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Viliam_Bur comments on How to Fix Science - Less Wrong
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Evolution is also a political issue. Shall we now refrain from talking about evolution, or mentioning what widespread refusal to accept evolution, up to the point of there being a strong movement to undermine the teaching of evolution in US schools, says about human rationality?
I get that it can be especially hard to think rationally about politics. And I agree with what Eliezer has written about government policy being complex and almost always involving some trade-offs, so that we should be careful about thinking there's an obvious "rationalist view" on policy questions.
However, a ban on discussing issues that happen to be politicized is idiotic, because it puts us at the mercy of contingent facts about what forms of irrationality happen to be prevalent in political discussion at this time. Evolution is a prime example of this. Also, if the singularity became a political issue, would we ban discussion of that from LessWrong?
We should not insert political issues which are not relevant to the topic, because the more political issues one brings to the discussion, the less rational it becomes. It would be most safe to discuss all issues separately, but sometimes is it not possible, e.g. when the topic being discussed relies heavily on evolution.
One part of trying to be rational is to accept that people are not rational, and act accordingly. For every political topic there is a number of people whose minds will turn off if they read something they disagree with. It does not mean we should be quiet on the topic, but we should not insert it where it is not relevant.
Explaining why X is true, in a separate article, is correct approach. Saying or suggesting something like "by the way, people who don't think X is true are wrong" in an unrelated topic, is wrong approach. Why is it so? In the first example you expect your proof of X to be discussed in the comments, because it is the issue. In the second example, discussions about X in comments are off-topic. Asserting X in a place where discussion of X is unwelcome, is a kind of Dark Arts; we should avoid it even if we think X is true.