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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Open Thread, September 15-30, 2012 - Less Wrong
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Reposting a comment I made on Yvain's livejournal:
There's a standard argument about "efficient charity" that says you should concentrate all your donations on one charity, because presumably you have preferences over the total amounts of money donated to each charity (not just your own donations), so choosing something like a 50/50 split would be too sensitive to other people's donations.
I just realized that the argument applies in equal force to politics. If you're not using "beliefs as attire" but actually care about politics, your participation in politics should be 100% extremist. That's troubling.
Value of information about which political side is more marginally valuable makes unbiased discussion a cause that's potentially more valuable than advocacy for any of the political sides, and charities are similarly on the same scene. So the rule is not "focus on a single element out of each class of activities", the choice isn't limited to any given class of activities. Applied to politics, the rule can be stated only as, "If advocacy of political positions is the most marginally valuable thing you can do, focus on a single side."
Yeah, I agree. I wonder how many people would subscribe to the rule in full generality.