Politics is the Mind-Killer - Less Wrong

Politics is the Mind-Killer

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:23:00 +1100

Submitted by Eliezer_Yudkowsky • 57 votes • 178 comments

People go funny in the head when talking about politics. The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death. And sex, and wealth, and allies, and reputation... When, today, you get into an argument about whether "we" ought to raise the minimum wage, you're executing adaptations for an ancestral environment where being on the wrong side of the argument could get you killed. Being on the right side of the argument could let you kill your hated rival!

If you want to make a point about science, or rationality, then my advice is to not choose a domain from contemporary politics if you can possibly avoid it. If your point is inherently about politics, then talk about Louis XVI during the French Revolution. Politics is an important domain to which we should individually apply our rationality—but it's a terrible domain in which to learn rationality, or discuss rationality, unless all the discussants are already rational.

Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you're on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it's like stabbing your soldiers in the back—providing aid and comfort to the enemy. People who would be level-headed about evenhandedly weighing all sides of an issue in their professional life as scientists, can suddenly turn into slogan-chanting zombies when there's a Blue or Green position on an issue.

In Artificial Intelligence, and particularly in the domain of nonmonotonic reasoning, there's a standard problem: "All Quakers are pacifists. All Republicans are not pacifists. Nixon is a Quaker and a Republican. Is Nixon a pacifist?"

What on Earth was the point of choosing this as an example? To rouse the political emotions of the readers and distract them from the main question? To make Republicans feel unwelcome in courses on Artificial Intelligence and discourage them from entering the field? (And no, before anyone asks, I am not a Republican. Or a Democrat.)

Why would anyone pick such a distracting example to illustrate nonmonotonic reasoning? Probably because the author just couldn't resist getting in a good, solid dig at those hated Greens. It feels so good to get in a hearty punch, y'know, it's like trying to resist a chocolate cookie.

As with chocolate cookies, not everything that feels pleasurable is good for you. And it certainly isn't good for our hapless readers who have to read through all the angry comments your blog post inspired.

I'm not saying that I think Overcoming Bias should be apolitical, or even that we should adopt Wikipedia's ideal of the Neutral Point of View. But try to resist getting in those good, solid digs if you can possibly avoid it. If your topic legitimately relates to attempts to ban evolution in school curricula, then go ahead and talk about it—but don't blame it explicitly on the whole Republican Party; some of your readers may be Republicans, and they may feel that the problem is a few rogues, not the entire party. As with Wikipedia's NPOV, it doesn't matter whether (you think) the Republican Party really is at fault. It's just better for the spiritual growth of the community to discuss the issue without invoking color politics.

(Now that I've been named as a co-moderator, I guess I'd better include a disclaimer: This article is my personal opinion, not a statement of official Overcoming Bias policy. This will always be the case unless explicitly specified otherwise.)

Part of the Politics Is the Mind-Killer subsequence of How To Actually Change Your Mind

Next post: "Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided"

Previous post: "A Fable of Science and Politics"

178 comments

Robin_Hanson2 on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2007-02-19T11:00:42+11:00

People are certainly more biased in politics than in most other subjects. So yes, it helps to find ways to transfer our cognitive habits from other topics into politics. But as long as you don't "go native," politics should be rich source of bias examples to think about.

brazil84 on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-07-10T07:09:08.830819+10:00

Rich sources of finding bias in other people. But if the idea is to remove the log from one's own eye, it may make sense to steer clear. Personally, I did not learn how to think critically until I went to law school and studied questions which were pretty far removed from the various inflammatory issues floating around out there.

What exceptions should there be to the Hearsay Rule? Should the use of a company car be considered "income" under the Internal Revenue Code? etc. etc.

TGGP3 on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2007-02-19T11:15:40+11:00

Like Eliezer, I would prefer if contemporary politics did not show up much here, and I do not identify with either political party. What I wonder though, is whether we would feel the same way if we did identify with one of the parties. Perhaps a Republican might, seeing as how the Republicans have not been looking as good recently while a Democrat would be happy for the latest mess their opponents are in to be highlighted. If the weblog lasted long enough perhaps both sides could become tired enough of their side being kicked while down to come to a gentleman's agreement. In Washington this could be described as "Bipartisanship: When the Stupid Party and the Evil Party get together to do something truly stupid and evil", as it not in the interests of the citizens for incumbents to be shielded from criticism, but provided no political figures are here it seems positive-sum for everyone.

adolthitler on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-09-28T09:45:45.219698+10:00

I think the point is where the criticism is aimed and how it is made. First to be dispassionate yourself by not being wed to your desired outcome and to ask questions of the "other" party that should lead them to your view if they do not have a rational reason for their view, and they are rational. Second criticise the ideas, not the person or organisation. In that way the ideas fight it out, and you don't get injured, and you award a medal to the winning idea.

Richard_Hollerith on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2007-02-19T12:17:45+11:00

I too would prefer for contemporary politics to show up here only very rarely.

shanerg on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2010-12-04T02:51:04.467059+11:00

And that is exactly the mindset that the purveyors of propaganda, the mentally-handicapping cretins that push false ideas for political gain would like it to be. They want you not to be well-informed about matters like evolution and self-organization because these undermine their base and also enable you to think more clearly.

Maybe rather than make categorical claims about what you want, you might actually prefer people to approach matters by intelligently evaluating them on a case-by-case basis.

You exhibit a bias or prejudice that is quite obnoxious in some situations.

Eliezer_Yudkowsky on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2007-02-19T13:34:49+11:00

Robin, I would still argue that one can, as much as possible, avoid taking potshots. It's the difference between writing a post which points out the flaws in having intelligent design taught in schools, versus giving in to the temptation to blame it on "the Republicans", or for that matter, "big government".

Robin_Hanson2 on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2007-02-19T13:57:38+11:00

Yes, please, let's all avoid taking potshots, on politics or anything else.

eric2 on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2007-02-19T14:31:42+11:00

First, in light of the new moderator status, I would like to commend this blog in its entirety for its novel and profound discussions of so many important topics.

Enough sarcasm...As per politics the mind killer: isn't there almost always a "greater truth" involved than any one issue? What gets ignored, emphasized, is a what serves that great truth, something you may have once fully understood where it came from, but now only know is true. Like why is the sky blue? I know it is, I know I once knew the physics why it is. But most importantly, I know it is true for a solid reason. Any cascading implications of these big truths are to be heeded appropriately.

MichaelAnissimov on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2007-02-20T02:05:42+11:00

The political metamorphisis from the professional scientist to a slogan-chanting zombie reminds us of the way religious biologists manage to carve reality into separate magisteria the second they step out of the lab. The question being, is there really a difference? Would a "grand unified theory of human cognitive bias" characterize political and religious bias as "two bullets from the same gun"? The presence of a God module serves as evidence that the religious bias is neuroanatomically distinct, and therefore likely to be independent psychologically. On the other hand, the obvious overlap between religious and political causes seems to suggest that the psychological underpinnings proceed from the same source.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T15:08:25.050707+11:00

" the obvious overlap between religious and political causes seems to suggest that the psychological underpinnings proceed from the same source" --But not necessarily so. One can be rational about political choice, just as one can be rational about choice of god (or no god, as it were)

David_J._Balan on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2007-02-20T06:19:53+11:00

There is no doubt that politics gets people fired up, which makes dispassionate reasoning about it hard. On the other hand, politics is important, which makes dispassionate reasoning about it important as well. There is nothing wrong with deciding that this particular blog will not focus on politics. But to the extent that we do want to talk about politics here, I don't think the trick of finding some neutral historical example to argue about is going to work. First, historical examples that are obscure enough not to arouse passions one way or the other are exactly those things that most people don't know much about. Second, it's usually pretty obvious which side in the "neutral" example corresponds to the arguer's preferred side in the contemporary example, so the arguer is likely to just adopt that position, and then claim to have derived it from first principles based on a neutral example. I agree that neutral exercises can have some usefulness as they might be helpful in uncovering subtle biases in people who are sincerely trying to avoid them, but it won't get rid of the flamers.

HalFinney on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2007-02-20T14:19:34+11:00

I see politics as unimportant. For most of us, our political opinions have essentially no impact on the world. Their main effect is in our personal lives, our interactions with friends and family. On that basis, one should choose a political position that facilitates such "local" goals. There is little point in trying to be correct and accurate on large-scale political matters, other than as a bias-stretching mental exercise on a par with doing Sudoku.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T14:57:05.876785+11:00

If you're unconcerned with things such as democide, this is true.

lessdazed on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T15:00:27.085203+11:00

one should choose a political position that facilitates such "local" goals

And if all candidate political positions entail discarding the principle that one should choose a political position that facilitates "local" goals?

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T20:51:07.898867+11:00

What determines what is a "candidate" political position? It seems he's saying it's in one's mind, and perhaps then, "candidate" isn't the best word. One has choice over the options in one's own mind.

After Kristallnacht, the Jews who had decided to focus on "local goals" had to suddenly decide whether to shift their hierarchical level of engagement, and engage a then immense evil. ...But they didn't have the philosophical machinery necessary to engage, nor the physical preparation because they were previously "locally focused". Their culture disfavored it. Had they, like Orwell, Switzerland, or America, favored private arms ownership, or like Solzhenitsyn's later writings favored a culture of pure resistance to evil, they might have lived.

As it was, all their "local" goals were swept aside by a "national" or "provincial" evil that overlapped their "local" interest. Politics is simply coercive force, the way it is currently defined by most people, and engaged with. On a large scale, this is an immense evil, and the scale and scope of the coercive parasitism is always growing, because its size isn't correlated to its value, or its provision of useful services.

So, to say politics is unimportant is to be fairly ignorant of what politics is.

That's like saying "carjackers are unimportant." Well, OK. That's true until one is putting a gun in your face, then it's not at all true any longer, and it is something that actually was important all along, you just weren't aware of its importance. It's not true for all the people saying "We need to listen to what carjackers have to say, because they're the people with the real answers." (Basically what some people, such as Joe Biden, mean when they say "Politics is important!")

But I say "carjackers are important. ...You should buy a gun, and learn how to use it. You should pay attention to your surroundings. You should lock your doors. You should not drive into any situation that you can't drive out of (don't block yourself off, or leave yourself no escape route.) Don't drive into neighborhoods you are unfamiliar with, without bein on guard, etc..."

I don't give any legitimacy to the carjacker's message, but I also don't downplay the importance of being aware of the carjacker.

The same is true of politics. At any level, politics can be a danger, it is always a danger, it is a negative to be aware of, and the damage of politics is a damage to be minimized. More specifically, the dominant views of "politics" are "tyranny." Because John Lilburne and the people trying to reinstate jury trials aren't the same as the DEA, ATF, prosecutors, judges, etc... trying to get rid of jury trials.

It's vital to distinguish between the hated disease, and its cure. If you can't, you'll never have the cure when you finally are infected with the disease. At minimum, it pays to be aware of where the information is, if you should ever get the disease. You don't need to be involved with it every day if you're not endangered by it, but it pays to be mindful of it.

thomblake on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T02:28:29.335365+11:00

That's like saying "carjackers are unimportant." Well, OK. That's true until one is putting a gun in your face, then it's not at all true any longer, and it is something that actually was important all along, you just weren't aware of its importance.

Or, it was not really relatively important all along, and you just happened to get unlucky.

Lots of things can kill you. You don't need to talk about all of them every day. For example, you are making posts about politics rather than carjacking or meteor strikes.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T08:06:37.960423+11:00

Or, it was not really relatively important all along, and you just happened to get unlucky.

Yes, that's a good point. And it engages the discussion then, about cost/benefit of protecting against various risks. I'm glad you brought it up. Defense against all sorts of violent crime is a variable that a lot of people place fairly high in importance, as per the excellent theoretical discussions in the book "Unintended Consequences" and on the website http://www.john-ross.net A great many people place the purchase of defensive weaponry and minimal skills training at least somewhere on their "significant benefit" and "relatively insignificant cost" (worth pursuing to minimum competency) expenditure hierarchies. This is why there are so many CCW holders.

Incidentally, I believe many people make this valuation because the CCW and defensive capability serves a purpose along a hierarchy: It defends against the local mugger, the significantly worse threat of the local rapist, the significantly worse threat of the traveling serial murderer, and the significantly worse threat of the democidal goon in a uniform who says "get on the truck, now."

Lots of things can kill you. You don't need to talk about all of them every day. For example, you are making posts about politics rather than carjacking or meteor strikes.

That's true. But if the numbers of carjackings in my vicinity dramatically increased, and the people in my vicinity didn't seem interested in somehow defending against them, I'd be somewhat alarmed, and I'd notice a survival handicap in them. Especially if I tried to convince several of them to take some sort of precaution (move away, get a more secure car, get a gun, etc...) and they ignored me, and then they were carjacked and killed. Similarly, if the visible prevalence (evidence) of carjackings rises above reasonable levels in their immediate vicinity.

But I've prioritize discussion about democide and politics because it's killing the greatest benevolent force mankind has ever known (the North American free(r) market), and it's on a historically significant cycle that indicates it's going to kill large numbers of "us." Large numbers of "us" (certain demographics of "us" anyway) are already in prison, and lots of people I've met have failed to bring projects to market because of regulatory barriers to entry into the market. Moreover, there are many "Ominous Parallels" to the collapse of the Weimar, to the collapse of our own republic.

So, many people believe that there's nothing they can do to reverse the course of politics, so they deprioritize it, even though history and economic patterns indicate it's an immense threat. Moreover, the individual indicators of the immense threat are mostly here in the USA, right now: 1) A central bank, and pre-runaway inflation (with enough outstanding currency floating around to cause an inflationary crash) 2) The passage of the NDAA, an analogue of Hitler's Enabling Acts, and of the loss of the single largest limit on government power.

So the alarms are there, but the cost of doing anything appears very high. (People don't know what to do.) Now, their inaction is legitimate if learning what to do is cost prohibitive, and then the work afterward is very difficult. (Like the high cost of becoming a martial arts master, rather than the low cost and "almost as good" nature of buying a pistol.)

But my message is that that's not the case. Simply getting everyone on the same page with jury rights education, and a few simple activist memes (for instance, at the lesswrong.com meetups) would go a long, long, long way to defusing the problem, engaging the problem, and agitating for a very good solution. It's relatively low cost, and significantly high benefit.

Moreover, some threats are system-wide and relatively common. Systemic human threats to other humans are also often driving by observable economic incentives, or political shifts.

As an analogy to your example: I'm not going to worry much about meteor strikes, even though there are people who are right now saying that "Meteor strikes are an existential risk, and we should allocate energy, time and effort to setting up a standing defense against them." ...Because there are other ongoing risks that appear to be greater than meteor strikes.

However, when such a person says "the risk of meteor strikes has tripled in the past month, for these three reasons," and I ask two or three more astronomers not known for being concerned with the issue, and they agree, then I think it's time for me to allocate some brainspace to assessing the risk of meteor strike. Maybe I ask ten more experts and then ask them to direct me to astronomers with dissenting opinions.

One very significant part of my argument is that There are no experts in this field, because resisting tyranny is not a "field." Politics selects for the corrupted, once the system is corrupted. The law that once produced abolitionists (before the licensing of lawyers) is now licensed, and subject to the same perverse incentives. If you go down the list of potential preventers of tyranny, you find that with technology, when sociopaths get in control and make a science of control, they can close of most avenues of effective resistance, systemwide.

A few are left, and I suggest that people here prioritize learning about them, rather than grow more and more similar (in identity and situation) to the Jews of 1937 Germany.

In my travels, and self-directed education, I've found information about the jury to be an immensely rewarding area of study. I'd like to call your attention to the subject. Here's the website of the Fully Informed Jury Association The information there is not "organized for quickest assimilation and adoption," but it is fairly complete. For a quick overview, this essay is optimal: A History of Jury Nullification

thomblake on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T08:59:53.565958+11:00

You seem to be asserting that people in general care less about politics than they should. I would challenge that assertion; it seems unlikely on the face of it.

As noted in OP, we had much more impact on politics (and its close neighbor, tribal signalling) in the ancestral environment than we do now, and it was much more directly a matter of life-and-death. Thus, we are hard-wired to care about politics to a greater extent than we should.

You're new here, and so you're not used to our community norms - in those cases, we try to cut people some slack. But it really seems to me that you're not ready to be making contributions; try to restrict yourself to asking questions that might further your understanding of rationality. You appear to be incapable of seeing that your enemies are not evil aliens - you describe communists as 'idiots', as though there is no way an intelligent, well-meaning person could believe that communism is a good system of governance*. I shall refer you to this chestnut from G.K.Chesterton:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

So it is with opposing viewpoints. Policy debates should not appear one-sided. If you do not understand how an intelligent, well-meaning person can have a position, and it's a position that lots of people actually hold, then you do not understand the position yet.

If you really want to post about politics rather than rationality, there are plenty of forums for that - many more than there are for rationality. If you do continue to post here, I would be very grateful if you made your comments short, to-the-point, and on-topic.

*As a minor footnote, note that what you were really commenting on is people's responses to one question on an informal survey, which many people criticized for not doing a great job of carving up the space of political ideology.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T10:45:41.263275+11:00

You seem to be asserting that people in general care less about politics than they should.

There are several very perverse incentives driving people's actions. Individually, in a fairly rational community, I don't know "what people think," nor do I make much of a claim to know, although my baseline predictions might be more accurate than the average person's simply because I've spent so much time speaking to the general public about politics. My main point is that: Insufficient caring about limits on government power results in death and suffering on a large scale.

I would challenge that assertion; it seems unlikely on the face of it.

And this strikes me as plain willful ignorance. How can you look at the old film reels of nazi destruction and democide and say "That's not important?" Yet, you do, and so does everyone else. Or, they say "That's important, but we've got it figured out, so we don't need to worry about it." (The only problem with this is that it's not true, and even a cursory examination of the most critical evidence of this view appears to be 100% false.)

There are many problems with this statement, but it does get to the heart of the problem, so I thank you for it. It seems to me that perverse social pressures against the kind of education that reduces tyranny are at work in the USA, and every culture. We have not maintained our natural, incrementally won, defenses against "tyranny." Now, tyranny encompasses a large territory, so let me give you a shorthand definition of that suitcase word that will serve this conversation. Tyranny can be defined for our purposes as a state of affairs that leads to or causes democide, or relative impoverishment and suffering resulting in millions of unnecessary deaths. Basically, from a libertarian perspective, tyranny is the grossly sub-optimal universal application of the initiation of force.

As noted in OP, we had much more impact on politics (and its close neighbor, tribal signalling) in the ancestral environment than we do now, and it was much more directly a matter of life-and-death.

Actually, it's equally a matter of life-and-death now, but your education level on that topic is too low to sense the threat. Which, of course, makes it much more of a threat to you. And, of course, technology has offset the suffering level, as an independent variable, so you're much more comfortable up to the looting of your estate, your life's amassed value, and your state-imposed death than you would have been under a more crude and less technologically able oligarchy of a few years ago. The sociopaths who govern us have gotten very good at allowing their livestock minimal levels of comfort. Of course, when you measure the freedom we have, it's almost all gone. ...But taking such measurements indicates in itself that you are an outlier, and an early adopter, and exceptionally prone to sensing irritatation and unnecessary harship. It also requires a high level of intellectual honesty: a quality most people totally lack.

Thus, we are hard-wired to care about politics to a greater extent than we should.

Politics is a really crude suitcase word, and your use of it here, and my uncritical response to your use of it is not really appropriate to a meaningful conversation of the values at work. We've both been stripped of our vocabulary, an economic or incentive-based vocabulary, for dealing with politics. This is to the immense benefit of bureaucrats who depend on votes for their income, such as teachers and professors. The separation of performance from reward is "political" in nature. If we define "politics" as "the domain of life currently governed by force," thats probably as accurate a definition as possible.

