Politics as in the politics that most obviously triggers this is useless.

What I meant by this was things like idle speculating about the election. Indulging in off hand remarks about Gawddamn Liberals and Bible Thumping Conservatives. Frowning seriously and speaking about some politicians misconduct. Debating the particularities of certain laws. Endorsing candidates, criticizing candidates. Taking the parties stated platform seriously, ad hominens on the demographics that support a certain position, various other Dark Arts, ect.

In short everything that immediately triggers tribal feelings in those who are basically politically active average Joe "good citizens".

The "real" mechanism would be perhaps controversial but mostly not covered under the "no mind killers" rule.

These are of course ideological mind-killers. I would argue that currently there is some room for intelligent debates on LW about various such issues, the sore thumb being gender relations/sexual conduct. People are not obviously mind-killed by discussing say group differences or questioning Democracy (ok many are, but a substantial and not at all fringe fraction of LWers who have tought about this question and take some deep criticism of it quite seriously), though a kind of paranoia and strained feeling of someone saying "too much" does persist. Considering its demographics, constant stream of new unacclimatised participants and the very aggressive signalling on things like charity and altruism (which are concepts always heavily defined and shaped by the underlying fundamentals of a society) it is admirable that LW rationalist community can go as far as it does.

I say people can survive without daily politics just fine. Because signalling only requires they understand the ideological fundamentals, and even further they might do just as well if they try and understand the ideological fundamentals from the outside, without getting into the messy details. I think my "model crazy society's expectations as a black box without bothering with the details of how they think their crazy works" satisfices.

I do however agree with your concern here:

However, when people speak about avoiding mind-killers on LW, they often have in mind complete cessation of thinking about such topics and living under the assumption that the status quo will continue indefinitely, or all until some grand technological game-changer. (Worse yet, sometimes they go further and privilege the hypotheses on controversial questions favored by the respectable opinion and official intellectual institutions, and consider attacks on these, but not adherence to them, as mind-killing.)

But to think about such issues critically and objectively, there is in fact no need to even know what has been going on in say the past year. The tabooed fundamentals and key axioms have been the same for quite a bit longer and will not be changed by political action in the context of a modern Western "representative democracy".

You are right, it is much harder than I made it sound.

But I am convinced that many LWers if they could be made clearly aware of the importance of this for a clear picture and committing to be very aggressive fighting several very hard to root out biases, could make the transition or perhaps at least trust another LWer who has done some of the legwork once they saw the predictive power of the model.

Naturally the impulse of wanting to grab someone and shake violently until they realize the importance of something they have been missing their entire lives does little good. It is hard to communicate in many or few words, due to various complications, just how utterly vital this difficult and even dangerous (intellectually and perhaps emotionally) journey is in order to understand society.

I sometimes fear it just can not be done.

Naturally you can't really state the rules emulating the black box or people will object, since the signalling is all messed up and it may ruin important narratives.

It is basically the most mind-killing thing that I can think of in the context of LW public discussion.

Also the simple rules are only simple in comparison to what they replace.They are currently scattered through various notes and correspondences and a reference chart that's probably only understandable to me. I don't have a go to response or prepared mail, I do write about individual points when they come up. To properly introduce them fully to other LWers would probably take one or two top level quality articles, rather than a throwaway comment in an obscure thread.

Rule 1: assume all judgments that things are [ETA: or are] not of equal value are due to motivated thinking by people writing their bottom line according to a weighted primeval in-group/out-group equation, and in response one should compensate along necessary opposite vectors [ETA: or find an ingroup member to inform you about their group].

Rule 2: Rule 1 does not apply to the extent the in-group in question is constructed around complying with these rules.

Note 1: There will not necessarily be unique solutions to these rules, for example, evidence that men and women think differently in important ways can either be dismissed entirely or have its interpretation arranged so that the tasks women are better at are more important.

Note 2: These rules only apply to conclusions in line with primeval in-group/out-group thinking, for example, no one cares if their non-African scientists discover that all modern non-Africans are descended from Neanderthals, because the in-group is allowed to say things that some perceived moral systems would see as making them inferior. The opposite would have been a different situation.

Note 3: Any conclusion that results from compensating more than one did may be honestly disagreed with; the presence of honest disagreement marks the system as tolerant and makes those who apparently dishonestly disagree beyond the pale and not even worth arguing with. Any conclusion at variance with the rules system due to its compensating significantly less isn't just wrong, but evidence of primitive rationalization and/or moral failure, in accordance with Rule 1, and its advocates are different in kind from those merely disagreed with,.

[ETA: Note 4: These rules are recursive. Whether someone is valuing things as equal (or not) is to be judged by an interpreter of the rules according to the rules.

These rules constitute a black box with which one can discover socially respectable positions without understanding facts and apparently underlying issues. Information about such facts may distract from unbiased use of the black box, and result in unacceptable opinions.]

Not without getting into highly mind-killing territory.

Do not criticize blacks, women, homosexuals. Criticism of whites and of men is encouraged, as this confers a level of protection by signaling that you belong to the creed. Identify all manner of scum and human parasites, and praise them. Attack all manner of productive people, law abiding people.

No enemies to the left, no friends to the right. Feel free to attack Palin, tea party, republicans and especially non left wing republicans. A level of protection is achieved by attacking non leftists.

Criticize government for failing to be sufficiently all encompassing. Blame private enterprise for everything. Never suggest that government should cut back involvement with anything. If criticizing a regulation, make sure that the basis of criticism is that allows too much freedom.

To illustrate this, let us have a thread on the causes of the financial crisis

Consider racefail09, where sophisticated people with great skill in expressing themselves and intimate knowledge of our politics

Not at all. The people who complained about supposed racism in the original post should have been trolled hard for disputing the author's motives in wishing to write fiction about minority folks--and seeking to do it "right", i.e. minimizing outgroup biases. Their original arguments were non-sensical and should have been exposed as such. Instead what we got from the folks on the author's side was lots and lots of arguments about how minority people should have no say in the matter, and how pseudonymous/anonymous critics should be disregarded for not making their identity known (even though unprivileged critics have lots of reasons for being pseudonymous). The complainers' faction replied by correctly accusing the authors' side of racist bias, and that was that. It could no longer be sensibly argued that the OP authors were in the right when seeking to write about cultural outgroups in an unbiased way, so the debate was effectively lost.

Hardly a marker of "sophisticated people with great skill in expressing themselves and intimate knowledge of our politics".

In this context, "not signaling allegiance to a standard political faction". Or more generally, "not looking at the world through the prism of a standard political ideology".

I might agree with you, except that factions (hence, folks needing to declare allegiance to some faction) have instrumental value in political processes, and it's hard to see what might replace them. So even though ideologies can be bad (since they often lead to absolute-sounding, black-and-white thinking) the best antidote to them is compromise and careful deliberation--as opposed to withdrawing politics entirely and ceding any debate to the faction with the briefest sound-bites and the most adherents.