= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
aaronde comments on Is Politics the Mindkiller? An Inconclusive Test - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (276)
Then why not just discuss politics on another site?
Because on a different site, the users would be different, i.e. I wouldn't be talking with people I knew I share a certain mindset with.
Because then we won't be able to discuss them with lesswrongers.
What if you advertised the site only to LessWrongers?
Then why not just discuss it on LessWrong?
Clutter, distraction, drama.
(ETA: Very much confused by downvotes. Are these not relevant considerations that differ relevantly between the scenario where politics is discussed in threads on LessWrong, and the scenario where politics is discussed on a different site inhabited by LessWrongers?)
The "clutter" and "distraction" concerns don't seem to be specific to politics. Any topic which a substantial portion of the community is uninterested in discussing raises similar concerns. I am sure there are a number of readers who are not all that interested in the interpretation of QM, for instance, and for them MWI-related threads and comments are clutter and distraction. Is your worry that political threads will generate far more comments (and thus far more clutter for the uninterested) than other topics that aren't of nigh-universal interest? Or do you think that the portion of the community uninterested in discussing politics is significantly larger than their counterparts for topics like MWI?
The "drama" concern might be especially salient for political discussion. That's where experiments of this sort are useful. If it turns out that the discussion remains largely drama-free (as it has so far), that is at least some evidence that we can talk about politics on LW without too much drama ruining the site.
That an error is commonly made is not an argument for making it.
I disagree with various parts of that, but in retrospect it was a mistake for me to enter this discussion and I'm hereby bowing out.
From my experience on other parts of the internet, yes a political thread with lots of disagreement clogs the heck out of recent comments etc.