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Vladimir_M comments on Politics is a fact of life - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (51)
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.