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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.

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14 Politics is a fact of life

by [anonymous]

21st Jan 2011

1 min read

14

There is a tendency to downvote articles and commentaries with a political subtext with a remark on how politics is the mind-killer. I completely understand that nobody wants his mind to be killed, however, I disagree on the employed methods. I don't think anybody can really afford to ignore politics. It's a fact about any group of even a handful of people. Thus instead of shunning politics I think it's better to build one's rational defenses. Understanding that politics is a problem is only the first step. If you stop there, there will always be a big part of life where you are not rational. Therefore I suggest that, as long as it doesn't get out of hands, there should always be room for political discussions if not on the main site at least in the discussion section.

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[-][anonymous]14y330

If talking politics on LW is so great, please link to a political discussion we've had that you'd like to see more of. The political discussions here I've seen in the past haven't gone so well.

I don't think it works well for this community. I used to have some thoughts like yours -- "But I like politics! It's interesting! And I'm right, dammit!" However, LessWrong is really better without it. Both because remaining politics-free keeps us more level-headed about other issues, and because it avoids driving away the rather sizable population of rationalists who hate politics.

[-]Ultima14y00

remaining politics-free keeps us more level-headed about other issues, and because it avoids driving away the rather sizable population of rationalists who hate politics.

Is everybody here interested in everything here?

Probably not, so why shouldn't the people who don't like politics just avoid the political stuff (just like the people not interested in AI just ignore the AI posts)?

[-][anonymous]14y30

Because some people, otherwise valuable and great to have around, will disapprove of someone as soon as they know he/she is interested in politics. They can't help seeing that as a mark of bad character.

I don't know of anyone who thinks "I can't respect her; she has this thing about AI."

[-]Will_Newsome14y-20

It's... interesting... that LW talks more about politics than about social epistemology.

[-][anonymous]14y10

Could you explain what you mean by "social epistemology"?

[-]Will_Newsome14y-30

I will try and one up that by trying to get JenniferRM to explain what she means by social epistemology, since she has better thoughts on the subject than I do.

[-]Anatoly_Vorobey14y210

You're conflating two different things: actual political discussions and meta-political discussions focusing on e.g. "rational defenses" when it comes to politics. You're justifying the latter, but people downvote and shun the former.

The latter, in theory, could be done without any content from the former, although frequently people fail to pull that off. E.g. you could have a discussion about how and why political discussions tend to fail at rationality, and what could be done about it, without opining on any political issue. Such a discussion, I conjecture, would not attract the usual "political" downvotes and objections.

[-]Costanza14y190

Science is a fact of life, one which nobody can really afford to ignore. But a steady diet of science news is bad for you: You are what you eat, and if you eat only science reporting on fluid situations, without a solid textbook now and then, your brain will turn to liquid. Or so I've heard.

Matters of policy and governance and economics are important. But typically, "politics" tends to mean "political news" -- election horseraces, poorly-designed opinion polls, and general show business for ugly people. That's why it's the mind-killer.

I would not automatically downvote a serious analysis of policy or governance on this site. Something like an examination of a RAND study.

[-]TheOtherDave14y40

Sure, valueless political discussions are valueless, and valuable ones aren't. Of course.

The question is whether we {do, should, can} condition our rejection of a discussion on its valuelessness rather than its political character. The implicit suggestion is that rather than treating political discussions as something special, we ought to enforce the general rule of rejecting valueless discussion.

The main difficulty I see is that we don't actually seem to enforce such a general rule.

[-]Costanza14y50

I'd rather say that the "political character" of a discussion on an open internet forum like this -- one not devoted to politics -- tends to be a very good predictor that the discussion will be valueless, or worse. I'm sure there would be exceptions, but I don't know that this is shows much of an error in the existing karma system.

[-]prase14y160

Politics is difficult to treat empirically. Let me take the risk and mention a potentially sensitive political question now to illustrate the problems.

Should we stay in Afghanistan after 2015? (By we, I mean all countries that have some units there, and by stay I mean continued non-negligible military presence. The date 2015 was chosen arbitrarily - I suppose the complete withdrawal cannot realistically be done much sooner. I am aware that a non-negligible part of LessWrong audience comes from countries not engaged in the war, but I wanted to leave the question brief.)

It is a sensible question: important (it influences relations between Islamic nations and the West), potentially interesting for all (contrary to, say, gay marriage laws in California, which would be primarily interesting to Californians, while others unfamiliar with Californian politics would have difficulties to understand the details), morally relevant (number of killed people depends on the decision), concrete (in contrast to, say, "is libertarianism good?"), and so on.

