Politics Discussion Thread September 2012

Multiheaded

The last thread didn't fare too badly, I think; let's make it a monthly tradition. (Me, I'm more interested in thinking about real-world policies or philosophies, actual and possible, rather than AI design or physics, and I suspect that many fine, non-mind-killed folks reading LW also are - but might be ashamed to admit it!)

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

My model is that there are groups of people with common personal-life interests, such as raising the status of one sub-group or another. Those who can band together to exert coordinated social pressure, win.

There is no reason to expect different stable coalitions of such groups require equally large footprints of politicized subjects. Let alone that all such subjects are equally important for the common good! I'm saying that ceteris paribus the less politicized the result of a such a collation is the better off society as a whole will be.

Perhaps stable coalitions requiring small footprints have other remarkably negative externalities that nearly always outweigh the gains in areas of life free from politicization. But considering just what a horrible cancer on action and the greater good politicking seems to be, I'm somewhat dubious this is commonly the case.

People adopting a general stance of opposing "the personal is the political" subsidize smaller footprint coalitions. Naturally such subsidizing has very small if not tiny effect, it still probably beats out the effect from voting also I would claim that under current circumstances it serves as a useful filter to finding interesting people.

So you're saying "Let the bakers' union be the bakers' union, but keep them out of the Green Coalition?"