Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:
- Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
- No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
This is probably me projecting, but I took it to be about distinguishing between those which make claims about reality and those which don't.
For example: If somebody says "You should be democratic, because the people have the right to rule themselves" - that's not even claiming to be a fact, just an ethical position. If they say "You should be democratic, because democratic countries do better economically," then that's a about the real world, which I could even test if I wanted to.
In my admittedly limited experience, it seems that a lot of confusion in the greatest mind-killing subjects (politics and spirituality) come from people not properly distinguishing between those two kinds of statements.
The interesting question is how you evaluate proposed big changes. Democracy has turned out to be a moderately good idea, but trying it out for the first few times was something of a leap in the dark.
There are reasons for thinking that democracy might work better than monarchy-- generally speaking, a bad ruler can do more damage than not having a great ruler can do good, but is the theoretical reason good enough?