The problem isn’t knee-jerk apoliticism, it’s that LW delights in whatever seems clever and insightful, whether it promotes good and justice or not, and standard political talking points are familiar and boring.
I don’t even think this is a smokescreen for innate political leanings, which you’re dancing around from mentioning. It’s quite possible an early 20th century LW equivalent would find radical socialism as intriguing as today’s LW is finding the various strains of libertarianism and neoreaction, since that would have been the anathema to the intellectual mainstream back then, with many low-hanging fruits of intriguing unthinkability.
This is a very good point. Less Wrong has definitely shown strong signs of delight in being contrarian. If this is the real explanation for the skewed political leanings of Less Wrong, I would still suspect that the “don’t discuss politics” unwritten rule is used as a means to defend these beliefs from criticism.
I don’t see how it could be shown either way, though. Hm.
I think the rule gets invoked easier for boring political discussion, basically repeating the talking points everyone is already familiar with. If you can make the criticism into something that’s actually insightful and interesting, it could be received a lot better. But given how the LW discussion dynamics seem to keep driving many politically inclined users up the wall, this doesn’t seem to be the way discussion in a political forum is expected to operate. Unless you can start typing up stuff like the Non-Libertarian FAQ you might just resign to the political discussion environment being what the forum’s insight porn focus makes it.
Do you think that there’s enough of a consensus on what constitutes “good and justice” to marginalize those who disagree? E.g. call them “crazy” and not listen to them?
Do you think that there’s enough of a consensus on what constitutes “good and justice” to marginalize those who disagree? E.g. call them “crazy” and not listen to them?
It’s tricky. You do want to call some people crazy and stop listening to them. The question is which people.
You do want to call some people crazy and stop listening to them. The question is which people.
That is true. A more general question is: On which basis (e.g. their values? your values? rationality? smell?) should you decide which people to not listen to.
I agree with most of this post, but you seem to have an implicit assumption that the good and the just should be promoted. An alternate view would be to promote what is true in any area regardless of utility.
The reason for said view would be that replacing rational with irrational beliefs in anything, regardless of direct utility, improves the sanity waterline and thus has minor benefits. Therefore any post which overthrows irrational views and replaces them with rational, no matter how irrelevant the subject matter, does more good than harm.
… unless promoting said view has other costs which exceed the value gained by it’s contribution to the sanity waterline. The recent posting by Josh Elders on ‘celibate pedophelia’ is a prime example of this issue, where there was a non-trivial cost associated with having the article even present on LW.
It’s hard for me to respond now given that the post appears not to be there any more. Could you clarify by explaining the content of the article and what problems it caused?
The post used a lot of words to say very little of interest (I think it was things along the lines of “Vg’f nccnerag gb zr gung zbfg crbcyr jub ner frkhnyyl nggenpgrq gb puvyqera qba’g zbyrfg gurz, vg’f whfg gung lbh bayl urne nobhg gur barf jub qb” and “vg’f boivbhf gung encvat n puvyq uhegf gurz, ohg vg’f abg boivbhf gb zr jul cresbezvat frk npgf jvgu n puvyq jub nterrf gb qb vg vf vaureragyl unezshy”) and reading it made me feel uncomfortable.
I used rot-13 because we don’t want Google keyword searches to turn up any unfortunate associations.
The post used a lot of words to say very little of interest
Well, it generated some interesting discussion in the comments.
reading it made me feel uncomfortable
What about it made you feel uncomfortable? It’s arguments aren’t that difficult to refute (and were refuted in the comments); however, the refutations also apply to a number of other popular beliefs. I suspect it’s this fact that is the real source of discomfort.
I agree with most of this post, but you seem to have an implicit assumption that the good and the just should be promoted. An alternate view would be to promote what is true in any area regardless of utility.
I was being facetious about the political discussion pattern where everyone thinks it’s a foregone conclusion that their beliefs side up with good and justice and they can just proceed to trying to win the rest of the argument as a battle.
The problem isn’t knee-jerk apoliticism, it’s that LW delights in whatever seems clever and insightful, whether it promotes good and justice or not, and standard political talking points are familiar and boring.
I don’t even think this is a smokescreen for innate political leanings, which you’re dancing around from mentioning. It’s quite possible an early 20th century LW equivalent would find radical socialism as intriguing as today’s LW is finding the various strains of libertarianism and neoreaction, since that would have been the anathema to the intellectual mainstream back then, with many low-hanging fruits of intriguing unthinkability.
This is a very good point. Less Wrong has definitely shown strong signs of delight in being contrarian. If this is the real explanation for the skewed political leanings of Less Wrong, I would still suspect that the “don’t discuss politics” unwritten rule is used as a means to defend these beliefs from criticism.
I don’t see how it could be shown either way, though. Hm.
I think the rule gets invoked easier for boring political discussion, basically repeating the talking points everyone is already familiar with. If you can make the criticism into something that’s actually insightful and interesting, it could be received a lot better. But given how the LW discussion dynamics seem to keep driving many politically inclined users up the wall, this doesn’t seem to be the way discussion in a political forum is expected to operate. Unless you can start typing up stuff like the Non-Libertarian FAQ you might just resign to the political discussion environment being what the forum’s insight porn focus makes it.
Do you think that there’s enough of a consensus on what constitutes “good and justice” to marginalize those who disagree? E.g. call them “crazy” and not listen to them?
It’s tricky. You do want to call some people crazy and stop listening to them. The question is which people.
That is true. A more general question is: On which basis (e.g. their values? your values? rationality? smell?) should you decide which people to not listen to.
I agree with most of this post, but you seem to have an implicit assumption that the good and the just should be promoted. An alternate view would be to promote what is true in any area regardless of utility.
The reason for said view would be that replacing rational with irrational beliefs in anything, regardless of direct utility, improves the sanity waterline and thus has minor benefits. Therefore any post which overthrows irrational views and replaces them with rational, no matter how irrelevant the subject matter, does more good than harm.
… unless promoting said view has other costs which exceed the value gained by it’s contribution to the sanity waterline. The recent posting by Josh Elders on ‘celibate pedophelia’ is a prime example of this issue, where there was a non-trivial cost associated with having the article even present on LW.
It’s hard for me to respond now given that the post appears not to be there any more. Could you clarify by explaining the content of the article and what problems it caused?
The post used a lot of words to say very little of interest (I think it was things along the lines of “Vg’f nccnerag gb zr gung zbfg crbcyr jub ner frkhnyyl nggenpgrq gb puvyqera qba’g zbyrfg gurz, vg’f whfg gung lbh bayl urne nobhg gur barf jub qb” and “vg’f boivbhf gung encvat n puvyq uhegf gurz, ohg vg’f abg boivbhf gb zr jul cresbezvat frk npgf jvgu n puvyq jub nterrf gb qb vg vf vaureragyl unezshy”) and reading it made me feel uncomfortable.
I used rot-13 because we don’t want Google keyword searches to turn up any unfortunate associations.
Well, it generated some interesting discussion in the comments.
What about it made you feel uncomfortable? It’s arguments aren’t that difficult to refute (and were refuted in the comments); however, the refutations also apply to a number of other popular beliefs. I suspect it’s this fact that is the real source of discomfort.
I was being facetious about the political discussion pattern where everyone thinks it’s a foregone conclusion that their beliefs side up with good and justice and they can just proceed to trying to win the rest of the argument as a battle.