I tend to agree with your concern.
Discussing politics is hard because all political groups make extensive use of lies, propaganda and emotional appeals, which turns any debate into a quagmire of disputed facts and mind-killing argument. It can be tempting to dismiss the whole endeavor as hopeless and ignore it while cynically deriding those who stay involved.
Trouble is, political movements are not all equal. If they gain power, some groups will use it to make the country wealthy so they can pocket a cut of the money. Others will try to force everyone to join their religion, or destroy the economy in some wacky scheme that could never have worked, or establish an oppressive totalitarian regime and murder millions of people to secure their position. These results are not equal.
So while it might be premature to discuss actual political issues on Less Wrong, searching for techniques to make such discussions possible would be a very valuable endeavor. Political trends affect the well-being of hundreds of millions of people in substantial ways, so even a modest improvement in the quality of discourse could have a substantial payoff. At the very least, it would be nice if we could reliably identify the genocidal maniacs before they come into power...
So while it might be premature to discuss actual political issues on Less Wrong, searching for techniques to make such discussions possible would be a very valuable endeavor. Political trends affect the well-being of hundreds of millions of people in substantial ways, so even a modest improvement in the quality of discourse could have a substantial payoff.
I didn't understand this at first but now its clear. Improving the discourse on LessWrong would have an impact on actual policy. Needless to say I fully support anti-democratic coups by rationalists s...
I am emotionally excited and/or deeply hurt by what st_rev wrote recently. You better take me seriously because you've spent a lot of time reading my posts already and feel invested in our common tribe. Anecdote about how people are tribal thinkers.
I don't even know where to begin. This is what blueist ideology has been workign towards for decades if not millennia, but to see it written here is hard to stomach even for one as used to the depravity caused by such delusions as I am. The lack of socially admired virtues among its adherents is frightening. Here I introduce an elaborate explanation of how blueist domination is not just completely obvious and a constant thorn in the side of all who wish more goodness but is achieved by the most questionable means often citing a particular blogger or public intellectual who I read in order to show how smart I am and because people I admire read him too. Followed by an appeal to the plot of a movie. Anecdote from my personal life. If you are familiar with the obscure work of an academic taken out of context and this does not convince you then you are clearly an intolerant sexual deviant engaging in motivated cognition.
While sympathetic to this criticism I must signal my world-weariness and sophistication by writing several long paragraphs about how this is much too optimistic and we are in grave danger of a imminent and eternal takeover by our opponents. The only solution is to begin work on an organization dedicated to preventing this which happens to give me access to material resources and attractive females.
Ciphergoth proves to be the lone voice of reason by encouraging us to recall what we all learned on 9/11: