You’re right, it is indeed entirely possible that that article was downvoted for reasons unrelated to Ayn Rand. The fact that someone literally said that all of Less Wrong should be ashamed for allowing “Ayn Rand Derangement Syndrome”, however, and that that person went on to suggest that I and everyone else who’d dare criticise Rand should be downvoted, and that this person got upvoted for this post… can not be explained in such a convenient way.
The same holds for another comment in this thread, where someone calls me out for criticizing “their” party (I did not mention any party by name) and for criticizing “their” beliefs and saying that I should not be allowed to call “their” party crazy unless I could “defeat” them in a debate about economics.… and this person got upvoted for this, again. This to me signals, at least weakly, that there is way too much support on Less Wrong for the view that dissent against politics X should be culled. This worries me to say the least, since it skews Less Wrong politics in that direction.
Dissent against ANY politics should be culled. DISSENTING AGAINST POLITICS IS BAD FOR RATIONALITY. CHEERING FOR POLITICS IS BAD FOR RATIONALITY.
This is SUPER obvious because your dissent is just calling people crazy over and over, and saying it’s obvious that they’re crazy and you don’t understand how anyone could think they’re not crazy. YOU ARE MINDKILLED. You are not capable, or at least have not SHOWN yourself to be capable of dissenting against the politic you hate in anything like a reasonable fashion.
The point of this website is that lots of things that normal people take as obvious or intuitive are not in fact true, and based largely on their own biases. You seem to completely be missing this point in this and your other conversations about politics. So either do your research, come up with a refutation of objectivism based on actually reading it, or DON’T TALK ABOUT IT. Mentions of things you disagree with as crazy in an offhanded way is exactly what we don’t want.
You are not capable, or at least have not SHOWN yourself to be capable
I find it telling that you can’t commit to one of those two possibilities. Especially since my assessment is that you’re strawmanning Sophronius pretty hard.
Why does a rant with all capital letter shouting get upvoted to +9 by Less Wrong users? Calling me mindkilled and saying I can’t be reasonable and should go away and stop talking is both rude and unhelpful.
I’m probably just going to downvote you from here on out but let me respond one last time: I did NOT tell you to go away. I did NOT tell you to stop talking. Whatever you may have thought of my tone or ALL CAPITAL LETTER SHOUTING, my message is different. When you say “I think x, and those idiot followers of y disagree with me!” and I tell you to NOT say that last part, that is not the same as telling you to stop talking or go away.
If you look through my comments, you’ll see plenty end up negative and people yell at me for saying dumb shit. But what they’re saying isn’t GO AWAY or SHUT UP, it’s BE BETTER. Obviously if you refuse to understand this I do in fact want you to go away, but I hope that instead you’ll realize what you’ve been doing wrong.
Because it’s trying to tell you why you are getting the reaction you are, and people are agreeing with it.
So either do your research, come up with a refutation of objectivism based on actually reading it, or DON’T TALK ABOUT IT. Mentions of things you disagree with as crazy in an offhanded way is exactly what we don’t want.
Of course it’s not working! When has shouting at someone in all capital letters ever worked? I don’t even know what this person is trying to accomplish, other than being rude and telling me to shut up. It bothers me extremely that this viewpoint would get so much support.
The fact that you don’t understand is the problem. It is also the problem with your main post (I’m talking about the post specifically, not your particular political opinions.) The main post is being downvoted because you fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the mindkiller sequence, and the political policy/preference of LW. In fact, your post is a prime example of why there is such a strong bias against political articles and discussion.
I wish I had a way to convey the information you’d need to figure it out. Some people just get it, some people just don’t get it. I haven’t spent much time thinking about why, or how to convey it, but my initial guess is that it wouldn’t be easy.
I don’t even know what this person is trying to accomplish, other than being rude and telling me to shut up.
Maybe get you into looking at what people are actually saying and taking some time to come up with replies that actually address that content in a meaningful way, instead of just responding with cached thoughts like “Republicans are crazy” or “shouting is rude”. And to realize that coming up with thoughtful replies isn’t just a question of figuring out the correct etiquette, but requires skill and insight which you might not always have.
Because if you read the recommendations they are none of them objectionable though some may be mistaken if taken as moral injunctions rather than as guides to bear in mind. Your post otoh, is mealy mouthed misdirection combined with “Boo blues!”.
Don’t discuss politics, discuss policy, unless you’re aiming to overthrow the system because even if you devote your entire life to one singular policy goal, and get elected to your national Parliament your chances of achieving your goal is not great.
