(Vladimir_Nesov, I think this 5 karma hit thing shouldn't apply to all comments in a thread stemming from a highly downvoted comment; it discourages resolution of confusions and breeds resentment toward LW as a community, which occasionally leads to publicity problems in other fora. Which I don't really care about but I bet you do.)
This updates my estimate of your political position closer to the middle.
I am probably somewhere in the middle. I don't have very developed views about politics; my take on political discourse is more sociological than anything. I don't think that I have enough information or wisdom to have justified political opinions. Mostly my feelings are, people suck at reasoning about politics, right-leaning people suck in a quaint mostly ineffective way, left-leaning people suck in a really dangerous way, Marxists are really smart and I don't understand them yet but I get the feeling they're engaged in some fucked up casuistry, reactionaries should stick to deconstruction of leftism (which is great! they should team up with Marxists!) and stop making fools of themselves with impossible policy recommendations and myopic political theory, libertarians are largely philosophically misguided which is a problem since they reason from ethics so much, I have to have contempt for liberaltarians because otherwise people might mistake me for a stereotype of that group to which I am most related, et cetera.
To me having confident political opinions is like going into some rainforest ecosystem where everything is strangling everything else and being like, ya know what, I'm definitely going to take sides with the lizards in this scenario, they seem most righteous, fuck the snakes and the birds and the trees and the bugs. I mean, liking lizards is cool, go ahead, but when it comes to 'alright let's cull the snake population, they're keeping down the lizards', at that point it's like people are almost trying to shoot themselves in the feet.
On a side note, do your Christian friends know of your notion of superhuman gods? What do they think about it?
I had two close seriously Christian friends in high school, one a conservative and ideological Christian, the other more of a nuanced philosopher. I barely ever talk to the former, and the latter may have changed his views since high school and is reticent to talk about them. So, no, they're not familiar with my notions. I befriended a Mormon girl within the last year and she and I mostly talk about the problem of discernment. Her perspective is more 'you can go with your instinct about whether an experience confirms the interpretational framework in which you experience it', whereas mine is more 'basically everyone is heavy-handed in their interpretation of these things, the phenomena seem to be purposefully baffling in a way that makes correct interpretation nearly impossible' (which is sort of my perspective on everything, but it applies triply to topics as tricky as the supernatural). So, she thinks I should have more faith or something. Other than that, I haven't talked much with Christian people about the supernatural (and I'd argue Mormonism barely counts as Christianity from a theological perspective and perhaps also an anthropological one). Mostly I stick to theology, where in some ways I feel more confident I know what I'm talking about.
While LessWrong contains a large amount of high-quality material, most of the rationality advice isn't actually targeted at our core audience. The focus seems to be more on irrational things that people do, rather than irrational things that smart people do. (Sidenote: If we wanted to create a site focused on spreading general rationality, then we'd need to simplify the discussion, remove a lot of the maths/controversial ideas and add in some friendly images. Does such a site exist?).
This has led to a number of comments questioning the real world value of having read the sequences. If your average person had the patience to read through the core sequences and understand them, they'd find them extremely valuable. It'd provide them with a glimpse into a new way of thinking and even though they would likely hardly appear to be very logical to most Less Wrongers, they'd be much better than they were at the start.
On the other hand, most Less Wrongers already know the basics of logic. That's not to say that we don't act extremely irrational much of the time, but just that going over the basics of logic again probably provides minimal benefit. What is needed is something specifically targeted at the kind of irrational mistakes and beliefs that intelligent people make. I would argue that if this were a sequence, it would be the most important sequence in the entire site. But, since I lack that level of writing ability, I'm not even going to attempt such a project. So I just created a post where we can list articles or ideas that should be part of such a sequence in the hope that someone else might pick it up
Here are some examples of mistakes that intelligent people make:
Taking a fixed instead of a growth mindset - shying away from challenges, convincing oneself that we are just naturally bad at non-intellectual things and that we shouldn't focus on them
Directly pointing out people's flaws
Overthinking issues that are really very simple
Counter-signalling by ignoring the value of fashion, money, being liked
Valuing intelligence above all other qualities
Rigidly adhering to rules
Expecting other people to always be rational
Not considering popularity as a signal that is worthwhile understanding
Overvaluing being right
I'm sure there are plenty more. Any other suggestions or relevant articles?