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Vladimir_M comments on Politics is a fact of life - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (51)
In my opinion, this is indeed a very important question, considering the stated goals of this forum. Many people here take pride in being "rationalists" who are supposedly head and shoulders above the common folk when it comes to eliminating biases and popular delusions. Yet if they are nevertheless afraid to touch topics like politics where these biases and delusions are particularly severe and widespread, or worse, if discussions of such topics here tend to display the same problems as elsewhere, one must ask -- what good is all this "rationality" then? It's as if there was a weightlifting club whose members had an agreement not to touch weights over, say, fifty kilos. (In fact, even worse -- these people would at least know for sure they can handle up to 50kg weights, whereas if your biases are too strong to think about political topics rationally, how can you be confident that you're better than average in other areas?)
Now of course, posts and comments that talk about politics in the usual way full of biases, delusions, and strong emotions should be downvoted and discouraged, but only to the extent that, for example, people commenting about physics with stubborn ignorance and incorrigible inaccuracy get treated similarly. In other words, what should be targeted are errors of logic and fact as such, not the topic at hand in which they are committed. To some extent, this is indeed what happens, and it's one feature of this forum that I really like. I have made many comments here about politically and ideologically sensitive topics, and most of them have been well received in terms of upvotes and responses.
One question I find fascinating is what exactly determines the range of sensitive topics that tend to break down the discourse even on LW (and which is, in my observations, quite different from most other venues). Maybe one day I'll post a compendium of my conclusions about this.
Delusions that are truly widely held and not merely believed to be widely held are far too dangerous to attack. There are sociopolitical Eldritch Abominations that it would serve LW well to stay well clear of and perhaps even pretend they don't exist for the time being. People here could loose jobs, not just friends or family and the forum where discussion would take place would be routinely attacked. Worse it would attract all the contrariness who happen to agree with the particular stance, but may not be very inclined towards participating in a rationalist community.
There is no sense in having someone lower a truck on you so you can try to lift it to demonstrate your dedication to making the gym hours spent count for something.
Konkvistador:
I don't think that's true as a general rule. Clearly, modern Western society has its own truly dangerous taboos, and attacking those head-on would indeed be stupid, for all the reasons you have listed. However, there are many topics where the modern public opinion is widely biased and delusional that can nevertheless be discussed safely without raising any dangerous red flags, especially if a high standard of discourse is maintained (which has the additional benefit of keeping away the swarms of uninteresting and status-lowering-by-association intruders).
That's undoubtedly true, when it comes to truly dangerous topics. The real problem, however, is that if the supposedly high level of "rationality" and epistemic skill claimed by so many people here can't be put to use to clear up even perfectly safe topics muddled by political/ideological biases and delusions, that in my view casts the same doubt on the benefits of all this rationality stuff as the refusal or inability to do a few pushups would do for the gym.
The most salient example to me is when I responded to a complaint that PUA ideology treats women like they are silly with the response that"
It doesn't seem at all correct to say "average men treat women like they're silly, but rationalists don't do that!"
among other things I said here. I certainly felt compelled to add the disclaimer "Sure, rationalists treat men as silly too."
The remarkable part is that I got both up votes and down votes.
It's considered true or at least acceptable on lesswrong to say "All members of the human race are often irrational." It logically follows that "All poor people are often irrational." Nonetheless, this true statement alone is liable to be unpopular without explanation. This is because by not talking about non-poor people I imply I think something different regarding them. This is somewhat justified, for the same reason that wiggin is a lie.
Nonetheless, I feel the rational climate is unhealthy enough that I don't think one can simply reply to "PUAs think women are irrational" with "so do LWers", where one should be able to. I should be able to respond to "A racist said wiggins are irrational" with "they are", and to "some Wiggins are criminals and like ketchup" with "true".
