LessWrong Political Prerequisites

Politics is a hard subject to discuss rationally. Correspondingly, LessWrong has a developed a unique set of norms and habits around discussions politics that still allow for dialog while hopefully avoiding many pitfalls. The exact norms are hard to summarize, but approximately they are:

• Read this sequence of posts before discussing politics on LessWrong.
• Generally, be extra careful and charitable when discussing politics.
• Recent "news-driven" posts (which includes much mainstream politics) will generally not be given much visibility. Moderators don't promote them to the Frontpage, so only longtime LessWrong readers are likely to see them when browsing the site.
• If you're a new user who came specifically to weigh in on some recent political discourse, I recommend instead focusing on other topics until you've gotten a better feel for LessWrong discussion culture.