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TheOtherDave comments on Let's talk about politics - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (20)
As I've said elsewhere, it's worth taking the second-order effects into account.
That is, suppose I accept for the sake of comity that LW's exceptional discussion-having abilities would be well-used discussing partisan national politics. (In actual fact I'm unconvinced of this, given what I've seen of it.)
I should still ask myself what kinds of people will join LW if we start regularly discussing such issues who would not otherwise join, and what effect they will have on our exceptional discussion-having abilities.
My prediction, given that we're an open-registration forum on the Internet, is that it will net degrade those abilities.
I realise more and more that I did not phrase my question/query very well. What I meant with a political discussion was that you have a general issue and you try to find either the truth or a consens if possible. So I don't want to discuss Democrats vs Republicans (I am German anyway) but talk about certain issues that you would not want to discuss, because they are "political". (e.g. same sex marriage, how to minimise poverty etc.)
If you want to discuss a topic without reference to partisan national politics, I'd recommend you do so and see what happens. I expect that for the most part, if the topic is one of genuine interest, you'll get a discussion about it.
That said, it's worth paying attention to what makes certain topics seem interesting in the first place.
I discuss same-sex marriage on this site not-infrequently, for example. That's because I happen to be in one, and we often discuss relationship dynamics. I don't generally get downvoted for it.
OTOH, if I were to start talking about legalizing same-sex marriage in America in the abstract, the most plausible explanation for why I was talking about this would be because it has become a partisan political question in an election year. If I wanted to talk about it for some other reason, I would make a distinct effort to frame it so that my real reasons were immediately clear.
I would also look skeptically at my own belief that those really were my real reasons.