Open thread, Nov. 17 - Nov. 23, 2014

MrMind

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

I was reading the thread about Neoreaction and remembered this old LW post from five years ago:

Somewhere in the vastness of the Internet, it is happening even now. It was once a well-kept garden of intelligent discussion, where knowledgeable and interested folk came, attracted by the high quality of speech they saw ongoing. But into this garden comes a fool, and the level of discussion drops a little—or more than a little, if the fool is very prolific in their posting. (It is worse if the fool is just articulate enough that the former inhabitants of the garden feel obliged to respond, and correct misapprehensions—for then the fool dominates conversations.)

So the garden is tainted now, and it is less fun to play in; the old inhabitants, already invested there, will stay, but they are that much less likely to attract new blood. Or if there are new members, their quality also has gone down.

When I saw the question posted in the discussion, I thought it had a potential to be a good discussion topic. After all, I reasoned, there are a many thoughtful people on LessWrong who are interested in politics, history, political philosophy. There are a lot of insights to be gained from discussing interesting and difficult questions about society. And there are quite a few insightful neoreactionaries here, eg. Konkvistador and others (some of whom sadly no longer actively participate on LW). And some neoreactionary ideas are interesting and worth a look.

Despite all this, it seems that currently so many of subthreads of that thread basically turned into an unproductive flamewar. Why? Well, politics is the mind-killer, of course. What should have I expected. Nevertheless, I think it could have been avoided. I am not totally against political discussion in some threads. In fact, even many comments in that thread are good. Well, taken individually many comments are quite reasonable, for example, some of them explain a certain position and while you may agree or disagree with a stated position, you can't say anything bad about the comment itself. However, when aggregated they do not form a productive atmosphere of the thread. While many comments are reasonable, it is suspiciously easy to sort most of them into a two group - pro- and anti- neoreaction with little middle ground who could act as (sort of) judges that could help evaluate the claims of both sides. There is suspiciously little belief updating (even on small issues) going on (maybe it is different among lurkers), which is probably a very important measure of whether discussion was actually productive (I do not claim that all LessWrong discussions are productive. A lot of them aren't). Many people aren't arguing in good faith. Some of them even post links to this discussion in other forums as if it is representative of LessWrong as a whole.

I am not calling for censorship or deletion of certain comments. Nor I want discussing controversial issues being prohibited. I am calling for a moment of reflection about mind-killing. For a moment of consideration about whether you yourself aren't mind-killed, whether you yourself are no longer updating your beliefs honestly, whether you are no longer arguing in a good faith (even if the other side lowered its standards first). I don't know what ritual could be devised to reinforce this point. Maybe it is true that there is only three stable equilibria points (Vladimir_M, alas, no longer comments on LessWrong). Is it possible to devise something, I don't know, maybe a ritual or social norm or yet something else that would help keep things in an unstable point of both having the broad scope of questions and the high quality discussion? Or is any such attempt doomed to crumble due to the influence of discussion standards of the outside world?

In addition to that, I think that the question itself was poorly worded. It was way too broad. The questions that are likely to be polarizing would benefit from being much more narrow and much more specific. Maybe this way everyone would be talking about the same thing, as it would be much harder to try to steer the discussion into things that you like to talk about. Maybe this way everyone would have clearer and more concrete idea about what everyone else is talking about, making it easier to reason about the whole situation, easier to weigh the evidence in favour of one or the other position.

One aspect of neoreactionary thought is that it relies on historical narratives instead of focusing on specific claims that could be true or false in a way that can be determined by evidence.

To quote Moldbug:

Classifying traditions by their cladistic ancestry is a fine example. The statement that Universalism exists, that it is a descendant of Christianity, and that it is not a descendant of Confucianism, can only be interpreted intuitively. It is not a logical proposition in any sense. It has no objective truth-value. It is a pattern that strikes me as,

... (read more)

5Viliam_Bur12y

I agree it would be good to find a better method to debate politics. Maybe we should have a meta-rule that anyone who starts a political debate must specify rules how the topic should be debated. (So now the burden is on the people who want to debate politics here.) It seems to me that in political topics most of updating happens between the conversation. It's not like you say something and the other person is "oh, you totally convinced me, I am changing my mind now". Instead, you say something, the other person looks at you very suspiciously and walks away. Later they keep thinking about it, maybe google some data, maybe talk with other people, and the next time you meet them, their position is different from the last time. For example, I have updated, from mildly pro-NR to anti-NR. I admit they have a few good points. But this is generally my experience with political movements: they are often very good at pointing out the obvious flaws of their competitors; the problem is that their own case is usually not much better, only different. I appreciate the few insights, they made me update, and I still keep thinking about some stuff. I just didn't come to the same conclusion; I separated the stuff that makes sense to me from the stuff that doesn't. Just like I try to draw good ideas e.g. from religion, without becoming religious. Instead of buying the whole package, I take a few bricks and add them to my model of the world. There are a few bricks in my model now that an outside observer could call "neoreactionary", although that would probably depend on the exact words I would use to describe them (because they are not unique for NR). The other bricks I have judged separately, and I was unimpressed. That's where I am now. There is also this irritating fact that NRs keep associating themselves with LW. I consider that a huge dishonesty and in a way an attack on this community. If people are impressed by LW, this can make them more open towards NR. If people are disg

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