Good point on majority voting. It matters a lot whether a comment has 18 upvotes and 14 downvotes or 14 upvotes and 18 downvotes. So a relatively narrow majority on polarized subjects can give you important control over the conversation.
a relatively narrow majority on polarized subjects can give you important control over the conversation.
The proper way to fix this is to agree to downvote all mindkilled comments regardless of whether they "support our side".
If we cannot agree on this norm... goodbye rationality.
If we can agree on voting on comments by criteria other than "my tribe or the other tribe", then we have a chance for a meaningful discussion.
Specifically:
Someone posts a comment promoting tribe X, without any rationalist merit. -- Proper reaction: downvote.
S...
A long blog post explains why the author, a feminist, is not comfortable with the rationalist community despite thinking it is "super cool and interesting". It's directed specifically at Yvain, but it's probably general enough to be of some interest here.
http://apophemi.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/why-im-not-on-the-rationalist-masterlist/
I'm not sure if I can summarize this fairly but the main thrust seems to be that we are overly willing to entertain offensive/taboo/hurtful ideas and this drives off many types of people. Here's a quote:
The author perceives a link between LW type open discourse and danger to minority groups. I'm not sure whether that's true or not. Take race. Many LWers are willing to entertain ideas about the existence and possible importance of average group differences in psychological traits. So, maybe LWers are racists. But they're racists who continually obsess over optimizing their philanthropic contributions to African charities. So, maybe not racists in a dangerous way?
An overly rosy view, perhaps, and I don't want to deny the reality of the blogger's experience. Clearly, the person is intelligent and attracted to some aspects of LW discourse while turned off by other aspects.