Politics Discussion Thread September 2012

Multiheaded

The last thread didn't fare too badly, I think; let's make it a monthly tradition. (Me, I'm more interested in thinking about real-world policies or philosophies, actual and possible, rather than AI design or physics, and I suspect that many fine, non-mind-killed folks reading LW also are - but might be ashamed to admit it!)

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

But in the world we live in, there are groups that are (1) identified by persona characteristics, and (2) oppressed in some sense by the mainstream. If those groups don't conflate the personal and the political, they don't have a workable roadmap to social change.

There is no reason to expect that politics somehow inherently favors the truly oppressed. In reality, groups that are strong have inherent advantages in politicking over groups that are weak. The real oppressed have low status, few allies, and no resources.

Rule of thumb: the group that everyone agrees is the most oppressed is not actually the most oppressed - at least, not any longer. The most oppressed group doesn't have that kind of PR!

No one is claiming that "politics somehow favors the truly oppressed", nor need they in order to argue that "the personal is political" [EDIT: in the sense that political activity can be necessary for personal-looking goals; the phrase can be understood in other ways]. What's relevant is whether politics is necessary for the truly oppressed.

Hypothetical world: two subpopulations, the lucky Haves and the oppressed Have-Nots. Everything is harder for the Have-Nots because of explicitly discriminatory laws, casual tribal hatreds, lack of r... (read more)

1TimS14y

My point is simply that the original quote is a roadmap for moving up the status ladder. Moving a group up the status ladder is hard to do deliberately and the insightful idea from the quote goes to the methodology of deliberate social engineering. Like most social engineering techniques, it does not inherently favor any particular group.