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jimrandomh comments on Less Wrong Should Confront Wrongness Wherever it Appears - Less Wrong
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While I am generally impressed with the level of rationality in discourse here, I really doubt that we have the quantity of information necessary to really come to a well-informed consensus on any controversial subject.
I'm not sure exactly what kinds of issues the OP had in mind, but I worry that we wouldn't do particularly well here on topics like AGW, or what went wrong with the housing market, or how much of IQ is genetic, or nuclear power, or any number of other fascinating and important topics where a dose of rationality might do some good.
We wouldn't do well on these topics, in spite of our rationality, because doing well on these topics requires information, and we don't have any inside track to reliable information.
Yes, there are topics for which most of us don't have sufficient information to write about them or discuss them. However, people with that information almost always do exist. Therefore, we should encourage them to come here and share that information. Maximizing the chance that those people do write here means carefully avoiding things that might deter them, and fear of being seen as off-topic is such a deterrent.