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The_Lion comments on Are we failing the ideological Turing test in the case of ISIS? (a crazy ideas thread) - Less Wrong Discussion
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I am 100% in favour of looking at the evidence. But that isn't a thing Val could have done to avoid arguments breaking out in the comments, because how carefully Val has looked at the evidence has essentially no bearing on whether others choose to argue about the issue. And it certainly isn't a thing Val could have done to avoid arguments while also expressing an unwillingness to get involved in those arguments because the only way Val's expertise thus acquired could influence the arguments would be through Val getting involved.
Every strategy has drawbacks. If you prioritize avoiding arguments then indeed you have to accept having less influence than people willing to have those arguments.
So it could be that, given Val's actual preferences, avoiding arguments wasn't a good priority to have. But given Val's stated goals (avoiding distraction from the main point of the discussion), leaving the topic alone would have met then better than bringing up an inflammatory and distracting topic and then declining to discuss it.
It seems to me as if "don't bring up the distractingly inflammatory topic, but if someone else does and gets things very wrong then be ready with convincing evidence and arguments" is a strictly better strategy than "bring up the distractingly inflammatory topic, but then declare yourself unsettling to talk about it" both for avoiding conceding control to the crazy and for avoiding distractions.