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fundamental_th comments on Less Wrong’s political bias - Less Wrong
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For the same reason that there are articles on Less Wrong that give dating advice. Because people are interested in it.
I guess it's not clear to me what LessWrong could contribute to political discussion that you can't get elsewhere. The instant-failure modes that typify most political discussions, even among the highly educated, could be avoided and...then what? What correct answers to what questions would LessWrong settle upon that economists and related professionals would not?
What I'm asking here is whether you have a specific question you want answered or if you simply enjoy the conversation. If it's the latter, I can certainly understand why you would want to have political discussions on LessWrong.
People here generally put in their due diligence in constructing reasoned well-sourced arguments, tend to admit when they were wrong on something and most importantly force you to look at your own assumptions. That puts it leaps and bounds over any other political debate I've ever seen.
If a group of economists and other relevant experts were polled on various policy matters and compared to the answers reached by LessWrong users if policy was discussed on LessWrong, how much do you think the answers would differ, and would it be the experts' errors or LessWrong's errors causing whatever discrepancies?
This depends a lot on the proportions of the economists that are from each school and what constitutes "other experts."
If you get a representative slice of economists, I'd expect much better predictive value on any given policy than LW because a) they have a quite a bit more expertise dealing with the models and b) we've got a lot of Austrian School / Prediction Markets people here to skew away from the consensus. If you weight them too heavily to any one school, especially the really funky ones, then you might see us start to pull closer but I still doubt the gap would close.
If you get a representative slice of Sociologists, PoliSci folks, X-studies professors and whatever other political talking heads you can find in academia and put them in a room together, it'll disprove the notion of a just universe when the building isn't hit immediately by an asteroid. And they'll also be wrong much more than LW, although we still wouldn't beat any of the handful of real scientists hiding in the back (Anthropologists / Social Psychologists mostly).
I'm not saying we're some kind of amazing truth engine here, just that this is an abnormally reasonable environment with a lot of abnormally smart and well educated people.
How about very progressive and very libertarian people having a less wrong discussion about politics?
It would be nice-- I think there's significant overlap between libertarian and progressive ideas on drug legalization, immigration, and probably other issues, but each group has built up a huge ugh field around the other.
I suggest that such the ugh field is largely one way, of Progressives for Libertarians.
One example. Years ago I bumped into a Progressive fellow from my freshman college dorm who I remembered having your typical freshman dorm political arguments with. On seeing and recognizing each other, I say hi and reach out my hand to shake his hand - and he refused. Ha! What an ideological ass! Yet it still cheered me to see him, though he apparently still gnawed the bones of his ideological resentments decades after we had last seen each other. Progressives think nothing of showing such personal resentment and animosity toward those they disagree with. Indeed, as our current poster demonstrates, they often consider such public displays of hostility a feature, and not a bug.
Libertarians are too much an ideological minority to hate unbelievers with much fervor - we'd have to hate most everyone. We don't have the luxury of living a life in an intellectual walled garden where we can get away with the same kind of venom, loathing, and intolerance. If we couldn't divorce the memes from the meme carriers in our minds, we'd all be in prison for mass murder.
For example, I think the Bible is a moral abomination. But I often quite like serious religious believers, and end up gravitating toward them. Similarly, one gal I know started with plans for the seminary, then became a Marxist, and now is a Wiccan Progressive dirt over humans tree hugging Socialist. Likely she's a utilitarian as well. She's endorsed most every ideological horror common in western societies, but I like her just fine. In fact, I feel a bond to her because of her lunacy.
For me, the salient division isn't between what people profess to believe is true, but whether they seem to care about what is true.
...
If you are genuinely interested in that dialog you shouldn't use language like this (Edited for unnecessary harshness). Come on, you know how progressives reading that first sentence will react. You basically describe them as heartless. You know that even the exceptions to your statement will take it personally. Why phrase it that way? You could just as easily write: "Since there are so many progressives it is easy for them to isolate themselves from ideological opponents and avoid considering that possibility that libertarians aren't evil. The fraction of libertarians open to that conversation is much higher."
With the second sentence why "loathe"? Why load your mental model of progressive policies with negative emotional valence? That kind of stake-raising is exactly why conversations about politics are so hard. Surely "disagree" or "believe misguided" convey your position without telling progressives you think their ideas are loathsome. "Remake the world to efface their effects" is scary, stake-raising language too. I understand that it doesn't literally mean anything other than "I would like to replace progressive policies with libertarian policies" but words have connotations and imagery.
Do I? First, I doubt that projecting their emotional reaction was foremost in my mind.
And no, this is not all Progressives, all the time. Context of my comments - Progressives have a greater Ugh field for Libertarians than Libertarians for Progressives. Which I think is true, and I think shows up as them displaying more of the behavior in my generalization than LIbertarians.
No. Plenty of heart. But a human heart has more emotional range than Barney's.
Because I have values. The negative emotional valence comes as a by product of those values when confronted with things that contradict those values.
HPMOR:
Yet another moment where I cheered Harry.
And in this case, the emotional valence was particularly relevant to my point: it's not just that you don't have to hate people with ideas you disagree with, but you don't have to hate people whose ideas you hate. And, you don't have to hate them if they hate your ideas either.
Your suggestion seems the be that the latter is too much to hope for.
Yes, and in this case they're relevant to the point.
Seems like it should have been somewhere in your mind. I mean, I guess if you were just complaining to other Libertarians it's fine, but it seems like the productive audience for your comment would be progressives.
Don't disagree.
I have values too. They result in negative emotional valence for bad things happening to people. And inevitably they leak over a bit into the policies and people I think cause those bad things. But I do my best to hold the tides back and keep my values judgments out of my policy analysis. That way I can change my mind on policy if I hear new arguments or learn new information. I don't think that's the same as Yoda's poor advice.
I have no idea if it is too much to hope for or not. How is it going so far? It would be great if political discourse lived up to your ideals -- but why not make it easier for everyone?
Analysis disconnected from values sounds rather pointless to me. Particularly in politics. The first step in good faith negotiation is a communication of values. If I don't clearly communicate my values, how is a Progressive supposed to come up with an argument to satisfy them?
I'm trying. The goal isn't yet another pointless political discussion, or talk for talk's sake.
If they don't know my values, the discussion will be unproductive. If knowing my values means they can't have a productive conversation with me, then we won't be having a productive conversation. End of story. The only people I might have a productive conversation with are people who can talk to the enemy.
Further, having to self censor information flow does not make the conversation easier for me. In fact, it doesn't make it easier on anyone. It's a cost, an impediment, a friction in the exchange in information. This is where I disagree with Crocker. Why should I have to pay that cost, if I'm not requiring it in others? Two people playing by Crocker's rules can get things done.
On a more personal note, I find people who require their tender feelings to be stroked and soothed 24/7 tiresome. If soothing their feelings requires me not being honest about mine, I find it even more tiresome. No doubt they find me tiresome too. Fine. I'm not an appropriate playmate for those people. And they aren't for me. I can live with that.
Also, I find the culture of offensitivity highly manipulative. Hurt feelings become a trump card to stifle expression of opinion. It's the new blasphemy. I'm not interested in playing that card, particularly in a political discussion on the web, and see no compelling reason to consent to having it played on me.
I've had this discussion before on LW. It's admittedly a trade off, and one that varies by personality.
But in the case of radically opposed political views, demanding that one side refuse to fully communicate their position strikes me as a non starter. Saying that I "disagree" really isn't communicating. I find the proposed system grotesque, and the moral foundations an abomination. IMO, one of the problems with those on my side of the argument is that they don't question the moral premises of Progressivism. Another problem is that Progressives do their best not to hear them. One of the immunizing strategies of the majority is refusing to talk to the Devil.
Can you unpack "grotesque" and "abomination"? When people use words like that I mostly understand them to be conveying disagreement, along with the desire to rile people up in unproductive ways, but I understand you here to be claiming to have different goals than that. I'm not sure what they are.
Analysis that is connected to values doesn't have to mean embedding the values in the analysis. Pick a policy. Talk, in neutral terms, about what you think it will do. Then express how you feel about those impacts. Then the progressive you're talking with can say "oh, I don't care about that impact at all" or "I certainly care about that impact but disagree that the policy does it." You can't have conversations about terminal values. You can have them about policies which is why you have to take terminal values out of your conversations about policies.
Right, so clearly express those values. But don't attach the values to progressive policies. If it is the policies themselves that you loathe, how is a progressive supposed to argue for them?
I think this is probably wrong for (most) humans. We're immediately distracted by status signals and emotions. Once the conversation is about that that is all it's about.
Most people can't play by Crocker's rules. I'm not even sure the people who say they play by Crocker's rules do all that well.
Fair enough.
To be clear: if you had said "I loathe libertarian policies" I would have made the same objection. Both sides ought to lower the stakes.
This is interesting and I would be interested in hearing you expand on them. Part of why your language seems unnecessary to me is that I'm somewhere between a libertarian and a Progressive and I don't see any differences in values so much as I see Progressives not understanding how incentives work.
That's an interesting statement. Would you mind expanding on it?
Preferences, likes, dislikes. I prefer A to B. I value A more than B.
What you describe sounds pretty common among people who are either capable of detaching emotionally from the topic at hand, or who lack emotional investment to it in the first place, as a description of people who aren't and don't.
There's a lot of different labels that can be applied to this condition depending on how one wants to frame it; rather than get into framing wars I'll just label it X for convenience. And X is hardly limited to how libertarians view progressives, of course.
All of that said, you may be right that libertarians are more likely to demonstrate X than progressives are. You might further be right that this is because libertarians are too much of a minority, because they lack the luxurious walled-garden privileges that progressives enjoy, because they would otherwise commit mass murder, etc.
That said, I would caution against inferring any of that with significant confidence solely from personal experiences.
I would also caution against describing the situation the way you do here unless your intention is to upset progressives who lack X.
That said, upsetting people in this way can of course be a very effective way of maneuvering for status, as the people you upset will typically express their emotions, which in a social community like this one allows you to roll your eyes and dismiss them with community support. If that sort of social status maneuvering is your goal in the first place, then of course neither of those cautions apply.
I'm sure my generalizations would be wrong for lots of individual Progressives and Libertarians, but that won't make me dismiss my conclusions from my lifetime of observations. What can we reason, but from what we know?
I'm a libertarian, loathe Progressive doctrines, and would remake the world to efface their effects from existence. If they're Progressives and lack X, I don't see a way to sugar coat those facts that will make them happy. Do you?
Yes, and framing someone's statements as intentionally upsetting people to maneuver for status is effective in maneuvering for status with some people too.
We can't. But we can do things that increase the reliability of what we know.
Nope.
Absolutely.
Not as goal in itself, but it appears to frequently be a necessary first step to getting progressives to the point where it's possible to have a reasonable discussion.
I wish I could agree with you, but I run into (Reaction-influenced?) libertarians who conflate liberals, progressives, and Stalin.
When you say conflate, what do you mean?
Normally, one conflates ideas, and not people. Do these libertarians see similarities between Progressivism and Stalinism, or do they have the same emotional reaction to Progressives that they have for Stalin?
As nearly as I can figure it, they think that the ideas held by progressives and liberals are so similar to state communism that anything faintly leftish is on the short route to genocide.
Or at least the Road to Serfdom.
People failing to see degrees of a problem, is a problem. But notice that you've identified hatred of ideas, though unfairly exaggerated, and not hatred of people, or even attributing malicious intent.
Even Hayek, who had some of that all or nothing attitude, didn't even attribute malicious intent to Socialists, to whom he dedicated The Road to Serfdom.
Me, I've started to question intent more closely, as I see the theocratic impulse to force others to live by your values as one of the worst possible intents.
Ok, here are my reasons:
1) I would like to be able to talk about politics with rational people
2) Understanding more of how the world works could be useful in other areas.
3) I want to be able to make references to things that might be construed as political without having the entire post downvoted to -6 because I'm not allowed to talk about politics.
4) I am increasingly worried about the radicalisation (Assuming it really is increasing) of Less Wrong and I think the problem is that crazy views get too much credence here, due to an unwillingness to criticize by more rational people. (Biggest issue for me)
Edit: I don't get why I receive so many downvotes in a matter of minutes for answering a question as honestly and helpfully as I can manage. I see the same in some of my other posts. I somewhat suspect this is entirely based on party politics, where I am perceived to be criticizing party X in the original post, and so have unrelated posts downvoted by angry people. But maybe I'm missing something.
The problem is with who you'd consider to be "rational people".
Rationality doesn't touch values. Epistemic rationality is just an accurate map and instrumental rationality is just about reaching your goals whatever these goals might be.
So if, for example, if I axiomatically hate redheads and want to kill them all, that's fine. I can be as rational about it as I want to be.
Are you quite sure you want to talk politics with rational people who have radically different goals?
I'd suggest a distinction between "politics" and "policy", at least in the American English prevalent on LessWrong. "Politics" implies party politics, blue versus green, horse races (by which I mean election horse races), and tribalism. I think your post suggested an interest in this. Personally, I don't want this here.
If, however, you want to talk about policy, using the analytical language of policy, then I say go for it. However, your original post, with its reference to parties, made me doubtful.
But that doubtfulness is precisely the point. I want to be able to make references to contemporary issues, without having to worry all the time whether or not someone might interpret it as being a sneaky and subtle way to signal affiliation for... whatever. I don't frequent too many sites, but it's only Less Wrong where people are so paranoid about this. And what's worse it's skewed, because if I complain about crazy political parties the response is "How dare you insult the republican party!", as seen in at least one post in this thread.
If you don't want to be seen as sneaky, don't mince your words so much. Everyone here knows what you're alluding to anyway and to be honest your views themselves don't seem anything other than solidly mainstream. You're not being persecuted for being a slightly-left-of-center liberal / social democrat, it's a question of content.
If you don't want to be seen as signaling affiliation... signal your affiliation less? Lots of us are open about our political views, in fact that seems to be a big part of your complaint, but even then most of the time it involves more substance than just saying "Yay X" and watching the Karma counter. You can be proudly liberal / marxist / Bokononist / whatever and people will generally be cool with it as long as your posts have some substance behind them.
I don't want to strawman your position, but I really can't see what you would prefer other than just having more posters here agree with your politics. Is that an inaccurate assessment?
I am curious now. What makes you think I am slightly left of centre, or liberal, or a social democrat?
I mean, I admit that it's quite obvious which party I am calling crazy in the OP. But that's because there is only one crazy party in the US, and everyone knows this, so that's easy to infer. But bear in mind that in Europe, almost everyone agrees that US politics are crazy, so I don't see what you could infer from that. Maybe it was the comment that I don't vote for the racist party? That makes you think that I am centre left? Or the fact that I don't like Ayn Rand?
The only other thing I can think of is that I am not obviously crazy, but if that means I have to be centre-left, there is something wrong here.
As I said before, your allusions aren't terribly subtle. If you think the Republicans are too far right then you're left of center and if you can find anything to agree with the Democrats about you're not very far left either. That leaves Green and Social Democrat parties mainly, and their ideologies are all variations on the same tune.
You're assuming I frame my political beliefs in terms of US political parties. I do not. You should bear in mind that according to the average European (which I am) your entire political discourse is nuts. It's not even a question of left or right. So no, the fact that I think one of your parties is more crazy than another of your parties does not mean I am centre left. The most right wing party in my country is to the left of the US democratic party, crazy as that may sound to American ears. The fact that politics in the US have been becoming more and more extreme over the years does not in any way mean that my country is now more left-wing, either.
Frankly, I don't care about left vs. right. I just want people to be able to discuss individual issues based on actual argumentation without turning it into a shouting match. I want to be able to ask what if anything we should do about climate change, without people claiming that I am showing colour politics because my being "in favour" of climate change means I am clearly left wing, or something like that.
Have you found calling people crazy achieves or helps achieve this goal? Can you formulate a logical and probable pattern of events where calling people crazy will help achieve this goal in the future?
For what value of “anything”? It can't be the literal one, as I'd guess that Obama and Stalin both agree(d) that 2 + 2 = 4.
LOL. There's one party that's conventionally called "crazy" in the mainstream media. And..?
Two spaces at the end of a line forces a linebreak.
Right. It's those damn greens. Damn those greens, with their votes for... crazy green things! Not like us blues, who want nothing but good and rational blueness!
[ETA] My mind has been killed. This is why I don't want party politics -- as opposed to policy -- on LessWrong.
Couldn't you instead exercise self-control?
Can you please expand on 4)? Maybe give some examples of "crazy views", "radicalization" or "unwillingness to criticize"?
Ok, a while back I had all my posts downvoted because I referred to Ayn Rand as an example of someone who I thought was crazy. Someone replied that Less Wrong should be ashamed for allowing "Ayn rand derangement syndrome" and that anyone who held the view that Ayn rand was crazy should be downvoted. His post got upvoted while my posts got downvoted to -6 as a result. This is one (small) example of what I call crazy views that get a surprising amount of support on less wrong.
Another example would be this thread about using global warming as an example. ChrisHalquist notes here that it's pretty worrisome that that post got downvoted so much (it's a bit higher now but still negative), which I agree with. Admittedly, it could just be that the article wasn't very well written... but I don't think so.
30% of Less Wrong being libertarian. Yes I think that is an example of radical views. Again it's entirely possible to be sane and call yourself libertarian. But I definitely think this number supports my experience, where if I even vaguely mention republican policies or Ayn Rand I get instantly shot down. On the other hand, criticizing the Democratic party does not seem to have the same effect .
If my hypothesis is right, I will now get a ton more downvotes purely for having mentioned which party/group I'm talking about, by exactly those people. Let's see.
If you say "I think Ayn Rand is crazy" what is that supposed to accomplish that waving a big Blue flag wouldn't? You're not starting a reasoned discussion, just drawing battle lines.
If you say "I think Ayn Rand's philosophy is incorrect / immoral and here's why..." then you'll actually be able to have a constructive debate. You can learn why people might believe something you think is crazy, they can test their beliefs against your arguments, and in the end hopefully both sides will have adjusted in a more evidence-supported direction. That kind of communication is what LW is about; approaching areas where we are heavily biased with caution and rigor to separate out truth from myth.
(Note: I'm not an Objectivist and don't vote Republican, although you'd probably consider me more radical than either of them anyway. The downvote was for poor logic, not a slight against a political group/philosophy.)
But I don't want to talk about Ayn Rand. The article was never even about her. I just gave a list of people and things that I perceived were damaging or crazy as an example to illustrate my point in that article. As a result, I got pulled into an angry shouting match where people insisted I should be ashamed to have criticized their favourite author, and all of my (entirely unrelated) posts got downvoted. I take issue with the fact that there is this one group of people (no idea how large) on Less Wrong that gets to silence dissent like this, and everybody else just sits there and nods along because they're not allowed to discuss politics.
It doesn't matter to me how radical your political views are. What matters to me is whether you are willing to entertain people with other views, or just want to shut down all dissent.
Good, then we agree; we should avoid behaviors which shut down dissent and dismiss people with opposing views out of hand.
So the next time someone puts an unsupported personal attack on a fringe political philosopher into an article, how about we all downvote it to express that that sort of behavior is not acceptable on LW?
How about we clearly and rationally express our stance instead of assuming massive inferential silence is any more meaningful than more moderate inferential silence?
Compare your implicit expectation in this comment to how one should react to some casually mentioned their position is "crazy", with your recommendation here to how someone should react to a casual anti-gay statement.
What accounts for the glaring difference?