Part of the negative reaction to your post, I think, is that this came off as disingenuous. Everyone knows the party you think is crazy is the Republican Party. I understand the point you were trying to making is more meta than that, but it’s hard not to be wary of someone who wants to talk about politics when they lead in with the suggestion that a large fraction of Less Wrong is aligned with a crazy party.
There is a harm in talking about all these things at such an abstract level: it probably exaggerates the extent of actual disagreement. I don’t really have many hard-and-fast political views right now but if I take a political identification quiz I’ll usually end up listed as a libertarian (with slight movement to the left). But the content of my libertarianism is basically “society should do the things most economists think they should do”. There are a few other assumptions built into it but it has little to do with anything Ayn Rand talked about (and I’ve never voted for the party you think is crazy).
So I wonder if people might be more receptive to a post like “Hey, guys. I see a lot of you identify as X. It seems like part of X is believing Y. Y seems like it is obviously bad to me, so I’m wondering if those of you who identify as X could explain if they identify that way despite Y, or if they really believe Y. If you believe in Y maybe you could explain why it is not as crazy as it sounds to me.”
Hm, thanks for the feedback. You might be right that couching any criticism I have in a ton of fake humbleness might be necessary to make me seem less confrontational. I’d much rather be honest about what I actually feel, though.
Anyway, I think it’s interesting that I make a post about certain parties being crazier than others, and everyone concludes that I mean the republican party.
Largely for the same reason that, when someone makes a comment about the downfall of social mores over the last fifty years, it’s going to get a comment about listening to conservative talk radio. There are certain ideas that—no matter how unique and individual your method of getting to them are—happen to have five or six decimal places worth of correlation with particular ideologies and listening to other particular sources.
Fake humbleness might be better than no humbleness. But I’d actually recommend a degree of genuine humbleness. If you’re not open to the possibility that the policies you support are the crazy ones and the people who you disagree with are right then I wouldn’t want you discussing politics on Less Wrong either. If you want to discuss politics just so you can correct the views of others, that sounds really terrible.
Doesn’t that strongly imply that everyone on Less Wrong thinks on some level that Republicans are crazy?
I think it strongly implies everyone on Less Wrong has a decent model of the average European’s politics and common political rhetoric in general.
Oh, but I am genuinely humble about things I am uncertain about. A lot of actual politics, such as economics, are sufficiently complex that I dare not have too strong an opinion about them. The same does not hold for evolution being real, or boys kissing being okay, or global warming being a thing, or a hundred of other things that people have somehow decided is political. I do not see why I have to pretend to be uncertain about subjects merely because someone said “it’s political now guys, everyone pretend you know nothing”. It frustrated me at school when I could not defend gay kids without being called gay myself. It frustrates me on Less Wrong that I cannot call certain views crazy without being called leftist.
If Less Wrong would admit that a lot of Republican held views are simply crazy, and fairly distributed criticism of craziness regardless of political allegiance so it’s not just Republicans that get criticized… I would be more than okay with this.
It frustrates me on Less Wrong that I cannot call certain views crazy without being called leftist
If one called religion “crazy”, one would be likely to be an atheist. And if an American lists a bunch of Republican views and call them all crazy, without doing anything similar about any Democrat-held view I’d consider them likely to be a Democrat (or a libertarian but, since you seem to dislike libertarianism, that’s unlikely in your case).
On my part, it frustrates me that you see calling certain views “crazy” as supposedly being dissent or an argument. No! Calling a different view “crazy” without any argument about why, is a status game—it’s an attempt to shut down dissent by deliberately lowering the status of the people that even attempt to discuss the issue.
i.e. they aren’t just in really strong disagreement with you (something which would put them on an equal level), they are insane wackos, and nobody sane could possibly hold any doubt about the issue, or worse yet defend the views, or worse yet share them. It’s an attempt to throw said views outside the Overton window.
On my part I’m actually sympathetic about such status games. I’m a progressive. I wish that e.g. neonazism in Greece had been destroyed, and same with lots of other vile crazy views. I don’t want to discuss with Greek neonazis, I want them utterly destroyed and thrown out of any political discussion completely.
But you seek the same about your political opponents (seemingly Republicans), while also seemingly denying you so seek it.
People on LessWrong, however, have the ability to recognize status games when they see them.
Right, so as ArisKatsaris says: calling something crazy without an argument is a status game. I suspect if you actually dived into the issues themselves you wouldn’t be that far away from even the most reactionary people on this site. I don’t think anyone here doesn’t believe in evolution. I don’t think anyone has strong moral issues with homosexuality—though you might hear some descriptive analyses of the cause and nature of homosexuality you might not like. “global warming being a thing” is trickier: since there are several sub-claims within it. Plus, this is a place where people like to question scientists. I mean, there is no way there aren’t large minorities here who disagree with scientific consensuses in nutrition science, pharmacology and psychology. Climate science needn’t be special.
But the issue is that you’re not actually arguing these points, you’re just waving a flag. You can tell just by the way you phrased them: “global warming being a thing” , “boys kissing being okay”. It shuts down discussion about these issues because you’ve construed them such that anyone who wants to, say, question the widespread hyperbole when Democrats discuss global warming or talk about how homosexuality can’t possibly be genetic now has to take a status hit as a result of taking the side you’ve construed has “crazy”.
it’s interesting that I make a post about certain parties being crazier than others, and everyone concludes that I mean the republican party. Doesn’t that strongly imply that everyone on Less Wrong thinks on some level that Republicans are crazy?
That is a possible explanation, indeed.
Another possible explanation could be that everyone on LessWrong thinks that saying “my enemies are crazy” without providing specific arguments why is how Democrats typically speak. (Or perhaps that a Republican would likely use some other word, such as “godless” or “commie”.) In which case, it’s a simple logical deduction that if author speaks like a Democrat, his supposedly crazy enemies are most likely Republicans.
Yet another possible explanation could be that majority of American LW readers are pro-Democrats, therefore “crazy enemies” of a random person (in context of speaking of USA’s two major political parties, which excludes Libertarians etc.) are most likely Republicans.
I’m not endorsing any of these views here; just saying that all of these are plausible explanations why someone might guess you meant Republicans, and the other explanations are not evidence for Republicans being crazy.
A different example: If you meet a guy on the street and he starts talking to you about “inferior races”, are you able to guess whom he meant? Does your ability to guess correctly imply that you agree with him?
I’m intrigued by your usage of “yield the point” in this context. Do you feel that the more likely interpretations proposed by others in this matter takes away something of value from you?
It feels really disingenuous though, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth, to have to ask those questions and pretend I don’t know the answers just because it makes me seem less confrontational.
LessWrong isn’t terribly off-put by confrontation, it’s the idea that is voted on.
The fact that someone literally said that all of Less Wrong should be ashamed for allowing “Ayn Rand Derangement Syndrome”, however, and that that person went on to suggest that I and everyone else who’d dare criticise Rand should be downvoted,
You’re right, it is indeed entirely possible that that article was downvoted for reasons unrelated to Ayn Rand. The fact that someone literally said that all of Less Wrong should be ashamed for allowing “Ayn Rand Derangement Syndrome”, however, and that that person went on to suggest that I and everyone else who’d dare criticise Rand should be downvoted, and that this person got upvoted for this post… can not be explained in such a convenient way.
The same holds for another comment in this thread, where someone calls me out for criticizing “their” party (I did not mention any party by name) and for criticizing “their” beliefs and saying that I should not be allowed to call “their” party crazy unless I could “defeat” them in a debate about economics.… and this person got upvoted for this, again. This to me signals, at least weakly, that there is way too much support on Less Wrong for the view that dissent against politics X should be culled. This worries me to say the least, since it skews Less Wrong politics in that direction.
Dissent against ANY politics should be culled. DISSENTING AGAINST POLITICS IS BAD FOR RATIONALITY. CHEERING FOR POLITICS IS BAD FOR RATIONALITY.
This is SUPER obvious because your dissent is just calling people crazy over and over, and saying it’s obvious that they’re crazy and you don’t understand how anyone could think they’re not crazy. YOU ARE MINDKILLED. You are not capable, or at least have not SHOWN yourself to be capable of dissenting against the politic you hate in anything like a reasonable fashion.
The point of this website is that lots of things that normal people take as obvious or intuitive are not in fact true, and based largely on their own biases. You seem to completely be missing this point in this and your other conversations about politics. So either do your research, come up with a refutation of objectivism based on actually reading it, or DON’T TALK ABOUT IT. Mentions of things you disagree with as crazy in an offhanded way is exactly what we don’t want.
I find it telling that you can’t commit to one of those two possibilities. Especially since my assessment is that you’re strawmanning Sophronius pretty hard.
