
Discussion Topic: Many on this website would agree that politics is the mind-killer. But there are many important decisions we have to make that concern politics, and engaging in dialogue is a valuable strategy for figuring out complex topics. So how can we successfully talk and reason about politics? What precautions should we take? How do we talk politics with someone who hasn’t stopped to think about this sort of thing?
There will be general discussion too, and there are lots of interesting recent posts (also check out LW’s sister site, Overcoming Bias ). But don’t worry if you don’t have time to read any articles, or even if you’ve never read any Less Wrong! Bring a friend! The atmosphere is casual, and good, intelligent conversation with friendly people is guaranteed.
I will bring a whiteboard with Bayes’ Theorem written on it.
Or, more importantly, under what conditions is it optimal for one to “talk politics with someone who hasn’t stopped to think about this sort of thing”?
Thanks for probably increasing the value of our upcoming meetup!
Well, it depends on what your goals are. But, generally speaking, making effective political decisions is very difficult and requires a specialized cognitive toolkit: the standard virtues of rationality do not suffice. There is a well-established literature on what effective political engagement might look like, and what cognitive tools might support this. Bernard Crick’s In defense of politics is a standard reference.
Thanks! I’ll see what I can garner from google books for tonight, and then add it to my own reading list.
Following Karl Popper: democracy is voting the wrong person out, not the right person in. And it is voting, not inheriting the role and not being beheaded to end a rule. This makes (Popper-style) democracy very much a less-wrong school of thought.
I appreciate the input, but this isn’t really our discussion topic. We’re not talking about political systems tonight—we’re talking about talking about them!