wedrifid comments on EY "Politics is the Mind Killer" sighting at Washington Examiner and Reason.com - Less Wrong
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Comments (61)
Nancy did identify a serious problem with your comment, but I'm not sure modulo that issue that your comment should be downvoted as much as it is. To some extent, the point that we have politics as a way of resolving issues without bloodshed is valid: modern politics in many ways is an improvement over the alternatives. But that doesn't by itself make politics a good thing or make politics less of a mind-killer. To some extent, much political interaction resembles ritualized combat that occurs in many mammalian species (and sometimes in groups)- fatality is minimized, but the level of actual rational discourse is clearly still pretty low.
To some extent, it may help to see politics as the mindkiller as a statement about how political discourse can be improved. In most of the West, politics doesn't result in people being killed often, but it still isn't a rational way of examining disagreements and resolving them in a way that appropriately balances conflicting goals. And it is very very easy for it to become outright tribalism that doesn't devolve into violence primarily because we have strong anti-violence taboos and respect taboos more than anything connected to the political process.
It should be. The comment fundamentally missed the point and made an irrelevant challenge to the alternative forms of competition as though it was some kind of insightful counterpoint rather than a naive trivialization.
Wedrifid, I was disappointed that Eliezer so succinctly identified the problem then mostly left it hanging.
Now, your comment fundamentally missed the point I was making, furthermore you seem to be acting out a common politician's caricature, I don't see you making an actual argument here & tbh I'm slightly surprised as you usually do much better than that.
Either way. in the interest of preserving the sanity waterline I'll stop here.
"Politics" is not the problem Eliezer identified and nor is "the thing that is the alternative to raiding and pillaging". (Never mind that the 'politics' that corrupts thinking applies just as much---or more---to the tribes who go around raiding and pillaging. It's about the internal politics within the tribe and the external conflicts come in to it as just more things the individuals can argue about in order to achieve personal gain, preferably at the expense of rivals.)