Konkvistador:
Delusions that are truly widely held and not merely believed to be widely held are far too dangerous to attack.
I don't think that's true as a general rule. Clearly, modern Western society has its own truly dangerous taboos, and attacking those head-on would indeed be stupid, for all the reasons you have listed. However, there are many topics where the modern public opinion is widely biased and delusional that can nevertheless be discussed safely without raising any dangerous red flags, especially if a high standard of discourse is maintained (which has the additional benefit of keeping away the swarms of uninteresting and status-lowering-by-association intruders).
There is no sense in having someone lower a truck on you so you can try to lift it to demonstrate your dedication to making the gym hours spent count for something.
That's undoubtedly true, when it comes to truly dangerous topics. The real problem, however, is that if the supposedly high level of "rationality" and epistemic skill claimed by so many people here can't be put to use to clear up even perfectly safe topics muddled by political/ideological biases and delusions, that in my view casts the same doubt on the benefits of all this rationality stuff as the refusal or inability to do a few pushups would do for the gym.
The most salient example to me is when I responded to a complaint that PUA ideology treats women like they are silly with the response that"
LW treats people like they are silly, none of their core values are beyond question, their imagined reasons are confabulations, and their real reasons reek of bias, irrationality, and anti-epistemology.
It doesn't seem at all correct to say "average men treat women like they're silly, but rationalists don't do that!"
among other things I said here. I certainly felt compelled to add the disclaimer &quo...
There is a tendency to downvote articles and commentaries with a political subtext with a remark on how politics is the mind-killer. I completely understand that nobody wants his mind to be killed, however, I disagree on the employed methods. I don't think anybody can really afford to ignore politics. It's a fact about any group of even a handful of people. Thus instead of shunning politics I think it's better to build one's rational defenses. Understanding that politics is a problem is only the first step. If you stop there, there will always be a big part of life where you are not rational. Therefore I suggest that, as long as it doesn't get out of hands, there should always be room for political discussions if not on the main site at least in the discussion section.