JGWeissman comments on Some Heuristics for Evaluating the Soundness of the Academic Mainstream in Unfamiliar Fields - Less Wrong

73 Post author: Vladimir_M 15 February 2011 09:17AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_M 18 February 2011 07:23:13PM *  3 points [-]

steven0461:

On the other hand, harmless violations of such guidelines can cause harmful violations in future top-level posts, and most of the harm may be in low-probability large-scale arguments, like the ones we had about gender.

Fair enough. What we're facing here is the same ongoing conflict of visions about what the range of appropriate topics on LW should be. My opinion is that if the forum as presently constituted isn't capable of handling sensitive topics in a rational manner, and if any topic with even the remotest sensitive implications should therefore be avoided, then the whole project should be written off as a failure and the website reconstituted along the standard guidelines for technical forums (i.e. with a list of precise and strict definitions of suitable technical topics, and rigorous moderation to eradicate off-topic comments).

Certainly, I find it comically absurd that there should be a community of people boasting about their "rationality" who at the same time have to obsessively self-censor to avoid turning their discussions into food fights. I'm surely not alone in this assessment, and the bad PR from such a situation should be a sufficient reason for the owners of LW to undertake some radical steps (in one direction or another) to avoid it.

I do think we keep avoiding crucial parts of the problem that are a bad idea to talk about, but that are frustrating to avoid talking about once the topic has been brought up (if only because of the sense that what has been said will be taken for a community consensus), and this frustration is probably what's actually causing me to complain.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Are you saying that there are some points relevant to this discussion that you're reluctant to bring up because they are "a bad idea to talk about"?

Comment author: JGWeissman 18 February 2011 07:36:18PM 3 points [-]

Certainly, I find it comically absurd that there should be a community of people boasting about their "rationality" who at the same time have to obsessively self-censor to avoid turning their discussions into food fights.

When you have made this argument before, I responded:

There are some people here who I would trust to have rational discussions about the policy decisions that politics is supposedly about, and which candidates are likely to implement which policies and which tradeoff is better. My expectation if they tried to have that discussion on this public internet site is that they would draw attention and participation of less skilled members who would drag the discussion down into typical mind killing politics, and probably draw new people to Less Wrong who are not so interested in rationality and getting the right answer as joining in the tribal political argument.

It seems inappropiate to me for you to repeat this argument without addressing my response.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 18 February 2011 08:13:22PM *  4 points [-]

JGWeissman,

Please pardon my lack of response to your argument -- back in that thread the volume of replies to my comments became too large for me to respond to all of them. Better late than never, though, so here is my response.

I certainly don't think constant discussions of everyday politics on LW would be interesting or desirable. Someone who wants to do that has countless other places on the internet, tailored to all possible opinions and tastes, and there is absolutely no need to clutter up LW with it. However, what we're debating is at the other extreme, namely whether there should be a strict censorship (voluntary or not) of all discussions that have even remote implications in politics and other topics that are likely to inflame passions.

I think the answer is no, for several reasons. First, there are interesting questions relevant for issues at the core of LW's mission statement that inevitably touch on sensitive topics. Second, for some potentially sensitive questions I find extremely interesting (and surely not just I), LW really is a venue where it's possible to get a uniquely cool-headed and rational analysis, so avoiding those would mean forsaking some of the forum's greatest potentials. Finally, as I've already mentioned, the idea of a self-congratulatory "rationalist" community that in fact suffers from the same problems as any other place whenever it comes to sensitive topics is comically bad PR for whatever causes LW is associated with.

Of course, it may be that LW is not capable of handling sensitive topics after all. But then, in my opinion, the present way it's constituted doesn't make much sense, and it would benefit from a reorganization that would impose much more precisely defined topic requirements and enforce them rigorously.

Comment author: JGWeissman 18 February 2011 08:31:22PM -1 points [-]

You seem to be restating your position, without actually addressing my point that a policy that takes into account the likely behaviours of LW members of various levels of skill and experience, including those who have recently joined, does not reflect on the capabilities of the experienced, high level members.

If you can not address this point, you should stop repeating your argument that such rational people should be able to handle political discussion.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 18 February 2011 09:05:39PM 3 points [-]

JGWeissman:

You seem to be restating your position, without actually addressing my point that a policy that takes into account the likely behaviours of LW members of various levels of skill and experience, including those who have recently joined, does not reflect on the capabilities of the experienced, high level members.

I don't see how this objection is specific to sensitive topics. Assuming that regular participants maintain high enough standards, incompetent attempts by newbies to comment on sensitive topics should be effectively discouraged by downvoting, as in all other debates. Even in the most innocent technical discussions, things will go downhill if there is no mechanism in place to discourage unproductive and poorly thought out comments. In either case, if the voting system is ineffective, it means that more stringent moderation is in order.

On the other hand, if even the behavior of regular participants is problematic, then we get back to the problems I was writing about.

Comment author: steven0461 18 February 2011 09:15:32PM *  2 points [-]

In innocent technical discussions, users will generally base their votes only on the merits of the comments they're voting on. In sensitive political discussions, some will vote based on ideological agreement.

A problem common to both cases is that LessWrong is hesitant to vote anything down below zero, possibly for good morale-related reasons.

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