Lesswrong is not neutral because it is built on the principle of where a walled garden ought to be defended from pests and uncharitable principles. Where politics can kill minds. Out of all possible distribution of human interactions we could have on the internet, we pick this narrow band because that’s what makes high quality interaction. It makes us well calibrated (relative to baseline). It makes us more willing to ignore status plays and disagree with our idols.
All these things I love are not neutrality. They are deliberate policies for a less wrong discourse. Lesswrong is all the better because it is not neutral. And just because neutrality is a high-status word where a impartial judge may seem to be—doesn’t mean we should lay claim to it.
FWIW I do aspire to things discussed in Sarah Constantin’s Neutrality essay. For instance, I want it to be true that regardless of whether your position is popular or unpopular, your arguments will be evaluated on their merits on LessWrong. (This can never be perfectly true but I do think it is the case that in comments people primarily respond to arguments with counterarguments rather than with comments about popularity or status and so on, which is not the case in almost any other part of the public internet.)
Fair. In Sarah Constantin’s terminology, it seems you aspire to “potentially take a stand on the controversy, but only when a conclusion emerges from an impartial process that a priori could have come out either way”. I… really don’t know if I’d call that neutrality in the sense of the normal daily usage of neutrality. But I think it is a worthy and good goal.
I don’t think Cole is wrong.
Lesswrong is not neutral because it is built on the principle of where a walled garden ought to be defended from pests and uncharitable principles. Where politics can kill minds. Out of all possible distribution of human interactions we could have on the internet, we pick this narrow band because that’s what makes high quality interaction. It makes us well calibrated (relative to baseline). It makes us more willing to ignore status plays and disagree with our idols.
All these things I love are not neutrality. They are deliberate policies for a less wrong discourse. Lesswrong is all the better because it is not neutral. And just because neutrality is a high-status word where a impartial judge may seem to be—doesn’t mean we should lay claim to it.
FWIW I do aspire to things discussed in Sarah Constantin’s Neutrality essay. For instance, I want it to be true that regardless of whether your position is popular or unpopular, your arguments will be evaluated on their merits on LessWrong. (This can never be perfectly true but I do think it is the case that in comments people primarily respond to arguments with counterarguments rather than with comments about popularity or status and so on, which is not the case in almost any other part of the public internet.)
Fair. In Sarah Constantin’s terminology, it seems you aspire to “potentially take a stand on the controversy, but only when a conclusion emerges from an impartial process that a priori could have come out either way”. I… really don’t know if I’d call that neutrality in the sense of the normal daily usage of neutrality. But I think it is a worthy and good goal.