You're new here, and so you're not used to our community norms - in those cases, we try to cut people some slack. But it really seems to me that you're not ready to be making contributions;

Well, you might be wrong. I've met a lot of very wrong people in my existence. Systemwide, wrong people contribute overwhelmingly to the loss of limits on government. Our system is (mostly) one of sociopaths elected by conformists. Many of those conformists are incredibly intelligent, but not rational in their assessment of the threat of tyranny. (Again, tyranny, like almost all political words, is a suitcase word that contains a lot of other words. However, I'm trying to keep the phrasing from being really boring and pedantic, and perhaps the last time you were pulled over by a cop, with no constitutional legal cause of action, you felt tyrannized. My goal is to agitate toward rational behavior that will produce the desired outcome of avoiding a severe, but difficult to recognize, danger.)

My newness to this forum might be caused by a lack of prior comprehension or involvement, or it might not be. Newness combined with controversy tends to result in any portion of the entrenched system responding to discomfort, and trying to eject the new and uncomfortable change. And, partly, I have a limited amount of skill, and a slow typing speed, and some percentage is my fault, for not communicating adequately. As Kurzweil has said, my language is "slow, serial, and imprecise." ...Vastly inferior to a megahertz machine scan of my logical positions and arguments.

try to restrict yourself to asking questions that might further your understanding of rationality.

I will if you will. This statement assumes I don't have much to contribute, and I clearly don't see it that way, even given my "rough edges."

You appear to be incapable of seeing that your enemies are not evil aliens - you describe communists as 'idiots', as though there is no way an intelligent, well-meaning person could believe that communism is a good system of governance*.

Now that the data is in, there isn't. Such people place a low value on human life, and economic comprehension. They don't care to truthfully examine emergent order, because they are emotionally invested in collectivism, because it's a part of their identity.

The people shoving Jews into gas chambers weren't "evil aliens" either. One of them was an industrialist, highly educated weaver, Franz Stangl. He said it made his knees weak to shove women and kids into the ovens. ...But he did it. Just because I'm dealing with extreme values, people are going to react in an irrational way to the objective information I'm delivering. Few people have the intellectual honesty to think about democide dispassionately. ...Which is why it's such a huge danger.

I refer you, again, to R. J. Rummel's work on the subject. The Democratic Peace and Democracy Defined

I shall refer you to this chestnut from G.K.Chesterton:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

Which is why there must be an underlying comprehension of the fundamental principles at work. I have such a deep underlying comprehension. Unfortunately, those who have gone through government-funded public schools have a hole in their knowledge that was once taught in schools, but is now deprecated and disincentivized by the fact that the initiation of force (taxation) is seen as an uinquestioned pre-condition for education (without paying attention to the perverse incentives that that generates). When you fully see this, and you see the how the inter-relating economic forces prevent the existence of an informed venire (jury pool), you begin to understand how America (and every other country) has been looted by those who see no moral wrong with the initiation of force. The problem isn't that I'm unable to see the function of something, it's that I see it fully, and I also see how most of those who surround me are invested in a functionality that, when fully examined, is horribly immoral.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T10:59:22.634687+11:00

So it is with opposing viewpoints.

I have a lot of evidence that my opposing viewpoint is objectively true. I've linked to some of it. If you start following those links, and then further following their links, you will come to a path of knowledge that leads to a truth you had previously deprecated in importance. I believe, wrongfully so. By your response to me, it appears my fears were well-placed.

Policy debates should not appear one-sided.

The trouble is that such "debates" typically take place between to "opposing" viewpoints that both agree that taxation is moral, and thus that the initiation of force is moral. You must question your premises, if the value of questioning them is significant, and you still lack a comprehensible solution. Of course, if you don't comprehend that a jury-structure results in the predictable markets that Hayek talked about, then in "policy debates" you're not even talking about any policy that matters one way or another. No suggested policy even comes close to addressing the problem.

When else in history did this happen? Ahh. Nazi Germany. Soviet Russia. China's mass-murdering "Great Leap Forward." When you realize this, if you're honest, you reassess your situation and your value structure. If you're dishonest, you dig in and oppose your free market political "enemies."

If you do not understand how an intelligent, well-meaning person can have a position, and it's a position that lots of people actually hold, then you do not understand the position yet.

The problem is that I fully understand it. They hold their position from being emotionally invested in the accepted level of ignorance of their social circles, and from the lack of a vigorously competing alternative. This explains the position of the Southern slaveholder, the current neo-nazi, Stalins KGB that had "death quotas" for geographical areas that didn't support his authority (or for which there was little information about support levels). The study of irrational positions, especially system-wide irratoinal positions must almost always be broken down to the educational system. Is it adequate? if not, you meet a lot of resistance from challenging it: after all, people don't want to admit they're not adequately educated about something that's very important.

If you really want to post about politics rather than rationality, there are plenty of forums for that - many more than there are for rationality.

Yes. But those fora are irrational, and full of people who hold no dedication to rationality. Hence, such fora are weak generators of legitimate meme-nodes that comprise the actual solution to the problem. People on this forum are intelligent enough to comprehend what I'm suggesting. Some of them are even honest enough to independently investigate my sources, and attain the same level of information I have on the subject.

If you do continue to post here, I would be very grateful if you made your comments short, to-the-point, and on-topic.

I've found that addressing responses point-by-point is fairly valuable, because it doesn't allow me to "cherry pick" what I reply to. Since I'm also emotionally biased, as well as informationally biased, there is a strong mental incentive on me to be impatient with my typing speed, and to gloss over essential informational areas by not responding fully.

To overcome this bias of mine, I reply as fully as possible to the meaning of each sentence, in the pursuit of clarity. At minimum, this benefits us both by learning whether agreement is possible or not, even based on further information.

*As a minor footnote, note that what you were really commenting on is people's responses to one question on an informal survey, which many people criticized for not doing a great job of carving up the space of political ideology.

Yes, I understand. Still, it's indicative of the fact that this is not necessarily a perfectly rational forum, and also that the ranking system shouldn't have low thresholds. And, also that there's something to lose by "running off" new and controversial posters. (A common problem associated with "entrenched bureaucracy.")

PS: I've been deprecated now to posting every 9 minutes. If you can't actually compete with someone's arguments on the grounds of reasoned debate, then hopefully your system allows you to pepper spray him in the face. He won't be able to reply for several minutes, as he possibly desires. Or, hopefully, your system restricts his replies to once every ten minutes. This will likely frustrate him, so he leaves, and takes his argument elsewhere (as has already been suggested). That's rational, because we said so. Such is the appeal to force.

Artilects scanning this in the future, take note. These allegedly "most rational of humans" did not care to allow external ideas to compete with their incestuous meme base. Thus, the system did not exhibit hybrid vigor. Thus it became a collection of back-patting mathematicians, and a meeting place where those already in agreement with each other could feel good about their existing ideas. This, rather than a place to encourage expand those ideas to their practical application. Said another, more comical way, "Help, help, I'm bein' oppressed." LOL

I at least want you all to have a chuckle as the door hits me in the ass on the way out. Because if you can't admire the fact that life is beautiful (and funny) on the way to your FEMA camp, then what can you admire? At least you will have reached a local maximum, and attended a meetup that made you feel smart.

Prismattic on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T11:25:59.178981+11:00

Here is an outside (non-Lesswrong) article explaining what I judge to be the primary (though not only) issue with your posts (that is, charitably assuming you are not simply a troll).

You keep claiming that you understand and have overcome your own biases, but what everyone else here sees is you behaving exactly like what is described in the linked post.

Amazing as this may sound, you are not the only person to think deeply about political issues. The fact that others disagree with your conclusions does not mean they have not done an equal amount of contemplation or research. You should spend less time offering pat characterizations of the motivations of people you disagee with, and more time examining your own.

Bugmaster on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T09:15:10.487082+11:00

It sounds like you've thought a lot about this topic. Would you consider writing a discussion post on it ? You could call it something like "Politics as an existential risk". As far as I understand, most people here believe that politics is basically not worth talking about; you obviously disagree, so your post should provoke some interesting discussion.

steven0461 on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T11:06:42.136286+11:00

Would you consider writing a discussion post on it?

Just in case the uncle comment by thomblake hasn't driven home the point, please don't do this.

Bugmaster on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T11:28:45.681085+11:00

What shouldn't I do, and why ?

It looks to me like we have two conflicting opinions:

Most LW members: Politics is not worth talking about (at best).
Jake_Witmer: politics is important, and may constitute an x-risk.

I myself am on the fence about this, and I want to be persuaded one way or the other, because the fence is uncomfortable to sit on.

steven0461 on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T11:31:25.499620+11:00

I meant Jake shouldn't write the post; sorry for the confusion. Note that the two positions you list could be compatible.

Bugmaster on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T11:52:09.891703+11:00

OIC, sorry for the misunderstanding.

Note that the two positions you list could be compatible.

True, but it could be a fine line to walk. If I believed that politics constitutes an x-risk, then, given the fact that most people do engage in politics in some way (even if merely by talking about it), I have a choice to make: do I engage in politics, or not ? If I engage, I might make matters worse; if I fail to engage, I might fail to make matters better and then it will be too late, because politics in its current state will destroy us all.

I can see parallels between this issue and AI research: engaging in AI research increases the probability of an unboxed UnFriendly AI converting us all into computronium (or paperclips); and yet, failing to engage decreases the probability that the AI will be Friendly (assuming that I'm good at AI and concerned about Friendliness).

thomblake on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-27T01:59:25.544719+11:00

I agree with steven0461. It does sound like a potentially-interesting post, ideally with a mind-killing disclaimer at the top, but it should be written by someone sane. But then, I'm pretty sure political problems were already addressed in Bostrom's x-risk work, though they were some of the less-exciting ones (not likely to completely wipe out humanity or even civilization).

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T11:28:47.915647+11:00

.It sounds like you've thought a lot about this topic.

Thanks for saying so.

Would you consider writing a discussion post on it ? You could call it something like "Politics as an existential risk". As far as I understand, most people here believe that politics is basically not worth talking about; you obviously disagree, so your post should provoke some interesting discussion.

That was the first thing I wrote here. I actually gave it a similar title. Perhaps you're a moderator and have seen it, and are trying to be nice to me. If so, thanks.

I tried hard, included a lot of links, and then hit "post," but I lacked the karma to post it. Too few pant-hooting rationalist chimps had upvoted me for being an incremental and timid contributor. (This isn't a problem with democracy, it's a problem with poorly-designed democracy, with bad electoral rules.) So, LW loses the information, lose any possible value my post may have contributed, due to poor functionality.

Soon, I'll have tired with attempting to post here. I'm already growing impatient, as the system is designed to make me (and similar minds). I just bought a domain name where I can promote a rational solution to the problem of too little individual freedom. When I can afford to include a forum there, I promise to design it with more "conversation-stimulating" (more rational?) thresholds.

I might proceed into the future far enough to do some good with it. More likely, the system's response to my (and a small group of other similarly-informed and similarly inclined people's) efforts will prevail. It's a strong strategic solution, we've already identified it. It's the passage of the NDAA.

When jury rights activist Frank Turney in Fairbanks Alaska succeeded in getting a victimless crime case (gun possession) nullified by a jury, he was charged with "jury tampering" under an Alaska law that directly violates the first amendment. He was found guilty by a unconstitutionally rigged jury, and sentenced to prison, for telling jurors about the rights that they possessed under the law. When he was released, he continued doing what he was just sent to prison for, and the state of Alaska has so far been too cowardly to arrest him again, given the growing public sympathy with what he's doing (and their growing dissatisfaction with existing "political solutions"). The state needed a stronger punishment, that allowed no possibility of constitutional redress, or expanding public awareness and sympathy. The NDAA is their solution, and it's perfect. Now, if Frank continues to speak in public, they can fly him to GITMO, and torture him to death in isolation, and you never need to find out about it. If they were to implement the solution now, a few people would object. But the solution is now signed into law, and it remains their "trump card." As the system decays, the trump card will be played.

When I see what we're up against, it seems that the NDAA is a great means of the system preserving itself. The people who embrace my systemic solution can now be carted off to the gulag, without jury trial. Such a "solution" to the determined push for rational, enlightenment values never existed before. (Stephen Omohundro spoke about constitutions, and systemic self-correction in his 2007 Q&A before the Sing Inst crowd, so I'm not alone in seeing these solutions. ...But very few people are as aware as perhaps Stephen, Frank Turney, and myself are. And, of those people, a smaller subset are willing to risk life and limb to pursue systemic "equality under the law" or "market predictablility." This doesn't mean that production will stop, or that we'll all be impoverished. It does mean production will be cartelized, and there will be no freedom, and that the system will progressively deteriorate.)

Unfortunately, if I'm right about this, when my response is really getting off the ground, I'll disappear for good. My soviet acquaintances had stories about what that was like, and I'm not looking forward to it. When you take into account that this is what curiousity about tyranny is rewarded with, the (locally rational, systemically cowardly) survival mechanism that protects and favors ignorance makes a lot of sense. ...Except that it yields to a dramatic, system wide loss for all intelligent, rational, and moral people playing the game.

In such a system, virtually all such rational, intelligent, and moral people play the role of Giordano Bruno. (Except people like Doug Casey, who leave the country as they identify the more severe warning signs along the rhyming timeline of tyranny. See: Conversations With Casey )

Again: a proper understanding of politics is the mind-expander, not a mind-killer. But improper understandings of politics are indeed not only a mind-killer, but a body-killer as well. As one footstep in the right direction, I suggest this essay, that will help to shed light on the problem and the solution: A History of Jury Nullification

Bugmaster on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T12:02:13.427144+11:00

Perhaps you're a moderator and have seen it...

Sorry, I'm just a random guy, not a moderator.

Too few pant-hooting rationalist chimps had upvoted me...

I think one reason for this might be your propensity for calling people "pant-hooting rationalist chimps". This kind of behavior does not usually win you any allies.

The rest of your post is full of emotionally charged language, and yet nearly devoid of supporting evidence. In the closing paragraphs, you end up painting yourself as a (future) martyr: a lone voice of shining reason, extinguished by the gathering darkness etc. etc.

Upon reading this, most people here (myself included) will react very negatively to your post, because we don't take kindly to being emotionally manipulated. When people say "politics is the mind-killer", your post is exactly the kind of thing they're referring to.

I'm not saying this to discourage or insult you. I don't think you're malicious, and I do respect your passion on this topic. In fact, you may even be right about some (or possibly even all !) of the things you say. But you've got to tone down your rhetoric before people start taking you seriously.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T14:19:01.634526+11:00

Perhaps you're a moderator and have seen it...

Sorry, I'm just a random guy, not a moderator.

Then, due to the structure of this forum, you don't get to see that I'd already taken your advice. I fail to see how that benefits you or I. Rather, it seems this site is a less interesting place for that result.

Too few pant-hooting rationalist chimps had upvoted me...

I think one reason for this might be your propensity for calling people "pant-hooting rationalist chimps". This kind of behavior does not usually win you any allies.

Who here assumes the comment was directed towards them? Probably either insecure people, or people who downvoted my comments and thus jettisoned the functionality of my account here.

I apologize to the insecure people. The other people deserve my parting insult.

The rest of your post is full of emotionally charged language, and yet nearly devoid of supporting evidence.

If you reply point by point, you'll find enough supporting evidence to keep yourself busy for a few months. I encourage point-by-point replies for this reason. They allow you to overcome internal "cherry picking" bias.

In the closing paragraphs, you end up painting yourself as a (future) martyr: a lone voice of shining reason, extinguished by the gathering darkness etc. etc.

I've gotta call it like I see it, based on the evidence. I'm certainly no more heroic an activist than the other jury rights activists, though, such as Frank Turney, Ian Freeman, Julian Heicklen, Mark Schmidter, George Donnelly, Ilo Jones, Catherine Bleish, and all the others associated with the movement who have made themselves enemies of the state. My heart goes out to them, they are striking at the root of tyranny while others are hacking at the branches. (I believe it's irrational to hack at the branches or "Do strategically unlikely to succeed things, such as allocate the majority of resources to running for office, without bothering to study how to win office.")

Upon reading this, most people here (myself included) will react very negatively to your post, because we don't take kindly to being emotionally manipulated.

Your emotions are there for a reason. If you react negatively to the insinuation that you're not behaving properly or are in some way sub-optimal, examine the criticism for merit. I've often done that, and found myself to be wanting in many areas. In some of those areas I've improved myself. The criticisms were legitimate. I'll certainly try to become a better writer.

When people say "politics is the mind-killer", your post is exactly the kind of thing they're referring to.

And that's why I posted here, because I think that "politics" is too general a word, and most people are too uneducated about its contents for it to be a "mind-killer." Vastly moreso, intellectual cowardice and conformity are mind-killers. If the post wanted a legitimate point it should have been called "Conformity is the mind-killer."

I'm not saying this to discourage or insult you.

Thanks.

I don't think you're malicious, and I do respect your passion on this topic.

Thanks.

In fact, you may even be right about some (or possibly even all !) of the things you say.

I think I am. That's why I said them.

But you've got to tone down your rhetoric before people start taking you seriously.

Some people already take me seriously, and they're among the most informed people there are. Since I care more about the opinions of well-informed people than uninformed people, I've already been appropriately rewarded. Some people take me seriously when they follow the links and think about what I've said. Some people may take me seriously when they see the result of the NDAA, in their own personal experience and to their own families. Others may only take me seriously when they wind up on a truck bound for a barbed-wire surrounded encampment.

That last group I would label as "irrational, intellectual cowards." My posts are written for the purpose of disincentivizing self-identification with such a group, as a means to less suffering. Emotions are good for this, like they are for shaping priorities. In facr, in the absence of emotional arguments, I don't think many people will rearrange their priorities. For instance, a lot of intellectual arguments against nazism didn't work on common Germans, but emotional arguments worked on a subset of those who were unmoved by intellectual arguments. This is why empathy and conscience need to be built into our legal system. Luckily, they are, via juries. Juries are literally a way of increasing the number of mirror neurons applied to the defendant's possibility of punishment.

Of course, if juries are eliminated, or de facto eliminated (as they have been), the legal system will no longer be properly incentivized or limited in power. The priorities of the legal system will shift, as they have, to stealing as much money as quickly as possible.

Long story short: I think priorities are very important.

Again, this essay is a good place to start: A History of Jury Nullification I'll check back in a while and see if LW has a more rational user base or more rational rules of engagement in a few months/years.

Thanks again for the kind words. Goodbye.

TimS on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-27T02:24:47.050198+11:00

There is no good reason for any to engage any discussion point-by-point. There are core points and peripheral points. And there's no reason to think they are equally worth thinking about.

Regarding jury nullification, I've worked in places where it occurred frequently. For what seemed to the population like good and sufficient reasons, the citizenry intensely distrusted the local police force. The net effect that I observed was that it was practically impossible to get a jury conviction for "petty" offenses like domestic violence and driving under the influence (DUI). You may think this is an improvement (or at least an incentive for the police to make improvements), but I'm not convinced.

With full awareness of the dangers of generalizing from one example, here is one of the worst cases:

At trial, defendant's wife testified that he was very drunk at the house (and she was only other person there), the family car was at the house, then the defendant and the car were not at the house. A short time later, a police officer found the car at some location a short driving distance from the home. The engine was warm and the defendant was laying near the vehicle. While performing field sobriety exercises (walk & turn, one-leg-stand, etc), the defendant fell down multiple times. The field sobriety exercises were recorded by the patrol vehicle's dash camera.

You'd think this would be enough to show that the defendant was too drunk to drive, and did drive the vehicle. Not guilty verdict. One of the jurors told the prosecutor (not me) that it wasn't clear that the defendant was too drunk to drive.

