Okay, so, we don't know what the right answer is. But we know what the right answer ISN'T, right?
See Yvain's post on Schelling Fences on Slippery Slopes.
Like if there is a 0.00001% chance it is "the answer", but a 99.99999% chance to waste everyone's time and making some people angry, we should probably discard it. Why waste time when we can pursue that handful of ideas that have a much higher chance of improving the world?
You do realize that most people have the same opinion about the Singularity?
See Yvain's post on Schelling Fences on Slippery Slopes.
This is not a blanket reason to defend all ideologies against censorship. The analysis of many religions also implicitly assumes that there is no cost to tolerating competing religions, whereas there is a definite cost to hearing out many of the worst political ideologies.
It's almost as if the slippery slope works both ways. If you can't filter anything, your energy is drained by a thousand paper cuts.
You do realize that most people have the same opinion about the Singularity?
I wasn't aware th...
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.