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alexg comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013) - Less Wrong
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Comments (1750)
G'day
As you can probably guess, I'm Alex. I'm a high school student from Australia and have been disappointed with the education system here from quite some time.
I came to LW via HPMoR which was linked to me by a fellow member of the Aus IMO team. (I seriously doubt I'm the only (ex-)Olympian around here - seems just the sort of place that would attract them). I've spent the past few weeks reading the sequences by EY, as well as miscellaneous other stuff. Made a few (inconsequential) posts too.
I have very little in the way of controversial opinions to offer (relative to the demographics of this site) as just about all the unusual positions it takes I already agreed with (e.g. athiesm) or seemed pretty obvious to me after some thought (e.g. transhumanism). Maybe it's just hindsight bias.
I'm slightly disappointed with the ban on political discussion. I do agree that it should not be mentioned when not relevant but it seems a shame to waste this much rationality in one place by forbidding them to use it where it's most needed. A possible compromise would be to create a politics dicussion page to discuss pros and cons to particular ideologies. (If one already exists point me to it). A reason cited is that there are other sites to discuss politics - if any do so rationally I'd like to see them.
It is a relief to be somewhere where I don't have to constantly take into account inferential distance, and I shall try to make the most of this. I only resolve to write just that which has not been written.
Welcome!
There have been previous political threads, like here, here, or here. If you search "politics," you'll find quite a bit. Here was my response to the proposal that we have political discussion threads; basically, I think politics is a suboptimal way to spend your time. It might feel useful, but that doesn't mean it is useful. Here's Raemon's comment on the norm against discussing politics. Explicitly political discussion can be found on MoreRight, founded by posters active on LessWrong, as well as on other blogs. (MoreRight is part of 'neoreaction', which Yvain has recently criticized here, for example.)
I don't see what you mean by the 'pros and cons' of holding a particular ideology. Ideologies are, generally, value systems- they define what is a pro and what is a con.
I must add that not all political discussion is a mud-flinging match between the Cyans and the Magentas.
For example, the Public Choice theory is a bona fide intellectual topic, but it's also clearly political.
I would also argue that knowing things like the scope of NSA surveillance is actually useful.
I'm curious why you'd divert from the historically compelling example of the Blues and the Greens.
It's about politics, but the methodology is not political. The part of politics that's generally fun for people is putting forth an impassioned defense of some idea or policy. That's generally not useful on LessWrong unless it's about a site policy- and even then, the passion probably doesn't help.
Sure.
I strongly associate the Greens with, well, the Greens -- a set of political parties in Europe and the whole environmentalist movement.
Blue is a politically-associated color in the US as well.
True, but LW is VERY unrepresentative sample :-) and maybe we could do a bit better. You're right in that discussing the "pros and cons" of ideological positions is not a good idea, but putting "Warning: mindkill" signs around a huge area of reality and saying "we just don't go there" doesn't look appealing either.