I think that your Ayn Rand comments were downvoted based on their anti-rational tone, rather than on substance. For example, when Multiheaded writes in a similarly emotional and combative style, he gets downvoted just as much.
I am not sure why the AGW-test post was downvoted so much. Maybe because it mentioned the US Republican party as an example?
This might be a confusion about definitions. Libertarianism has many different meanings, from valuing individual freedom over other considerations to advocating "radical redistribution of power". Some of it is indeed quite radical, but when an average LWer thinks of libertarianism, they probably don't mean to support an armed uprising.
This type of remark tends to screw up the vote-measuring experiment. The subjects must be unaware that they are in an experimental setting for the results to be representative.
You're right, it is indeed entirely possible that that article was downvoted for reasons unrelated to Ayn Rand. The fact that someone literally said that all of Less Wrong should be ashamed for allowing "Ayn Rand Derangement Syndrome", however, and that that person went on to suggest that I and everyone else who'd dare criticise Rand should be downvoted, and that this person got upvoted for this post... can not be explained in such a convenient way.
The same holds for another comment in this thread, where someone calls me out for criticizing "their" party (I did not mention any party by name) and for criticizing "their" beliefs and saying that I should not be allowed to call "their" party crazy unless I could "defeat" them in a debate about economics.... and this person got upvoted for this, again. This to me signals, at least weakly, that there is way too much support on Less Wrong for the view that dissent against politics X should be culled. This worries me to say the least, since it skews Less Wrong politics in that direction.
Dissent against ANY politics should be culled. DISSENTING AGAINST POLITICS IS BAD FOR RATIONALITY. CHEERING FOR POLITICS IS BAD FOR RATIONALITY.
This is SUPER obvious because your dissent is just calling people crazy over and over, and saying it's obvious that they're crazy and you don't understand how anyone could think they're not crazy. YOU ARE MINDKILLED. You are not capable, or at least have not SHOWN yourself to be capable of dissenting against the politic you hate in anything like a reasonable fashion.
The point of this website is that lots of things that normal people take as obvious or intuitive are not in fact true, and based largely on their own biases. You seem to completely be missing this point in this and your other conversations about politics. So either do your research, come up with a refutation of objectivism based on actually reading it, or DON'T TALK ABOUT IT. Mentions of things you disagree with as crazy in an offhanded way is exactly what we don't want.
Part of the negative reaction to your post, I think, is that this came off as disingenuous. Everyone knows the party you think is crazy is the Republican Party. I understand the point you were trying to making is more meta than that, but it's hard not to be wary of someone who wants to talk about politics when they lead in with the suggestion that a large fraction of Less Wrong is aligned with a crazy party.
There is a harm in talking about all these things at such an abstract level: it probably exaggerates the extent of actual disagreement. I don't really have many hard-and-fast political views right now but if I take a political identification quiz I'll usually end up listed as a libertarian (with slight movement to the left). But the content of my libertarianism is basically "society should do the things most economists think they should do". There are a few other assumptions built into it but it has little to do with anything Ayn Rand talked about (and I've never voted for the party you think is crazy).
So I wonder if people might be more receptive to a post like "Hey, guys. I see a lot of you identify as X. It seems like part of X is believing Y. Y seems like it is obviously bad to me, so I'm wondering if those of you who identify as X could explain if they identify that way despite Y, or if they really believe Y. If you believe in Y maybe you could explain why it is not as crazy as it sounds to me."
Again, mischaracterization of what I wrote.
My original post: http://lesswrong.com/lw/iqq/a_game_of_angels_and_devils/9tat
I suggest that's one reason you're downvoted - mischaracterizing what others say in a self serving way.
Can you expand "anti-rational tone" here? I'm not sure what you're talking about and it seems like the kind of phrase that cognitive biases hide behind.
30% of LessWrong are liberals, 30% are socialists, and 30% are libertarian. 3% or so are conservative.
That's the progressiveness of LessWrong showing -- even if we stupidly use the sides in American politics (where libertarians are weirdly considered allied to the Republicans) that'd a 60% that would vote Democrat vs 33% that would vote Republican.
