nerzhin comments on Less Wrong Should Confront Wrongness Wherever it Appears - Less Wrong

24 Post author: jimrandomh 21 September 2010 01:40AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (159)
Tags: meta

Comments (159)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: prase 21 September 2010 09:12:55AM *  2 points [-]

This:

If a topic is important, the public discourse on it is wrong for any reason, it hasn't appeared on Less Wrong before, and a discussion on Less Wrong would probably bring clarity, then it is automatically considered on-topic. By important, I mean topics where inaccurate or confused beliefs would cost lots of utility for readers or for humanity.

Politics is important (with high utility costs), the public discourse is wrong, it hasn't appeared here before. It's not entirely obvious that discussion on LW would bring clarity, but probably it would. Why do you think politics does not qualify as a topic endorsed by the OP?

Comment author: nerzhin 21 September 2010 06:06:17PM 2 points [-]

Politics is important

Let's say we talk about politics for a while and come up with a concrete proposal. The utility of our work is the product of (utility of proposal if implemented) and (probability of successfully implementing proposal). Even if the first number is very high, the second probability is vanishingly small.

This means that politics is not important as a Less Wrong topic.

Comment author: prase 21 September 2010 06:33:59PM 2 points [-]

Under your definition of importance, agreed. However, for reasons which are clear from the context, I have used the definition of the original post:

By important, I mean topics where inaccurate or confused beliefs would cost lots of utility for readers or for humanity.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit