buybuydandavis comments on Should effective altruists care about the US gov't shutdown and can we do anything? - Less Wrong

-2 Post author: Ishaan 01 October 2013 08:24PM

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Comment author: gwern 01 October 2013 09:38:35PM 9 points [-]

this is an obvious conclusion and I'm being silly

Yes.

Can you say how confident you are in this opinion?

If I were to attach a probability, it would be far below 1%; even if the most prominent famous person connected to LW I can think of, billionaire Peter Thiel, were to intervene, I still would not expect as high as a 1% chance of meaningful influence on the outcome.

Comment author: Benito 01 October 2013 10:29:37PM 5 points [-]

I think this is the important point people should be talking about; Why are you talking about politics? What possible benefit will come of talking and arguing over that which you can have no effect?

Comment author: buybuydandavis 02 October 2013 12:28:38AM 4 points [-]

As the son of a company VP said after he observed his elders pontificating on politics:

It's fun to talk about things you can't do anything about.

Comment author: SilasBarta 04 October 2013 04:03:18AM 1 point [-]

Case in point: the weather.