But I wouldn't want to use the sides of American politics -- the world is NOT the battleground for a fight between Republicans and Democrats and the stupid politicals alliances of America needn't be our concern. Libertarianism is the ideology that says "stop throwing people in jail because they smoked marijuana". I think that's a very fine thing it says right there. Even finer than gay marriage (which I also support) btw.
And I'm saying this as someone who called himself a socialist in that poll. And who has voted for libertarians in the past also. If you're seeing a right-wing bias in LessWrong, despite only 3% calling themselves conservatives, then you're suffering from seeing everything through the prism of American parochialism where Only Two Sides Exist.
Libertarianism as defined in the LW survey question says more than that. I agree we should stop throwing people in jail because they smoked marijuana but I still answered “socialism”. (IOW it doesn't generically refer to the bottom half of the Political Compass plane but to the bottom right quadrant specifically.)
As I already said above, I also answered "socialism". My point was that "the stupid political alliances of America needn't be our concern". My own politics of interest are such that I consider libertarianism is allied to progressivism in the issues that I'm most concerned about -- Sophronius however seems so focused on the American political alliances, that, because by historical accident rightwingers in America are currently allied to libertarians, he sees this as evidence of rightwing bias.
How do you plan to tell who downvoted you, and why they did so??? Doesn't look like very sound experiment design to me.
I saw those comments. they were of terrible quality and largely based on nothing but hearsay about Rand. They deserved to be downvoted regardless of your viewpoint.
That was me! And it's you again! I should have known!
Although you're mischaracterizing what I said. Again. Though I'm not surprised, as it was your modus operandi the last time we spoke. First of Rand, then sympathizers of Rand, then me, then the LW community as a whole.
For anyone who wants to claim that my characterization here is unfair, I invite them to read the original thread and get back to me if they still think so: http://lesswrong.com/lw/iqq/a_game_of_angels_and_devils/
You continue true to form here:
I'll give you another hypothesis. You're getting the response you're getting because you're screaming that you're an internet crank at the top of your lungs. And I'm guessing that many of those downvotes are coming from the Progressive side of the field. Maybe most, as another guess is that the Progressives are more intent on driving cranks out of the LW community than the Libertarians are.
Do you really fail to see how your last was the usual ridiculous posturing of the internet crank who can only see disagreement with him as a moral and intellectual failure of others, and then tell it to them, like they're going to believe it and be impressed by it?
And your initial post here was condemning the Progressives here for not condemning the Libertarians loudly and viciously enough.
Did you expect gratitude from that self supposed keen insight?
By the way - responding 25 times in a thread? Crank crank crank.
The only thing missing are the red and green flashing gifs.
Saying that Ayn Rand is crazy is contains no useful political information that helps someone who reads your post to update his map of the world in a productive way.
Saying Ayn Rand is crazy is no criticism of Ayn Rand. It might be defamation.
The post basically says that you should judge someone rationality by he willingness to believe in scientific authorities and signal that belief instead of judging his rationality by direct empiricism or by choosing effective strategies that help him win.
One of the core Lesswrong dogma's is that rationality is about winning. The post basically disagrees and doesn't explain why he disagrees.
The comments above include suggest this as the thread under discussion.
That link is not provided by the OP, though, so it's possible they meant something else. OTOH, Googling site:http://lesswrong.com "Ayn rand derangement syndrome" only turns up that thread, so it seems likely referent. (To my amazement, removing the site parameter still only turns up that thread, which seems implausible... is this some kind of automatic Google-tuning? Do others get the same result?)
For my own part, I think a charitable reading of the OP's summary is close enough to accurate, but in the context of their comments more generally I'm no longer willing to extend them the benefit of the doubt implied by a charitable reading.
I'm getting the same results. It's a relatively recent neologism (~10 years), and most uses focus on modern political leadership or modern organizations, which may be why.
Still, a surprising Googlebomb.
Don't worry, the last crazy post on politics I saw was voted down to -10