I disagree; discovering that someone holds political views opposed to yours can inhibit your ability to rational consider arguments; arguments become soldiers, etc.,
Besides, I think the survey from ages ago showed the general spread of political views, and I doubt much has changed since. For discussing particular issues, there are other places available, and it may be that only by not discussing hot topics can we keep the barriers to entry up that keep the LW membership productive.
But the quality of discussion here is generally much higher than elsewhere. I would like us to try discussing politics and see how it goes—but I’d prefer a new toplevel post to an Open Thread discussion.
I think the quality of discussion is higher because we don’t discuss politics: if we started, we’d pull in political trolls and fanatics. If you consider how common political discussion sites are, and what a city on a hill LW is, I’d be very conservative about anything that might open the gates. We have rarity value, and it could be hard to re-gain.
Perhaps a minimum karma level to discuss politics?
This is a special case of a general problem. There are lots of solutions, it just doesn’t seem likely that any will be implemented (unless, as rumor has it, there is already a secret forum to discuss other subjects that less wrongers are only invited to when they have proven themselves).
Also, I’m not sure that just saying: “Hey people! Talk about politics over here. ” is going to lead to a great discussion. I’d be much more interested in a discussion of how and where what we have in common as rationalists should affect our political views. It seems likely that we all ought to be able to come to important but limited agreements (about how to think about policy, about how the policy making process should be organized, and about a select few policy issues- religious issues, science, maybe a few more) from which we could expand to other areas, constructively. Maybe we all end up as ‘liberaltarians’ maybe not. But there needs to be a common starting point or everyone will just default to signaling, talking points and rhetorical warfare.
That’s the post I was trying to find, and failing. However, if there is such a conspiracy (beyond simply random chats between clever people) it’s either quite small or not done by Karma or you (with nearly exactly 10 times my karma count) would have been invited.
I have a parallel problem at University: trying to find discussion groups, debating societies, etc. where people agree enough on the basics and are interested in the truth, are small enough that signalling isn’t too great a problem and entery is suffiently easy for me to be able to speak and yet large enough to self-perpetuate.
Maybe Econlog or somesuch should create a LessWrong Parallel?
It’s probably not worth discussing ideas that require code changes unless you’re in a position to implement them and present patches, and even then it may not be accepted.
I think we fend off trolls pretty well: we tend to just vote them down and otherwise ignore them. I don’t think we have to worry about a troll invasion here.
Equally, I don’t think it’s worthwhile discussing drastic subject-matter changes, partly becuase that is the level of change that would be required to affect it safely.
At the moment, trolls are both in the minority, and both their views and presentation differ markedly from ours: whether by Aumann or Groupthink, we have both a large set of beliefs we agree on that aren’t widely held outside LW, and a special terminology that we use.
However, in Politics none of these would be the case; widespread disagreement makes it hard to tell what is in good faith, we don’t have a specialised language, and without a rigourous way of approaching the problems, are unlikely to reach a closer set of conclusions than any other fairly Libertarian internet grouping.
I disagree; discovering that someone holds political views opposed to yours can inhibit your ability to rational consider arguments; arguments become soldiers, etc.,
Besides, I think the survey from ages ago showed the general spread of political views, and I doubt much has changed since. For discussing particular issues, there are other places available, and it may be that only by not discussing hot topics can we keep the barriers to entry up that keep the LW membership productive.
survey link?
Here it is. But why don’t you just use the search function?
I expected it to be named something other than “survey results.” Also want to promote the habit of including links in original posts.
Quite. And the relivant section,
“138 gave readable political information...We have 62 (45%) libertarians, 53 (38.4%) liberals, 17 (12.3%) socialists, 6 (4.3%) conservatives, and [no] commie.”
But the quality of discussion here is generally much higher than elsewhere. I would like us to try discussing politics and see how it goes—but I’d prefer a new toplevel post to an Open Thread discussion.
I think the quality of discussion is higher because we don’t discuss politics: if we started, we’d pull in political trolls and fanatics. If you consider how common political discussion sites are, and what a city on a hill LW is, I’d be very conservative about anything that might open the gates. We have rarity value, and it could be hard to re-gain.
Perhaps a minimum karma level to discuss politics?
This is a special case of a general problem. There are lots of solutions, it just doesn’t seem likely that any will be implemented (unless, as rumor has it, there is already a secret forum to discuss other subjects that less wrongers are only invited to when they have proven themselves).
Also, I’m not sure that just saying: “Hey people! Talk about politics over here. ” is going to lead to a great discussion. I’d be much more interested in a discussion of how and where what we have in common as rationalists should affect our political views. It seems likely that we all ought to be able to come to important but limited agreements (about how to think about policy, about how the policy making process should be organized, and about a select few policy issues- religious issues, science, maybe a few more) from which we could expand to other areas, constructively. Maybe we all end up as ‘liberaltarians’ maybe not. But there needs to be a common starting point or everyone will just default to signaling, talking points and rhetorical warfare.
That’s the post I was trying to find, and failing. However, if there is such a conspiracy (beyond simply random chats between clever people) it’s either quite small or not done by Karma or you (with nearly exactly 10 times my karma count) would have been invited.
I have a parallel problem at University: trying to find discussion groups, debating societies, etc. where people agree enough on the basics and are interested in the truth, are small enough that signalling isn’t too great a problem and entery is suffiently easy for me to be able to speak and yet large enough to self-perpetuate.
Maybe Econlog or somesuch should create a LessWrong Parallel?
It’s probably not worth discussing ideas that require code changes unless you’re in a position to implement them and present patches, and even then it may not be accepted.
I think we fend off trolls pretty well: we tend to just vote them down and otherwise ignore them. I don’t think we have to worry about a troll invasion here.
Equally, I don’t think it’s worthwhile discussing drastic subject-matter changes, partly becuase that is the level of change that would be required to affect it safely.
At the moment, trolls are both in the minority, and both their views and presentation differ markedly from ours: whether by Aumann or Groupthink, we have both a large set of beliefs we agree on that aren’t widely held outside LW, and a special terminology that we use.
However, in Politics none of these would be the case; widespread disagreement makes it hard to tell what is in good faith, we don’t have a specialised language, and without a rigourous way of approaching the problems, are unlikely to reach a closer set of conclusions than any other fairly Libertarian internet grouping.