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Eugine_Nier comments on 2012 Survey Results - Less Wrong
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I believe that, with your linked comment getting 32 points, you are making Nancy rather uncomfortable in turn.
I'm fairly certain that we're all suffering from the hostile media effect; e.g. you keep saying how there's creeping censorship of right-wing ideas on LW, while I'm disturbed by such complaints getting karma and support :)
Consider the way this post was down-voted, along with some of the discussion, particularly here, as exhibit A.
OK, I'm considering it. How does it indicate creeping censorship of right-wing ideas on LW?
I neither upvoted nor downvoted that post, so my guesses at the motivations of downvoters shouldn't be trusted too far, but my guess is that mostly it was downvoted because, while it was ostensibly about a technique of rationality, (1) what it said about that technique was mostly very obvious, (2) a big chunk of the article was devoted to the discussion of an entirely different topic with considerable mindkilling potential, and (3) this gives some ground for suspicion that the rationality-technique discussion served largely as a pretext for airing the author's views on that topic. (A topic that others in the past have been curiously enthusiastic to air similar views on.)
Having said all that, I'll add that in fact I don't think it likely that MTGandP is a racist or that s/he wrote that post in order to bolster racist ideas, and I think that if anyone downvoted that post because they wanted to discourage a nasty racist (rather than, e.g., to discourage other people who are nasty racists from posting similar stuff) then they made a mistake. But the point is that the downvotes don't look to me like censorship of right-wing ideas; they look to me like some combination of (1) finding the post unenlightening and (2) seeing it as promoting racism.
As for the "discussion, particularly here", again that doesn't look to me at all like censorship of right-wing ideas, nor like people arguing for the censorship of right-wing ideas. It looks to me like one person apparently thinking that racism has gone away and other people objecting that no it bloody hasn't. (Exception: the very first comment in the thread you linked to says, roughly, "race is a needlessly contentious thing to discuss to make your point", which (1) is true if the point is what MTGandP says, rather than that being a pretext for talking about race, and (2) doesn't constitute any sort of attempt at censorship, as opposed to advice that some topics are likely on the whole not to produce helpful discussion.)
Incidentally, I notice that some people in this thread are insisting that there's nothing particularly right-wing about believing in racial intelligence differences, whereas the only thing I can see to link the downvoting of the post you linked to with "right-wing ideas" is its defence of (discussing the possibility of) racial intelligence differences. Curious.
See my comment here for why I think the example was appropriate. Furthermore, the way you're throwing around the term "racist ideas" suggests you are also making the mistake the post describes with respect to the example given.
You might have missed the part where AndrewHickey says:
Depends on what you mean by "right-wing". It's certainly true that there are currently a number of left-wing people who believe that discussing race and intelligence is morally unacceptable.
There's also a number of people who think there are bad intelectual confusions in every race-intelligence comment they have ever seen.
Why?
No, I didn't miss it. I don't see any attempt at censorship there; I see someone saying: you appear to be ignorant about X, and in view of that you would do better to leave the subject alone.
No, I don't think it does. Because so far as I can see there is nothing else about the post, or the votes it got, or the ensuing discussion, that anyone would consider an instance of "creeping censorship of right-wing ideas". Given that you cited it as an example of that, I can only conclude that you consider belief in racial intelligence differences to be a "right-wing idea". My own understanding of the term "right-wing" doesn't come into it, unless there's something else in the post that's distinctively right-wing; did I miss something?
Because you're using "racist" as a property of an idea independent of its truth value that lets you dismiss it.
Well, especially on LW, the normal response to ignorance is to help educate the person being ignorant rather than to attempt to dismiss him as quickly as possible.
Furthermore, the statement is more like "you said something that could be stretched to imply you are don't know X (where X is itself a highly politicized claim whose truth value is a matter of political dispute) that means you are too ignorant to even say anything about the topic".
What idea do you think I'm doing that to?
(It seems clear to me that there are ideas that can reasonably be described as "racist ideas". For instance, the idea that black people are fundamentally inferior to white people in abilities, character, and personal value, and that this means they should be segregated to keep them out of the way of superior white people. Or the idea that the right thing to do with people of Jewish descent is to put them into concentration camps and kill them en masse. So if you're saying that merely using the words "racist ideas" is proof of error and confusion, I think that's wrong. On the other hand, if there's some actual idea you think I'm wrongly describing that way, then let's hear what idea that is.)
I've seen both quite often.
But let's suppose for the sake of argument that (1) Andrew Hickey was in fact intending to dismiss MTGandP as quickly as possible and to get him (note: actually I have no idea whether MTGandP is male or female; indeed the name rather suggests a collective) to drop the subject, and that (2) such behaviour is very atypical on Less Wrong. What then? How does this indicate "creeping censorship of right-wing ideas"?
The most it indicates, being as uncharitable as possible to AH, is that one person (AH) is trying to intimidate another person (MT) out of talking about an idea that AH considers racist. How do you get from "AH tries to intimidate MT out of talking about the idea that black people might have inferior intelligence" to "LW exhibits creeping censorship of right-wing ideas"? No one was censored. There was no deluge of people agreeing with AH and telling MT to shut up. The idea in question isn't, at least according to others in this thread who appear sympathetic to "right-wing-ideas", particularly a right-wing one anyway.
In the ancestor you wrote:
What work is the word "racist" doing in that paragraph that couldn't be better done by the word "wrong"?
The fact that MT's post is at -7 and AH's comment is at +4 rather than the other way around suggests the problem isn't limited to AH.
The word occurs several times in different contexts; I take it (from what you've said elsewhere here) that you're referring to the instance where it prefixes "ideas". The work it's doing that couldn't be better done by "wrong" is specifying the particular variety of allegedly-wrong ideas I'm saying I think MTGandP isn't trying to promote.
... indicates that there are some other people who think MTGandP's post wasn't very good (which might be for many reasons), and that there are some other people who agree with AH (which also might be for many reasons).
I repeat: How does any of this amount to "creeping censorship of right-wing ideas"? What specific right-wing ideas? How are they being censored?
I think it's interesting that you keep changing the subject from "what propositions Greens believe" to your beliefs about "what topics Blues think are morally acceptable to discuss". It comes across that you're trying to make some sort of deeply subtle point about what beliefs you think it is morally acceptable to believe you have about Blues.
I was just trying to explain what Konkvistador probably meant by that statement.