Now how shall we determine the answer? Even if the question is pretty concrete, there is vast number of things we should consider. First, the answer depends on values: how much do we care about lifes of the Afghanis? How much do we want them to be free to choose their form of government, even if the most likely choice is theocracy? Do we want to preserve some deontological principles, like sovereignty of countries and prohibition of war, even if it prevents us from maximising utilities? Of course, we could tackle these questions separately at first, and after finding agreement come back to the overall discussions of Afghanistan. But I don't expect finding agreement on the particular questions. We haven't yet agreed upon the Trolley problem, where we are free to make up all convenient simplifications.

Then, we should engage in prediction. What will be the effects of the continued presence in Afghanistan? What will be the consequences of a withdrawal? Future predictions are hard, require specialised knowledge, and worse, exactly what knowledge is relevant may be disputed. I don't expect finding an agreement here either.

Would it even be better if we instead discussed "should Brutus et al. have killed Caesar?" There is hardly any mind-killing potency left in this question, but finding an agreement is almost equally unlikely.

The obvious mind killing, i.e. biases creating strong emotions which lead people to support parties rather than seek truth is only one side of the problem with politics. The other side is that the discussion is drown in the immense sea of differing intuitions, hard to classify evidence, confounding variables and lack of experimental data.

Some political questions can be possibly reduced into solvable elements, but these reduced parts would probably no more look like politics. Assembling them together back to solve the original political problem would then be a hard work which will not fit into a blog post. The lack of political posts here may be result of the LW's no-politics policy, but also it may be result of our ability to recognise that those questions are far too much complicated to be solved here. There are no posts about string theory on LW as well.

[-]Emile14y140

There is a tendency to downvote articles and commentaries with a political subtext with a remark on how politics is the mind-killer. I completely understand that nobody wants his mind to be killed, however, I disagree on the employed methods.

I don't think many people are worried about their mind being killed as much as the community being damaged.

[-]XiXiDu14y00

I don't think many people are worried about their mind being killed as much as the community being damaged.

People who are rational enough to not laugh about superhuman intelligences threatening galactic civilizations, who are not angered by a bunch of hardcore atheists, will likely be able to consider arguments rather than being driven away by the political affiliation of some members.

[-]benelliott14y60

I think the worry is that discussing politics runs the risk of creating tribalism, which would severely damage our ability to discuss the other topics.

[-]XiXiDu14y00

How is politics defined with LW? My current understanding is that discussing the goal-system of an FAI can be considered politics. After all an FAI would be ruling, making decisions while running the universe. What difference is there between a health-care debate, or to wage war against some country versus the implementation of CEV over any other goal-system and the possible suppression of any alien civilisation or other potential minds?

If you consider creating a fooming AI a political act, which I think is reasonable given its consequences, then you not only discuss politics on LW but also ask people to contribute to a certain political player who is trying overthrow all governments in favor of a new world order. Sounds crazy, but I don't see how that differs, except in scale.

[-]benelliott14y70

You make a good point, so I'll try to be more clear about why starting a Health-care debate on LW would worry me.

Politics has a tendency to create what I call 'bad entanglements'. An example would be the fact that in US politics there is a correlation between supporting Health Care and supporting Homosexual Marriage. There is no particular reason for this, I personally can't see any inference by which one position can be derived from the other. This only happened because both issues were debated by the same people in the environment, and Blue and Green politics turned them into two sides each with their own position on both issues (and many others).

Overall, I would say this entanglement reduces the chance of an good resolution for either issue.

What I don't want to see is the problem of Friendly AI developing its own bad entanglements. I have already seen this happening to some extent within Friendly, those who believe it is possible are more likely to believe its necessary and those who think its impossible tend to think its unnecessary (not yet a very strong correlation thankfully). This suggests we may not be good enough at rationality to avoid this problem yet.

Since the problem of bad entanglements seems quite difficult to excise, our best strategy is to focus on making sure it doesn't get started, which can be done by not discussing too many controversial issues in one place. In fact, I would probably suggest that as a general policy for any community that actually wants to resolve the issues it discusses.

[-]torekp14y40

How is politics defined with LW?

It isn't. But by any definition respecting ordinary language, creating a fooming AI is a very political act. Yet the subject has been discussed many times on LW without anyone's mind being killed. (Some minor injuries, perhaps ;) ) Thank goodness the LW community doesn't take its own rules too seriously.