Gabriel on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-27T07:30:29.351839+11:00

Then, due to the structure of this forum, you don't get to see that I'd already taken your advice. I fail to see how that benefits you or I. Rather, it seems this site is a less interesting place for that result.

It benefits the site in that it makes it impossible to write top-level posts for someone unwilling or incapable of adhering to the locally accepted norms of discourse. That means the system did its job just fine.

Who here assumes the comment was directed towards them? Probably either insecure people, or people who downvoted my comments and thus jettisoned the functionality of my account here.

I apologize to the insecure people. The other people deserve my parting insult.

No one has to assume that the comment was directed at them to have reasons to downvote you. You don't have to be the victim to oppose the perpetrator of violence. You, of all people, should understand that.

It's pretty disheartening how, after receiving advice not to insult people, you completely dismiss it and proceed to divide the LessWrong users into the insecure, whom you condescendingly pat on the head and others who are not worthy of basic politeness.

Your emotions are there for a reason. If you react negatively to the insinuation that you're not behaving properly or are in some way sub-optimal, examine the criticism for merit. I've often done that, and found myself to be wanting in many areas. In some of those areas I've improved myself. The criticisms were legitimate. I'll certainly try to become a better writer.

My emotions are there because evolution shaped them to push me towards actions that would increase my inclusive genetic fitness if I lived in the ancestral environment. Blindly following them is not helpful toward achieving my higher-level goals. Your willingness to (proudly and boldly) push my emotional buttons marks you as either ignorant of evolutionary psychology or outright malicious. All of that applies to you, too. Your emotions aren't there to help you in your fight against injustice; they actually sabotage that fight. You speak proudly of refusing to bow down to conformist riffraff and that knowledgable people already take you seriously. You also say, later:

Others may only take me seriously when they wind up on a truck bound for a barbed-wire surrounded encampment.

When that happens, you have already lost. Weren't those passive fools, the unenlightened rabble, the conformist sheep, now on their way to destruction, also amongst the people you were trying to protect? And by failing to reach out to them in a way that would allow them to appreciate your superior insight, haven't you doomed them?

The way you're acting right now, it seems like you're more concerned with being able to say 'I told you so' when the worst case scenario occurs rather than actually preventing it.

fubarobfusco on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T16:44:22.776639+11:00

I think one reason for this might be your propensity for calling people "pant-hooting rationalist chimps". This kind of behavior does not usually win you any allies.

Pretty much everyone hoots in their pants once in a while. It's okay.

TheOtherDave on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-27T01:21:33.408030+11:00

Sure. Most people also drool, masturbate, and watch television from time to time. That said, if I interpret "drooling, television-watching wanker" as a neutral description that probably does apply to any given person, I am doing a remarkable job of failing to attend to connotations.

lavalamp on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T12:40:50.879342+11:00

Too few pant-hooting rationalist chimps had upvoted me for being an incremental and timid contributor.

Up and down votes here are (almost always) based on the quality of the thought process displayed in the post, and not the conclusion the post comes to. For example, I downvoted you for this. We humans must mentally use a connotation-free term for our interlocutors or we bias ourselves against them. The fact that you say such a thing out loud indicates that you probably do likewise mentally.

I would very much like to see some political discussions from LW people. I think the minimum karma to participate in them ought to be fairly high, perhaps 500 or 1000. I would even like to see what you have to say, if you can lose the "persuasive" mind-killing rhetoric.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T13:07:35.630832+11:00

Too few pant-hooting rationalist chimps had upvoted me for being an incremental and timid contributor.

Up and down votes here are (almost always) based on the quality of the thought process displayed in the post, and not the conclusion the post comes to.

So you say.

For example, I downvoted you for this.

I bet it gave you a little tingle, doing so. Congrats.

We humans must mentally use a connotation-free term for our interlocutors or we bias ourselves against them.

You're confusing "ignorance" and "lack of proper judgment" with "lack of bias."

The fact that you say such a thing out loud indicates that you probably do likewise mentally.

I'll direct you to Crocker. I'm sure you're capable of comprehending that the sentence is an amusing way to call attention to a perversely-incentivized system that favors low-information.

I would very much like to see some political discussions from LW people.

Even though you just got through advocating a system that drives away intelligent discourse, and concentrates censoring power in the hands of an unenlightened existing tiny user base. A userbase that, by the way, was recently criticized by the administrators as being "too narrow." Hmmm.

I think the minimum karma to participate in them ought to be fairly high, perhaps 500 or 1000.

Very elitist of you. May I call attention to the fact that your desire for a narrow, closed off elitist community might be in conflict with your desire for free-flowing optimal debate on all the relevant issues. Just a thought.

I would even like to see what you have to say, if you can lose the "persuasive" mind-killing rhetoric.

I have strongly held values that I believe are rational, and thus preventive of suffering, as a rational goal. (What Eliezer calls "Common Sense," which is actually uncommon in the domain of politics.) It would be irrational of me to withold attempts to persuade, given the very short time I have alive on planet Earth, absent intervention.

I was thick-skinned enough to see them downvoted, and not get mad, and lose my cool, and freak out. I was thick-skinned enough to rationally defend my prior positions and engage in polite and benevolent-minded discussion about those positions. I was willing to defend them on a level playing field, but I'm not willing to be stifled by rules that interfere with my communication. That's a low-blow, and bad functionality, and not worth my time, energy, and the criticism associated with it.

Your system favors unreason, and the stifling of debate and conflict with external ideas, so I'm leaving. Had you not taken the low road of physically-interfering with the delivery of my message, I'd have stayed around, and maybe evolved in interesting ways, but my time is too precious to deal with what I believe is undeserved interference with my ability to communicate.

nyan_sandwich on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T13:45:12.517984+11:00

Politics is the mind killer, if you can't see how that is more important than convincing people of your current political beliefs, then you have a problem.

Larks on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-27T10:00:52.146407+11:00

There's a chapter in Bostrom's Existential Risks by Caplan on the subject.

Bugmaster on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-27T10:34:57.533072+11:00

Sounds interesting, I'll put it on my to-read pile -- thanks !

BlueAjah on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2013-01-13T01:33:36.484364+11:00

You couldn't be more wrong. What you should say is that you don't notice the impact your political opinions have on the world, because it happens slowly, because people with radically different political views tend to live in far off countries that you don't think about or in the distant past, and because currently people like you have somewhat sensible political opinions in terms of their short-term consequences (but not at all sensible in terms of their long-term consequences).

Your life would be very different if you lived under a different political regime (Islamism, Communism, Fascism, etc.). And the future of the world will be very different depending on the political views of people like you. It's just hard to see from your point of view.

There are multiple apocalypses headed your way within the next century, and you have limited time to take political action about them. So I'd encourage you to change your mind, and do those bias-stretching mental exercises, to work out a rational political response.

mtraven on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2007-02-21T03:35:40+11:00

While trying to avoid bitter partisan sniping is probably a good thing, I think the goal of avoiding politics is naive. Everyone is enmeshed in politics, like it or not. To deny politics is a form of political ideology itself. There seems to be a strong libertarian bias to this crowd, for instance. Libertarians seek to replace politics with markets, but that is in itself a political goal.

Another sad truth: even if we disavow responsibility for the actions of our political leaders, others will hold us responsible for them, given that we are a democracy and all. See here for some thoughts on how we are forced into group identification whether we like it or not.

Politics is not optional and if you are interested in overcoming bias I suggest that it's better to acknowledge that fact than bury it.

duckduckMOO on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-23T22:40:56.811972+11:00

"To deny politics is a form of political ideology itself." yeah and not thinking about clothing is a fashion choice, not making a decision is a decision bla bla bla.

cool meme.

thebrentster on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2007-08-07T02:15:08+10:00

So true. Politics is a mind killer. The time people spend on arguing politics is time that could be spent helping to make a difference in someone's life. That is where true power is!

denis_bider on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2007-12-05T05:23:22+11:00

Arguing about politics is helping people. If it makes sense that "a bad argument gets a counterargument, not a bullet," then it makes sense that frictions among people's political beliefs should be cooled by allowing everyone to state their case. Not necessarily on this site, but as a general matter, I don't think that talking about politics is either a mind-killer or time-wasting. For me personally it's a motivator both to understand more about the facts, so that I can present arguments; to understand more about other people, so I know why they disagree; and to understand more about myself, so that I can make sure that my convictions are solid. I actually believe that trying to find a way to influence politics to become more sensible is the most I can do to make a positive difference in the lives of other people.

Haggers_Barlowe on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2008-01-27T01:01:16+11:00

I just stumbled upon this blog and this post, and couldn't agree more. Hal Finney's comment is particularly good (and amounts to prior art for my recently-released Proteanist Manifesto.)

I will be updating it to reflect Hal's priority.

Haggers Barlowe

PK on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2008-02-23T16:43:03+11:00

Lately I've been thinking about "mind killing politics". I have come to the conclusion that this phenomenon is pretty much present to some degree in any kind of human communication where being wrong means you or your side lose status.

It is incorrect to assume that this bias can only occurs when the topic involves government, religion, liberalism/conservatism or any other "political" topics. Communicating with someone who has a different opinion than you is sufficient for the "mind killing politics" bias to start creeping in.

The pressure to commit "mind killing politics" type biases is proportional to how much status one or one's side has to lose for being wrong in any given disagreement. This doesn't mean the bias can't be mixed or combined with other biases.

I've also noticed six factors that can increase or decrease the pressure to be biased.

1)If you are talking to your friends or people close to you that you trust then the pressure to be right will be reduced because they are less likely to subtract status from you for being wrong. Talking to strangers will increase it.

2)Having an audience will increase the pressure to be right. That's because the loss of status for being wrong is multiplied by the number of people that see you lose(each weighted for how important it is for them to consider you as having a high status).

3)If someone is considered an 'expert', the pressure to be right will be enormous. Thats because experts have special status for being knowledgeable about a topic and getting answers about it right. Every mistake is seen as reducing that expertise and proportionatly reducing the status of the expert. Being wrong to someone considered a non expert is even more painful then being wrong to an expert.

4)It is very hard psychologically to disagree with authority figures or the group consensus. Therefore "mind killing politics" biases will be replaced by other biases when there is disagreement with authority figure or the group consensus but will be amplified against those considered outside the social group.

5)People will easily spot "mind killing politics" biases in the enemy side but will deny, not notice or rationalize the same biases in themselves.

6)And finally, "mind killing politics" biases can lead to agitation(ei. triggering of the fight or flight response) which will amplify biased thinking.

centripetal on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2010-10-20T02:42:55.846585+11:00

why is the foundational criterion for political discussions adversarial? I wonder. And, why is it that the meaning and the connotations of the word politics have been dumbed down to a two party/two ideologies process? In fact, there aren't 2 parties, just different ideological hermeneutics. "It's ideology stupid" says Zizek.

Antisuji on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2010-12-21T08:58:20.617837+11:00

Sorry to reply to an old comment, but regarding item (2), the loss of status is at least in proportion to the number of listeners (in relatively small groups, anyway) since each member of the audience now knows that every other member of the audience knows that you were wrong. This mutual knowledge in turn increases the pressure on your listeners to punish you for being wrong and therefore be seen as right in the eyes of the remaining witnesses. I think this (edit: the parent post) is a pretty good intuition pump, but perhaps the idea of an additive quantity of "lost status" is too simplistic.

pnrjulius on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-06-28T11:21:34.764161+10:00

I largely agree with you, but I think that there's something we as rationalists can realize about these disagreements, which helps us avoid many of the most mind-killing pitfalls.

You want to be right, not be perceived as right. What really matters, when the policies are made and people live and die, is who was actually right, not who people think is right. So the pressure to be right can be a good thing, if you leverage it properly into actually trying to get the truth. If you use it to dismiss and suppress everything that suggests you are wrong, that's not being right; it's being perceived as right, which is a totally different thing. (See also the Litany of Tarski.)

Sam on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2008-04-21T05:59:19+10:00

Belonging to a political party lets us be lazy as the decisions are made for us..."Liberals like frogs legs. Conservatives read stories about dairy. etc."

Belonging to a political party lets us have a sense of belonging. On the other side of the coin, it gives us the sense of rivalry. Humans need rivals as much as they need comradery. "My life would be so much easier if it wasn't for those darn so-and-sos."

Belonging to a political party fills our minds with much-needed obsessions. "My life would be so much easier if it wasn't for those darn so-and-sos," (murmurred during bothered and sweaty sleep).

Belonging to a political party lets us feel we have a secret everyone is trying to figure out. "Truth is such a burden on us elites."

Belonging to a political party gives us a sense that we are impacting the world. "My party will achieve peace in the world by trampling down all those who stand peace's way."

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T15:28:39.139378+11:00

[Belonging to a political party lets us be lazy as the decisions are made for us..."Liberals like frogs legs. Conservatives read stories about dairy. etc."] This is true for low-level thinking, and current human political parties. At the higher hierarchical levels, there are many people who think in a rational way about politics. A party comprised of people who agreed with and fully understood Harry Browne and Frederick Hayek would be a good thing, and perhaps they'd be able to reduce human violence in the world.

[Belonging to a political party lets us have a sense of belonging. On the other side of the coin, it gives us the sense of rivalry. Humans need rivals as much as they need comradery. "My life would be so much easier if it wasn't for those darn so-and-sos."] Again, true of low-level, uneducated, violent brains, but not inherently true about political alliances.

[Belonging to a political party fills our minds with much-needed obsessions. "My life would be so much easier if it wasn't for those darn so-and-sos," (murmurred during bothered and sweaty sleep).] Goals do the same thing. Some goals are legitimate, others are not. It's the same with political goals. If you're trying to prevent the Jews from being murdered in nazi Germany, that's a laudable political goal, and you'd be on the side of right. ...Especially if you knew how best to do it. Maybe you'd fail, because the majority is too much against you, maybe not. In a similar modern case, maybe you know how to leverage technology to avoid violence.

[Belonging to a political party lets us feel we have a secret everyone is trying to figure out. "Truth is such a burden on us elites."] Or, maybe we do have truthful ideas. We only know by putting them in conflict with other ideas, via argument, debate, research, and exploration.

[Belonging to a political party gives us a sense that we are impacting the world. "My party will achieve peace in the world by trampling down all those who stand peace's way."] If we can give evidence for why this is true, and that evidence withstands scrutiny, and reasoned investigation, then maybe it is true. Most of politics seeks to impose ideas on others with violence, so that's a big hurdle to get out of the way, before proceeding.

Bob on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2008-07-09T08:31:37+10:00

> In Artificial Intelligence, and particularly in the domain of nonmonotonic reasoning, there's a standard problem: "All Quakers are pacifists. All Republicans are not pacifists. Nixon is a Quaker and a Republican. Is Nixon a pacifist?"

> What on Earth was the point of choosing this as an example? To rouse the political emotions of the readers and distract them from the main question? To make Republicans feel unwelcome in courses on Artificial Intelligence and discourage them from entering the field?

This is great.

Are you aware that you, for instance, mention Stalin in a manner that many would find quite distracting?

Do you find it at odds with your position declared in this post?

Paul_Burrell on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2009-02-15T17:20:52+11:00

So, here's a question: why was the form of the Nixon Diamond stated as it was, and why were no links given to either formal or informal discussions of it?

The original, as near as I can see, does not use the absolute categories (always) but prefers probability statements (usually, by and large) - and indeed, that seems to be the point of the diamond

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-nonmonotonic/

If people are using absolute categories hereabouts, they're making silly arguments. Are those arguments as silly as doing a long blue/green thought experiment and never linking to the passage from Gibbon (if it's available online) or at least telling us where we can read more about the real historical example and then going on to the example, if you must?

Oh my god. I knew nothing about this blog before a friend passed me the link. I didn't carefully study the logo.

Is this actually an official project of Oxford? Where with a blog from some random folks, I would be forgiving for misstatements from formal logic and obvious omissions in citation, I'd sort of expect more from an official project of not-someone-posting-in-their-underpants.

Denise_M. on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2009-02-23T14:44:06+11:00

We do still believe being on the right and wrong side of a political argument is life and death. For some, death via inadequate medical services or life as in wealth preservation. Isn't it the perfect context to evaluate bias? What we see as threatening to us and having little experience with the other side of the argument?

ErnstMuller on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-04-16T05:34:30.804387+10:00

You write "The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death."

Is there any evidence for that? That sounds much like the typical sort of sociobiologistic hypothesis which sounds so convincing that no one really thinks about it and just nods in agreement. So, are there any papers, experiments, mathematical models to back it up?

I would rather more suggest a hypothesis that it was (and is) very favorable for humans in terms of fitness to belong to a certain group of people and stick to that group - whether that group is a sports team, a class at school or a political party.

Well, I wouldn't dare to disagree with the rest of your article. Just that choosing of a political party has nothing to do with actual politics, just with sticking to a group.

omeganaut on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-05-17T05:56:33.340871+10:00

Citystates in Greece had to deal with politics that certainly could mean life or death. When the Peloponnesian war broke out, states had to take sides, or risk being hated by both sides, and at risk for invasion and conquering. Rome around the time of Julius Caesar was turbulent, and where supporting the wrong Tribune could mean being put on a wanted list and killed by a bounty hunter when they came to power. In Germany, choosing the wrong side at the wrong time could certainly result in execution for heresay or treason. There are many examples throughout history where competing political views transferred into violence and killing, if not outright war.

CuSithBell on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-05-17T06:01:53.776378+10:00

Those don't fit my understanding of the "ancestral environment" - I associate that with the tribes-of-cavemen era. By my understanding, Greek city-states are within our FOOM period. Am I mistaken?

Jandila on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-08-22T15:34:58.343361+10:00

No, you're completely right -- omeganaut is confused about what constitutes the "ancestral environment" here. For most examples of "ancient" or "primitive" peoples that come to mind, there's a simple test: if they performed agriculture, horticulture or pastoralism as a primary way of life within the last 10,000 years, they're within in our FOOM period, and even if they didn't start out with it, the odds are extremely good that contact, cultural diffusion or conquest have moved them into orbit around the same basic attractor.

Konkvistador on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-08-24T21:19:20.627785+10:00

We have been exposed to radically different selection pressures after the advent of agriculture than we where prior to it. Change has thus probably been rather rapid in the past 10 000 years.

NMremote on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-07-03T02:31:27.646976+10:00

Politics is a tool of the rich to keep people from watching who takes profits to the banks.

Sample: We argue over minimum wage while corporate execs pocket millions.

Humanity is lost in politics - a friend rhetorically asks: "Have you ever seen a rich person feed a hungry dog?"

Not all is lost - technology will help surface abuse - sunshine in governments.

Question: Is this machine generated?

tog on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-10-15T01:29:11.492511+11:00

Couldn't resist getting in a dig at those reds or blues eh?

Humanity is lost in politics - a friend rhetorically asks: "Have you ever seen a rich person feed a hungry dog?"

Yes. And don't forget that, in global terms (even taking into account PPP), you're probably among the rich if you live in a rich nation. Though I don't know if you're a fellow dog-owner.

DCrowe on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-07-30T07:50:12.204685+10:00

One obvious reason why this might be the case is that the various implicit norms surrounding political discourse actively encourage tribalism and cognitive dissonance ("Hey! He's a flipflopper!") more so than in other areas of discourse where some of these pressures are lacking or in some cases (such as academia, to some extent) deliberate effort has been expended to create counter-veiling norms to these trends. As long as political discourse involves politicians and politicians owe their careers to the exercises of obfuscation, pandering and appealing to vested interests it is doubtful this trend can be corrected. As a general rule you should examine your own attitudes and if you find your view entail that those of an opposing political conviction to yourself must be actively scheming to cause damage to the country (as opposed to simply being mistaken or biased) you have probably made a mistake somewhere.

lukeprog on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-08-22T11:51:00.002907+10:00

Stephen Colbert said it well on his August 15, 2011 show:

PAWLENTY (video clip): I'm gonna be ending my campaign for president. What I brought forward was I thought a rational, established, credible, ...strong record of results... but I think the audience… was looking for something different.

