You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Emile comments on What topics would you like to see more of on LessWrong? - Less Wrong Discussion

25 Post author: Emile 13 December 2010 04:20PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (137)
Tags: meta community

Comments (137)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: wedrifid 15 December 2010 02:25:02AM *  5 points [-]

I don't know if I am explaining this well (and may be someone can do better), but discussing politics tends to create "us" vs. "them" mentality really quickly.

You explained it well and it is a phenomenon we often reference. Perhaps the greatest source of bias humans have. Certainly the source of the most annoying biases we have. :)

We are all (well, except, Eliezer of course) flawed humans here and are prone to such reactions.

Don't even joke about that (please).

An infight would be very deadly to a small community like this.

From past experience the infighting isn't deadly but it is certainly distracting and probably does some damage. I note that as a community we don't seem especially prone to strongly identifying with world or national politics in the patriotic tribal sense. That kind of politics is far closer to mere abstract theory. The real political infighting lesswrong is vulnerable to tends to be moral and local. (And vulnerable it is.)

Comment author: Emile 15 December 2010 09:14:55AM 1 point [-]

I note that as a community we don't seem especially prone to strongly identifying with world or national politics in the patriotic tribal sense. That kind of politics is far closer to mere abstract theory. The real political infighting lesswrong is vulnerable to tends to be moral and local. (And vulnerable it is.)

I agree that there probably isn't that much tribal patriotism here, but there are probably a few posters whose minds are tainted by ideology (libertarianism, left-liberalism, environmentalism, maybe conservatism) (I don't consider my mind untainted by ideology), which can be equally polarizing.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit