Emile comments on Meetup : West LA Meetup—Confess Your Unpopular Opinion - Less Wrong

4 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 09 August 2013 06:07AM

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Comment author: Emile 09 August 2013 01:12:41PM 0 points [-]

Things on #ConfessYourUnpopularOpinion seems pretty tame to me - either me or those people is wrong about which opinions are really unpopular (though some cases can just be explained by different social environments).

Comment author: gwern 09 August 2013 03:56:41PM *  6 points [-]

If the responses weren't tame and people were expressing genuinely unpopular opinions, it'd basically be a suicidal let-100-flowers-bloom folly.

EDIT: my RSS reader today furnishes an excellent example of why even popular opinions can be too dangerous to tweet.

Comment author: wedrifid 09 August 2013 04:51:05PM 4 points [-]

Things on #ConfessYourUnpopularOpinion seems pretty tame to me - either me or those people is wrong about which opinions are really unpopular (though some cases can just be explained by different social environments).

Obviously 'unpopular opinion' refers to wearing the rebel uniform instead of whatever uniform their parents wear. You wouldn't want to actually confess something weird.

Comment author: Lumifer 09 August 2013 04:06:21PM *  2 points [-]

If you have a really unpopular (socially suicidal) opinion, why would you publish it for the world to see -- just because of a twitter hashtag?

Comment author: wedrifid 09 August 2013 04:57:08PM *  6 points [-]

If you have a really unpopular (socially suicidal) opinion, why would you publish it for the world to see -- just because of a twitter hashtag?

#UnconvictedKillersConfessYourCrimes

#PoliticiansConfessYourCorruption

This is better than 'sudo'.

Comment author: Emile 09 August 2013 04:58:28PM 1 point [-]

Sure, there's going to be a strong selection effect, most people aren't going to publish their really unpopular opinion, what I find more surprising is that so many people post opinions that they should know aren't really unpopular, like

addicts shouldn't go to mansions/nice places to recover while cancer patients have to sit in a hospital room

(seriously, who's going to disagree with that? Some people might say "that doesn't happen", or "this is taking some edge cases to muddle the pciture", but I don't expect many saying "I'm fine with that happening")

I would have expected more people who post things that are unpopular in many circles but not in their clique (like "I think Gay Marriage is wrong"), or people posting "real" unpopular opinions if they don't care or are sufficiently anonymous.

Comment author: Lumifer 09 August 2013 05:41:46PM 4 points [-]

what I find more surprising is that so many people post opinions that they should know aren't really unpopular

I think you take all this at face value, while you really should be looking at the meta-game since that's what most people are playing.

Comment author: gwern 09 August 2013 05:15:16PM 3 points [-]

(seriously, who's going to disagree with that? Some people might say "that doesn't happen", or "this is taking some edge cases to muddle the pciture", but I don't expect many saying "I'm fine with that happening")

Personally, comrade, I think we need not 1 mansion for cancer patients, but 50 mansions!

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