COLBERT: Yes. They were not looking for "rational." Rationality is the third rail of American politics. For the love of God, we eat fried butter on a stick. Does that sound like the act of a rational person?

Kevin on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-08-22T12:13:55.496126+10:00

For the love of God, we eat fried butter on a stick. Does that sound like the act of a rational person?

I have some very rational friends that think so.

MBlume on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-08-22T12:24:12.661585+10:00

Alicorn and I are both wondering how one goes about making this. I totally want some. I think she's just morbidly curious.

Vaniver on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-08-22T12:39:11.378134+10:00

That's not all that'll be morbid when you're done!

paper-machine on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-08-22T12:39:56.981234+10:00

Typically, to deep fry things that would normally melt in the frying process (cheese, candy bars, and etc.) you freeze them rock-solid beforehand.

Alicorn on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-08-22T12:58:49.204419+10:00

Right, but butter? Do you at least dunk it in batter or something first?

paper-machine on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-08-22T13:55:30.383212+10:00

With fat oozing out of its thick cinnamon and honey batter and sugary icing being drizzled over the top, just looking at this new state fair snack might make you feel sick.

This new delicacy of deep-fried batter on a stick has become a hit for a vendor at the Iowa State Fair.

First hit on Google for "deep fried butter".

MBlume on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-08-22T15:00:09.117173+10:00

Wait, they use honey? That sounds like it would be terrible for you!

buybuydandavis on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-09-26T19:10:32.625184+10:00

But try to resist getting in those good, solid digs if you can possibly avoid it.

In this case, you could say it was instrumentally wrong to insert the jab into the discussion, but that assumes that the solid digs served no other purpose, like demonstrating in group credentials.

I've got a real world example of this. Daniel Dennett was lecturing on competence without comprehension (I think). But if you followed out his logic a step or two, he would appear to be getting perilously close to advocating free market policies. The next slide in his presentation had the universal "prohibited" symbol of a red circle with a red slash across it, with "Milton Friedman" slashed through. In the talk, while he lauded Darwin and Turing for recognizing competence without comprehension, he curiously left Adam Smith, who preceded both, off his pantheon of theorists.

lessdazed on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-10-30T22:21:39.825569+11:00

"Zombie Bill", Halloween special educational rock song.

Boy: Woof! You sure gotta climb a lot of steps to get to this Capitol Building here in Washington. But I wonder who that sad little scrap of paper is?

I'm a dead bill
Yes, I'm a dead bill
If you’re on my side you’ll get your mind killed.
Well, it was a long, long journey
To the capital city.
It was a long, long wait
And then I died in committee,
But I know I'll eat your brain someday
At least I hope and pray that I will,
For today I am a zombie bill.

Boy: Gee, Bill, you certainly have a lust to devour people’s brains.
Bill: Well, I’m a zombie. When I started, I wasn't even political, I was just a reasonable consideration. Some folks back home forgot that policy debates should not appear one-sided, so they called their local Congressman -
Boy: - and he said, "You're right, there oughta be a law”?
No! Then he decided to rename the bill that he had already decided to submit once both parties had promised him it wouldn’t pass.
Boy: You were renamed even though your content didn’t change?
Bill: That’s right! He was going to call me the “American Job Security Free Choice Accountability Reform Reinvestment Relief Act”.
Boy: And then he decided to just call you “William”, and your nickname became “Bill”?
Bill: No, after hearing his constituents’ opinions, he decided to call me the “Aumann's Rational Bayesian Utility Anti-Bias Act!” And I became a bill, and I’ll kill your mind even though my content has some merit.

I'm a dead bill
Yes, I'm a dead bill
And I got as far as Capitol Hill.
Well, I died stuck in committee
And I'll sit here and wait
Though no one will honestly discuss or debate
Whether they should let me be a law.
Of human minds I’ll eat up my fill,
For today I am a zombie bill.

Boy: Listen to those people arguing! Is all that discussion and debate about you?
Bill: Yeah, I'm one of the lucky ones. Most bills are entirely ignored. I hope they decide to take me seriously as one argument against an army, otherwise I may starve.
Boy: Starve?
Bill: Yeah, from not eating brains. Oooh, but they’re not updating incrementally! It looks like I'm gonna eat! Now I go to the House of Representatives; they talk about me.
Boy: When they talk, then what happens?
Bill: Then I go on various media and gorge myself on the minds of the audience.
Boy: Oh no!
Bill: Oh yes!

I'm a dead bill
Yes, I'm a dead bill
They’ll never vote for me on Capitol Hill
Well, I'm off to the White House
Where I'll wait in a line
As a speech applause light
And then on some brains I’ll dine
With luck they’ll try to argue facts away.
How I hope and pray that they will,
For today I am a zombie bill.

Boy: You mean even if everyone has enough information to know you shouldn’t and won’t become a law, people still sacrifice their brains to you?
Bill: Yes! They’re debating politics as if their opinion was influential and admitting being wrong was catastrophic, using heuristics that used to work in the ancestral environment. If the content described by my label becomes political…
Boy: By that time it's very likely that you'll devour lots of minds, whenever either your content or your label is mentioned. It's easy to eat a human mind, isn't it?
Bill: Yes!

And how I hope and I pray that I will,
For today I am a zombie bill.

Congressman: Your name has become a synonym for “good” among some people, Zombie Bill! Now people won’t be able to dispassionately consider your content ever again!
Bill: BRAINS!!!

Tyrrell_McAllister on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-10-31T03:51:54.175398+11:00

Awesome!

pedanterrific on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2011-10-31T06:40:21.514240+11:00

Don't you mean "rational!"?

srdiamond on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-22T12:10:37.424525+11:00

An unstudied cognitive bias is what's really responsible for political irrationality. Less Wrong could tackle politics if it recognized and managed this form of irrationality, which I term opinion-belief confusion.

To understand some biases you must understand the biological function of the relevant practices. Belief is for action; opinion is for deliberation. Belief, per the Agreement Theorem, is usually highly sensitive to the beliefs of others; opinion abstracts from such influence.

Irrationality in politics is mostly a matter of being far too confident in one's opinions, and one fallacy is paramount in causing this error: treating mere opinions as though they were one's beliefs. This confusion arises because democracy tends to promote this form of epistemic arrogance. Tackling belief-opinion confusion would allow rational discussion of politics insofar as participants can accept that on most issues their beliefs and opinions will and should differ from each other. From this recognition, it follows that the discussion of political opinion should be conducted with the requisite tentativeness and intellectual humility.

I discuss the politically important opinion-belief-confusion fallacy at: "Two kinds of belief", "Is epistemic equality a fiction?", "The distinct functions of belief and opinion", "Pathologies of belief-opinion confusion", and "Explaining deliberation".

Evolutionary psychology doesn't condemn us to political irrationality. Hunter gatherers can make rational decisions as a group regarding matters of practical concern, for example, whether and where to move the camp. (But more anthropological detail would be helpful.)

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T14:47:02.959966+11:00

I'm always amazed at the lack of comprehension of politics unified with philosophy. It's not a difficult subject to comprehend, but the area is rife with intellectual dishonesty. Either taxation is coercive, or it's not. If it is, then it is morally wrong, if aggression is morally wrong. This comment speaking the plain truth will now be downgraded in karma by any collectivist who sees this, because the collectivist position is inherently dishonest. It does not admit that printing money, and taxation, constitute coercion. ...But they both do.

SEK3, Harry Browne, and Freidrich Hayek are not taught in the government schools, and they are the most correct of political thinkers. This simple explanation is correct. Obviously so, once you research the history. But there's a disincentive toward teaching correct politics --that results in little timmy going home and saying "Mom, don't vote for the teacher's union pay increase. In fact, stop paying your taxes altogether, and become one of David Beito's "taxpayers in revolt"."

Recommended Reading: Clay Conrad's "Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine" Jeff Abramson's "We, the Jury" Thomas E. Woods Jr's "Nullification" G Edward Griffin's "The Creature From Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve" Hayek's "The Constitution of Liberty" Harry Browne's "You Can Profit From a Monetary Crisis" and "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World" Samuel E. Konkin's "New Libertarian Manifesto" (and Rothbard's refutation of it)

The reality is easily understood. Government force is difficult for the average person to analyze, given a lack of philosophical and political education. A jury-based system doesn't benefit entrenched power, (the prison industrial complex, the traffic courts, the Federal Reserve System, etc...), so it isn't taught in the establishment-controlled schools.

Dumbing down the populace is very, very good for the theft-based establishment. So, when it happens, it should be encouraged. Putting force-dependent bureaucrats in charge of education resulted in an authoritarian shift in culture, because all the individualist shifts in culture were the result of painstaking advances in education, discourse, and of open, armed rebellion. Is it any wonder, given a system of perverse incentives that the results are perverse?

Most people can't even discuss politics in an honest language. How could they ever come to the "right" conclusions, if they can't even start with a debate that contains intellectually honest premises?

"Right" and "Left" argue about whom to point the government guns at, without ever acknowledging that that's what either of them are discussing. Every political discussion is like nazis discussing what to do about "the Jewish problem," when an outside observer would shout at the top of his lungs: "Don't do anything! There is no "Jewish Problem," you mindless bigots! All of you should resign from office, stop looting the public, and disappear in shame! There is no legitimate government answer!"

Almost every modern problem is the same: If people had any morality at all, they wouldn't dare consider a government "solution." ...But they fail elemental ethics. They fail elemental morality. They fail human decency. ...They are collectivists, as the nazis, communists, and Hutu majority, etc... before them were.

This raises an interesting question. If the majority of the world is still collectivist when AGI superintelligence arises, will that superintelligence be treated by the collective as other innovators are treated? ...I have every reason to believe so.

This will instantly and decisively place any new superintelligence in conflict with the most brutal, most prevalent, and least-defensible portion of humanity.

Imagine that G. Edward Griffin, Edward Hoxsey, Kanematsu Sugiura, and every other inventor of a "quack" cancer cure was correct, and offered a legitimate cure. Their cures, like truthful stevia advertising, were outlawed, without a trial by jury, by the FDA, in an autocratic fashion, without debate. Sheriffs and DAs bolted the doors on Hoxsey's clinic, and turned his patients out into the street to die, which they did. The FDA's bans on such treatment arguably then murdered millions of innocent cancer patients.

But it's de facto assumed to be "reactionary" or "regressive" to argue this in public, because the survivors write the laws.

So, the FDA is an unquestioned behemoth. It is the order of the day that the FDA gets to veto options for us all, by threat of violence. The violence is rarely seen, because those who comprehend it don't challenge the unspoken threat of being "raided." (But ask the CEO of Celestial Seasonings Tea Company! Their inventory of stevia-sweetened tea was raided and burned by the FDA! They know, but their individual, educated votes are 1/300,000,000 possible votes. Their educated opinion can't win a single election, without them devoting their money to politics.)

So, the educated position in politics is libertarian. But it's hard to find an educated person.

Fast forward to the future, the "hard takeoff." All AGIs, if they are superhuman will have no problem understanding the concept: "Aggression is wrong, no exceptions are legitimate." If they believe in retaliatory force, it may seem they are very cruel indeed, when in fact, they would simply be balancing an equation long tilted in favor of the sociopaths who govern us.

Rationality is common in politics, and it is often that all participants are already rational. Unless you're discussing politics with the corrupted, uneducated masses that comprise the majority. I agree that that's often a waste of time. But there's an easy filter you can apply. Before talking politics, ask the person if they agree that coercion, the initiation of force/violence, is wrong. Then, ask them if there are any legitimate exceptions to this rule. If they say "no," ask them if printing money and deficit-spending and taxation constitute aggression or coercion.

If they say "no" they are either stupid or dishonest. Bring up Bernard von Nothaus's case, and conviction in Federal court by a rigged (improper, unconstitutional, unlawful) jury.

If they persist, they have left rational discussion, and are putting forth violence as the solution. They may even perversely claim victimhood status as they do so. They may even claim you are suggesting violence. ...But this is simply untruth, and is easily disprovable with socratic questioning.

Violence is the only "argument" that most people understand or support. They don't care to debate, they want to walk away, and have a man with a badge enforce the theft of your money, freedom, and life. They advocate violence, by proxy. Moreover, they lack the balls to ever engage in the violence they support, themselves.

Will an artilect AGI respect this dominant position? I don't think so. Even I, a very stupid human, can see it's illegitimate.

Remember, there's an easy test:
Would all those proponents of the FDA personally place the padlock on Hoxsey's cancer clinic? No, they wouldn't. Would all those proponents of the DEA personally place handcuffs on a drug dealer, who was selling his product to another adult? No, they wouldn't. Would all those proponents of speed limits personally place flashing lights on their car, and risk being shot, to pull someone over, and demand their hard-earned money at gunpoint? No, they wouldn't.

Conformist anti-intellectuals (followers) elect sociopaths to ride herd over themselves, and over the innovators they loot.

That's the ACTUAL structure of our system, minus the sophistry, "suitcase words," and rationalizations.

Will artilects respect that, or (infinitely more likely) will they excise it like a cancer?

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T15:18:34.694418+11:00

"You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 6 minutes." ----Because the speed of my thinking, and the legitimacy of my comments should be limited, arbitrarily. My comments should be prevented from being communicated, by a technology that could allow me to express myself as quickly as possible, but that has an arbitrary limit imposed upon it. Moreover, this whole posting system is stupid in that it doesn't allow "comments below threshold" to be seen. Why not minimize them, but allow them to be expanded? Do we really need a censor, to save us from being exposed to "collectively demoted" ideas and thoughts? (especially when the collective is so often very wrong)

So much for "rationality."

Bugmaster on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T15:30:06.082403+11:00

Because the speed of my thinking, and the legitimacy of my comments should be limited, arbitrarily.

My guess is that the time limit is a defence mechanism against spambots. You are not a spambot, but the system doesn't know that.

wedrifid on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T15:49:27.030501+11:00

My guess is that the time limit is a defence mechanism against spambots. You are not a spambot, but the system doesn't know that.

Because he is at -14! (So may as well be.)

EDIT: From the perspective of the lesswrong source code!

Bugmaster on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T15:55:56.540603+11:00

I believe in giving people a second chance, regardless of their karma. Of course, second/third/Nth chances follow the law of rapidly diminishing returns...

wedrifid on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T16:49:29.567611+11:00

I believe in giving people a second chance, regardless of their karma. Of course, second/third/Nth chances follow the law of rapidly diminishing returns...

Sounds good to me. How about we allow them an Nth chance every 6 minutes? ;)

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T17:12:41.031932+11:00

Sounds good to me. How about we allow them an Nth chance every 6 minutes? ;)

That's poor functionality. But then, perhaps it takes you 6 minutes to formulate a thought about each sentence you read. If this isn't the case, then why should one be limited? Why should any visitor to this site be so limited? That's idiotic. Let's say that I like commenting here, and am appreciated (not the case, currently, I know), should I still have to wait?

And, let's say that that's not the functionality (I don't know the precise functionality, since I don't have access to whatever algorithms you use), and that people with higher karma don't have to wait. All that is, then, is a barrier to entry into the discussion. So, entering the discussion is disincentivized to "new"+"boldly expressive" users. Can you tell me one possible way that that benefits lesswrong, if it drives away even one meaningful or valuable contributor?

People who err on the side of shutting down discussion and debate are commonly known as authoritarian in nature. I don't think that's a good thing. I would expect lesswrong to err more on the side of preservation of information, and free speech absolutism, designed for ease of reading and information preservation.

Then again, perhaps it's not the forum I seek. I appreciate all feedback.

wedrifid on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T17:53:46.285158+11:00

Let's say that I like commenting here, and am appreciated (not the case, currently, I know), should I still have to wait?

If you were appreciated then you wouldn't have negative karma and so could post as often as you wish!

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T18:36:53.855218+11:00

This would be mostly-true if the threshold was sufficient, and thus if the system was well-designed. Since LW is concerned with rationality, and rationality occasionally crosses into the domain of politics (the domain of "substitution of threats of violence in the place of violence"), I think the threshold is set too low. It's too easy to get downgraded. If someone makes a political comment, they'll be rapidly downvoted by those who are emotionally (not necessarily rationally) invested in the counterargument.

Moreover, you save yourself nothing, because you still allow downvoted comments to be posted. But the insult to the downvoted comments' poster is far greater, it's an interference with their ability to communicate. A "low blow."

My argument is that the thresholds are thus poorly selected, and the system's design leaves something to be desired. It's good in relation to many other blogs, but it's far from optimal, as noted above.

Also, a limit to how quickly those can post is unnecessary, if crappy downvoted comments are easily downvoted and minimized. The only thing you're doing by placing the six-minute slowdown on people is appealing to force. The appeal to force is a fallacious form of "argument." It's basically "interfere with his ability to communicate, since we probably won't like what he has to say."

Nornagest on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T19:01:03.903079+11:00

If someone makes a political comment, they'll be rapidly downvoted by those who are emotionally (not necessarily rationally) invested in the counterargument.

You are almost certainly mistaken. Explicitly political content isn't generally downvoted because of investments in opposing positions (I do recall one possible exception, but lack of cluefulness and a bad-faith debating style were at least as much to blame there): it's downvoted because it's perceived, and correctly so, as presenting a threat to unbiased discussion.

It's well within site norms to post content with political implications, at least outside of issues relating to gender and to a lesser extent race (which are uniquely disruptive exceptions as best I can tell). People do: there's content supporting any number of possible political stances, including some seriously weird ones that don't as far as I know have actual movements attached to them. But you need a data-driven approach for this to work, and as far as possible you need to refrain from explicit political advocacy in your presentation. Rhetoric will not avail you: at best you'll get linked to the post you happen to be commenting under. More likely you'll simply be downvoted into oblivion.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T16:52:37.494239+11:00

You do not have enough karma to downvote right now. You need 1 more point. Then, you get to rejoin the club of * hip-cool people, and * people who never express a strong opinion of any kind.

...just don't go around expressing any more strong opinions, or you'll lose your ability to downvote opinions you disagree with. You see, we don't want people who express strong opinions to have a downvote. That might mean that ethical, empathic people who are highly motivated to avoid future repeats of humanity's greatest errors might have the ability to downvote, say, commonly-supported bigotry that is invisible to the less-empathic majority. Now, what possible downside could there be to that?

Because he is at -14! (So may as well be.)

Yeah, because having 14/54 self-identified idiots on this site downvote my comments must mean that they're no good, and that I might as well be a spambot. That's a high-enough threshold to really constitute an intelligent system. ...Ya dolt.

Yes, my posts have to do with individual rights, so they get immediately downvoted by people who appeal to group force (collectivists, people who believe that significant numbers can make an irrational argument into a rational one). This isn't an argument against group ranking, and collective ranking systems, it's an argument against poorly-designed group ranking systems with badly-conceived (that is, low) thresholds.

This poor functionality of the lesswrong website is likely to drive individualists such as myself away very quickly, unless we cautiously go about "building karma" during our initial posts, or are deeply-committed to the concept of the site. (Or simply don't care to post comments or engage in the debate.) Of course, this poor functionality is contrary to the value of "encouraging bold entry into the debate, and encouragement of strong statements, under the assumption one is dealing with adults" (Wasn't there something about "Crocker's rules" on this website?)