Why does a rant with all capital letter shouting get upvoted to +9 by Less Wrong users? Calling me mindkilled and saying I can’t be reasonable and should go away and stop talking is both rude and unhelpful.
I’m probably just going to downvote you from here on out but let me respond one last time: I did NOT tell you to go away. I did NOT tell you to stop talking. Whatever you may have thought of my tone or ALL CAPITAL LETTER SHOUTING, my message is different. When you say “I think x, and those idiot followers of y disagree with me!” and I tell you to NOT say that last part, that is not the same as telling you to stop talking or go away.
If you look through my comments, you’ll see plenty end up negative and people yell at me for saying dumb shit. But what they’re saying isn’t GO AWAY or SHUT UP, it’s BE BETTER. Obviously if you refuse to understand this I do in fact want you to go away, but I hope that instead you’ll realize what you’ve been doing wrong.
Because it’s trying to tell you why you are getting the reaction you are, and people are agreeing with it.
Looks like it’s not working too well though.
Of course it’s not working! When has shouting at someone in all capital letters ever worked? I don’t even know what this person is trying to accomplish, other than being rude and telling me to shut up. It bothers me extremely that this viewpoint would get so much support.
The fact that you don’t understand is the problem. It is also the problem with your main post (I’m talking about the post specifically, not your particular political opinions.) The main post is being downvoted because you fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the mindkiller sequence, and the political policy/preference of LW. In fact, your post is a prime example of why there is such a strong bias against political articles and discussion.
I wish I had a way to convey the information you’d need to figure it out. Some people just get it, some people just don’t get it. I haven’t spent much time thinking about why, or how to convey it, but my initial guess is that it wouldn’t be easy.
Maybe get you into looking at what people are actually saying and taking some time to come up with replies that actually address that content in a meaningful way, instead of just responding with cached thoughts like “Republicans are crazy” or “shouting is rude”. And to realize that coming up with thoughtful replies isn’t just a question of figuring out the correct etiquette, but requires skill and insight which you might not always have.
Because if you read the recommendations they are none of them objectionable though some may be mistaken if taken as moral injunctions rather than as guides to bear in mind. Your post otoh, is mealy mouthed misdirection combined with “Boo blues!”.
Don’t discuss politics, discuss policy, unless you’re aiming to overthrow the system because even if you devote your entire life to one singular policy goal, and get elected to your national Parliament your chances of achieving your goal is not great.
Part of the negative reaction to your post, I think, is that this came off as disingenuous. Everyone knows the party you think is crazy is the Republican Party. I understand the point you were trying to making is more meta than that, but it’s hard not to be wary of someone who wants to talk about politics when they lead in with the suggestion that a large fraction of Less Wrong is aligned with a crazy party.
There is a harm in talking about all these things at such an abstract level: it probably exaggerates the extent of actual disagreement. I don’t really have many hard-and-fast political views right now but if I take a political identification quiz I’ll usually end up listed as a libertarian (with slight movement to the left). But the content of my libertarianism is basically “society should do the things most economists think they should do”. There are a few other assumptions built into it but it has little to do with anything Ayn Rand talked about (and I’ve never voted for the party you think is crazy).
So I wonder if people might be more receptive to a post like “Hey, guys. I see a lot of you identify as X. It seems like part of X is believing Y. Y seems like it is obviously bad to me, so I’m wondering if those of you who identify as X could explain if they identify that way despite Y, or if they really believe Y. If you believe in Y maybe you could explain why it is not as crazy as it sounds to me.”
Hm, thanks for the feedback. You might be right that couching any criticism I have in a ton of fake humbleness might be necessary to make me seem less confrontational. I’d much rather be honest about what I actually feel, though.
(Rest of post retracted, agree with criticism)
Largely for the same reason that, when someone makes a comment about the downfall of social mores over the last fifty years, it’s going to get a comment about listening to conservative talk radio. There are certain ideas that—no matter how unique and individual your method of getting to them are—happen to have five or six decimal places worth of correlation with particular ideologies and listening to other particular sources.
Fake humbleness might be better than no humbleness. But I’d actually recommend a degree of genuine humbleness. If you’re not open to the possibility that the policies you support are the crazy ones and the people who you disagree with are right then I wouldn’t want you discussing politics on Less Wrong either. If you want to discuss politics just so you can correct the views of others, that sounds really terrible.
I think it strongly implies everyone on Less Wrong has a decent model of the average European’s politics and common political rhetoric in general.
