= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
bogus comments on [LINK] Why I'm not on the Rationalist Masterlist - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (866)
This is harsh, but I think it's basically right. A useful rule of thumb: any time you see the words "safe space" used in the context of deliberation or political discussion (as opposed to, y'know, providing actual, safe, spaces to people threatened with actual bodily harm) you can substitute "echo chamber" and see whether their argument still makes sense. Yes, sometimes echo chambers generate worthwhile political arguments, but that's kind of the exception, not the rule. And these arguments still need to be evaluated openly, if only because this is the only way of acquiring durable credibility in a political or deliberative context.
I agree about political discussion. But LessWrong isn't about political discussion. Far more important to a typical LessWronger would be something like community building, which correct me if I'm wrong but that's pretty much a textbook example of what "safe space" is good for. This criticism was not directed at us per se, but we can extract useful information from it.
It is about honest discussion of issues with political implications, I believe, without unnecessarily belaboring those implications.
Fair point. It is about deliberation, though. And make no mistake, these folks use "safe space" in the political/echo-chamber sense all the time. To me, this makes their overall argument extremely problematic - they're showing no appreciation at all for the benefits of open discussion.
Also, yes, real-world communities, meetups etc. are quite different and some important concerns do come into play. But LW folks have been quite aware of this, and we've seen plenty of useful discussion about related issues, with very little controversy.
Yes, creating a safe space does prevent an entirely open discussion. So downvoting to oblivion people to talk about the merits of killing everyone in Asia, or the validity of Christianity. As a community, we have decided that there are certain discussions we don't want to have, and certain topics we don't want to discuss.
Not all safe spaces are equal. A safe space for a support group for trans folk would have a different meaning for a safe space for African Americans. I think Less Wrong could have its own version of a safe space, with the spirit behind the rules being something like "don't say/advocate for violence against others, don't be needlessly rude, don't use personal attacks."
But those already are the rules on LW......aren't they?
Yeah, in theory. This leads to two things:
1) We already do have a kind of safe space in theory, it's mostly the name "safe space" that turns people off more than the actual idea.
2) We're doing part of that wrong, because it was people advocating ideas that would be dangerous to the OP that turned her off from LW in the first place.
I think you are covering a lot of distance by stretching "don't advocate violence" into "don't say anything that someone feels the widespread adoption of could be potentially dangerous."
Actually, this is something I've been a bit confused about the whole time. What posts is she talking about? The OP says Yvain's posts, but from the substance of the article the article it sounds like she's talking about reactionaries.
Considering the much higher than average rate of homocide towards trans people based on todays standards, a reinforcement of gender roles would almost certainly increase that rate.