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Vladimir_M comments on Holy Books (Or Rationalist Sequences) Don’t Implement Themselves - Less Wrong
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This is a list of applause lights, not a statement of concrete values, beliefs, and goals. To find out the real UU values, beliefs, and goals, one must ask what exact arrangements constitute "liberty," "justice," etc., and what exact practical actions will, according to them, further these goals in practice. On these questions, there is nothing like consensus on LW, whereas judging by the uniformity of ideological positions espoused on the Unitarian/UU websites, there does seem to be a strong and apparently unchallenged consensus among them.
(To be precise, the applause lights list does include a few not completely vague goals, like e.g. "world peace," but again, this says next to nothing without a clear position on what is likely to advance peace in practice and what to do when trade-offs are involved. There also seems to be one concrete political position on the list, namely democratism. However, judging by the responses seen when democracy is questioned on LW, there doesn't seem to be a LW consensus on that either, and at any rate, even the notion of "democracy" is rather vague and weasely. I'm sure that the UU folks would be horrified by many things that have, or have historically had, firm democratic support in various places.)
The core theme I've seen repeated across congregations is the "seven core principles" that I posted above. I've seen some degree of ideological consistency across those, but I've attended seen quite a few sermons discussing various perspectives on the seven core principles. It seems like a fairly common tradition to even invite speakers from other religions or affiliations to come and share their own thoughts.
Certainly a bias towards those who are "compatible" with the group consensus, and there is some degree of "group think". LessWrong has this going for it as well, though: there's a strong thread of anti-religion bias, and I'd say there's a moderate pro-cryonics/singularity bias. I don't see a lot of posts about how SIAI is a waste of time and money, or how Christianity is really misunderstood and we should come to embrace our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Can you can point to something specific in the UU literature that makes you feel that they're less tolerant to dissent than LessWrong?
Before I even click at a link to a Unitarian Universalist website, I know with very high probability that there is going to be a "social justice" section espousing ideological positions on a number of issues. And for any such section, I can predict with almost full certainty what precisely these positions will be before I even read any of it.
Now, the UU folks would probably claim that such agreement exists simply because these positions are correct. However, even if I agreed that all these positions are correct, given the public controversy over many of these issues, it would still seem highly implausible that such ideological uniformity could be maintained in practice in a group highly tolerant of dissent. In contrast, I see nothing comparable on LW.
You say:
Actually, in my opinion, LW does have its collective quirks and blind spots, but you're nowhere close to pinpointing them.
Regarding SIAI being a waste of time and money, I've seen such opinions raised in several threads without getting downvoted or otherwise creating any drama. (I can dig up some links if you insist.) As long as you make a polite and coherent argument, you won't elicit any hostility by criticizing SIAI.
Regarding religious proselytism, that is generally considered impolite anywhere. On the other hand, I actually do believe that there is a lot of misunderstanding of religion on LW, in the sense of many people having a "reversed stupidity" attitude towards various religious teachings and beliefs, developing "applause lights" reactions to various loudmouth atheists who bash traditional religion but believe far crazier stuff instead, etc., etc. I have made arguments along these lines on occasions, and I've never encountered any hostility in response, just reasonable counterarguments.
Regarding cryonics, it may well be that the average opinion on LW is heavily biased in favor of it. But again, if you want to argue that cryonics is bunk, you'll be welcome to do so as long as you have something new, intelligent, and well-informed to say about it. (In fact, I remember posts from people who solicited for anti-cryonics arguments.)
In contrast to these topics, one that usually destroys the quality of discourse on LW are gender issues. This really is a recurring problem, but then, I seriously doubt that a diversity of views on these issues is welcome among UUs. Another problem are certain topics whose understanding requires familiarity with some peculiar theories that are discussed on LW occasionally, where certain (seemingly) very theoretical and far-fetched speculations are apparently taken seriously enough by some of the prominent people here that discussing them can lead to bizarre drama. None of this however comes anywhere close to the ideological uniformity that I observe among the Unitarian Universalists, at least judging from their internet presence.
Tangentially: The discussion of actual issues and biases on LessWrong is appreciated. I've only been here briefly, so I haven't really gotten to know the community that well yet.
This was sadly not clear in my original post, but my goal was to compare "looking at a public website" to "reading top-level posts". I've never seen a top-level post supporting Christianity or condemning the SIAI here. On an individual level, I'm sure there are people that hold those stances, just as there are individual UU members who don't agree with the values you're seeing on the UU websites.
My point was simply "when you look at the 'public face' of an organisation, you're going to see some degree of consensus, because that's just how human organisations work"
I suppose I should reiterate this, as it seems to be unclear: My point was not that UUs don't have a degree of "group consensus." My point was that they do not treat it as an unquestionable dogma.
That they generally have a "social values" page does not seem at all contradictory to this - the issue is whether they're willing to entertain discussion from opposing views.
In my (anecdotal) experience as someone who has actually attended UU churches, the answer has been very strongly yes. If you have actual experiences to the contrary, or have seen websites from them that seem to make it vividly clear that dissent is not tolerated, I'd be genuinely curious to see this. It's entirely possible that my experiences aren't typical, but I haven't seen any evidence to support that theory.
LessWrong FAQ:
You don't see a lot of posts about how gravity doesn't really exist and it's just the Flying Spaghetti Monster pushing us down with his tentacles, either.
Note the previous part of the sentence by Vladimir_M that you quoted: (emphasis added)
There's a difference between consensus on empirical questions where the evidence falls overwhelmingly on one side, and consensus on higher-level ideological questions with a much less clear distribution of both evidence and arguments.
Nevertheless there are some from time to time, as well as comments to effect and many more that are ambivalent.