This has come up before. At this point, I think it’s fairly well understood that the point of that post isn’t “don’t discuss politics” so much as it is “discuss politically sensitive topics at the object level if possible, and don’t sling mud gratuitously”.
That doesn’t, however, mean that the norm that’s subsequently grown up around politics is a bad one. In view of the phrase’s origins it might be better named something else, but all else equal I’d prefer a culture that avoids political alignment when possible to one that enthusiastically embraces factionalism, and for pretty much the same reasons that the catchphrase connotes.
I really don’t think it is. Sure, there’s a zero point that I didn’t explicitly mention (no normative weight given to political alignment, as opposed to actively encouraging or discouraging its expression), but we don’t need to encourage expressing tribal identity for it to dominate political discussions. It’s the default. That’s the underlying theme of the politics sequence that we usually point to with the “Mind-Killer” catchphrase, and the implicit rationale behind the norm. Now, we don’t have a lot of recent data, but in view of LW’s performance when discussing identity-linked but not conventionally political issues, I don’t remotely trust our commentariat to be inherently awesome enough to overcome this problem.
We could of course debate the exact extent to which factional considerations ought to be deemphasized, but at that point we’re just quibbling about details.
This has come up before. At this point, I think it’s fairly well understood that the point of that post isn’t “don’t discuss politics” so much as it is “discuss politically sensitive topics at the object level if possible, and don’t sling mud gratuitously”.
That doesn’t, however, mean that the norm that’s subsequently grown up around politics is a bad one. In view of the phrase’s origins it might be better named something else, but all else equal I’d prefer a culture that avoids political alignment when possible to one that enthusiastically embraces factionalism, and for pretty much the same reasons that the catchphrase connotes.
That is a dangerously intense false dichotomy. It almost seems like a political argument.
I really don’t think it is. Sure, there’s a zero point that I didn’t explicitly mention (no normative weight given to political alignment, as opposed to actively encouraging or discouraging its expression), but we don’t need to encourage expressing tribal identity for it to dominate political discussions. It’s the default. That’s the underlying theme of the politics sequence that we usually point to with the “Mind-Killer” catchphrase, and the implicit rationale behind the norm. Now, we don’t have a lot of recent data, but in view of LW’s performance when discussing identity-linked but not conventionally political issues, I don’t remotely trust our commentariat to be inherently awesome enough to overcome this problem.
We could of course debate the exact extent to which factional considerations ought to be deemphasized, but at that point we’re just quibbling about details.
Details that seem to me—by your own assertion—to be the exact details we need to discuss here.
Can I get away with outright accusing you of irrationally defending a blanket ban on political or meta-political dialogue now?
Guess not. Would have liked to see inferential silence avoided here.