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Omid comments on Brainstorming for post topics - Less Wrong
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Proposal: You don't need politics. In which I argue that keeping up with the news and political controversies is not a duty nor effective altruism. Intended to counteract the "Rah political activism!" message I got in school.
I endorse this approach. Ever since high school (so for about 12 years), I have deliberately stayed ignorant of all politics local to my country and of local news. I absolutely never watch or read the news, and I rarely find myself discussing these topics with my friends.
News and politics are designed to generate outrage and promote anti-rationalism and epistemic dark arts. They also strongly select for bad and depressing news, and for non-representative surprising incidents. On the other hand, the value from my knowing about the news is very small (e.g. in terms of changing my behavior).
Sometimes politics steps into your life. For example, you want to teach people rationality, but a religious political party just made religious education mandatory in schools. Or you invented a better way to teach maths to kids, but you can't use it, because in your country all schools must strictly follow the plans written by government. Etc. The idea is that the political power can prevent you from doing the right thing, so unless your plan is just to break the law and go to jail, you must somehow get involved with politics.
Of course, you could also just give up this specific topic, and choose some other topic where there is no direct political opposition. Or you could just write a lot about your idea, and hope that someone else will notice it and do the dirty work for you.
This is a great topic. I know of three good resources on it:
I Hate The News by Aaron Swartz
News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier by Rolf Dobelli in The Guardian
Avoid News: Towards a Healthy News Diet (PDF) by Rolf Dobelli - a longer version of the one in The Guardian.
Would almost write this post myself - btw does 'rah' mean 'yay'?
Yep, pretty much, it's a rallying cry type of thing
Be careful how you phrase this. Because I want Friendly AI, I do need politics - in a different sense of the word, one that has little to do with keeping up with the news or what the pundits are saying.
Little, but not nothing. The mundane political wars contain many object lessons on how to win at politics in the broader sense.