It should be noted that the FAQ was largely written by a person (me) and should not necessarily be considered authoritative... if the LW community thinks something in the FAQ should change they should feel free to change it.
There was just an astonishingly civil examination of the most mindkilling topic I could think of in Discussion. I've criticized people for violating the LessWrong politics taboo in the past, but I'd be happy to chat about anything from particular elections to the merits of Marxism if it was always done so painstakingly in the articles and so thoughtfully in the rebuttals.
I'm not sure how to achieve that, though. "Everybody can talk about politics carelessly" isn't any better an idea than it was before, and trying to enforce "only talk abou...
From eyeballing the survey results, we might expect the worst ideological conflicts on LW to be those current among libertarians, liberals, and moderate-to-mainline socialists, and especially those that're interesting to nerds with those affiliations: not, for example, abortion or immigration, where one camp's almost exclusively conservative. And indeed, the most heated political arguments on LW that I remember have dealt with radical feminism, fat acceptance, the treatment of women in nerd culture, and anything vaguely associated with pick-up artistry. Nothing economic, which is a bit of a surprise, but maybe it's easier to cast those issues in consequential terms -- or maybe taxes just aren't sexy.
The ethno-nationalist wing of neoreaction has also caused problems, but I think that had less to do with the subject matter and more to do with the poster: long-time SSC readers may remember him as Jim.
"rationality" can be interpreted broadly enough that rational discussion of anything would count
"Rational discussion" is not rationality. You can very rationally discuss politics. You can very rationally discuss the life cycle of the cicada.
Truly "on topic" is content that helps the user to become more rational. Multiple definitions of rational apply: Being more practically effective counts. Being better able to sort through evidence counts. Meta-understanding on the meaning of rationality counts. Modelling what a rational...
Anything, as long as 1) it's chosen, written, and formulated in a way that shows alignment with the values of the community, taken in a broad way; 2) doesn't make LW look bad to outsiders. (There have been cases of mods stepping in, or the community shutting down certain insistent debaters, when it came to certain discussion topics, for reasons of it being very bad PR.)
The first condition in fact could be generalizable to pretty much any human group (deviations from this norm might be taken to be, basically, trolling), and is more restrictive than it may l...
"Here's an idea that can make you go crazy (and lose all your money) if you think about it too hard, let's write it up and give people nightmares for the next 4 years and counting".
I have this heuristic which states, if a bunch of smart people get excited about something, you should check it out. There's no obligation to also get excited about it (a lot of smart people get excited over classical literature, which does less than nothing for me, but I'm sure this is a product of my draw in the lottery of fascinations and not sloth.)
At this point, "anything that you find interesting and doesn't get downvoted into oblivion because nobody else finds it interesting" seems a reasonable criteria for "appropriate for LW". ...
Things I think should be treaded upon carefully if not avoided altogether:
NatPhilosopher is also underhandedly manipulating quotations by lifting words out of context.
Take a look at NatPhilosopher's first quotation and citation in their pièce de résistance arguing against the safety of pediatric vaccination:
In 2002 the National Vaccine Program Office (NVPO) convened an expert group to study safety issues with adjuvants in vaccines. Among their conclusions:
“pervasive uncertainty [from] missing data on pharmocokinetics and toxicities of aluminum injected into humans… There seems to be abundant data concerning risk levels for ingested aluminum, but scant data about risk levels for injected aluminum. The oral minimum risk level, for example, appears to be in the range of 2–60 mg/kg of aluminum per day but there are no comparable data for injected aluminum.”[1]
This does sound worrying. But let's take a look at the actual report. Here are the quotations in context (emphases mine, italics are NatPhilosopher's lifted words):
From the Metal Ions in Biology and Medicine International Symposium held immediately prior to the aluminum workshop, we learned about “pervasive uncertainty”, a phrase used in this workshop to denote missing data on pharmocokinetics and toxicities of aluminum injected into humans. Even with identification of areas needing further study, it was apparent that aluminum which has been used as a vaccine adjuvant for more than 70 years, has an established safety record with low incidence of reported adverse events.
[...]
There seems to be abundant data concerning risk levels for ingested aluminum, but scant data about risk levels for injected aluminum. The oral minimum risk level, for example, appears to be in the range of 2–60 mg/kg of aluminum per day but there are no comparable data for injected aluminum. The uncertainties notwithstanding, there appeared to be a large margin of safety for aluminum adjuvants.
Not so worrying with context, is it?
The actual conclusion of the report (emphases mine):
In summary, a variety of aluminum salts have useful physicochemical and immunogenic properties that lend these minerals to use in vaccines. Based on 70 years of experience, the use of salts of aluminum as adjuvants in vaccines has proven to be safe and effective. Aluminum as an adjuvant enhances antigen presentation and stimulates a type II immune response. It has been possible, using aluminum adjuvants, to reduce the number of injections and the amount of antigen per dose, and thereby decrease the toxicity of some antigens. Without extensive research, it is impossible to know how removal of aluminum from vaccines would affect the known benefits of vaccines in which it is contained. More pharmacokinetic data are needed but there is an apparent wide margin of safety with the use of aluminum adjuvants and reported adverse events have been mostly minor and of low incidence. MMF histologic lesions may be a consequence of the normal immune response and may, in fact, be a wholly serendipitous finding in patients with ascending myalgias and fatigue. Some identified areas of research include: expanding the aluminum pharmacokinetic database, especially following IM injection in young children, conducting bimetal (mercury and aluminum) toxicological studies in animals, identifying biomarkers of toxicity, defining the frequency and duration of MMF in normal controls, determining the role of aluminum in the pathophysiology of the MMF lesion, developing new adjuvants, and establishing new methods for administering immunizations.
I am not in any way an anti-vaxxer, my own child has been vaccinated according to the standard protocols in my country, and I agree that NatPhilosopher should have mentioned that alongside the scary-sounding stuff s/he quoted the quoted sources contain statements that aluminium-based vaccines appear to be safe, and that not doing so is dishonest.
BUT it seems to me (as far as the material you've quoted goes; of course there may be more that points the other way) that NatPhilosopher is correct to say that this report suggests that the safety of injected alum...
For example, what would be inappropriately off topic to post to LessWrong discussion about?
I couldn't find an answer in the FAQ. (Perhaps it'd be worth adding one.) The closest I could find was this:
However "rationality" can be interpreted broadly enough that rational discussion of anything would count, and my experience reading LW is compatible with this interpretation being applied by posters. Indeed my experience seems to suggest that practically everything is on topic; political discussion of certain sorts is frowned upon, but not due to being off topic. People often post about things far removed from the topics of interest. And some of these topics are very broad: it seems that a lot of material about self-improvement is acceptable, for instance.