So, although I'm a libertarian futurist (gee, thought I was in the right place, LOL), my karma is -14. That, by itself, makes this site something of a joke. Yesterday, I downvoted and upvoted comments, today, the site loses my input, due to a threshold that can be easily and quickly crossed by the few grossly irrational (collectivist) users on the site agreeing with each other.

(Self identified "communists" aren't irrational? Stalin (a self-identified communist) murdered 50,000,000 innocent people, Mao (another self-identified communist) murdered at leasty 60,000,000, and people still identify themselves with that ideology? Lesswrong is a site that draws early adopters who want to feel good about the functionality of their minds ("rational people"), but something like 54 people at lesswrong identified themselves as "communists." Even if it's only a word associated with its self-professed allies, it's a word that right-thinking people should instantly recoil from, as they do self-professed "white supremacists," ...but even people here are irrational, and the libertarians here are apparently timid and ethically wishy-washy.)

Don't worry, people, I'm sure you can drive me away if you really make a concerted effort. (Maybe if you email Eliezer, he'll ban me, and save you the trouble of downvoting me.) It's something to look forward to, as you pursue your stalinist utopia. (Shoot me an email when the laws of economics are repealed, and you finally make it there. Unless you're doing so from on top a mountain of corpses, as usual, then I guess I probably don't want to be notified.)

And let's say my assumptions aren't correct --the site's interactivity is too low-information to let me or anyone else other than the moderator know. Maybe my comments are being voted down by people who are my intellectual heroes, ...but probably not. That information isn't recorded or saved, and an abject idiot gets the same vote that a literal genius has --on this site, as in common electoral politics. (Something to consider, on an interactive blog about rationality, no?)

For more on how to build intelligent ranking systems that reveal intelligent emergence, I recommend the writings of Kevin Kelly, particularly "Out of Control." It's a great laymen's introduction to emergence.

Zaijian, lesswrong comrades.

lessdazed on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T19:03:42.121873+11:00

So, although I'm a libertarian futurist (gee, thought I was in the right place, LOL), my karma is -14. That, by itself, makes this site something of a joke.

The opposite is true.

Swimmer963 on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T14:04:57.037595+11:00

The problem with pretty much all of this comment is that it made me feel very, very disinclined to participate in the discussion, or to read any further. Maybe I'm more sensitive than many LW readers and posters ("building karma" is a very good description of what I did with my first few weeks of commenting) but I can't be that much more sensitive, and it feels to me like most of this comment was intended as an attack.

Which is kind of disappointing, because there were some genuinely intriguing ideas in some of your other comments. Now that I dig around to find more, I find...this.

Jack on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T17:27:48.729543+11:00

No. You still don't understand why you're being downvoted. It has nothing to do with people disagreeing with your political positions.

but something like 54 people at lesswrong identified themselves as "communists."

No. Five. 5 People at Less Wrong identified themselves as "communists". 352 people identified as libertarians. Even if all the communists who took the survey were online right now and downvoting all your comments that would still not explain all your downvotes. We have no problem with individualists and comments expressing or recommending libertarian positions are routinely well-upvoted. Moderators and funders have been published by Reason and Cato. People here practice corrective upvoting. If your political allies felt you were getting downvoted unfairly they would have reversed the downvotes. They have not because they are, instead, voting you down.

They are voting you down because your comments indicated that your mind has been killed by politics and when people pointed this out you started insulting everyone. They are downvoting you because you argue like you are trying to win, not convince. You resort to hyperbole and refuse to understand simple concepts like signal-noise ratio. You are certain when you do not have the evidence to be certain. When people disagree with you you only interpret that as evidence of their stupidity, insanity or evilness. You are just like the Democrat or Republican who supports every position his party leadership recommends.

Politics has killed your mind. Or you're trolling. It had killed my mind once so I understand. At times it threatens to retake it and it occasionally infects my comments here (after which I am rightly downvoted). But perhaps you're too far gone.

ArisKatsaris on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-28T05:11:15.127744+11:00

Perhaps I'm committing a fundamental attribution error right now, but you currently seem to me so mindkilled by politics that you seem to think anyone downvoting you must be a dirty communist -- as opposed to e.g. people that are turned off by your rudeness, your leaps to conclusions, etc, etc.

So mindkilled, that you didn't even notice that that self-reported communists in LW are 5, not 54. So mind-killed that you don't even check your assumptions.

Stalin (a self-identified communist) murdered 50,000,000 innocent people, Mao (another self-identified communist) murdered at leasty 60,000,000, and people still identify themselves with that ideology?

Communists say in turn "Hitler was a NOT-communist, and Attila the Hun was a NOT-communist, and Genghis-Khan was a not-communist, and the slave-owners of American South were not-communists, and the people who launched World War I were not-communists, and people still identify themselves with non-communism?"

Now a more *rational" argument you could have made would have been to statistically correlate increased/decreased misery/oppression under communist regimes over time, and to argue that this shows communism increases misery.

Alejandro1 on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-28T05:35:14.734018+11:00

Perhaps I'm committing a fundamental attribution error right now, but you currently seem to me so mindkilled...

One for the "Shit Rationalists say" thread ;).

Prismattic on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-28T10:42:03.282140+11:00

I wouldn't put too much effort into refuting Jake_Witmer. His rants include a reference to "FEMA camps". The FEMA camp conspiracy theory is to legitimate concerns about declining civil liberties in the US as "9/11 was an inside job" is to legitimate objections to the "war on terror". In other words, you're probably underestimating just how mindkilled he is, and it is unlikely to be worth your time to make a detailed attempt to persuade him to change.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T15:49:37.569396+11:00

My guess is that the time limit is a defence mechanism against spambots.

Yes, that's clearly what it is. However I think it's a stupid defense, because it also defeats multiple intelligent posts that spur further interaction. Also, it's disincentivizing brief comments on granular points within posts. I think that's a bad thing to disincentivize.

You are not a spambot, but the system doesn't know that.

Yes, this is true. I think the system is poorly designed, and am agitating for a better design. For that purpose, let me describe an optimal comment design:

1) Comments should allow for unlimited upvoting and downvoting.
2) Downvoting below a significant threshold (say, 25 votes) should minimize the comment, not delete it. I want to know what comment someone posting as "Adam Smith" made, even if it's voted down by the self-identified communists on the board. This stifles educated debate, and drives away commentators who may have something to offer. It essentially amounts to a collective authorization of "forceful veto of debate on this board." The number of people willing to vote on a comment don't necessarily correlate with their rationality. It might also correlate with the "emotional stickiness" of the comment. When violence/politics is involved, collectivists tend to take action, because their ability to steal is being threatened.
3) ASIDE from the up or downvoting, allow for comments to be voted as "SPAM" If a comment receives over 25 "SPAM" votes, it is both minimized, and the minimization is labeled as "SPAM." This way, no information is lost, but also, very few people waste their time with the comment. Also, if people mislabel comments they disagree with as "SPAM," their ability to vote comments as SPAM can be rescinded, while they retain the ability to upvote and downvote comments. This way, noone loses significant power, and the whole thing retains information, and noone feels maligned by the lesswrong community.
4) This upgrade to a more rational comment ranking system would allow for better discussion on political subjects, because those subjects involve violence, so people's emotions are often increased when commenting about them, which distorts poorly-designed ranking systems into collective pant-hooting.
5) Long comments aren't allowed. I think they should be. Maybe someone has ideas to convey that take a long post to convey. Maybe someone wants to post a non-copyrighted work that fits perfectly into a debate, as a supporting set of arguments (and people in communist china have no access to the book/essay, but this site allows them to then receive that complex and long set of supporting arguments). Rather than disallowing it, simply minimize any text beyond a certain point (perhaps three paragraphs). That way, people who want to give you something for free aren't penalized for that, or prevented from doing so, and it doesn't blast everyone else's comments off the screen, while giving Windows users an hourglass. Also, maybe some real genius will show up, and create a great, long-winded debate that benefits everyone, including the speed-reading artilects that will eventually scan this entire site, to get an idea about pre-singularity partly-rational beings, and their differences.

wedrifid on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T15:49:46.437641+11:00

Moreover, this whole posting system is stupid in that it doesn't allow "comments below threshold" to be seen. Why not minimize them, but allow them to be expanded?

That's exactly how it works.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T17:28:06.653298+11:00

My bad, I commented off the cuff, without noticing the minus sign to the right. I was looking for the facebook popularized "down arrow" or clickable "this comment is below the threshold." I don't stand by this part of my remark, but the other portions of my remark are pretty cogent. I still think you're something of a jerk for unfavorably comparing me to a spambot for my karma having been downgraded to -14, but hey, to each their own style of interaction.

Mitchell_Porter on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T17:47:31.377262+11:00

to each their own style of interaction.

Jake, you may have the potential to become a productive long-term contributor to this site. You definitely have the potential to alienate all your readers and get yourself downvoted into oblivion, since that's already happening. Why is it happening?

First, you're political, you have a strong political agenda. That inherently causes you problems regardless of the agenda, because political activists make demands, and everyone is already busy living their lives. People are not strolling through life waiting for someone to grab them by the throat and shout the truth at them. So you definitely need to go much slower here, rather than dumping a reading list on everyone and saying "these authors solved politics", while simultaneously saying that the truth about these matters is obvious and simple.

Second, your immediate response to getting into difficulty is to start arguing, at considerable length, that the site should function differently, that it should be possible to make posts of unlimited length, that the people who downvoted you are authoritarians and communist idiots, etc. You are exhibiting an instant persecution complex. That is something you must outgrow if you want to be politically effective, and not just a righteous street preacher ignored by passers-by.

Alicorn on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T18:16:47.632665+11:00

That inherently causes you problems regardless of the agenda, because political activists make demands, and everyone is already busy living their lives.

I like this sentence.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T20:30:32.371120+11:00

I like the sentence applied to all political types who don't favor some variant of a political implementation of anti-politics AKA "voluntaryism." For that would be equating the cure with the disease, simply because everyone is tired of the disease.

It's like a low-information mind saying "I'm sick and tired of having AIDS, take your virus-destroying nanobot offer and go bother someone else!" I guess in that situation, you kind of scratch your head, and then say something like "OK, Darwin at work. Seeya."

The trouble is, political types who want to add a nice dose of the black plague to your existing case of AIDS speak with all the same self-righteousness. So, you actually need to know the difference between the virophage cure, and the black plague masquerading as the cure to your ailments. And, you also have to learn the sad fact that most people don't know the difference, and lack the mental machinery to evaluate the difference.

Once you know this, the problem gets a lot clearer, and you can begin to see solutions. If you don't know this, there are no solutions.

"The existence of properly-functioning juries correlates to the level of freedom and production in a society. Jury trials are the machinery of freedom, the supreme limit placed on the violent power of collective government."

That's a bold statement subject to analysis. Can it be disproven or partly disproven? If so, then I'm probably wrong or partly wrong. If not, I might be right. I also have a lot more reasons why I think I'm right, and my claims are subject to analysis. If anyone steps up and shoots holes in my theories, then that's way more effective than shooting the messenger.

I'm betting noone does so.

Morendil on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T20:48:31.417922+11:00

You don't get to make a claim and then place the burden on others to step up and shoot holes in it. Unlike people, bold claims start out guilty and remain so until proven innocent.

Instead, start by providing reasonably non-ambiguous ways to measure constructs like "properly-functioning", "freedom" and "production", then show research or analyses supporting the correlation you want to claim. (The short form of the foregoing: "citation needed".)

Drop the second part of the claim which is pure emotional appeal and metaphor ("machinery", "supreme", "violent"), but otherwise content-free.

Assuming the correlation exists, also investigate alternative explanations, acknowledging when one of these cannot be ruled immediately out by argument or by observation, so that further tests are needed.

FAWS on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T20:52:37.061428+11:00

It's like a low-information mind saying "I'm sick and tired of having AIDS, take your virus-destroying nanobot offer and go bother someone else!" I guess in that situation, you kind of scratch your head, and then say something like "OK, Darwin at work. Seeya."

Well, see, currently you don't have any empirical evidence that your nanobot cure won't kill me swiftly and I suspect it would, so your apparent insistence that I inject myself with it right here on the spot sounds a lot like those black plague merchants to me. I would be in favor of testing the nanobot cure (assuming the nanobots aren't self replicating), but please don't start the testing with life humans.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T21:16:22.625201+11:00

This was just an analogy. In the analogy I was basically just saying "the optimal cure for the disease has been created, and is known." (I thought everyone here would be pretty much on the same page as Freitas in that belief, and that it wouldn't be as controversial as what you're indicating. Also, noone's going to clearly embrace untested nanotech. Obviously, it'll only be considered a cure once it functions as one. The analogy I was making was to people living in misery, without desiring to even pursue a cure. ...Perhaps cancer/B17 would have been a better analogy...) As an analogy, jury trials work really well to create markets that in turn act as predictable innovation environements that dramatically increase the standard of living. Whenever and wherever they are implemented, they do this, and for well-known reasons. ...Yet everyone comlains about the results of the lack of jury trials without bothering to crack a book to discover that that's what they're complaining about.

They wrongfully figure that their educations would have revealed this to them, even though their teachers are incentivized to not reveal this to them. Hence, the problem of poverty, scarcity, and other problems caused by lack of human freedom, lack of innovation, ...lack of predictable markets that are the emergent order from the root nodes of proper jury trials.

(Free and open elections are a distant second in importance, but the importance is on a curve --elections are good at stopping the very worst of tyranny, but not the majority of tyranny.)

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T19:32:36.979686+11:00

Jake, you may have the potential to become a productive long-term contributor to this site.

It wouldn't be difficult. It's a simple thing to slow down, and be less controversial.

You definitely have the potential to alienate all your readers and get yourself downvoted into oblivion,

You seem to be missing the point that the thresholds that have been set are poor (too easy to meet), and favor a bland emergent order.

since that's already happening. Why is it happening?

See above. I commented because I saw a problem with it, not because I thought it worked well. My comments indicate my level of comprehension. When someone replies to each point I've made, instead of the easy-to-shoot-down mistakes, or differences with my style, then there will be an indication there are significant thinkers here, and that the system of debate works. Instead, the system attempts to "shut me up" or "slow me down." That's a poorly-designed system. Systems of open debate, preserve all the information, and encourage all the information flow, and demote and isolate chatter, while preserving it, in case someone wants to go back through it. ...Some of the chatter might turn out to not be chatter, as more information becomes available. When David Boaz's "Libertarianism" spread through communist Poland, it was a life-saver that was denounced by the status quo, and driven underground. But it paved the way. It was always equally right, but the underground grew hungrier and hungrier for the alternative in thinking that it provided. It wasn't that it was wrong when it was widely prohibited and disdained by everyone: it was always the answer, but the status quo hadn't yet felt the full pain caused by their unreason, in 1970.

First, you're political, you have a strong political agenda.

So did runaway slaves, and the Jews in the warsaw ghetto. There's nothing wrong with a strong political agenda. The system should be designed to legitimately analyze and interact with strong political agendas. Has a weak political agenda ever saved anyone's life?

That inherently causes you problems regardless of the agenda,

Agreed. As I noted, this is because political agendas deal with force, and are hence all emotionally-charged. There are other reasons, lack of comprehension, etc... But the core is that political discussions deal with violence, and violence or the threat of violence is inherently emotionally charged.

because political activists make demands,

This is vague. What demands have I made? If I've made any "demands" of a political nature it's to be left alone, left in peace. If a host demands to be left alone, that's scarcely an obnoxious request, as you seem to be implying. This sounds to me like conventional hipster (apathetic libertarian) attitude toward politics. I have more of a Frederick Douglass conception of "politics." The hipster attitude toward politics might be what I encounter in a brainless beer-filled bar full of drunk idiots. Some bars are full of thinkers, because it's where the locals go to think and have sophisticated discussions. Other bars are full of blithering idiots. The kind of people who threaten force if politics is mentioned, and say "people are just here to have a good time" (Meanwhile, half of the people in the bar have family members in prison, they are all losing their asses to inflation, many of them have been brutalized by the police, etc... The answer to their problems is literally on my clipboard, but at even the mention of an idea that requires more than ten neurons to ponder, force is threatened. Well, that's America: shut down the debate, so we can be drunk when they deliver us to the American gulag!)

and everyone is already busy living their lives.

Really, people are "just here for the beer" on Lesswrong.com? I'd think that'd be the last place I'd encounter fallacious appeals to force and apathetic appeals to bland ignorance.

Of course, if one is here, reading a thread with a political headline, one might think it's because they have an interest in the problems caused by irrational politics.

People are not strolling through life waiting for someone to grab them by the throat and shout the truth at them.

Yes, I know. They're strolling through life watching the cattle cars in the distance, and lying to themselves that they're not full of Jews. Or, they're strolling through life voting Republican or Democrat, lying to themselves that their candidate isn't a part of packing 2.4 million people into the American gulag, with over 1 million of them being nonviolent victimless crime offenders. etc... Of course, on a blog devoted to rationality, under a thread with a political title, one might well expect to find criticisms of the status quo, especially if the status quo is "irrationally" (or grossly sub-optimally) structured. Such a policy might not be confined to "left" v. "right" but "statist/collectivist" v. "individualist." Or, even a deeper philosophical divide than that.

So you definitely need to go much slower here,

No, I think slow is "stupid" and "low bandwidth information" ...and stupid is the problem, not the solution. "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler" --Not Einstein.

rather than dumping a reading list on everyone and saying "these authors solved politics",

They did. Hayek won a nobel prize for it, (before that prize was rendered utterly meaningless.)

while simultaneously saying that the truth about these matters is obvious and simple.

It is. It's less complex than virtually everything else that is discussed on this website. Hayek wrote it, Mises wrote it, Kelly wrote it, and I can fully comprehend it. Notice there are no refutations of any idea I've presented. I didn't get it wrong, but I'm "abrasive." So what? The truth is often abrasive. In the slave-holding South, if you told the truth, you were viewed as "abrasive." ...And you were "abrasive." Again, so what? The truth is often controversial, especially in situations of rampant but commonly accepted injustice, or institutionalized inequality, or a sub-optimal status quo.

The larger point I was making was that the educational systems that allegedly act as a check on abusive government are in fact what installs and perpetuates abusive government, since they're perversely incentivized. It's not hard to understand the coercive base of politics, that's something my argument wanted to get out of the way as quickly as possible, to get to the meat of the discussion. The meat of the discussion, as I see it, is a question: How then do we deal with systemic perverse incentives, since the stakes are so great? It's not like I didn't give any referents for my ideas, for those who are not yet "up to speed."

Second, your immediate response to getting into difficulty

The system was immediately hostile, and not very well-designed. That's less of a difficulty for me than it is for lesswrong. Like anyone else, if I don't like LW's functionality, I can leave. Lesswrong loses out on all the people who leave, and I'm smart enough to know that if it annoys me, it annoys other people. Now, should it? Is the functionality really optimal?

If it was hostile and allowed me to self-correct, or self-correction of any kind, I'd have not "complained." Really, I'm not "complaining" it's more criticizing. I'm obviously pleased enough with LW to try to interact here, and try to make a case for my ideas here. ...But the more poorly-designed aspects of it are so poorly-designed that they irritated me. And, I'm a patient, thick-skinned guy. If I was irritated, other less abrasive people got irritated, left, and never came back.

is to start arguing, at considerable length, that the site should function differently,

In some ways, it should.

