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.

Most people who are concerned about gender egalitarianism probably feel, in fact, slightly relieved that this comment is quite, so to say, neutral - I know I did!

It treats hypothetical males as selfish animals who only care about dating a physically attractive fertile female and hypothetical females as selfish animals who only care about dating a socially attractive tribal chieftain! So basically it's neither misogynistic nor misandric, it's simply misanthropic :)

It treats hypothetical males as selfish animals who only care about dating a physically attractive fertile female and hypothetical females as selfish animals who only care about dating a socially attractive tribal chieftain!

I tried going further than that by making them exactly symmetrical: both sexes want a physically fit partner who wears nice clothes.

At any rate, my argument holds no matter what men/women want. As long as men and women can invest scarce resources into improving their dating value.

8sixes_and_sevens14y

I say it reads like satire because it looks like a joke an economist might make when trying to underscore the limitations of simple supply/demand models, in a similar fashion to the efficient market hypothesis punchline of "if there was really $100 on the floor, someone would have picked it up already".