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.

So I'll try to write it throughout an all-nighter I'm pulling tonight, and even then I'm not promising anything. :)

I think that would be a rather cool text, so please do!

BONUS! Something I should've linked to a lot earlier. A great article by Linda Gottfriedson, an illustrious old lady who does ev-psych like Razib Khan but gets more status for it. What if the Hereditarian Hypothesis is True? - on how there are better, more fair ways to reduce racial achievement gaps than Affirmative Action in the oft-dreaded case that group genetic differences determine individual IQ a lot. Everybody please read it.

I've read some of her work before but not that particular paper, I've downloaded it for later reading.

That is, don't get caught up in the halo effect - most Soviet dissidents were indeed heroic people with uncommon clarity of vision towards their own system of repression in their own time, but that doesn't mean you would find their "general" judgment of things at all acceptable.

Just out of curiosity which works from Soviet dissidents would you recommend I read?

but his stuff would bounce right off Moldbug's black-and-white brain!

This is unfair to him no? While Moldbug clearly dislikes universalism, his brain is far less black-and-white than that of the regular modern intellectual. If the past is a foreign country, he is its premier explorer. He may have gone a bit native, but it takes one of those to humble us into occasionally looking past our biases and taking those weird savages seriously.

I would argue the fact that Moldbug can stand reading all these interesting and ideologically widely disparate sources is evidence he is if anything too open to any shiny new idea he encounters.

Just out of curiosity which works from Soviet dissidents would you recommend I read?

Varlam Shalamov. Bleak, great and terrible. Also fairly apolitical, beyond a confirmation that tyranny is tyranny and it fucks people bad. He's certainly beyond the notions of individualism and collectivism that a "civilized" life allows; it's all about mere survival in an order of pure hatred and malice.

This is unfair to him no? While Moldbug clearly dislikes universalism, his brain is far less black-and-white than that of the regular modern intellectual.

Y... (read more)