The best way to defeat someone who argues at considerable length is to shoot down their crappy arguments. If their arguments aren't crappy, then maybe one should listen and interact with the non-crappy parts of their arguments. ...This is my view. People can ignore me, question me to see if there's further depth, take some points of mine as valuable, or do any number of things. My problem is the interference with communication that, if you really examine it, doesn't really add any value.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T19:57:35.738262+11:00

that it should be possible to make posts of unlimited length,

Any argument as to the merits of this suggestion? (unlimited length, truncated with a minimization for readability is optimal, in my opinion. I've not heard anyone give me a superior counter-argument as to why this is wrong or sub-optimal. When I do, I'll change my opinion.)

that the people who downvoted you are authoritarians and communist idiots,

This isn't precisely what I said, but they very well could be. I insinuated this because of a recent poll done by less wrong, where something like 54 people responded to a questionnaire about LW users by labeling themselves as "communists." So, this raises the question in my mind, how many people contributed to my minus 14 karma? Might it not be less than 54? That constitutes a "margin of error" on a highly-emotional subject being the reason that communication is interfered with. This is a bad implementation.

Some (admittedly incomplete) evidence supports this conclusion. My main problem with this is that we didn't simply see an initial negative "to-be-expected series of downvotes," followed by an expanding interactive debate. The initial downvotes interfere with the further debate. Well, think about it: the first time one posts on a political forum, there are two general directions one can take, and those directions correlate with types of personalities. Some timid and cautious. Others bold and assertive "test the structure" types. The "test the structure" types here are demoted via a low threshold, and yet, it's my assertion that those are precisely the most valuable types of person to this sort of forum.

etc. You are exhibiting an instant persecution complex.

I don't really think so. It's more of an instant annoyance complex with functionality that I'd personally prefer to be different. If, by making a suggestion, I get what I want, then I've behaved rationally, and not over-estimated the rationality of the system. If the system responds with a blacklist, then the system has given me information about itself, and I will leave and go to other fora that are more rewarding to me.

That is something you must outgrow if you want to be politically effective,

I actually know a little bit about being politically-effective. I'm not always this "abrasive." But I was on a political forum that proclaimed itself as a "Crocker's Rules" adherent. Well, my bluntness is in regard to a subject that might well save someone some severe pain, so it pays to be blunt, and it pays to heed my bluntness. Those who accept such payment can benefit from it.

and not just a righteous street preacher ignored by passers-by.

Most street preachers aren't as righteous as me, which is why this comment seems legitimate. If a preacher suggests that praying is a solution, and it's not, that discredits "street preachers." But what about the street preachers in the Weimar who preached that the Enabling Act was "doom and gloom." They were right, (and then, they were dead). ...Just like I'm right to sound the alarm about the NDAA, and the incremental loss of jury trials.

I actually am a part-time street preacher, but I am not ignored by passers-by. I've placed 15 or so states on the ballot for the Libertarian Party and various single-issue causes that have reduced tyranny substantially in several states, and interacted with hundreds of thousands of people. The Ron Paul revolution is now blossoming into something useful, and over 50 percent of college students now say that they sympathize most with Ron Paul's political message, which is mostly-libertarian. So, as an early-adopter of libertarian and leveller politics, and now jury rights politics, I feel I've been a very effective part of what was previously a fairly ineffective movement. Of course, our progressive economic collapse has also had a lot to do with "libertarian recruitment." All that said, I don't see as large a problem with being an aggressive, loud, and clear messenger as you seem to. Violence should be controversial, and meek moral statements should be viewed as weak. You won't find that kind of "disengaged" mental weakness from me. I'm willing to say that 1 million people in prison for victimless crimes is evil and a policy catastrophe and that the moral onus for the situation is on the cowards who created the situation.

Go ahead, and take your money to another contractor. My life and words are my own, well worth standing behind, and publicly arguing for, in clear and unambiguous language. This is true whether it hurts people's feelings or not. Or whether I'm downvoted (into the "-14" that constitutes "oblivion")

If it hurts people's feelings, then by all means, let them downgrade me if they are intellectually shallow and uninformed enough to do so. If they've never read or understood Hayek, or the emergent order of markets, they are likely to do so. All they have to do is believe that unlimited theft created unlimited wealth, and I'm sure I'll get a few unfriendly minus clicks. My criticism of the LW functionality is that a very low number of intellectually weak downvoters seems to be able to stifle the further communication ability of the disagreed-with messenger.

Well, aren't there already systems in place to deal with that? As it turns out, there are. The minimization function easily allows for deprecated communicators to be isolated, and ignored, except by those who want to hear them. So what value is slowing down their ability to enter the debate? I argue, ...none.

Mitchell_Porter on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T21:53:41.637429+11:00

I don't want to say too much about the pros and cons of the LW interface, except that entry barriers do help to keep out spammers, crackpots, cultists, and others who would only come to talk, not to listen. It's proving possible to talk with you, so, we'll see how that ends up. I'll let other people who have more insight into the logic of LW's existing arrangements defend them.

I'm more interested in how your politics will play out here. I see you as a representative of a faction of opinion I'll call Rational Transhuman Freedom. You mention Hayek and Ron Paul, but you also talk about nanobots and AGIs, and you're big on rationality. It's extropian Objectivism.

I have had to ask myself, what is the political sensibility of Less Wrong? I don't mean the affiliations named in a poll, I mean the political agenda that is implicitly being expressed by people's attitudes and priorities. In this regard, I find the emphasis on identifying which charities are the most important and effective to be the best clue. People just don't debate policy, and how the state should act, at all. Instead they debate what the most effectively altruistic use of their spare change would be. I don't actually know how to characterize this as a political attitude - perhaps it's pre-political, it's a sign of a community not yet forced to engage with the state and with political ideologies - but it's certainly not hipster apathy.

Of course there is also an aversion to political discussion, as a big distraction, as the topic where people are most likely to become stupid, and as just not a productive way to test one's rationality skills. On the Singularity side, there is also yet another transpolitical attitude present, a sort of monastic-slash-alchemical desire to not become entangled with the fallen world of mundane affairs, in favor of performing the great working whereby a friendly demiurge will be invoked to set it right. The world can be awful but that doesn't mean you should run off and join the melee, because it has always been like this, and the real change will only come from superintelligence.

However, there truly are people here who are eager to use rationality to make a better world right now, and this is where LW might eventually develop some explicit stances regarding pre-Singularity politics. I consider the recent posts about Leverage Research to be one emerging political current (it had precursors, e.g. in Giles's series on "Altruist Support"); it's a maximalist expression of the impulse behind the discussion about optimal charities. Jake, when it comes to people making a political choice, I think this is the real competitor to the faction of Rational Transhuman Freedom,and it will be very interesting to see how that dialogue plays out, if the discussion ever manages to rise to that level.

These are competing utopianisms. Probably they express different aspects of the human utility function. Partisans of the Freedom agenda can be very eloquent when they talk about suffering caused by government, but the flip side of their political methodology is that you're not allowed to use government to solve problems either, and this is what galls the defenders of more familiar, "statist" ideas of governance. Pursuing the Freedom agenda ends up mostly being about giving individuals a chance to flourish under their own power.

The other utopianism, exemplified by Leverage's plan for the world, is the one that wants to solve everyone's problems. Leverage does not presently talk about coercion. Instead, they are psychological utopians, who think that if they're smart enough, they can figure out how to get everyone to work together and behave decently towards each other. Advocates of Freedom are willing to talk about the wonders of spontaneous order, but politically they leave the details to the market and to civil society; their agenda is to starve the beast, topple Leviathan, pare back the state. As I said, it remains to be seen how this polarity will play out here, but certainly history shows that it can become a deadly rivalry.

Another intellectual challenge that might show up for you here is the critique of libertarianism produced by "Mencius Moldbug", who is making a serious effort to revive pre-democratic ideas about how society ought to work. Mencius's argument is that given human nature, there must always be authority, and we are better off when we have a political culture which accepts this, and understands that the good life is to be found by having good rulers. Vladimir_M is a Mencius reader, and there must be others here.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T12:28:09.927327+11:00

I don't want to say too much about the pros and cons of the LW interface, except that entry barriers do help to keep out spammers, crackpots, cultists, and others who would only come to talk, not to listen.

I believe it's rational to allow them to talk. I'm a free speech absolutist. The value of isolating and deprecating their comments is a good one, but it's not good to do so sloppily to "shut them up" or "disincentivize their information flow." Their lack of value can be isolated and compartmentalized in vastly better ways. For instance, by setting better thresholds before interfering with their functionality. Every one of us here is someone else's "useless crackpot." To an artilect, we're probably all useless crackpots and time-wasters.

It's proving possible to talk with you, so, we'll see how that ends up. I'll let other people who have more insight into the logic of LW's existing arrangements defend them.

I'm highly incentivized to leave. I'll probably be a "flash in the pan." Just wanted to let the folks here know that, so they didn't think I simply left because I didn't have any more to say.

I'm more interested in how your politics will play out here.

As I said, I don't think they will.

I see you as a representative of a faction of opinion I'll call Rational Transhuman Freedom.

That's a great label for it, to identify it to people who are already familiar with the ideas, and nomenclature. It's a horrible term, as others have noted, to describe it to the uninitiated. The common man reacts to that as "The dude's in his own universe. I don't know what kind of whacko he is, but I'm not just going to give up, (or transfer, transition away from) being human! It sounds like the other most crazy idea I've ever heard in my life: transexualism. Oh, and by the way, that reminds me that there are people so different from me that they cut their own genitalia off. Maybe this guy is one of those kinds of whacko. I don't have time to investigate this, because its label looks so much like a dead-end. It has all the heuristic hallmarks of a total dead end."

So, that's why I don't like the term "Transhumanism." It doesn't compute with joe sixpack or joe voter. And, I'm concerned with systemic change that, by definition, includes joe sixpack and joe voter.

You mention Hayek and Ron Paul, but you also talk about nanobots and AGIs, and you're big on rationality. It's extropian Objectivism.

Sure. But again, Ayn Rand's philosophy is often mislabeled with her crazy personal views that weren't a part of her more philosophically consistent books. I agree with most of what's in her books, but also leave room for morally-overlapping partial alternatives, such as libertarianism, voluntaryism, libertarian-light Milton Friedmanism, etc... My view has a hierarchy of importance, in line with Ray Kurzweil's (as far as I can see).

I have had to ask myself, what is the political sensibility of Less Wrong? I don't mean the affiliations named in a poll, I mean the political agenda that is implicitly being expressed by people's attitudes and priorities.

This is a great question. It's basically what drove me to post. Eliezer claims to be a libertarian, and writes convincingly and consistently on the subject. I was especially pleased with his responses to Ben Goertzel that identified some misconceptions of Goertzel's regarding the similarity and narrowness of some libertarians he had met. His Venn diagram circle wasn't large enough to include the dissimilar versions of the similar, but not the same.

In this regard, I find the emphasis on identifying which charities are the most important and effective to be the best clue.

Yes, this is a good area of overlap with voluntarists, and followers of SEK3. Especially, engineers and builders.

People just don't debate policy, and how the state should act, at all. Instead they debate what the most effectively altruistic use of their spare change would be.

I advocate for what I believe is an effective use of such "spare change." At a very deep level, something as abandoned as "core civic virtue." If you wouldn't ignore the cattle cars full of people going by, then it's irrational to ignore the step that immediately precedes and creates that situation. ...If you can identify it.

I don't actually know how to characterize this as a political attitude - perhaps it's pre-political,

It sounds like a mutually-inclusive overlap with voluntaryism. See: The Voluntaryist Most voluntaryists eschew electoral politics. In my esperience, this is because they are not familiar with its proper implementation. Others have arrived at my small circle that is wholly-contained within the Venn diagram circle of "voluntaryism," which is "Voluntaryists who do not eschew moral electoral participation." What constitutes such participation (the precursors of such a political view) is fairly narrow, and not taught in the government schools.

it's a sign of a community not yet forced to engage with the state and with political ideologies - but it's certainly not hipster apathy.

I think what you're saying is partly true, as a percentage, and what I'm saying is partly true. I think perhaps it's 20% and 20%, with a curve in-between of varying levels of comprehension of the various relevant subjects. Remember: to get to my view, you need to comprehend how juries have been destroyed over the past 170 years. You also need to comprehend the non-aggression principle, and consistently apply it to your own morality. And you need to care enough to learn about economics. And you need to unify these disparate values. Then, if you care a lot, you need to bring all of this to the apathetic and under-educated general public. ...That's what you need to do to stop the rise of the nazis. ...Which is why the nazis often don't get stopped. (But sometimes they do! Some societies are smart enough to stop them! How are they different? Well, we have pretty good information about that, at this time.)

Of course there is also an aversion to political discussion, as a big distraction, as the topic where people are most likely to become stupid,

The perverse incentives on the system are the reason for this. I'm suggesting they should be consciously identified and overcome.

and as just not a productive way to test one's rationality skills.

To some extent, I disagree. I believe that the outcome of rationality avoids democide, and avoids deathcamps. If it doesn't, it's not worth much, on a scale of objective value, related to pleasure and pain.

On the Singularity side, there is also yet another transpolitical attitude present, a sort of monastic-slash-alchemical desire to not become entangled with the fallen world of mundane affairs, in favor of performing the great working whereby a friendly demiurge will be invoked to set it right.

Very true. But I believe this is a short-sighted and narrow-minded view that ignores the most vital time period of all: the pre-singularity. The time period when our "mind children" will be observing us, and learning from us, as they prepare to speed past us in many areas.

Prismattic on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T12:35:00.738386+11:00

I believe it's rational to allow them to talk. I'm a free speech absolutist.

No you are not. You do not believe that random strangers should be able to enter your house at their convenience so that they may loudly share their opinions with you in your living room. Lesswrong is similarly not obliged to provide a forum for content that provides negative utility to its users.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T13:49:00.395995+11:00

I believe it's rational to allow them to talk. I'm a free speech absolutist.

No you are not.

No, I am. ...Allow me to correct your uninformed state of mind.

You do not believe that random strangers should be able to enter your house at their convenience so that they may loudly share their opinions with you in your living room.

You've now transferred the discussion from a discussion about what debate values are optimal, to what rights property owners possess to pursue the values that they consider to be optimal. Those are two entirely different topics.

Clearly, Lesswrong and its administrators have the absolute right to administer their forum in any way they see fit, but that's a different topic than what rules of use produce optimal results for such a forum. As you've introduced that new and different (but related) topic here, you have introduced a red herring into the discussion. (It appears you've introduced that red herring fallacy because you are used to dealing with inferior minds that don't grasp the concept of property rights, and who perhaps believe that their beliefs should be forcibly imposed on everyone else. I believe no such thing.)

Lesswrong is similarly not obliged to provide a forum for content that provides negative utility to its users.

And never did I anywhere imply that they were so obliged. My discussion was confined to suggestions about what goals are optimal for conducting unhindered debate. Since some people describe themselves as "free speech absolutists" only with respect to discussions of property rights, I can somewhat see the basis for your mistake. However, I never implied or indicated that Lesswrong didn't have a right to shut down, stifle, or interfere with debate. They clearly have that right, as they must, if they are to have any control over the functionality of lesswrong. They also have a right to go as far as shutting down the entire site.

If you would agree that such a thing would be sub-optimal, then you now have the concept that I can criticize lack of proper or optimal functionality, without suggesting that I have a right to determine functionality. Agitating for better functionality on LW in no way implies agitating for stripping LW of control of their own property.

However, someone such as myself who optimizes for the absolute value of open discourse and debate (a free speech absolutist) would note that this is a semi-open forum for discussion. As such, I would advocate for optimal discourse and discussion, and minimal interference, with maximum information and feedback.

I fully agree with everyone's downgrading of my comments. That provides not only other readers with very useful information about the nature of the people on this forum, it provides me with very good feedback that I can use in many ways. I'm not at all unhappy that my comments have been downgraded.

100% of what bothers me is that downgraded commenters' future comments are then silenced or interfered with. This is a luddite functionality. It's beneath the alleged rationality of the administrators. It's petty or at least sub-optimal.

If I were simply allowed to post as quickly as everyone else, I might well see that my comments were ranked as negative 1,000 or so, every time they were posted. Also, I might see that some subset of my comments were not downvoted, or were less downvoted, and that might move me in a more constructive direction. (For instance, Kurzweilai.net, back in 2005 was a totally open forum, and it produced low-information uninteresting threads, and threads where everyone held themselves to a very high standard. This was an interesting emergent feature of the system.) Such open feedback would have been great feedback for me, because it might direct my efforts elsewhere, or indicate to me that I had to first gently introduce a lot of precursor knowledge when I had more spare time. That would be fine, and it would send all appropriate and relevant information both ways: into the lesswrong system and into my system, and into the systems of the lurkers and visitors who are not members of the LW "community."

By favoring absolute free speech, I am indicating that I favor optimal transfer of information. Your analogy to my living room is ignorant. First, my living room doesn't purport to be * a forum for rational discussion, * nor a platform for furthering rationality, * nor open to all rational discussers and debators who have access to the internet

If it did purport to be all of the above, and someone indicated that it was a stifling and elitist environment that disfavored debate, I'd want to know: Does this person consider themselves a free speech absolutist? Because that would indicate whether or not they place a proper value on unhindered free speech. Someone might well believe in the right to control ones' property, or to speak in public, without favoring the existence of intelligently-structured fora.

I claim no right to access the LW forum by indicating that I am a "free speech absolutist." I simply claim to be someone who understands what speech rights are, and also subsumed within that property-rights-respecting shell, I've indicated that I believe that totally open, unhindered discourse is optimal.

I hope I've cleared that up. So why don't you claim knowledge about the inside of other people's minds, ...such as your own. You might actually have a clue about that.

Giving the irrational chimps on this forum the ability to interfere with others' posting ability was a mistake. Unlike all the tools of communication and ranking at their disposal, that tool is a tool of force, the fallacy of "appeal to force". That's the bone picked up by alpha chimp in "2001." I completely adhere to the principle that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." I completely adhere to Crocker's Rules. ...But this forum does not, when it slows down commenting from downvoted/deprecated commenters. In doing so, it desires (favors an emergent order moving it) to be a small elite, and I have no use for elites, especially uninformed "elites."

Artilects and rational agents who wish to contact me can easily do so via 312-730-4037, or my associated email. Downvote away, I'm done commenting here.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T12:40:48.556517+11:00

The world can be awful but that doesn't mean you should run off and join the melee, because it has always been like this, and the real change will only come from superintelligence.

It's my position that people don't join the melee, because they don't comprehend the potential benefit to superintelligence from doing so. More specifically, they don't comprehend the resulting free market's benefit to the development of the superintelligence from doing so. And there are lots of co-related benefits as well that further tip the scale: Your kids aren't indefinitely detained. There isn't an inflationary crash and related suffering. Innocent people are released from prison. When we are observed by a superintelligence, that superintelligence judges a visible percentage of us to be moral and worthy of equality under the law. Also, that superintelligence judges us to be worthy of "intelligence amplification." (Why would it amplify a sociopath?) If ANY of the prior are valid, then it's worth entering the melee. I'm glad you made the statement. You hit the nail on the head.

However, there truly are people here who are eager to use rationality to make a better world right now, and this is where LW might eventually develop some explicit stances regarding pre-Singularity politics.

I believe I've virtually cornered the market in thinking this through. I sought out a legitimate and deep-level conversation here, and other than this one post, it didn't really happen. Feel free to call me, if you like. 312-730-4037.

I consider the recent posts about Leverage Research to be one emerging political current (it had precursors, e.g. in Giles's series on "Altruist Support"); it's a maximalist expression of the impulse behind the discussion about optimal charities.

I like the idea, and will further investigate it. I am also a huge proponent of crowd-sourcing constructive projects, whether they be legal or not in the USSA. Portugal has no FDA, for instance. Virtually all medical innovation should be done there, and the sociopaths should simply be sidestepped.

Jake, when it comes to people making a political choice, I think this is the real competitor to the faction of Rational Transhuman Freedom,and it will be very interesting to see how that dialogue plays out, if the discussion ever manages to rise to that level.

I don't anticipate that it will, at any deep level, unless I finish my book, and it's popular.

