I agree that this is a real limitation of exclusively meta level political discussion.
However, I’m going to voice my strong opposition to any sort of object level political discussion on LW. The main reason is that my model of the present political climate is that it consumes everything valuable that it comes into contact with it. Having any sort of object level discussion of politics could attract the attention of actors with a substantial amount of power who have an interest in controlling the conversation.
I would even go so far as to say that the combination of “politics is the mindkiller”, EY’s terrible PR, and the fact that “lesswrong cult” is still the second result after typing “lesswrong” into google has done us a huge favor. Together, it’s ensured that this site has never had any strategic importance whatsoever to anyone trying to advance their political agenda.
That being said, I think it would be a good idea to have a rat-adjacent space for discussing these topics. For now, the closest thing I can think of is r/themotte on reddit. If we set up a space for this, then it should be on a separate website with a separate domain and separate usernames that can’t be easily traced back to us on LW. That way, we can break all ties with it/nuke it from orbit if things go south.
I agree that this is a real limitation of exclusively meta level political discussion.
However, I’m going to voice my strong opposition to any sort of object level political discussion on LW. The main reason is that my model of the present political climate is that it consumes everything valuable that it comes into contact with it. Having any sort of object level discussion of politics could attract the attention of actors with a substantial amount of power who have an interest in controlling the conversation.
I would even go so far as to say that the combination of “politics is the mindkiller”, EY’s terrible PR, and the fact that “lesswrong cult” is still the second result after typing “lesswrong” into google has done us a huge favor. Together, it’s ensured that this site has never had any strategic importance whatsoever to anyone trying to advance their political agenda.
That being said, I think it would be a good idea to have a rat-adjacent space for discussing these topics. For now, the closest thing I can think of is r/themotte on reddit. If we set up a space for this, then it should be on a separate website with a separate domain and separate usernames that can’t be easily traced back to us on LW. That way, we can break all ties with it/nuke it from orbit if things go south.