I think there’s one more piece to the story of how the Politics Is the Mindkiller post morphed into the distorted four-words version of itself, which is: sometimes someone wants to talk about politics but they’re clearly not ready, rationality-wise. Telling them “politics is the mindkiller” (in general, across all people) is more polite than saying “you-in-particular are not rational enough to talk about politics”. Unfortunately, I suspect this sort of doublespeak reduced the amount of attention people paid to other peoples’ skill levels, and contributed to some failures of gatekeeping.
This brings up a broader issue of “good norms for telling someone ‘you aren’t smart enough’, ‘you are lacking key skills’ are a key missing coordination tool.”
Unfortunately, I suspect this sort of doublespeak reduced the amount of attention people paid to other peoples’ skill levels, and contributed to some failures of gatekeeping.
I am curious about the specifics of the dynamics you’re thinking of. Can you think through a few examples and what concretely was going wrong?
From time to time we get users that come to LessWrong and only post about politics. Those users usually are not skilled to rationally discuss politics and there a need to dissuade them by downvoting their posts.
That seems true, but doesn’t seem (obviously) directly connected to the specific take: “doublespeak reduced the amount of attention people paid to people’s skill levels, and contributed to some failures of gatekeeping.”
I think there’s one more piece to the story of how the Politics Is the Mindkiller post morphed into the distorted four-words version of itself, which is: sometimes someone wants to talk about politics but they’re clearly not ready, rationality-wise. Telling them “politics is the mindkiller” (in general, across all people) is more polite than saying “you-in-particular are not rational enough to talk about politics”. Unfortunately, I suspect this sort of doublespeak reduced the amount of attention people paid to other peoples’ skill levels, and contributed to some failures of gatekeeping.
This brings up a broader issue of “good norms for telling someone ‘you aren’t smart enough’, ‘you are lacking key skills’ are a key missing coordination tool.”
I am curious about the specifics of the dynamics you’re thinking of. Can you think through a few examples and what concretely was going wrong?
From time to time we get users that come to LessWrong and only post about politics. Those users usually are not skilled to rationally discuss politics and there a need to dissuade them by downvoting their posts.
That seems true, but doesn’t seem (obviously) directly connected to the specific take: “doublespeak reduced the amount of attention people paid to people’s skill levels, and contributed to some failures of gatekeeping.”