If we shouldn't expect evidence in either case then the probability of God's existence is just the prior, right? How could P(God) be above .5? I can't imagine thinking that the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent being who answers prayers and rewards and punishes the sins of mortals with everlasting joy or eternal punishment was a priori more likely than not.

Contradiction: answered prayers is lots of evidence.

I don't think it's a good heuristic, and I don't think you do either. Reversed stupidity is not intelligence, and it's more efficient to tug "sideways".

For issues that are split around 95%-5%, I wouldn't be surprised if the proportion of idiots had very little correlation to the truth of the causes.

"Don't believe in yourself! Believe that I believe in you!"

If you're trying to quote Gurren-Lagann here, I believe you botched the quote. "Believe in me who believes in you!" But maybe it was dubbed differently. In any case, I do find some amusement in your approvingly quoting a show which was more or less premised on a rejection of rationality. "Throw away your logic and kick reason to the curb!" I'll have to remember that for the next anti-rationalism quotes thread.

But anyways, I did like this post, although as you implicitly concede it's just one narrative of community development among many. I'm sure that there have been as many communities to have fallen due to despotic moderation or impoverished by rigid ideological guidelines as there have been ruined in the ways described in the OP. Oftentimes the "idiots" who "ruin" the comm are actually the lonely voices of reason. It's a fine line to walk, and I look forward to someday seeing a modern-day Machiavelli write a tract on "The Internet Community Moderator". Because it really is that tricky.

4chan is actually pretty popular, I don't know if you are aware. Somehow their lack of censorship hasn't kept them from being "fun" for millions of people.

Eh, I could read it, with some stack juggling. I can even force myself to parse the "buffalo" sentence ;-P

I guess that makes sense. If you have the option of choosing what the composition of your mind is.

That's an unfortunate example: to the extent which economics is quantifiable, it's all differential equations... heck, marginal utility is a differential equation!

Maybe they weren't explicitly stated as differential equations but:

Once you learn the concept of a differential equation, you see differential equations all over, no matter what you do.

so it can't be helped.

You didn't mention in the Newcomb's Problem article that you're a one-boxer.

As a die-hard two-boxer, perhaps someone can explain one-boxing to me. Let's say that Box A contains money to save 3 lives (if Omega thinks you'll take it only) or nothing, and Box B contains money to save 2 lives. Conditional on this being the only game Omega will ever play with you, why the hell would you take Box A only?

I suspect what all you one-boxers are doing is that you somehow believe that a scenario like this one will actually occur, and you're trying to broadcast your intent to one-box so Omega will put money in for you.

I think our tribe is small enough, and blatant mistakes made by commenters are rare enough, for senior members to be able to recognize the new members simply by memory, checking the commenting history on the user pages when in doubt.

Very interesting. Wikipedia: "Priming the public with fringe ideas intended to be and remain unacceptable, will make the real target ideas seem more acceptable by comparison." This is a slightly different strategy than the Daily Kos article describes.

What I read doesn't say this, but I think part of the Republican Overton window strategy is to have lots of loose cannons like Rush Limbaugh who state extreme positions. The Republican party can say "You naughty boy, Rush!" and disclaim everything he says, but still benefit from it.