There is no need to start a thread on the public and private sectors' roles in health care. But if the subject comes up naturally in a discussion on, say, seeking psychological expert help in overcoming some form of irrationality - then let it. Let it be touched on (not displace the original topic) as far as is relevant. Putting up crude firewalls is not worth the price in artificially constrained discussion. The "slippery slope" isn't - as demonstrated in the response to Mass_Driver's recent thread.

[-]Vladimir_Nesov14y120

I don't think anybody can really afford to ignore politics.

I completely ignore politics. What am I losing?

[-]Vladimir_M14y130

Vladimir_Nesov:

I completely ignore politics. What am I losing?

You will probably agree that historically there have been at least some times and places where completely ignoring politics could be very costly. Therefore, if you believe that you're not losing anything by ignoring politics at the present time and place where you live, this can be rational only if you have some evidence that the present social order you live under is not in that category. However, you cannot have any such evidence if you really ignore politics completely.

It follows that either you're being irrational, or your level of interest in politics is perhaps very low, but still above zero.

[-]Vladimir_Nesov14y-10

It follows that either you're being irrational, or your level of interest in politics is perhaps very low, but still above zero.

I'd ask for specific examples of the kinds of situations you are talking about (and correspondingly the intended meaning of "interest in politics" appropriate for those situations). But it's not helpful to draw a distinction between "very low level of interest, above zero" and "completely no interest" for discussing the intended meaning in the post (i.e. deciding whether to have discussions about politics of LW). So sure, I didn't make this distinction. I don't see why you would see this distinction as relevant.

[-][anonymous]14y00

What I'm driving at is that the minimal level of interest in politics that it can be rational to have nevertheless invites non-trivial questions. Specifically, if the only belief about politics that you ever bother forming is that no further interest in politics is desirable or necessary, this belief still requires non-trivial justification, and it's irrational to ignore this question. (Which would be implied by the statement that one ignores politics completely.)

The concrete examples of situations where lack of knowledge of politics is costly (i.e. more costly than the cost of acquiring it) are easy to come by. It's enough to observe any occasion of damaging political instability, and how different people end up better off than others because they weren't caught by surprise. There are many other examples too, which I'm sure you can think of.

Now of course, you may conclude that the probability of all this is small enough that it's not worth your time and effort to think about it, just like e.g. the probability of dying in an earthquake is too small to justify obsessing over seismology. But if you only knew that there exists such a thing as earthquakes and that they strike with different frequencies in different places, without knowing anything more about them, it would be irrational not to inform yourself further about it to ensure that the probabilities of these dangers are indeed low enough. Yet while it's easy to obtain this seismological information with full reliability, my belief is that obtaining similarly reliable political information for analogous purposes is much more difficult, and worthy of asking some non-trivial questions.

[-]Vladimir_Nesov14y00

In what cases you shouldn't just rely on your gut feeling telling that everything is likely fine for the near future, and instead have to work on understanding the situation better? That gut feeling doesn't require additional work, and it does inform you about the current situation.

I'd expect that if anything so serious as to require action on my part was going on, and it would be possible to know it given more effort, my attention would be drawn to it, without the need to research things in advance. (This is the kind of state that I intended when asking for examples, and it's not clear what such examples are.)

[-]prase14y100

Why are people deleting comments with subcomments? It is annoying.

[-]Vladimir_M14y20

My apologies for that blunder -- please see the above reply to Vladimir Nesov for explanation.

[-]Vladimir_M14y40

My apologies for deleting the above comment -- after writing it, I concluded that it was unsatisfactory and decided to rewrite it. I wasn't aware that you had started writing a reply almost immediately after I had posted it. This was careless, although it wasn't my intention to be inconsiderate, and thanks for replying in any case.

Basically, the point at which we disagree is the following:

I'd expect that if anything so serious as to require action on my part was going on, and it would be possible to know it given more effort, my attention would be drawn to it, without the need to research things in advance.

As I've mentioned in previous discussions of this topic, my opinion about this specific question was strongly influenced by personal experiences. Specifically, it was the fact that my family members had this exact attitude in ex-Yugoslavia circa 1991 that caused a lot of avoidable trouble for us (which some other people I know indeed avoided thanks to their better insight into the situation). It doesn't seem to me that this example is particularly extreme or unique historically; I can easily think of many others that have happened around the world only in recent decades, and I'm sure you can too.

Now of course, one could argue that I am biased in overestimating the probability of such events, or that I'm overestimating the possibility that one could ever actually gain useful enough insight for this purpose, the things being just too unpredictable. I'm open to arguments on both these counts, but it certainly seems to me that based on my current state of knowledge, it would be irrational to just cease any interest in these issues.

