Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016

Elo

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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-threadspage before posting.)

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

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

Sorry for yesterday, I'll try to post a more coherent reply now.

Once in a while someone accuses Less Wrong of having a specific political bias and being intolerant towards the dissidents. The alleged political bias depends on who made the accusation. For example, neoreactionaries believe that Less Wrong is politically correct and left-wing; they would probably use the word "demotist", which pretty much means anyone who is not a neoreactionary. Meanwhile, RationalWiki (an "Atheism+" website) believes that Less Wrong contains "cringe-inducing discussions of the merits of racism", and the supposedly "non-political" debates in reality promote libertarianism and neoreaction.

Looking at the 2014 survey results, Less Wrong members identify mostly as Social Democratic, Liberal, Libertarian, approximately in equal numbers.

Can this result be interpreted as a unified political bias? I don't know. Maybe yes. Maybe there is an idea of society that most Less Wrong members would approve of -- I imagine something like: universal basic income, universal healthcare, minimal government required to provide security and the basic income, freedom for entrepreneurs, freedom of sexual expression and identity -- while they may disagree on some technical details (such as affirmative action: yes or no) and mostly on which label is most appropriate for this idea. Or maybe I am completely wrong here.

If we map this to the traditional American politics (Democrats vs Republicans), Democrats would obviously win, cca 4:1. But this shouldn't be surprising, considering that Less Wrong is an openly atheist website (Republicans associate with religion) and that half of members are non-American (Republicans associate with American jingoism, which non-Americans have no reason to share). Correcting for these two factors, I think the ratio is pretty much what we should expect.

My conclusion (which anyone is free to disagree with) is that the accusations of political bias more or less express frustration "why don't these people all agree with me? they said they were rational, and rational people are supposed to agree with me! are they suggesting that I am stupid?" (exaggerated for easier comprehension).

How to debate politics on Less Wrong without getting caught in the affective spirals? Let me quote:

On a more serious note: cut up your Great Thingy into smaller independent ideas, and treat them as independent.

For instance a marxist would cut up Marx's Great Thingy into a theory of value of labour, a theory of the political relations between classes, a theory of wages, a theory on the ultimate political state of mankind. Then each of them should be assessed independently, and the truth or falsity of one should not halo on the others. If we can do that, we should be safe from the spiral, as each theory is too narrow to start a spiral on its own.

Same thing for every other Great Thingy out there.

Specifically for neoreaction this means that "neoreaction" is a wrong topic for a debate. (However, "tell me why do you identify as a neoreactionary" can be interesting; probably the most productive LW thread on this topic.) The best approach would be to taboo "neoreaction" (and all other political labels), choose one object-level belief and debate that. Of course this presupposes that someone could compile a list of specific object-level beliefs in simple language without links to the other beliefs (and no, "Cthulhu always swims left" is neither specific nor transparent). Then we could debate the individual beliefs, and perhaps agree on some and disagree on others; and maybe we could find out that some of those beliefs are actually not unique for neoreaction.

(And then there is the issue that people who would disagree with some neoreactionary beliefs would soon find that the karma of their comments written years ago have overnight dropped to -1. Which will require some technical changes in voting mechanism to fix, there is no other way.)

The best approach would be to taboo "neoreaction"

Um, you were the one who first brought up that term in this discussion. In fact, the only reason we're having this meta-debate is because a bunch of people didn't want to have an object-level discussion about Donald Trump.

-2buybuydandavis10y

My objections are not about having bias, but enacting a bias institutionally and through social pressures to shut up people you disagree with. That impulse to shut others up by power and pressure has a marked tendency to go in one direction. Your projection of "why don't these people all agree with me?" sounds ridiculous to me. Can you point to a few discussions where NR folks were shocked, just shocked, that there was someone in the world that disagreed with them? I'd think that they're probably well used to that by now. I wouldn't expect them to be shocked. I'll share my conclusion. In many circles, the Left is accustomed to being able to proselytize their ideology while silencing Unbelievers. LW has a rare density of Libertarian leaning people, who generally aren't the types to sit silently and assent. Failing to ideologically bully, the Left resorted to pressure to just not talk about politics, which achieves the main goal of silencing the Unbelievers. LessWrong is not supposed to be a claim, but a goal. We have all sorts of wrong ideas that we share and mutually critique on our path to becoming LessWrong. But for politics, no go. More important to shut up those heretical ideas than actually get LessWrong about them. [...] No. The desire to speak, and the desire to be free to speak without being pressured to shut up, is not the demand or expectation that everyone agree. [...] Yeah, the best approach is to UnIdea "neoreaction". As for your suggested LWSpeak dictionary for political speech, that's conveniently another method of control. You can't use these symbols. You can't talk this way. How about instead we criticize each other's ideas if we want, and don't criticize them if we don't?

1Lumifer10y

Right. And let me quote from a post (again): [...] So at issue is democracy. Given this, with respect to that belief, it's easy to see how LW is politically unified. In fact, doubting democracy is pretty much outside of Overton window (that's part of what makes neoreaction interesting).