Oh, but I am genuinely humble about things I am uncertain about. A lot of actual politics, such as economics, are sufficiently complex that I dare not have too strong an opinion about them. The same does not hold for evolution being real, or boys kissing being okay, or global warming being a thing, or a hundred of other things that people have somehow decided is political. I do not see why I have to pretend to be uncertain about subjects merely because someone said “it’s political now guys, everyone pretend you know nothing”. It frustrated me at school when I could not defend gay kids without being called gay myself. It frustrates me on Less Wrong that I cannot call certain views crazy without being called leftist.
If Less Wrong would admit that a lot of Republican held views are simply crazy, and fairly distributed criticism of craziness regardless of political allegiance so it’s not just Republicans that get criticized… I would be more than okay with this.
If one called religion “crazy”, one would be likely to be an atheist. And if an American lists a bunch of Republican views and call them all crazy, without doing anything similar about any Democrat-held view I’d consider them likely to be a Democrat (or a libertarian but, since you seem to dislike libertarianism, that’s unlikely in your case).
On my part, it frustrates me that you see calling certain views “crazy” as supposedly being dissent or an argument. No! Calling a different view “crazy” without any argument about why, is a status game—it’s an attempt to shut down dissent by deliberately lowering the status of the people that even attempt to discuss the issue.
i.e. they aren’t just in really strong disagreement with you (something which would put them on an equal level), they are insane wackos, and nobody sane could possibly hold any doubt about the issue, or worse yet defend the views, or worse yet share them. It’s an attempt to throw said views outside the Overton window.
On my part I’m actually sympathetic about such status games. I’m a progressive. I wish that e.g. neonazism in Greece had been destroyed, and same with lots of other vile crazy views. I don’t want to discuss with Greek neonazis, I want them utterly destroyed and thrown out of any political discussion completely.
But you seek the same about your political opponents (seemingly Republicans), while also seemingly denying you so seek it.
People on LessWrong, however, have the ability to recognize status games when they see them.
Right, so as ArisKatsaris says: calling something crazy without an argument is a status game. I suspect if you actually dived into the issues themselves you wouldn’t be that far away from even the most reactionary people on this site. I don’t think anyone here doesn’t believe in evolution. I don’t think anyone has strong moral issues with homosexuality—though you might hear some descriptive analyses of the cause and nature of homosexuality you might not like. “global warming being a thing” is trickier: since there are several sub-claims within it. Plus, this is a place where people like to question scientists. I mean, there is no way there aren’t large minorities here who disagree with scientific consensuses in nutrition science, pharmacology and psychology. Climate science needn’t be special.
But the issue is that you’re not actually arguing these points, you’re just waving a flag. You can tell just by the way you phrased them: “global warming being a thing” , “boys kissing being okay”. It shuts down discussion about these issues because you’ve construed them such that anyone who wants to, say, question the widespread hyperbole when Democrats discuss global warming or talk about how homosexuality can’t possibly be genetic now has to take a status hit as a result of taking the side you’ve construed has “crazy”.
That is a possible explanation, indeed.
Another possible explanation could be that everyone on LessWrong thinks that saying “my enemies are crazy” without providing specific arguments why is how Democrats typically speak. (Or perhaps that a Republican would likely use some other word, such as “godless” or “commie”.) In which case, it’s a simple logical deduction that if author speaks like a Democrat, his supposedly crazy enemies are most likely Republicans.
Yet another possible explanation could be that majority of American LW readers are pro-Democrats, therefore “crazy enemies” of a random person (in context of speaking of USA’s two major political parties, which excludes Libertarians etc.) are most likely Republicans.
I’m not endorsing any of these views here; just saying that all of these are plausible explanations why someone might guess you meant Republicans, and the other explanations are not evidence for Republicans being crazy.
A different example: If you meet a guy on the street and he starts talking to you about “inferior races”, are you able to guess whom he meant? Does your ability to guess correctly imply that you agree with him?
I will yield the point made by you and several others that yes, other interpretations are possible and in fact more likely.
I’m intrigued by your usage of “yield the point” in this context. Do you feel that the more likely interpretations proposed by others in this matter takes away something of value from you?
LessWrong isn’t terribly off-put by confrontation, it’s the idea that is voted on.
Again, mischaracterization of what I wrote.
My original post: http://lesswrong.com/lw/iqq/a_game_of_angels_and_devils/9tat
I suggest that’s one reason you’re downvoted—mischaracterizing what others say in a self serving way.