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lmm 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: drethelin 07 January 2014 06:17:33AM 14 points [-]

People are allowed to be repelled by true statements. For example, did you know that many people like to have sex with horses? Both men and women! Horses have very large penises and this is something that both intrigues and excites some people. Did you know that horse semen is available for purchase over the internet? I don't think someone who prefers not hear about horse sex is necessarily or even probably a low quality commenter.

Comment author: lmm 26 January 2014 10:43:52AM 5 points [-]

I'll bite your horse penis: I think someone who would get upset or angry at your statement, who would avoid LW because of it, or ask that LW act to stop such statements being posted here, would indeed be a low quality commenter.

Comment author: drethelin 26 January 2014 09:31:12PM 3 points [-]

I sort of agree with you in that I think the highest quality of commenters won't be super squicked out by either horse sex or talking about cranial capacity differences between races or whether a trolley should run over 3 babies or 2 toddlers. But that's too high a bar! I think plenty of people are disgusted by certain topics and it's worth acknowledging that even smart, mostly well reasoned commenters can be scared away or simply feel unwelcome. Reddit can be a home to various mutually hating subgroups because of its structure, but we use a much less divided system and it's worth considering what topics attract what sorts of commenters.

Plus I don't actually want to talk about horse sex all the time as a filter.