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GLaDOS comments on [Link] Admitting to Bias - Less Wrong
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Comments (129)
Political bias on LessWrong as well?
We rely heavily on academia for determining what is true or isn't and academia has turned out to be biased in a certain way. I have recently grown convinced we can see examples of such bias playing out here as well. Considering politics is the mind-killer and how strange our demographics are this isn't really that surprising a realization. Similar conditions and incentives may recreate the problem here This compounds the progressive bias we inherit from academia.
Even many of our libertarians are probably left libertarians and nearly all of our high quality right wing thinkers are somewhat eclectic, eccentric and often aren't really conservative in the small c sense of the word. Examples include machinations like Anarcho-Capitalism, Moldbuggian Progressivism-curing Rationalist Uberfact, Eugenic Aristocratic Monarchies or Multi-universe spanning TDT zombie computational theocracies (something like that! ^_~ ).
Intellectual hipsters indeed. I'm not sure such fun ideas cooked up by a handful of enthusiastic rationalists really help us offset the bias, rather than just adding their own dose of political craziness to the mix.
Standing where we do as a community, means that our bias against ideas and arguments because of their tribal affiliation will not feel like being unfair or irrational from the inside. I have little idea how to fix this or even if it is wise to fix it considering how the mysterious but probably real w-force continues to do its magic over time. It may hurt our status bad enough to stop us from "Refining the art of human rationality" (yay! ^_^) in other ways.
Yes. In particular, shoddy cheap shots toward conservatives will receive a pass, and often acclamation.
Really? I can't say I've noticed many cheap shots at conservatives that weren't downvoted - unless you count cheap shot at stupid positions that happen to be mostly held among conservatives, like religion. But even cheap shots at religion here seem rarer than on other atheist forums.
I remember reading several posts from the sequences that contained shots at Bush, some of them cheap.
Isn't the point of this site to espouse the process of thinking rationally? to support and encourage others in coming to their own conclusions about the where the map lies over the territory? Indeed, if rationality is reliable at all in improving one's accurate perspective of the world, much of the community will come to the same conclusions - and of course others will I'm sure appreciate the availability of some guiding logic that may assist in them in learning to think more rationally. However, shouldn't others be left to their process and not forced to accept a conclusion they have yet to reach themselves, lest they be deemed irrational?
It just seems like pointless signalling hypocritical to the principles of the site itself to thrust a bottom line out there and say, "This is rational and not agreeing to this is irrational - whatever gets you here, I don't care, but make sure you do!"
As a summary metaphor:
In maths, you can reach right answer using incorrect methods, yet it will be a singular feat.
Sorry, did you accidentally reply to the wrong comment? (or is there some link I'm not seeing?)
My bad, I kept meaning to include a disclaimer notifying you that I wasn't so much responding to your comment as I was saying something that I thought needed saying after having read your comment.
This was the impetus:
Even though you qualified that statement as a meta example of a cheap shot while noting that cheap shots aren't to be tolerated, I still thought it needing saying.
The description in the survey made it clear that by ‘libertarian’ it meant ‘capitalist libertarian’. (I am a socialist libertarian myself, but I picked ‘socialist’ in the survey, IIRC.)