= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Lumifer comments on LessWrong 2.0 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (312)
Personally, I liked LW for being an integrated place with all that : the Sequences, interesting posts and discussions between rationalists/transhumanists (be it original thoughts/viewpoints/analysis, news related to those topics, links to related fanfiction, book suggestion, ...), and the meetup organization (I went to several meetup in Paris).
If that were to be replaced by many different things (one for news, one or more for discussion, one for meetups, ...) I probably wouldn't bother.
Also, I'm not on Facebook and would not consider going there. I think replacing the open ecosystem of Internet by a proprietary platform is a very dangerous trend for future of innovation, and I oppose the global surveillance that Facebook is part of. I know we are entering politics which is considered "dirty" by many here, but politics is part of the Many Causes, and I don't think we should alienate people for political reasons. The current LW is politically neutral, and allows "socialists" to discuss without much friction with "libertarians", which is part of its merits, and we should keep that.
Disclaimer: politics is the mind-killer.
LW used to be politically neutral; I'm not sure it is so anymore. A large part of the user base is American, and the current presidential election season is spilling into LW far more than previous seasons ever did. And the current wave of populist, nationalistic, libertarian/individualist ideology which seems to be very popular in the USA is being represented in the general atmosphere of LW.
It would be great if a temporary ban on political subjects could be set and enforced until at least the current election season is over.
I haven't noticed that. I don't recall any exteneded discussion that involved Hillary or Trump, for example.
What's wrong with that? Just that you'd prefer a different wave?
I'd prefer not for politics to spill into LW, no matter if it's left-wing or right-wing politics.
We've discussed this before, multiple times. The usual reply to your concerns is that LW very rarely discusses politics, instead what occasionally comes up is political philosophy which is usually argued about in much more sophisticated terms than "Yay magenta, boo teal".
It's not the sophistication of the arguments that is the problem. The problem is making arguments objective, rigorous, and grounded in experimental observation. I would not mind 'yay magenta, boo teal' as long as it were followed by a rational and rigorous justification. Unfortunately, making rational arguments in politics is extremely difficult. However, because of the mind-killing effect, the people making such arguments usually don't see it that way - they perceive their arguments as extremely rational and common-sense, unable to see why others view the arguments as nonsense. They are unable or unwilling to follow their arguments through with the enormous level of evidence that's required.
Well, yes, we all know that politics is the mind-killer, so what else is new?
I don't think that this is a particularly valid reason to run like hell when politics show up. It reminds me too much of the streetlight principle and at some point you need to get out of the kindergarten and start dealing with the real world.
At some point, yes. Kindergarten is actually a great metaphor. If you're five, and you run out of the kindergarten, you hit a bus and die.
You can either talk about politics in the way people currently do it - a way completely removed from any sort of disciplined, rational type of thinking - or not talk about it at all. It seems that a community dedicated to refining the art of human rationality should strive not to jump head-first into the current but to refine rationality to the point where our brains are capable of discussing politics rationally.
We are far from that point.
I'm not five.
Why is this strange binary choice? All or nothing is rarely a good way to approach things. Besides, most of conversation on LW will not satisfy your criteria of "objective, rigorous, and grounded in experimental observation".
Yes, yes, this essay is quite well-known, you do not need to repeat its point over and over.