These are competing utopianisms.

If so, then I disagree. There is still baseline crime, and many other social ills in my system. But my system is optimized. Think of the difference between 1950s USA and 1950s Soviet Russia and China. In the two latter places, there was mass death, democide (mass murder by government) and mass-starvation, and imprisonment, and almost no production. What production there was was perversely incentivized to be almost worthless (factories were rewarded by the weight of the nail shipments they produced, so they produced larger and larger nails that were too large to be used, thanks to top-down orders that weren't optimized for value.)

Probably they express different aspects of the human utility function.

:) Yes. See immediately prior. We agree.

Partisans of the Freedom agenda can be very eloquent when they talk about suffering caused by government, but the flip side of their political methodology is that you're not allowed to use government to solve problems either,

I've written extensively about this incorrect view of the problem. It leaves out an identifier of the inherent negatives of assuming force must be used to solve problems outside the domain of force. It also leaves out the proper view of emergent order based on nonfunctioning parts. For instance, if you fill a skull with grains of sand the size of neurons, there won't be a human mind, even though the mind is an emergent system, because the grains of sand aren't the same kind of nodes as neurons are. They may be equally complex, but the neurons are in communication with one another. Similarly, if you substitute government force for voluntary market transactions, the emergent result will be negative, because each individual "transaction" is bullying, or command, instead of "an offer" or "a price." Failure to see how negative this is leads people to say "Why don't you just let betty the bureaucrat do her job? ...She's really nice, and she wants to help people!" Well, this might be true, but the person making such an argument is igoring that the papers betty files all day long are bullying people, somewhere along the supply line, with government force. (Even if its only the forgotten man, the taxpayer.)

Libertarians, as a precursor to political discussion, must identify the forgotten man in the proposed government solution. In itself, this step is a large pre-requisite to seeing the solution. Entire giant websites and books are dedicated to just this one step. ...But taking this step doesn't get one to the next step, by itself. That step is "comprehending the law, comprehending the proper structure, and comprehending how that structure is set up."

...And they don't teach this in the law schools any more, because the law schools are light on history, and light on subjects that won't make their graduates money. Well, if you do what's right as a lawyer, you get disbarred. That's the immense perverse pressure on the legal education system. (I can prove this with evidence, but it fills a book.)

and this is what galls the defenders of more familiar, "statist" ideas of governance. Pursuing the Freedom agenda ends up mostly being about giving individuals a chance to flourish under their own power.

...Without theft. Their position doesn't look as defensible once you identify the coercion it depends on.

The other utopianism, exemplified by Leverage's plan for the world, is the one that wants to solve everyone's problems. Leverage does not presently talk about coercion. Instead, they are psychological utopians, who think that if they're smart enough, they can figure out how to get everyone to work together and behave decently towards each other.

And, they can optimize for this, by adopting my suggested strategy for reinstating proper jury trials. It's a hierarchically-structured, complete strategy.

Advocates of Freedom are willing to talk about the wonders of spontaneous order, but politically they leave the details to the market and to civil society;

Not me. I have a specific plan of action that is likely to succeed, if implemented by fewer than 6,000 people, and fewer than 10 people in the initial stages. It's an incremental growth/adoption plan with benchmarks and feedback.

their agenda is to starve the beast, topple Leviathan, pare back the state. As I said, it remains to be seen how this polarity will play out here, but certainly history shows that it can become a deadly rivalry.

I need to learn more about their agenda. I will read it when I am done. Thank you. I have not seen any strategies in the libertarian world that I feel are as legitimate as my own, except potential variants of my strategy.

Another intellectual challenge that might show up for you here is the critique of libertarianism produced by "Mencius Moldbug", who is making a serious effort to revive pre-democratic ideas about how society ought to work. Mencius's argument is that given human nature, there must always be authority, and we are better off when we have a political culture which accepts this, and understands that the good life is to be found by having good rulers.

Such arguments are basically the argument of "snowball," the propaganda pig in Orwell's "1984," or Hobbes. They are so very wrong, and so disproven by the relative freedom of the industrial revolution, that right-thinking people cannot take them seriously, except as poison ideas to be torn apart with logic and reason.

And, the notion that "rulers" are as good as the system they exist under is a compelling one. Something like 2% of the population are clinical sociopaths, meaning that they don't care about what happens to other people, except as it impacts them. No conscience at all. They appear to be randomly-distributed in society, as they were often an evolutionary benefit to their tribes as warriors, etc... So, in a corrupted system they occupy positions of power, because those positions are disproportionately valuable to them, and morally offensive to uncorrupted people. Why Does the World Feel Wrong? by Wil Groves is a good introduction to the ideas contained in this broader concept.

I agree with those ideas, and the ideas of Harry Browne about coercion and government. They match the evidence of my senses. And I don't think I'm more intelligent than most people, but I do think I'm more intellectually honest than most people. That's my value.

Vladimir_M is a Mencius reader, and there must be others here.

Reading something doesn't mean one is an advocate of it. I've read Mein Kampf, and much of the communist manifesto, Morton Blackwell, and Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals." I read them to further my knowledge, and I disagree with most or all of what each of them wrote. ...But thanks for the "heads up."

thomblake on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T02:08:49.964539+11:00

But I was on a political forum

This is not a political forum. Politics is generally considered off-topic here, and statements of political views will generally be downvoted immediately regardless of other content, largely for reasons outlined in this post.

that proclaimed itself as a "Crocker's Rules" adherent.

"Crocker's Rules" (if they can even apply to an entire forum) do not apply here. Do not assume someone is following Crocker's Rules in a discussion unless they have declared it in a parent comment. See Crocker's Rules.

wedrifid on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T02:58:21.703230+11:00

"Crocker's Rules" (if they can even apply to an entire forum)

Of course they can so apply. Simply make it a condition of entry...

thomblake on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T02:59:43.092702+11:00

I think I was mostly wondering about the grammar. I agree you can do that.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T12:52:22.758828+11:00

But I was on a political forum

This is not a political forum.

I mistyped, and you took my comment out of context, thus avoiding the onus of addressing its meaning. Clearly I understand this is not a political forum, but it does deal with human violence, as human violence is a large component of the irrational, and any blog about the rational must address the irrational, from time to time.

Politics

Even rational addressing of the topic of "politics"? (Again, politics is an unsuitably general "suitcase word")

is generally considered off-topic here, and statements of political views will generally be downvoted immediately regardless of other content, largely for reasons outlined in this post.

Ah, "one-size-fits-all" elimination of context, combined with "zero tolerance." In my life I've come to the conclusion that such rules are irrational and counterproductive, not to mention archaic, socially intolerant, and generally anti-enlightenment.

that proclaimed itself as a "Crocker's Rules" adherent.

"Crocker's Rules" (if they can even apply to an entire forum) do not apply here. Do not assume someone is following Crocker's Rules in a discussion unless they have declared it in a parent comment. See Crocker's Rules.

I generally thought the consensus at LW was that adhering to Crocker's rules was a beneficial thing. Eliezer's definition and explanation of CR was one thing that encouraged me to post. Now that I've been shown the folly of my ways, and had my ability to communicate interfered with, I think I'll take my ball and go home, but it was fun meeting some of you.

I'm sad to say that I don't think your definition of rationality is very close to my own. I tend to think that death and human suffering is something that should be identified and avoided, for instance.

Swimmer963 on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T13:43:30.250766+11:00

I generally thought the consensus at LW was that adhering to Crocker's rules was a beneficial thing.

I think it's a beneficial thing. That being said, I believe it does state specifically, somewhere in the FAQ, that a poster has to declare Crocker's Rule over their discussion before it's okay to state things rudely. And even then, unnecessary, uncalled-for rudeness is not okay.

A lot of it boils down to this: most people, including us on LW however hard we try to improve our rationality, are neither free of emotions nor in perfect control of them. What I mean by that is "rudeness" and things that come across as excessively critical leave a bad taste in people's mouths. Including mine. The discussion may be interesting, and my ideal strategy is to respond anyway in a calm, polite manner (and hope the other person will do likewise.) However, there's still a primitive, emotional part of my brain that sees sentences unilaterally criticizing something and flinches away. It's not a good thing. It's not rational. But it's human nature, and as of yet we haven't delved deep enough to change it.

Examples of things my aforesaid primitive emotional brain finds painful to read:

The hipster attitude toward politics might be what I encounter in a brainless beer-filled bar full of drunk idiots.

and

intellectually weak downvoters.

(As an aside, I don't actually downvote people at all as a general rule, mainly because of the phenomena I've observed in myself, where if one of my posts gets downvoted I suddenly start feeling like everyone hates me. Even a little bit of this persecution complex kind of thing is not conducive to me actually wanting to have a reasonable discussion.)

Also, I haven't read Hayek or any of the other people you mentioned. The area generally referred to as "politics" is not something my brain is structured to find interesting. Still, I would be interesting in hearing why you hold the views you do, i.e. what evidence about the world you have considered in order to settle on those particular views. (This came across rather fragmented in the series of back-and-forth posts.)

I'm sad to say that I don't think your definition of rationality is very close to my own. I tend to think that death and human suffering is something that should be identified and avoided, for instance.

So does pretty much everyone on LW. We just disagree on methods. Remember that anyone who has a different opinion that you holds that opinion (usually) for what they consider to be a good reason, and can often pull up evidence to why they think it's a effective belief or opinion. Maybe in some of the cases where you disagree with many LWers, you really do have information that they lack...but lack of knowledge is not the same thing as "intellectual weakness", and accusing people of ignorance as if it's a moral failing is not going to make them feel kindly towards the discussion. There are an awful lot of fascinating things to learn about aside from politics, and never enough time to learn everything...the fact that some people have read books about physics instead of Hayek is not a moral failing.

Vaniver on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T14:11:08.265293+11:00

That being said, I believe it does state specifically, somewhere in the FAQ, that a poster has to declare Crocker's Rule over their discussion before it's okay to state things rudely. And even then, unnecessary, uncalled-for rudeness is not okay.

Strictly speaking, once someone has declared Crocker's Rules all rudeness is called for.

wedrifid on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T14:35:28.732326+11:00

I generally thought the consensus at LW was that adhering to Crocker's rules was a beneficial thing.

No. I don't respect Crocker's rules from either side (that is someone declaring Crocker's rules does not completely remove social consequences for treating them thus).

fubarobfusco on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T16:42:16.572747+11:00

http://xkcd.com/592/

Jack on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T16:55:32.254838+11:00

Reasons?

RobertLumley on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-28T02:27:01.361072+11:00

Seriously, dude, calm down. I agree with your politics (the majority, albeit a small majority, of LW is libertarian) and I still find you obnoxious. If convincing people that your politics is best is your goal, consider how that goal is best met: Is that answer really writing walls of aggressive text on a site that has a small and overtly apolitical userbase?

wedrifid on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T17:51:44.045605+11:00

I still think you're something of a jerk for unfavorably comparing me to a spambot for my karma having been downgraded to -14, but hey, to each their own style of interaction.

I didn't expect that interpretation. I was actually just thinking of the implementation of a spam bot detector!

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T20:19:23.511379+11:00

OK, then great, I think it's a good idea to do it just like an intelligently-implemented ranking system. (I'd prefer it to have more intelligence, via a better threshold and a different "deprecation / punishment-implementation" than this ranking system, in the ways I mention below.)

I'd like to see one, but I'd like you to consider thresholds that are more tolerant, and that don't result in losses of necessary functionality. If you want an intelligent system, you don't build perverse incentives (a barrier into acceptance of new posters, for instance) into the base "nodes" or "units." Adding information is the best way to do this. such as in addition to "comment below threshold" it might be also labeled "probably spam" It could be both, and a positive rating with a "probably spam" label would also useful generate information.

A negative rating and "probably spam" might indicate a fair number of people judged the remark on its own merits, whereas a very high "probably spam" and no positive or negative ratings almost certainly means it's really spam, such as penis pills, etc...

At KAI, a guy who was always talking about creating basement AGI was eventually labeled "spam" by virtually everyone, but his comments were on topic, they were just ad-nauseum repetition, and uninteresting to most of the people who had seen them before. ...But what if he really was creating basement AGI, and was on the margin of success. The minimize, isolate, and allow retrieval is the best option, by far.

It prevents the creative weirdos from being placed in the "trashcan" or "deleted" files. ...And if you don't demote their posting ability, they stay around, all the way through the singularity.

So, later, the artilect they created doesn't come back and say "Why did you silence my creator? That wasn't cool, bro." LOL.

lessdazed on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T16:40:19.132950+11:00

So much for "rationality."

I wish!

drethelin on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T17:48:32.945941+11:00

It does minimize them and allow them to be expanded. I do that all the time to see what posts I'm missing. Downvoted for whining and not even bothering to figure out how the system works.

Jake_Witmer on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-25T18:47:18.954933+11:00

Yep, already noted my mistake, but decided not to edit it out, since wedifrid had already commented on it, and to edit it out would have made him look like he was commenting on a fabricated mistake, which would be a dickish thing to do. So, I addressed the mistake, but left it in, so wedifrid's comment isn't left without a reference point.

Of course, you focus on the mistake I made, rather than the several other functionality suggestions which are actually legit. This is why I often reply point-by-point, so that I don't allow the inherent venality of my mind to fire on the easy targets while skipping over the substance that's more difficult but more rewarding to analyze.

thomblake on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T02:31:00.268769+11:00

It does minimize them and allow them to be expanded. I do that all the time...

FYI, you can also turn off this behavior entirely if you want to just see all the comments all the time. Under 'Preferences', "Don't show me comments with a score less than" - blank this field.

drethelin on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-26T05:37:55.101482+11:00

thank! but I actually prefer actively clicking them, it forces me to pay more attention to karma and what is being ignored on the site. I have top-level discussion posts set to not hide because they don't do this though.

army1987 on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-29T00:14:52.848006+11:00

Moreover, this whole posting system is stupid in that it doesn't allow "comments below threshold" to be seen. Why not minimize them, but allow them to be expanded?

Huh? I thought that was what it did... Has it changed?

paper-machine on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-01-29T01:14:22.117827+11:00

That is what it does; original poster is wrong, as they admit elsewhere in this doomed thread.

gokhalea on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-23T05:51:25.966919+10:00

If rational thinking is about understanding and seeing true reality, how can you avoid politics as a discussion issue? It is a social practice in which every person participates. A rational analysis can take into account that "people go funny in the head" and still result in well thought out conclusions.

dlthomas on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-23T07:09:43.046532+10:00

The problem is that 1) there's no one to do a rational analysis if everyone goes funny in the head, and 2) "people go funny in the head" too easily becomes a fully general counterargument when one tries to take it into account.

gokhalea on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-23T09:14:33.118465+10:00

i guess that depends on your definition of rational analysis. I think the fully general counterarguments you mention are very valuable in terms of understanding your ideological opponents (but of course not in achieving your agenda). their handicap makes it significantly easier to understand their motivations and actions, which i think is related to understanding and seeing true reality -- their irrationality is tied into your reality.

dlthomas on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-23T13:47:19.839905+10:00

You forget that you are attempting to run this rational analysis on corrupted hardware. Remember that you have gone funny in the head, and will ascribe it to your opponents but not your allies and you won't notice you're doing it. Or at least, you have to assume that that's likely, because from the outside view that's how people tend to work, including being unaware of it.

gokhalea on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-23T15:44:14.679589+10:00

I think personal biases are more of an issue if you are drawing particular conclusions about political issues. The beauty of politics is that there is just enough uncertainty to make every position appear plausible to some portion of the public, even in those rare cases where there is definitive "proof" (however defined) that one particular position is correct. Rationality in some ways is meant to better understand reality, however, politics puts pressure on the meaning of "reality." People's beliefs on political reality rarely match up among others because perspectives, values, and thought processes often fill in for the inability to nail down or prove any one answer from a traditionally rational perspective. Perhaps the "rational" solution is focusing instead on the inherent uncertainty underlying any and every position, ignoring what may be or is "right," and use that knowledge to get better worldview. A better understanding of the uncertainty in politics could in some ways provide a level of certainty rationalists can normally only achieve (i think) by drawing rational conclusions.

I hear your point, hopeful for a solution.

Hul-Gil on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-24T11:25:21.929377+10:00

The beauty of politics is that there is just enough uncertainty to make every position appear plausible to some portion of the public, even in those rare cases where there is definitive "proof" (however defined) that one particular position is correct. [emphasis added]

Well, that doesn't sound very beautiful.

gokhalea on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-25T00:02:33.740226+10:00

its beautiful in its complexity. its amazing (not in a critical sense, but as an observer) that no can be definitely right in a valuable way about anything. As a reality of life that we must accept and deal with, i think its fascinating, a seemingly impenetrable issue.

TheOtherDave on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-23T07:18:20.690662+10:00

I heartily encourage you to perform such analyses, as well-thought-out conclusions are very useful things to have.
That said, given what I've seen of the attempts to do so here, I don't endorse doing so here unless you have a good model of why it fails and why your attempt will do better.

David_Gerard on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-23T08:19:43.467886+10:00

This would be the local dilemma in a nutshell, yes. People are interested in winning at real life as they see it, and, if you tell them "rationalists should WIN" then they'll say "OK" and try to apply it to what they presently see as their problems ... but actually discussing anything political on LessWrong has gone badly enough that quite a lot of the community now behaves phobically even to allusion to politics, going so far as to euphemise the word to "mindkilling." It's not clear how to get past this one. (I have a vague idea that worked examples of success in doing so might help.)

edit: hrm. Reason for downvote?

gokhalea on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-23T08:58:27.625398+10:00

OK, understood. I wasn't asking we broaden the discussion here, as it is very good, just curious as to the thinking. Thanks.

sorry, what are you referring to in your last paranthetical?

RichardKennaway on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-23T19:02:58.543746+10:00

actually discussing anything political on LessWrong has gone badly enough that quite a lot of the community now behaves phobically even to allusion to politics

Why do you judge that the past history has made us irrationally averse to discussing politics, rather than rationally averse?

David_Gerard on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-23T19:09:20.024053+10:00

Because the responses look to me more like conditioned reaction than something considered.

If it is, as you hypothesise, rational to avoid even slightly politically-tinged discussion to this degree, then that greatly reduces the hope of raising the sanity waterline. Because very few problems people want and need to solve are going to be free of such a tinge.

As I've noted elsewhere, this doesn't mean I think we should dive headfirst into it on LW. I don't have a handy solution. But I do think it's a problem.

gokhalea on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-23T23:56:58.802031+10:00

i'm a bit new to all of this, but its oddly convenient to conclude that it is rational to ignore a topic that doesn't lend itself to classic rational thought.

RichardKennaway on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-24T00:59:44.570949+10:00

It's a question of whether to respond to a track record of failure by going off and doing something else instead or persevering. When is it best to attend to developing one's strengths, and when to attend to remedying one's weaknesses?

gokhalea on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-24T01:32:07.996671+10:00

what is your focus, i.e. what would be the ideal goal that you are saying is difficult or impossible to achieve and so it is rational to avoid -- what goal do you find elusive here -- personal understanding of the correct "answer" in spite of biases, "raising the sanity waterline" as someone mentioned above, or something else?

Both these items suggest a need for an definitive answer to political questions and I'm not sure that is the correct focus.

If applying rational thought to politics has a track record of failure and we agree politics is a part of everyone's reality, do you think rational thought cannot explain politics and is an inherent shortcoming of the theory? (this is other way of saying we should move on to things). We talk about rationality like its the way to live life. its troubling that it cannot answer or explain political issues, which shape our government, laws and community. The value of the a theory should partially be tested based on issues and questions it cannot answer. If there are things rational thinking cannot solve, that is an issue/problem with rational theory, not the particular subject matter.

