Confronting the Mindkiller—a series of posts exploring Political Landscape (Part 1)

Confronting the Mindkiller

Hi LessWrong.

I will be attempting a series of 11 posts on how to defeat the mindkiller—Politics.

This is a bit of an exaggeration—“defeating” it is a seriously difficult task, and it’s something I cannot possibly hope to do alone. However, I hope to be able to raise the Sanity Waterline, as well as actually contribute something to this Community that I’ve begun to regard myself as part of.

I also beg patience from you, the reader. Lesswrong is far more critical than most other Communities, and frankly, even writing this post has begun to give me second thoughts, in fear of being downvoted into oblivion.

However, one who attempts nothing in the fear of consequences will live a life of regret—only by attempting to do the “impossible”, and hacking away at the edges, can one succeed. This post was written with something to protect in mind. I hope you be patient with me, at least until the last posts have been written. This might take a week or two to complete.

I prefer to post one post at a time, Eliezer Yudkowsky style, in order to better adjust my writing style to suit your tastes, to receive continuous feedback, and to break up this task into smaller chunks to better avoid Akrasia, but if you’d rather I post this in one long essay, I can begrudgingly do that too.

Since my idea of these series of posts in the Open Thread seems to have been relatively well-received, I’ll proceed to courageously embarrass myself in front of everyone.

This is my first serious post on this site, and I really welcome constructive criticism and any attempts to help me improve my writing skills. Likewise, if you don’t think I should continue writing this series of posts, let me know, although please be gentle. I assure you that I will not fall trapping to partisan arguments or argue one side over another in an irrational fashion.

The purpose of these posts is to improve the way we think about politics, and help you find the “right side” in politics, rather than directly tell you which side is right or wrong. This post, I hope, does not break LessWrong’s rules regarding no politics.

I also won’t mess up too badly. I promise.

Confronting the Mindkiller—Why the Mindkiller?

Why am I trying to actively confront the mind-killer? Because Rationalists should win. Because as Rationalists, we ought to be able to go out into the real world and use our skills for awesomeness.


A Martial Arts Grandmaster cannot become stronger by only fighting amateurs and beginners. He can only do so by fighting the strongest, by pushing himself beyond his limits. Even doing so, however, can be unsatisfactory. How can the Sensei know that his skills are truly useful, not something that fails when applied in real life? By simply testing himself in difficult real-world situations. Nothing else can suffice, no tournament or medal may be adequate in proving that he truly is the best fighter.

Likewise, the true test of Rationality is not one that we can easily overcome, but the one that is the most difficult to overcome. In order to learn to fight better, our “Sensei” has taught us to kick and punch dummies. But dummies are not a measure of your ability to fight. Dummies cannot fight back, they cannot actively test you, and they certainly cannot plan confrontations and strike when you least expect it. Dummies are useful, but only as a stepping stone towards fighting more difficult opponents.

The more advanced and experienced of us have gone out into the real world and fought with sparring partners. This is a step higher from punching dummies, but this is not the best we can do. I want to become stronger. In the words of Eliezer, the epitome of Intelligence is not those of the past, nor those in the present, but that of the future.

Rationality is similar. We run on corrupted hardware, and even the most rational of us is still comparatively irrational to the mindspace of possible Rationalists. That is why me must aspire to do better, even if we already are proficient in our art.

The best test of Rationality is to confront that which makes us the most irrational. We cannot become a master in martial arts without sparring and getting hurt, and we cannot become masters in Rationality by simply refusing to engage in politics. It makes sense to avoid certain spheres of politics until we have learned the basics of Rationality. However, such avoidance cannot be permanent.

We should not agree to Disagree.

Furthermore, I want to confront Politics simply because it is so mind-boggling. Aumann’s agreement theorem states than any two Perfect Bayesians with similar priors cannot agree to disagree. And yet the fact that we have people from all political spectrums means that politics has become so infectious, so divisive, that even X-Rationalists are split by it.


The most popular political view, at least according to the much-maligned categories on the survey, was liberalism, with 376 adherents and 34.5% of the vote. Libertarianism followed at 352 (32.3%), then socialism at 290 (26.6%), conservativism at 30 (2.8%) and communism at 5 (.5%).


Funnily enough, although many outsiders have accused us of agreeing far too much, political ideologies are one aspect where it is not clear cut at all. About one-third of this site are Liberals, one-third of this site are Libertarians, followed by a quarter of us being Socialism, and the rest being divided into Conservatives and Communists.

Compare this with issues commonly touted as Controversial, such as religion, where 92% of us are either Atheistic or Agnostic—a clearly cut issue.

Politics is the mind-killer on a scale where nothing else can compare, especially to x-rationalists. And yet since we cannot avoid its confrontation entirely I would argue we should not avoid confronting it at all. The arena of political debates are packed with the most subtle and devious dark arts and irrationality, leaving it to rot would be a bad decision; after all, politics is already playing a hand in every aspect of our lives. It would benefit from a healthy dose of Rationality, even if it cannot be made completely sane.

If the step to begin raising the sanity waterline does not begin here, where does it? If we, aspiring Rationalists who have studied probability theory, psychology, Bayesian inference, neuroscience, philosophy, epistemology, and as much information as possible on the science of decision making under uncertainty cannot even engage in politics without bickering and divisiveness, who can?


The answer is nobody. Which is the reason why our political arena is so screwed up today.

And finally...


We all dream of a better world to live in. I hope it will not drive you away to suggest that many a life has been lost over disagreements between which better world is the best. Many more lives have been lost because of people who refused to engage in political endeavors.

Rationality is not an abstract Art, to be appreciated in itself—it’s a tool that you use to mold the world to your desires, to win. I have this mad hope that someday political spheres will be sane, rather than hopelessly filled with the dark arts. Perhaps by attempting this sequence of posts, the world will be one small step closer towards a saner future.