Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup—Confess Your Unpopular Opinion
How to get in: Go to the Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says "Lounge".
Parking is free for 3 hours, or for longer if you apply some chicanery.
Discussion:
Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit.—Eliezer Yudkowsky
Sometimes it feels more like going to clown school wearing a suit.—Catharine G. Evans
On August 7, #confessyourunpopularopinion made the rounds as a (perhaps ironically, very popular) Twitter hashtag.
Examples:
- "Someone who has not directly experienced a form of oppression can have useful knowledge about it "
- "Abortion is often morally the best choice"
- "objects are syllables in a message/one aspect of god's lonely edge"
- "Inheritance should be illegal. You deserve nothing from your parents' deaths."
- "hypocrisy is what makes us human and sincere "people" are monsters who should walk to the bottom of a lake "
- "What we call "art" is just proof-of-work, no more transcendent or special than hashing random bitstrings. "
- "If you vote, you're the one who doesn't have a right to complain."
- "Most of the time the faceless soulless bureaucracy is right"
- "no matter how I look at it it's your fault my opinion is unpopular"
This is an inherently LessWrongish thing to do, so this is what we will be doing. I don't expect it to be a problem, but just in case, I will be enforcing (with my fists) a rule: No one's opinions are to be ridiculed or mocked. The point is to profess unpopular opinions.
Recommended reading:
- Lonely Dissent and its prerequisites
- What You Can't Say
- I've had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions
No prior knowledge of or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessible. Because a few people didn't get the joke last time, I have been instructed not to pretend that you have to have memorized the core sequences in order to attend without getting kicked out. It's still a good idea to read the sequences, though.
There may or may not be a highly visible whiteboard, which may or may not have Bayes's Theorem written on it.
wouldn't you, if you were her?