There are also, in my view, other situations in life where acquiring political knowledge can be very cost-effective, and I think this holds even if you actively shun any political engagement in your life. But I suspect we would reach similar disagreements if we were to discuss any specific examples.

[-]Douglas_Knight14y80

That one should assess political stability and predict the actions of politicians is a very different claim than that one should discuss optimal policy, which is what most people mean by "discuss politics" and a good chunk of your activities on the education thread. I find that people's discussions of policy tend to reinforce their beliefs in the stability of the current regime. That is a very serious cost of discussing policy as if one could control it.

[-]multifoliaterose14y30

Specifically, it was the fact that my family members had this exact attitude in ex-Yugoslavia circa 1991 that caused a lot of avoidable trouble for us (which some other people I know indeed avoided thanks to their better insight into the situation).

Elsewhere you said:

I lived through a time and place -- late 1980s and early 1990s in ex-Yugoslavia -- where most people were blissfully unaware of the storm that was just beyond the horizon, even though any cool-headed objective observer should have been able to foresee it.

I'd be interested in hearing more about this sometime; all I know is the western media depictions of the Yugoslav wars, it would be interesting to know how things looked from the inside preceding them.

[-]Vladimir_M14y00

Well, I could write a lot about it, but I think I've underscored the aspects relevant for this topic well enough already. If you have some more specific questions, feel free to PM me.

[-]Emile14y20

Is there any account of things you'd recommend for curious western readers? Either written by you in the comments here (I haven't been obsessively reading all comments here), or somewhere else.

[-]Vladimir_M14y40

For someone interested in this topic, I would first recommend making sure to gain an accurate understanding of the general historical framework in which this and other modern-era European ethnic and ideological conflicts have occurred. Without that, one is likely to get lost in the flood of complicated details and confused by the various parties' contradicting attempts to present their case as favorably as possible (or worse, successfully propagandized by some of them).

The ex-Yugoslav wars were, in my view, not a unique grand event that by itself decisively shaped history, like e.g. the world wars were, but rather just another instance of wider phenomena that have manifested themselves in many other places and times. Therefore, in my opinion, an interested reader should approach this topic by first gaining general insights about the origins and development of democratic and nationalistic ideologies in Europe in recent centuries, then studying the pre-1990 historical background of the ex-Yugoslav peoples, and only then getting into the concrete details of what happened in the 1990s. In my opinion, at each step a correct grasp of generalities, even if vague, is much more valuable than knowledge of details.

I'm not familiar with the academic sources on ex-Yugoslav wars, but for a detailed factual account, the (English) Wikipedia pages are generally not bad.

[-]David_Gerard14y00

Heh. Yes, someone who's ever been subject to the sharp end of "show business for ugly people" will never, ever forget its relevance to their life.

[-]David_Gerard14y100

Know what'd be highly useful? More on practical applications for plain old chimpanzee tribal politics. That is, the whole reason evolution hit upon general intelligence for us in the first place. Call it "micropolitics" to distinguish it from "show business for ugly people."

I've been applying the lessons of LessWrong a fair bit lately in micropolitics. Mostly Wikimedia-related stuff. If I say so myself, I've had some recent success putting WYSIWYG back on the agenda, including inspiring a very promising new approach. And a couple of other things that are in progress. But then, Wikimedia and Wikipedia are the deep end as far as quickly learning to work with others goes.

So, how are others going with applying rationality to micropolitics? Remember, you grew that brain at all to do tribal politics. You're naturally good at this.

[-]lukeprog14y90

I vote for keeping politics out of things. I do not trust LWers to discuss politics rationally most of the time. Nor do I trust myself to discuss politics rationally most of the time. The articles and discussion on Less Wrong have been fantastic without politics.

[-]Ultima14y-30

How could the LWers learn to discuss it rationally if you keep it out right from the outset? Isn't talking about something rationally a skill that you acquire? Sure, most people have no idea how to discuss politics rationally (and furthermore have no idea that they have no idea how to talk about it in a rational way), but that doesn't mean that they can't learn. If you keep your kid on a leash all day because you don't trust him to make the right decisions, what exactly would be bound to happen once you get distracted and drop the leash for a few minutes?

[-]Nornagest14y20

It's inappropriate to treat politics as a separate magisterium. There's nothing exceptional about the tools we apply to the topic: we've discussed collective action problems, social signaling, and defense against rhetoric and marketing at length here, all mostly without making recourse to their political applications.

LWers can learn to discuss politics rationally by building skill in the techniques appropriate to political discussion. Using political examples directly could be expected to do this efficiently iff we successfully manage to keep the discussion on the techniques themselves, but politics is loaded with so much bias that that's an exceptionally difficult task; if we can't hack it, the better option overall is to train on less efficient but less distracting examples.

