I am not saying we - as individuals, or as parts of groups elsewhere - should ignore politics. We should be skeptical of even our own conclusions, but we should try to do what we deem best. I am interested in politics.
I am strongly rejecting the following passage:
I agree with you that most politics is green-team-versus-blue-team, and for this reason politics is the mindkiller. But I'm under the impression that both support and opposition to SOPA come from people on both the left and the right.
because it is wrong. There is no bias fairy that comes and sprinkles magic Green-Blue dust over party labels. Absent additional evidence, my priors say that this sort of effect should appear with any group you identify with that might have "positions".
I more weakly reject this kind of discussion here because it is likely to hijack more productive discussion, is likely to turn off those who have reached different conclusions (perhaps even honestly), and we don't have good methods for dealing with the many biases that crop up here. I am strongly in favor of discussion of ways to combat those biases when we do consider these things in other environs, which we should of course be doing.
I'm not completely sure what you mean about the bias fairy sprinkling Green-Blue dust over party labels. Not that I object to the use of metaphor, it's just I'm not sure what you are attributing to me. I think it's completely plausible that I expressed myself in a confusing way, so I'm going to try again.
I think we both agree about the politics-is-the-mind-killer thing in principle. With that said, I'd suggest that politics exercises its mind killing power over some issues more than others, at any given time within a society. Some issues inflame politi...
Referring, of course, to the proposed U.S. legislation which could cause severe damage to the Internet—at least, that's what a lot of people are saying. See, e.g., this Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress (the first signatory listed is Vint Cerf). On Wikipedia, people including Jimbo Wales are discussing strategies as extreme as blanking the entire site (except for an explanatory message) to get people's attention, and thereby perhaps incite them to action, such as calling their Congressional representative.
I just happened to find out about all this a few hours ago, being someone who tries to avoid distractions like most kinds of news, so possibly others here with similar habits will appreciate having it called to ther attention. Or possibly they won't. But to those of you who possess relevant kinds of expertise:
(I think this subject can be discussed without political advocacy, in which I am mostly not at all interested anyway. It just looks like a practical problem to me.)
Edited to Add: I forgot to include a fourth bullet point:
It seems to have been assumed by many commenters, nevertheless.