If you say “I think Ayn Rand is crazy” what is that supposed to accomplish that waving a big Blue flag wouldn’t? You’re not starting a reasoned discussion, just drawing battle lines.
If you say “I think Ayn Rand’s philosophy is incorrect / immoral and here’s why...” then you’ll actually be able to have a constructive debate. You can learn why people might believe something you think is crazy, they can test their beliefs against your arguments, and in the end hopefully both sides will have adjusted in a more evidence-supported direction. That kind of communication is what LW is about; approaching areas where we are heavily biased with caution and rigor to separate out truth from myth.
(Note: I’m not an Objectivist and don’t vote Republican, although you’d probably consider me more radical than either of them anyway. The downvote was for poor logic, not a slight against a political group/philosophy.)
But I don’t want to talk about Ayn Rand. The article was never even about her. I just gave a list of people and things that I perceived were damaging or crazy as an example to illustrate my point in that article. As a result, I got pulled into an angry shouting match where people insisted I should be ashamed to have criticized their favourite author, and all of my (entirely unrelated) posts got downvoted. I take issue with the fact that there is this one group of people (no idea how large) on Less Wrong that gets to silence dissent like this, and everybody else just sits there and nods along because they’re not allowed to discuss politics.
It doesn’t matter to me how radical your political views are. What matters to me is whether you are willing to entertain people with other views, or just want to shut down all dissent.
What matters to me is whether you are willing to entertain people with other views, or just want to shut down all dissent.
Good, then we agree; we should avoid behaviors which shut down dissent and dismiss people with opposing views out of hand.
So the next time someone puts an unsupported personal attack on a fringe political philosopher into an article, how about we all downvote it to express that that sort of behavior is not acceptable on LW?
How about we clearly and rationally express our stance instead of assuming massive inferential silence is any more meaningful than more moderate inferential silence?
Compare your implicit expectation in this comment to how one should react to some casually mentioned their position is “crazy”, with your recommendation here to how someone should react to a casual anti-gay statement.
If you say “I think Ayn Rand is crazy” what is that supposed to accomplish that waving a big Blue flag wouldn’t? You’re not starting a reasoned discussion, just drawing battle lines.
If you say “I think Ayn Rand’s philosophy is incorrect / immoral and here’s why...” then you’ll actually be able to have a constructive debate. You can learn why people might believe something you think is crazy, they can test their beliefs against your arguments, and in the end hopefully both sides will have adjusted in a more evidence-supported direction. That kind of communication is what LW is about; approaching areas where we are heavily biased with caution and rigor to separate out truth from myth.
(Note: I’m not an Objectivist and don’t vote Republican, although you’d probably consider me more radical than either of them anyway. The downvote was for poor logic, not a slight against a political group/philosophy.)
But I don’t want to talk about Ayn Rand. The article was never even about her. I just gave a list of people and things that I perceived were damaging or crazy as an example to illustrate my point in that article. As a result, I got pulled into an angry shouting match where people insisted I should be ashamed to have criticized their favourite author, and all of my (entirely unrelated) posts got downvoted. I take issue with the fact that there is this one group of people (no idea how large) on Less Wrong that gets to silence dissent like this, and everybody else just sits there and nods along because they’re not allowed to discuss politics.
It doesn’t matter to me how radical your political views are. What matters to me is whether you are willing to entertain people with other views, or just want to shut down all dissent.
Good, then we agree; we should avoid behaviors which shut down dissent and dismiss people with opposing views out of hand.
So the next time someone puts an unsupported personal attack on a fringe political philosopher into an article, how about we all downvote it to express that that sort of behavior is not acceptable on LW?
How about we clearly and rationally express our stance instead of assuming massive inferential silence is any more meaningful than more moderate inferential silence?
Compare your implicit expectation in this comment to how one should react to some casually mentioned their position is “crazy”, with your recommendation here to how someone should react to a casual anti-gay statement.
What accounts for the glaring difference?