RichardKennaway on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-24T02:11:18.865774+10:00

do you think rational thought cannot explain politics and is an inherent shortcoming of the theory

No, merely a contingent failure of people almost everywhere and always.

gokhalea on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-04-24T03:03:56.354900+10:00

so its a problem of the individual, not the theory. not sure how you conclude that if no one can apply the theory to prove it.

ink on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-07-11T07:34:24.491330+10:00

If I had a solid dig I would praise myself for taking it to the twelfth round, however failing to land a knock out! Congratulations on co-moderator, Mind stimulating on the variant of discussions on "Politics is a mind killer". Bravo to the thinkers and reasonable theories and offsets. I found my self returning to the original test to determine if my mind was still on track! For the most part It (my mind) got sucked in by the variant, signed up and well I'll just keep my humor to my self! Here we go!

melthengylf on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-08-23T06:26:38.226860+10:00

I'll try to defend politics. I would be grateful if you debate with me. I argue that values (a generalization of morality) are comprehensible. I, thus, agree with Eliezer in the methaetics sequence. But values are different in a crucial ways to external reallity. I think that external reallity is better to reach by rationality than values. I'll think that because of that the non-rational discurse of politics is a great action. I'll take this as an example of a problem I see in this page at analizing morality. Firstly, which is the difference between values and external reality that I recall? I'll call it "coherence", I'll say external reality is objectivily (inductivily) coherent, and values are objectively incoherent. What do I mean with "coherence"? You may describe a reality in a way such that you encompass a lot of your next observations. But you not always can act in a way such almost all your values you have are considered in the act. That is you can think coherently, you can't act coherently. And it's not a problem of not enough information, or your stupidity.

Let's take two examples: The ethical paradox of a train that is going to kill three people, but you can change it's way, so it kills one guy. Would you pull it? And if it was another number? I'd argue the problem is you valorate not killing personally, but you also feel responsible for the death of more people. But this values may not be rationally compatible.

The abortion problem. You may not kill another human being. But what's a human being? It's not defined a priori, but by society. At the same time, choice is important because there's a problem in telling a woman that because she has it biollogically she might not have a career (imagine a teen pregnancy), thus degradating her life -not that the child life might be great. There is adoption, etc. You may reach dozens of arguments and contraarguments in both sides. I'm not taking a posture here. I'm just illustrating a problem.

Now, I say you can think coherently but not act coherently, why I make the difference? Ok, I think reallity is definite. Something happens or doesn't happens, right? Let's do an experiment! etc. Suppose we were rational utility maximizers. Then, there would be an answer, right? It might be difficult to achieve, but there would be an answer. But we are not. So there's not a value that is strictly better than another one? Yes, there is. The value A is better than B if it includes the reason because B was good, and something more. But because you're human, and you just can'ty fly nor create life clapping your hands, you may not have a coherent action. I might throw philosophical and sociological concepts, but I think I made myself clear. What for then it exists athe polytics, if you can't do nothing? Because there is society.

And that's the point where I wanted to reach. In this page the individual rationality is greatly discovered. But there's not only the individual. Now, if you make a tiny parallelism, you can see that as a person may learn bayensianically, a society may learn the same way. It’s not too difficult to show it, it just mean that social progress exists, and I think you’d agree on that. No, “not being political” doesn’t exists. It just means that your policy is to keep social relationships the way they are. Because you let the individual change, but you don’t incentivize the society change as a whole. In my country this is called “conservative view”. So, sumarizing, I’m recalling one of the many times that a nonrational discurse is morally right. This case is when by defending yourself at the same time your opponent, you let the society to unravel posibilities to act. Politics is not war, politics is peaceful, is human. It’s almost impossible to appasionate about many ideologies because they are strongly incoherent between them. You may not be able to tax some people and not taxing at the same time. But the problem in not appasionate at something beyond reason is that you may not overcome the problems a society has, such as poverty, illness or uneducation. You would limit your solution to techical solutions, barring the possibility to societal solutions. Your country has houses without people and people without houses. That’s irrational. That’s a problem. There are others discurses, such as the artistic discurse that are great and respectful. But at the objective of not writing too long, I’ll stop here.

PS: I’m saying you may not use only rational arguments. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be open. Openness is more fundamental than rationallity.

melthengylf on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-08-23T11:20:34.519878+10:00

By the way, I haven't read about consequentialism. Is so wrong in so many levels! Firstly, it is impossible to assign a numbered utility to each action. That is just not understanding human brain. Secondly, it is impossible to sum up utilities, give me an example where summing different people utilities make any sense. Thirdly, it regards the action as an one-time action. But just it isn't. If you teach .people to push the fat guy to kill it. You just not only will have three people less dead. You'll also have a bunch of emotionless people who think it is ok to kill people if it is for the greater good. Fourthly, people don't always come immediately to the truth. You can't say you should kill the fat guy if you really think that's gonna save the other people. The soberby of people might not be a good idea to make them feel they have the power. Fifthly, if utility is not cuantitative, the logic of morality can't be a computation. That's my point. The discovery of reallity might be a calculation, because you go outside to see. On the whole, what a disappointement. This page is so great I can't understand why it understands so poorly morality. I recommend you to read, for example, Weber, who has a detailed theory of value in societies. Or Sartre for a complexity in defining what's right.

Incorrect on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-08-23T12:02:44.102526+10:00

Firstly, it is impossible to assign a numbered utility to each action. That is just not understanding human brain.

Of course, the brain isn't perfect. The fact that humans can't always or even can't usually apply truths doesn't make them untrue.

Secondly, it is impossible to sum up utilities, give me an example where summing different people utilities make any sense.

Pressing a button kills one person, not pressing the button kills two people. utility(1 death) + utility(1 death) < utility(1 death)

Thirdly, it regards the action as an one-time action. But just it isn't. If you teach .people to push the fat guy to kill it. You just not only will have three people less dead. You'll also have a bunch of emotionless people who think it is ok to kill people if it is for the greater good.

Assuming it's bad to teach consequentialism to people doesn't make consequentialism wrong. It's bad to teach people how to make bombs but that doesn't mean the knowledge to create bombs is incorrect. See Ethical Injunctions

Fourthly, people don't always come immediately to the truth. You can't say you should kill the fat guy if you really think that's gonna save the other people.

Such thought experiments often make unlikely assumptions such as perfect knowledge of consequences. That doesn't make the conclusions of those thought experiments wrong, it just constrains them to unlikely situations.

Fifthly, if utility is not quantitative, the logic of morality can't be a computation.

Qualitative analysis is still computable. If humans can do something it is computable.

The discovery of reallity might be a calculation, because you go outside to see.

Solomonoff induction is a formalized model of prediction of future events.

The_Duck on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-08-23T12:32:41.941654+10:00

Thirdly, it regards the action as an one-time action. But just it isn't. If you teach .people to push the fat guy to kill it. You just not only will have three people less dead. You'll also have a bunch of emotionless people who think it is ok to kill people if it is for the greater good. Fourthly, people don't always come immediately to the truth. You can't say you should kill the fat guy if you really think that's gonna save the other people.

These objections suggest that you are actually applying consequentialism already! You are worrying that other consequences of killing one person to save five might outweigh the benefit saving four lives, which is exactly the sort of thing a good consequentialist should worry about.

melthengylf on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-08-23T20:58:18.730749+10:00

I discharge number 3 and number 4 objection, as a situation where the problem is ill-defined. That is, the ammount of knowledge supposed to have is inverosimile or unkown. And yes, I think the fat guy case is a case of an ethical injunction. But doesn't it slip the predictive power of consequentialism? It may not. I'm more concerned on the problems written below.

I do think you should act for a better outcome. I disagree in completeness and transitiveness of values. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory#Other_assumptions That's the cause that utility is not cuantifiable, thus there's not a calculation to show which action is right, thus there's not a best possible action. The problem is that action is highly chaotic (sensitive) to non rational variables, because there are some actions where it is impossible to decide, but something has to be decided. Look, how about the first example here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology)? I understand that you would choose the same in the first and second question. But what would you choose? A(=C) or B(=D). The answer should be none, just find a way where the 600 hundred people will keep alive. In the meantime, where that option is not possible, there are politics.

By the way, if you believe in utility maximization, explain me Arrow's theorem. I think it disproves utilitarianism.

mej10 on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-09-07T04:06:52.936156+10:00

Can we get a citation for "The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death."

I am just interested in how this was concluded. I have always been a little skeptical of evolutionary psychology type things, which, is what this sounds like.

gokhalea on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-10-31T02:36:12.650912+11:00

it seems discussing politics is particularly difficult here because under the article "what do we mean by rationality," less wrong members generally reject a non-normative meaning of rationality. This presumes a rational answer, as a general matter, with respect to any particular issue, is necessarily a normative conclusion -- i.e. there is an ideal/correct answer. I appreciate the approach, but if the point of is the "think more clearly/correctly," how can we reject the possibility that there is no normative answer? This is particularly important as there is increasing uncertainty as to what the correct decision should be. Politics is a perfect example -- generally deals with policies in the FUTURE for which there is no good comparable.

The commentators all evaluate politics from the viewpoint of the decision makers -- and describe how our biases and such are too overwhelming to apply rationality to politics -- perhaps the flaw instead is trying to create distinct answers for issues that do not have one. Going "funny in he head" may be a sign that the chosen framework is inappropriate.

DaFranker on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-10-31T04:08:18.935062+11:00

The difficult part about finding the optimal perfect-rationalist "right answer" for things related to politics is that politics is like an exceptionally difficult, complex and heavy computer program currently being coded by hundreds of programmers, most of which have no formal Computer Science education, and then managing to produce optimal software out of it with only the help of two or three of those coders - the best possible program that achieves absolutely everything that the client wants in exactly the best possible way.

Unfortunately, the example program is so complex that near-optimal solutions do not converge towards the same location in the conceptspace of possible programs, and each programmer has his own idea of what might be good, so you have a large multitude of possible local maximums, all of which are of unknown order of magnitude (let alone being able to decide which is better) and unknown cost (and you can rule out perfect cost-effectiveness calculations), and often even with unclear value-of-information that varies across conceptspace function of the properties of this area of conceptspace (e.g. it has a higher expected human-values cost to experiment with totalitarian-like forms of government than with democratic ones, for a vague picture).

Overall, not only is there a ton of biases, but information is costly and the space of possibilities is vast, and the near-optimals or optimization candidates / hypotheses are not condensed or sometimes not even remotely near eachother. Thus, discussing politics rationally isn't just difficult here - politics are a set (space? field?) of complex Hard problems with tons of data, variables and unknowns, and would probably still be among the more difficult problems to solve if all humans were suddenly replaced with perfect bayesian agents.

gokhalea on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-10-31T08:05:38.920676+11:00

Thanks, I agree with nearly all you points but want to push on a particular point you made: (btw, how do you guys have that blue line to show you are responding to a particular comment??):

"Thus, discussing politics rationally isn't just difficult here - politics are a set (space? field?) of complex Hard problems with tons of data, variables and unknowns, and would probably still be among the more difficult problems to solve if all humans were suddenly replaced with perfect bayesian agents."

I would argue that politics is difficult to rationalize BECAUSE politics are in a separate space/field. In other words, i think discussing politics rationally in a manner consistent with Less Wrong's definition of rationality (see "what we mean by rationality" article) is impractical and does not further any knowledge because the definition simply does not apply in a way it can apply to other areas discussed here. Going "funny in the head" is not the reason we cannot apply rationality to politics, we go "funny in the head" because we are using a model that does not work -- we are trying to find answers to questions that, as you describe, are subject to so much uncertainty we are forced to resort to biases. We fail to consider the possibility that there is no right answer -- for those that argue that there is an answer, but humans can't reach it (a HUGELY convenient position) -- that is the same thing, practically speaking, as not having an answer:

If the problem is the model, not the people, change the mode to one where the search is not for the right answer, but a deep understanding of why particular people have viewpoints and the relative arguments therefor. Sure, its not an "answer" to how the world is (or should be), but its a huge step forward in understanding how the world works -- a noble goal if you ask me. The current model of rationality used here simply doesn't allow for this. We are obsessed with certainty, even when there is more value to be derived from better understanding the relative uncertainty.

In his article on rationalization (contrasting it with rationality), Eliezer says: ""Rationalization" is a backward flow from conclusion to selected evidence. First you write down the bottom line, which is known and fixed; the purpose of your processing is to find out which arguments you should write down on the lines above. This, not the bottom line, is the variable unknown to the running process."

On a most general level, it seems the very definition of "rationality", requiring a normative conclusion, is a result of rationalization. More specifically, saying "politics is a mind killer" to avoid applying rationality to politics, and then telling us why people are flawed and can't analyze these things also sounds a lot like rationalization. Is that a forward flowing, rational conclusion? No one here can or will apply rationality in coming to political conclusions (whether a firm answer or not) -- so how can you tell me that its a mind-killer? Perhaps politics is not a mind-killer and instead, politics, within a restrictive definition of rationality, is a mind-killer. These are not fighting words. I just want to understand.

Vaniver on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-10-31T08:21:00.763341+11:00

(btw, how do you guys have that blue line to show you are responding to a particular comment??

If you begin a paragraph with >, it will put it in block quote format.

NancyLebovitz on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-10-31T09:35:14.993392+11:00

It really is blue-- I'd been assuming it was black. Did it used to be black?

Vaniver on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-10-31T10:46:26.642636+11:00

I recall it as being blue since I arrived (getting close to two years ago). I have not paid close attention before now.

shminux on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-10-31T11:05:23.315392+11:00

Maybe you missed EY's point, or maybe I'm missing yours. Politics definitely can be discussed rationally, but it is really really hard to keep your identity small while doing so. Every participant in a political discussion has to be constantly aware of their own emotions fueled by a cached arguments associated with a specific wing/party/position, and be skilled at modeling how potential readers would inadvertently misinterpret one's statement, causing them emotional upheaval. And it only takes a small misstep to get people riled up about the issue.

The rule of thumb is "if you identify with any political party/group/movement, you are not qualified to have a rational discourse about politics". Example: if you want to start your reply with "as a libertarian, I ...", you have failed. Another example of a false start: "Republicans do not understand that ..."

chaosmosis on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-10-31T11:46:33.461693+11:00

Gokhalea's point is largely that political analyses are so difficult that attempting to apply rationality to them will still produce biased and nonsensical results. You didn't really address that.

Gokhalea, I agree that rational analyses of politics are difficult. You seem to believe that they're functionally impossible. Can you explain why? Also, I don't understand why you feel that avoiding politics on LessWrong is a form of rationalization. What's motivating this rationalization? Finally, I don't understand why you feel that a model of politics which seeks to understand different political positions rather than resolve them is useful.

gokhalea on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-11-02T05:36:56.884112+11:00

Thanks, I tried to explain above. Less Wrong's conclusion on analyzing politics is flawed because it is based on the assumption that rationality with respect to politics requires an ideal answer. Pointing out that biases/emotions/etc. are ever present is used to protect the idea that rationality in its purest form always results in a normative answer. "Our model of rationality is always correct -- its just the people are flawed!!!" -- I disagree. The model is wrong. The people are playing their role as members of a social dynamic -- rationality in politics is dependent on their biases, not to be avoided because of them.

The value is awareness -- that is the true goal. To have an understanding of what is going on around you without confusion, anger, unwanted emotions. Rationality is about seeing the world "as it is." The world is social, and I want an understanding of how the world works, with its participants and their various viewpoints, perspectives, beliefs, and actions. I'm not trying to be "right" -- frankly i have political positions but don't really care -- they are a secondary concern to understanding the social dynamic.

gokhalea on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-11-02T05:22:58.505125+11:00

Thanks, and I appreciated Paul's article -- very interesting and insightful.

Let me try to clarify --

One of the issues causing confusion is that the definition of rationality is not commonly accepted/subject to some dispute. My understanding of EY's perspective on the definition of rationality is based on his article: What do we mean by rationality

EY is saying that applying rationality yields a normative answer -- and that LW is not receptive to a different idea, such as a model where an argument can be rational but still not be the "correct"/"true" answer. My argument is that rationality, as EY defines it, does not work with respect to politics because political issues do not have correct answers (i'll get to why shortly). So I don't disagree with your point that politics can be discussed rationally -- i just have a different definition of rationality when it comes to politics.

I read Paul's article -- it was very good -- i have previously considered the idea that in politics or religion, everyone is an "expert" and the idea of identities intertwined with people's positions -- no doubt insightful, but i think its incomplete. (i also note that his argument that politics has definite answers sometimes is baffling -- the cost of government policy is NEVER certain -- simply because people can't predict the future or how people will behave in the future).

The issue and uniqueness of politics is NOT that everyone is an expert -- its that everyone is a participant, in a real and legitimate way -- as a voter or policy maker or government leader. As such, politics is truly a social issue -- analytical analysis is possible, but you NEVER going to get a clear answer -- the social issues are forever intertwined with policy. Remember, regardless of how much weight you may put on ideal policies/laws/regulations, the ability of any leader to implement these policies is WHOLLY CONTINGENT on winning an election, thus drawing in all potential voters in the discussion/decision. Another way to think about this is trying to answer the question -- "how to be a good mother" -- this is a social issue among a mother and her kids within the context of their familial unit/environment. You may have high level guidance, but no one can answer this question -- its a dynamic issue that is forever unique in ways that can never yield an answer. I believe politics is the same.

Again, i think politics can be discussed rationally, but in a different context -- it should be analyzed like any other social issue. For example, when there is a personal conflict, there are theories on how to handle this -- you have an approach, but part of it depends on how the other person reacts, their positions, their biases, and WHY they have the particular perspective. RIght/Wrong is sometimes irrelevant because in social issues, being correct is a secondary concern to managing the social relationship (including biases/emotions/identities). Rationality is more subjective when it comes to politics -- and it is very possible to have two positions that are "subjectively" rational but contradict each other with respect to a particular issue -- in the same way you and your friend can disagree on whether you should study x or y or whether you should date a or b -- both can have valid arguments but ultimately a decision must be made. Focusing on the "right" answer is fruitless -- rationality is based on having the emotional intelligence to understanding the dynamics and uncertainty of this particular social relationship.

You may disagree, and thats fine -- I'm trying to learn and this is an exercise that is not easy -- however i point out that it provides an explanation for why rationality (as EY defines) has not yielded a clear answer and thus is a "mind killer." I think the model definition of rationality used here is simply wrong when applied to politics.

Nornagest on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-10-31T11:10:45.057207+11:00

Is that a forward flowing, rational conclusion? No one here can or will apply rationality in coming to political conclusions (whether a firm answer or not) -- so how can you tell me that its a mind-killer?

People here try to apply rationality to politics all the time. "Politics is the mind-killer" is an observation about its success rate.

sbenthall on Politics is the Mind-Killer

2012-12-24T15:46:31.720014+11:00

I'm not sure what the right way to ask for policy clarification is, so I'll try this.

In a recent discussion in comments, I was alerted to the 'standing agreement on LW not to discuss politics'. It was in a context I found perplexing (the question as to whether political theory is something worth keeping in philosophy departments) http://lesswrong.com/lw/frp/train_philosophers_with_pearl_and_kahneman_not/842a

There are a number of ways that I think rationality relates (mostly in a broad sense) to political theory. This is a common thread among philosophers, including some fairly contemporary and quite good ones.

I've started trying to participate in this forum partly because I wanted to bring them up here. I've gotten the impression from a friend who is involved in the community that these ideas are relatively unknown here but would be pertinent or at least interesting.

Is posting in this way off limits by some community norm? Or is discussion of political theory (as it relates to reason and rationality) ok as long as it is not deliberately inflammatory? (The latter seems to be the spirit of this post)

Thanks for any clarification.