Someone starting a topic with "some wiggins are criminals" has given good reason to suspect he is racist, someone saying "racists falsely believe some wiggins are criminals" has given good reason to suspect he is a PC fool, and someone pointing out the second truth, in this day and age and at this place of all places, has not created probable cause that he is a racist.
There are some people here who I would trust to have rational discussions about the policy decisions that politics is supposedly about, and which candidates are likely to implement which policies and which tradeoff is better. My expectation if they tried to have that discussion on this public internet site is that they would draw attention and participation of less skilled members who would drag the discussion down into typical mind killing politics, and probably draw new people to Less Wrong who are not so interested in rationality and getting the right answer as joining in the tribal political argument.
Wouldn't it be great if LessWrong were capable of doing that?
(My guess is "not really", because it's an antiprediction that an accurate understanding of politics will include some unusual and extreme-sounding positions, and the spread of such positions on LessWrong may make the site look bad, undermining its influence on nonpolitical issues that it's better-placed to affect.)
Duh, by noticing that you are better than average in other areas, but poor at politics. This is the situation a lot of us face.
Vladimir_M, you have stated the same opinions and arguments long ago, in the discussions I have linked to. Our failure to reach agreement even on the simple question "should we discuss politics here?" should be strongly suggestive! Also please note that SarahC has updated from answering "yes, but be careful" to answering "no". Has anyone updated in the opposite direction?
cousin_it:
But what are these criteria by which you can reliably conclude that you are better in other areas than in politics? Moreover, what are these peculiar sources of bias and delusions that manifest themselves in politics but not elsewhere, so that you can be confident that they cloud only your judgment about matters of politics but not other things? (And that they can therefore be set aside as a separate and unique problem.)
Of course, the answers are evident if we compare politics only with hard sciences. However, I have got the impression (perhaps incorrect) that in the space of all possible topics, you also draw another boundary specifically around politics (not least due to your frequent comments about non-hard-scientific topics).
I am somewhat puzzled by the fact that SarahC nevertheless replies to my comments that deal with politically sensitive topics from time to time (most recently today), not to condemn them, but in fact prompting further discussion. My conjecture is that she has in mind a much narrower definition of political topics than we do, one where even I might agree that the questions themselves are often senseless to begin with.
She is presumably reading this, so I hereby invite her to clarify this.
[Edit - forgot to add:] It's similar with other people -- I'm observing their revealed preferences, not abstract statements. I would never be so impertinent to make comments about politically sensitive topics on this forum if it actually provoked unfriendly reactions in terms of votes and replies. But instead, when I do make them, I almost invariably encounter upvotes and interested replies. Or do you think I should make some additional considerations here? (I'm really asking in good faith.)
Ok: what I think about this is a little nuanced. I don't think we'll do well with debates on literal "politics" -- that is, politicians, elections, and laws. I didn't like the flamewars about gender and PC a while back. It's a little too much navel-gazing and too adversarial. LW does a lot of different things, but "stay constructive" is a good ethos to keep; I enjoy posts that call my attention to something interesting I can learn. Pure arguing for the "pleasure" of spoiling for a fight is somewhat addictive but ultimately disappointing.
As to why I encourage VladimirM's comments on politically sensitive topics -- I don't really consider that "politics." I wanted to know what you thought about education, most recently, and I literally wanted to know what you thought about how best to teach children. If we've got to taboo every topic that could potentially touch on human social organization, we have a VERY narrow range of topics and they've pretty much all got to be written in LaTeX.
To be blunt: I don't see any virtue in pre-labeling these topics as "politically sensitive." I'm getting rid of my own bad habit of labeling everything "left," "right," or "libertarian." When you preface your statements by "You/the establishment/the socialists will hate me for what I'm going to say," well, you're just priming more people to hate you for what you're going to say. I'm being encouraging with you, Vladimir, partly because I want to know about areas where mainstream popular consensus may be wrong, and partly because I want to encourage a norm of talking about these things in a non-adversarial, thoughtful, non-political way. I'm trying to model what I'd like to see more of.