Is a commitment to entertain controversial or unpopular or odious ideas (or to advocate for them) separate from or integral to rationalism? Is a mental health professional’s preference to maintain enough anonymity so that their blog does not interfere with their practice or their safety separate from or integral to rationality? I phrase those as questions because I’m not sure. When it comes to the general idea that anonymity is needed to discuss certain or any topics, I’m more skeptical. People who use their real names on FB and Twitter spout off about anything and everything. Some of them will benefit from the reactions they get, some will suffer. Just like if they were sharing their views in person. A note of humility: I remember about 15 years ago noticing that anonymous comments on newspaper websites were a cess pool. I thought things would be much better if people had to put their names on their opinions. A lot of papers moved to a system where commenters used their FB IDs. I thought that would improve the discourse. I now think I was wrong, and that didn’t make things much better. So if I suspect that anonymity is not the boon others may think it is, you can take that with a grain of salt.
Is a commitment to entertain controversial or unpopular or odious ideas (or to advocate for them) separate from or integral to rationalism?
Integral – for epistemological rationality anyways, and arguably too for instrumental rationality as well.
Is a mental health professional’s preference to maintain enough anonymity so that their blog does not interfere with their practice or their safety separate from or integral to rationality?
I don’t think it’s “separate from” as much as ‘mostly orthogonal’. Scott is largely to blame for his relative lack of pseudonymity – he’s published, publicly, a lot of evidence of his identity. What’s he trying to avoid is losing enough of what remains so that his (full) legal name is directly linked to Scott Alexander – in the top results of, e.g. a Google search result for his legal name.
When it comes to the general idea that anonymity is needed to discuss certain or any topics, I’m more skeptical.
You’re right, it’s not needed to discuss anything – at least not once. The entire issue is whether one can do so indefinitely. And, in that case, it sure seems like anonymity/pseudonymity is needed, in general.
I don’t think there’s a lot of anonymity here on LessWrong but it’s certainly possible to be pseudonymous. I don’t think most people bother to really try to maintain it particularly strictly. But I find the comments here to be much better than in anonymous/pseudonymous comments in other places, or even – as you seem to agree – on or via FaceBook or Twitter (or whatever). This place is special. And I think this place really is vulnerable to censorship, i.e. pressure NOT to discuss what’s discussed here now. The people here – some of them anyways – really would refrain from discussing some things were they to suffer for it like they fear.
Is a commitment to entertain controversial or unpopular or odious ideas (or to advocate for them) separate from or integral to rationalism? Is a mental health professional’s preference to maintain enough anonymity so that their blog does not interfere with their practice or their safety separate from or integral to rationality? I phrase those as questions because I’m not sure. When it comes to the general idea that anonymity is needed to discuss certain or any topics, I’m more skeptical. People who use their real names on FB and Twitter spout off about anything and everything. Some of them will benefit from the reactions they get, some will suffer. Just like if they were sharing their views in person. A note of humility: I remember about 15 years ago noticing that anonymous comments on newspaper websites were a cess pool. I thought things would be much better if people had to put their names on their opinions. A lot of papers moved to a system where commenters used their FB IDs. I thought that would improve the discourse. I now think I was wrong, and that didn’t make things much better. So if I suspect that anonymity is not the boon others may think it is, you can take that with a grain of salt.
Integral – for epistemological rationality anyways, and arguably too for instrumental rationality as well.
I don’t think it’s “separate from” as much as ‘mostly orthogonal’. Scott is largely to blame for his relative lack of pseudonymity – he’s published, publicly, a lot of evidence of his identity. What’s he trying to avoid is losing enough of what remains so that his (full) legal name is directly linked to Scott Alexander – in the top results of, e.g. a Google search result for his legal name.
You’re right, it’s not needed to discuss anything – at least not once. The entire issue is whether one can do so indefinitely. And, in that case, it sure seems like anonymity/pseudonymity is needed, in general.
I don’t think there’s a lot of anonymity here on LessWrong but it’s certainly possible to be pseudonymous. I don’t think most people bother to really try to maintain it particularly strictly. But I find the comments here to be much better than in anonymous/pseudonymous comments in other places, or even – as you seem to agree – on or via FaceBook or Twitter (or whatever). This place is special. And I think this place really is vulnerable to censorship, i.e. pressure NOT to discuss what’s discussed here now. The people here – some of them anyways – really would refrain from discussing some things were they to suffer for it like they fear.