CarlShulman comments on Some Thoughts Are Too Dangerous For Brains to Think - Less Wrong
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In the comments here we see how LW is segmenting into "pro-truth" and "pro-equality" camps, just as it happened before with pro-PUA and anti-PUA, pro-status and anti-status, etc. I believe all these divisions are correlated and indicate a deeper underlying division within our community. Also I observe that discussions about topics that lie on the "dividing line" generate much more heat than light, and that people who participate in them tend to write their bottom lines in advance.
I'm generally reluctant to shut people up, but here's a suggestion: if you find yourself touching the "dividing line" topics in a post or comment, think twice whether it's really necessary. We may wish ourselves to be rational, but it seems we still lack the abstract machinery required to actually update our opinions when talking about these topics. Nothing is to be gained from discussing them until we have the more abstract stuff firmly in place.
Any hypotheses about the common factor?
Not sure. I was anti-status, anti-PUA, pro-equality until age 22 or so, and then changed my opinions on all these issues at around the same time (took a couple years). So maybe there is a common cause, but I have absolutely no idea what that cause could be.
del
Reduced attachment to explicit verbal norms?
My relevant life excerpt is similar to yours. The first two changed because of increased understanding of how humans coordinate and act socially. Not sure if there is a link to the third.
It's called "growing up."
I wouldn't call it that, climbing the metacontrarian ladder seems to describe it much better.