hyporational comments on [LINK] Why I'm not on the Rationalist Masterlist - Less Wrong Discussion
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Oh, certainly. Feminism points out, though, that the social mainstream is also a strong political identity which systematically distorts people's maps. They use somewhat unfortunate historical words for this effect, like "patriarchy". That's just a label on their maps, though; calling a stream a creek doesn't change the water.
So combining this with your guideline, we should be careful not to invite anyone who has a strong political identity ... but we cannot do that, because "ordinary guy" (and "normal woman") is a strong political identity too. It's just a strong political identity one of whose tenets is that it is not a strong political identity.
We don't have the freedom to set out with an undistorted map, nor of having a perfect guide as to whose maps are more distorted. Being wrong doesn't feel like being wrong. A false belief doesn't feel like a false belief. If you start with ignorance priors and have a different life, you do not end up with the same posteriors. And as a consequence, meeting someone who has different data from you can feel like meeting someone who is just plain wrong about a lot of things!
Also ... I wonder what a person whose maps of the social world were really "no better than random" would look like. I think he or she would be vastly more unfortunate than a paranoid schizophrenic. He or she would certainly be grossly unable to function in society, lacking any ability to model or predict other people. As a result, he or she would probably have no friends, job, or political allies. Lacking the ability to work with other people at all, he or she would certainly not look like a member of any political movement.
As such, I have to consider that when applied to someone who clearly does not have these attributes, that expression is being used as merely a crude insult, akin to calling someone a "drooling moron" or "mental incompetent" because they disagree with you.
This sounds awfully like "if you're not with me, you're my enemy." Any advice how to untangle myself from this web that seems inescapable? I already don't vote or read the news from any particular source, nor do I actively try to change political opinions.
People with agendas seem to want to make everything about politics and me as their pawn as a consequence. When they try to take my passiveness IRL as a sign of opposition to their political agenda, I usually proceed to explain how much more of a political enemy I could be just to demonstrate my point if I cared to.