= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Sophronius comments on Less Wrong’s political bias - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (352)
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.