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BlindIdiotPoster comments on Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013 - Less Wrong
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One thing that bothers me about this community is that we all clearly have political views and regularly express them, but for some reason explicit discussion and debate is discouraged. The end result here is that lots of people casually assert extremely controversial opinions as fact and people are expected to approve via silence.
So, is this something we want people to do? If not, maybe we should start calling it out? I suspect it's a bad thing myself.
A problem is that people uttering political opinions often do not see themselves as doing that. For as has been written, what it feels like to have a belief, while you are having it, is not that you believe something, but that you are looking straight at reality.
Then someone contests the obliviously held belief, and it is they who are accused of bringing in politics.
The pattern is especially clear in spaces where there is a prevailing political consensus. Only people posting against it are accused of politics, everyone else is merely speaking the truth. I have seen this in both left-wing and right-wing spaces. In fact, it is the default behaviour in such spaces. Regardless of the cause, the stronger the consensus, the more invisible it becomes to its members.
I think It's a bad thing to the extent that it could lead to opinions propagating without debate.
In the wider world, even things like atheism are "extremely controversial," but I don't think we need to make dramatic shows of uncertainty and humility every time someone brings it up; most all of us here are atheists and we need to move on and discuss the more difficult questions. What I worry about is that a community norm of being vocal about our opinions but not discussing them rationally or even at all most of the time then we may wind up deciding what to think via memetic exposure and perhaps evaporative cooling instead of rationality. This sort of effect would also be a danger if we had a norm of being verbally abusive to anyone with an unpopular opinion, of course.
Note that I can't offer evidence that this is a real risk or a phenomenon that actually happens in online communities, but it worries me.
I don't think the primary reason to not discuss atheism and theism at LW is because most readers of LW are atheists. What that implies to me is "if we all believe X, X is not worth discussing; if we are conflicted about Y, then Y is worth discussing."
What I would say instead is "Z is worth discussing to the extent that discussing Z is productive." There are topics where it would be great if we all agreed, but discussing those topics predictably does not lead to more agreement. That is, I would view it not as we are interested in more difficult questions, but in easier discussions.
The easier discussions are often on more sophisticated topics. For example, it's often easier to have an abstract discussion on what it means to believe something, and what it means to change your mind, than a concrete discussion on Lewis's trilemma.
That's what the downvote (and upvote) button is for. Reading == agreeing isn't a very good heuristic, and with the karma system you don't have to use it.
False. Silent disapproval and indifference look exactly the same.
The downvote button should be the difference.
If we are not willing to even spend the energy required to push the button to protect the level of discussion we have here, that almost seems like we don't care about it.
The reason is an assumption that if we discuss those topics, rationality will leave the building. Since rationality is what we're here for, we must not discuss those topics. Maybe one day we'll be ready to discuss those topics, but I don't think we are at this point.
This doesn't make the approval by silence a good thing.