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ChrisHallquist comments on A question about Eliezer - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think at LW, uttering rote admonitions has become a bigger mindkiller than politics itself.
Thomblake and I both noted that "politics is the mindkiller" is the mindkiller a few months ago. It would be nice if we could possibly ease off a bit on behaving quite so phobically about actually practical matters that people would be interested in applying rationality to, if we can stop it turning the site into a sea of blue and green.
Nice post, but I think even that may not go far enough. Eliezer's original post didn't distinguish carefully between gratuitous "digs" and using political examples to illustrate a point. In this thread, if the issue of the success of political commentators in making predictions is a topic perpetualpeace1 knows well, it isn't necessarily wrong for him to use it as an example.
If a substantial portion of LW readers are stopping reading when the encounter a thought on politics they dislike, might be worth confronting that problem directly.
One reason not to use political examples to illustrate a (nonpolitical) point is that it invites a lot of distracting nitpicking from those who identify with the targeted political group.
But another is that if you're trying to make a normative point to a broad audience, then alienating one subset and elevating another — for no good reason — is a losing strategy.
For instance, if you want to talk to people about improving rationality, and you use an example that revolves around some Marxists being irrational and some Georgists being rational, then a lot of the Marxists in the audience are just going to stop listening or get pissed off. But also, a lot of the Georgists are going to feel that they get "rationality points" just for being Georgists.
That's why I did not repeat the cached rote admonition, but tried to explain why I did not think it was a good idea in this case. I'm happy to have been proven wrong in this particular instance, probably because most regulars here know to steer clear from getting sucked into "right vs left" debates.