"Deciding to talk about politics, even though this may cause you to lose some of your audience" and "Deciding to tell people they're wrong, even though this may cause you to lose some of your audience" are both tradeoffs, and it's odd that LessWrong community norms go so far in one direction on one tradeoff and so far in the other direction on the other tradeoff (at least with regards to certain subjects).

Yeah, I saw the parallel there. I more or less think that both talking about politics and explicitly telling people that they're wrong are usually undesirable and that LessWrong should do neither.

I also agree with you that government action could be important for the future of AI.