JanetK comments on Taking Ideas Seriously - Less Wrong

51 Post author: Will_Newsome 13 August 2010 04:50PM

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Comment author: kodos96 14 August 2010 07:16:44PM 3 points [-]

Well, I was just speculating - I don't actually have any idea what the LW community in general thinks of the issue. What I was attempting to speculate is that the reason these topics aren't discussed much is because the contrarian/skeptical position on them is clustered with the set of contrarian positions commonly held by LWers, and therefore aren't discussed much since the contrarian position on them is basically that they aren't deserving of much attention, especially relative to the kinds of existential risks LW is concerned with.

I'm not sure how much more detail I can go into on my thinking without violating the "no current politics" rule.

Comment author: JanetK 15 August 2010 12:35:24PM 5 points [-]

Something I should have said in my previous reply. I agree with the "no current politics" rule. My problem is with what is politics - to some everything is and to some almost nothing is. When a subject is a purely scientific one and the disagreement is about whether there is evidence and how to interpret it, then this is a area for rationality. We should be looking at evidence and evaluating it. That does not involve what I would call politics.