[-]Vladimir_M14y80

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.

[-][anonymous]14y140

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?

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.

[-]Vladimir_M14y90

Konkvistador:

Delusions that are truly widely held and not merely believed to be widely held are far too dangerous to attack.

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).

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.

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.

[-]lessdazed14y110

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"

LW treats people like they are silly, none of their core values are beyond question, their imagined reasons are confabulations, and their real reasons reek of bias, irrationality, and anti-epistemology.

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.

[-]JGWeissman14y100

[-]cousin_it14y50

how can you be confident that you're better than average in other areas

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?

[-]Vladimir_M14y10

cousin_it:

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.

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).

Also please note that SarahC has updated from answering "yes, but be careful" to answering "no". Has anyone updated in the opposite direction?

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.)

[-][anonymous]14y90

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.

[-]steven046114y30

posts and comments that talk about politics in the usual way full of biases, delusions, and strong emotions should be downvoted and discouraged

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.)

[-]cousin_it14y80

See these previous discussions: 1, 2.My own position is best stated here.

[-]nazgulnarsil14y70

yes you can afford to ignore it. you really really can. you think you can't because your monkey brain is screaming that you won't have any allies or mating opportunities in the tribe.

[-]Dorikka14y60

I've upvoted the thread because, while I disagree with its point, I think it's a good idea to infrequently re-analyze whether a subject is fit for discussion here. However, I might not upvote if I saw this (why not politics?) particular type of post appear very often.

I don't want to see macropolitical (using this as a made-up word to indicate non-micropolitical issues, as defined in prior comments) discussion on LW because they give me a lot less useful information than does almost any other type of discussion. I am personally very uninterested in politics given that my impact is likely to be extremely low in it, so I see it as a waste of computing power, a source of accidental mind-killing, and a source of negative emotion which may interfere with my ability to do more worthwhile things.

On the other hand, I would welcome posts on micropolitics -- I plan to take a 'donor' path and foresee that I will need to learn how to usefully interact and manipulate (without connotation) people in a corporate setting and such.

[-][anonymous]14y50

Therefore I suggest that, as long as it doesn't get out of hands, there should always be room for political discussions if not on the main site at least in the discussion section

Tribalism will spill over, this is a bad idea.

[-]PeterisP14y30

As the saying goes, you can ignore politics but it doesn't mean that politics will ignore you.

It is instrumentally rational to be aware of political methodologies both in the sense that they will interact with many issues in your daily life and also in the sense on how you may improve the success chances of any goals needing interaction or cooperation with others.

[-]Nornagest14y10

I agree, but would draw a distinction between studying political methodology and political issues. Many mind-killers aren't mind-killing if you study them through an abstraction layer.

[-]magfrump14y20

Pro: Posts like this get large numbers of upvotes, indicating that people want to see more of them.

Con: As SarahC points out below, however, when people start posting their opinions (which they will) things get ugly.

I'm somewhat on the fence, in that I (like many others) am insatiably curious about what would come out of such discussions, and believe that in the end either I or many other people will have a large number of incorrect beliefs rectified. On the other hand, I do not know if the community would recognizably survive such a discussion, so for now I'd say it's best to wait.

[-]Perplexed14y20

Pro: Therefore I suggest that, as long as it doesn't get out of hands, there should always be room for political discussions if not on the main site at least in the discussion section.

Con: There should always be room for political discussion in our lives. But why on this site? There are other places people can go to talk politics.

Pro: Why not on this site? Discussion is always more productive when you are among friends - people you know are not trolls, and from whom you can expect a well-reasoned argument.

Con: But politics is the mind killer. If we allowed political discussion here, friends would become enemies, mild-mannered commenters would become trolls, and rationalists would become just so many Republicans and Democrats.

Pro: Really? If our veneer of rationalism is that fragile, perhaps this community is not as exceptional as we like to think. Why not give it a test? We can only learn something from this experience. Only we can learn something from this experience!

Con: No. It is just too risky.

Pro: Nothing ventured ...

Con: Ok. An experiment then. But it has to be safe. And limited. With ground rules and criteria for evaluating results agreed upon in advance.

Pro: Sounds good. ... Wait! You expect ME to propose the rules? Sorry, I'm no good at this. But maybe the readership has some suggestions.

[-][anonymous]14y-20

I don't think anybody can really afford to ignore politics. It's a fact about any group of even a handful of people.

There is a an old saying: You might not be interested in politics, but politicis is interested in you.

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