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wedrifid comments on Some Heuristics for Evaluating the Soundness of the Academic Mainstream in Unfamiliar Fields - Less Wrong
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Macroeconomics and global warming seem to me like intrinsically political topics, in that the vast majority of us don't have the expertise to comment on them on the object level, and so we're forced to use the indirect evidence provided by the opinions of others; but as I think everyone agrees, at least some of the relevant thinkers believe what they do because of ideological bias one way or the other, and so discussion of these topics either turns into discussion of such bias, or skirts around a crucial part of the problem.
And while I didn't see anything inflammatory in your post, even the least inflammatory comments about an ideologically-charged issue can serve as an invitation for people to empty their cached opinions on the subject in the comments.
I'm not even confident that it's better to completely avoid politics on LW; it's just that it seems to me we've been getting there less through a conscious collective decision than through a general apathy about on-topic and other site norms.
steven0461:
In your opinion, has this actually happened? Do you see something among the comments that, in your opinion, represents a negative contribution so that provoking it should be counted against the original post? (I understand you might not want to point fingers at concrete people, so feel free to answer just yes or no.)
I have to say I totally support the appropriateness of this post. It is not politics in the mind killer sense. Mind killing comes in when the social politics of the immediate participants corrupt the issue - not when abstract global or national issues come up.
Finding ways to work out how much to trust an academic field is a critical skill. When we can't trust science or academia to give us straight answers we really put our rational thinking to the test. And sometimes it really matters. Most notably with respect to mainstream opinion in the medical and pharmaceutical realms. There is more fiscal (and hence political) incentive for bias there than anywhere else and getting things right determines your health outcomes in the future.
I would like to see more posts in this vein, perhaps picking specific fields and giving a brief overview of credibility and whether there are correct contrarians to pay particular attention to.