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bogus comments on [LINK] Why I'm not on the Rationalist Masterlist - Less Wrong Discussion

21 Post author: Apprentice 06 January 2014 12:16AM

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Comment author: bogus 06 January 2014 06:35:28AM *  11 points [-]

But LessWrong isn't about political discussion ...

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.

Comment author: falenas108 06 January 2014 06:57:39AM 0 points [-]

They're showing no appreciation at all for the benefits of open discussion.

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."

Comment author: bbleeker 06 January 2014 12:42:09PM 12 points [-]

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?

Comment author: falenas108 06 January 2014 03:43:30PM -2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Randy_M 06 January 2014 03:54:19PM *  11 points [-]

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."

Comment author: falenas108 06 January 2014 04:33:50PM -1 points [-]

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.