I'm with Scott. It's so natural to think that if your enemies are as ruthless as the Tsars and their goons, you need to be as ruthless as the Bolsheviks to fight them. But we all know how that worked out, and it hardly seems to be an outlier; rather, it seems to be the norm for those willing to sink to their opponents' level. If the goal is victory for our cause, and not just victory for some people who find it convenient to claim to be cheerleaders for our cause, we need to be very careful that our tactics are not training up Stalins within our ranks. Not that I'm advocating total purity at all times and in all respects, but I think before playing dirty you need to make sure you have a much better reason to think it's a good idea than "the other guys are doing it."
If the goal is victory for our cause, and not just victory for some people who find it convenient to claim to be cheerleaders for our cause, we need to be very careful that our tactics are not training up Stalins within our ranks.
Well said. Also, an additional benefit of rational discussion is that it promotes truthseeking - people may discover that the cause that they're supporting is not the cause that they should be supporting. Under a "win at all costs" paradigm, arguments against your position are enemy soldiers, so if you win, it'll be w...
Scott, known on LessWrong as Yvain, recently wrote a post complaining about an inaccurate rape statistic.
Arthur Chu, who is notable for winning money on Jeopardy recently, argued against Scott's stance that we should be honest in arguments in a comment thread on Jeff Kaufman's Facebook profile, which can be read here.
Scott just responded here, with a number of points relevant to the topic of rationalist communities.
I am interested in what LW thinks of this.
Obviously, at some point being polite in our arguments is silly. I'd be interested in people's opinions of how dire the real world consequences have to be before it's worthwhile debating dishonestly.