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Viliam_Bur comments on How can we get more and better LW contrarians? - Less Wrong
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I'm not trying to spawn new contrarians for the sake of having more contrarians, nor want to encourage debate for the sake of having more disagreements. What I care about is (me personally as well as this community as a whole) having correct beliefs on the topics that I think are most important, namely the core rationality and Singularity-related topics, and I think having more contrarians who disagree about these core topics would help with that. Your suggestion doesn't seem to help with my goals, or at least it's not obvious to me how it would.
(BTW, I note that you've personally made 2 meta/community posts out of 7, whereas I've only made about 3 out of 58 (plus or minus a few counting errors). So maybe you can give me a pass on this one? :)
Do you also think that having more contrarians who disagree that "2+2=4" would increase our likelihood of having correct beliefs? I mean, if they are wrong, we will see the weakness in their arguments and refuse to update, so there is no harm; but if they are right and we are wrong, it could be very helpful.
More generally, what is your algorithm for deciding for which values of X we need more contrarians who disagree with X?
If people come to LessWrong thinking "2+2 != 4" or "computer manufacturing isn't science", is saying "You're stupid" really raising the sanity line in any way? In short, we should distinguish between punishing disagreement and punishing obstinate behavior/contrarianism.
Well, computer manufacturing isn't science, it's engineering.
If someone says, "I believe in computers and GPS, but not quantum mechanics or science" then they are deeply confused.
Has there been a glut of those on LessWrong?
This. It's obviously very possible that this was a troll, but that's not my read.
Edit: There were one or two others talking a lot without contributing much that seemed to be the impetus for this discussion post. Wei Dai's post seems to be a reaction to that post.