I think it just requires a cultural meme about criticism being a good thing.
That usually gets you a culture of inconsequential criticism, where you can be as loudly contrarian as you want as long as you don't challenge any of the central shibboleths. This is basically what Eliezer was describing in "Real Weak Points", but it shows up in a lot of places; many branches of the modern social sciences work that way, for example. It gets particularly toxic when you mix it up with a cult of personality and the criticism starts being all about how you or others are failing to live up to the Great Founder's sacrosanct ideals.
I'm starting to think it might not be possible to advocate for a coherent culture that's open to changing identity-level facts about itself; you can do it by throwing out self-consistency, but that's a cure that's arguably worse than the proverbial disease. I don't think strength of will is what's missing, though, if anything is.
Yes. And that's what I'm unrealistically looking for—not just disagreement, but fundamental disagreement. And by fundamental I don't mean the nature of the Singularity, as central as that is to some. I mean things like "rational thought is better than irrational thought" or "religion is not consistent with rational thought." Even if they're not spoken, they're important and they're there, which means they ought to be up for debate. I mean "ought to" in the sense that the very best, most intellectually open society imaginable w...
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