Perhaps you would like to make a list of topics we should not address and the data we should avoid using on LessWrong. If politics is off-limit, certainly religion should be as well!
The LW standard is to avoid discussion of current politics unless it’s crucial to your point, which it’s not in your article. This has been the standard for a long time, for well-discussed reasons. I thought you would be familiar with that, being a long-timer.
Plus, you spend a significant amount of the article on the political predicates rather than on your ultimate point about appropriate back-inference of moral culpability.
I apologize for the snideness of my reply, since there is precedent for talk of politics being discouraged even though it’s always open season on religion. It had slipped my mind.
However, re-reading Eliezer’s original post, I interpret it as advice, not as a prohibition: “I’m not saying that I think Overcoming Bias should be apolitical, or even that we should adopt Wikipedia’s ideal of the Neutral Point of View. But try to resist getting in those good, solid digs if you can possibly avoid it.” I think my use of a political example here falls within those guidelines, particularly since I’m not a Republican or an Obama-basher and therefore conclude that I’m not trying to jab anybody other than the irrational.
As to the Wiki saying we have a gentleman’s agreement not to discuss politics, I don’t recall agreeing to that. I could easily have missed it; or this may be a case of wikiocracy (government by whomever edited the wiki last).
My interepretation is that “politics is the mind-killer” it’s up to the discretion of the poster to post, and up to the discretion of everyone else to vote up or down. In this case, I wouldn’t have posted at all if I were required to reframe everything to not refer to political events. I don’t think the question of repayments to unemployed oil workers is a political flashpoint, and I don’t know what you mean about spending a significant amount of the article on the political predicates.
Most of the article is spent discussing politics with only a little bit at the end about inferring moral culpability from the causal diagram. The reason for avoiding political references is because it makes people take sides based on their liking a person or a party, and so should be avoided if possible. It was possible to avoid discussing the specific political debate in question, and because very little of it was devoted to its non-political point, so I voted it down, per my reading of the standard and its intent.
I apologize for the snideness of my reply, since there is precedent for talk of politics being discouraged even though it’s always open season on religion. It had slipped my mind.
I removed my earlier vote on the grandparent. I objected to the ‘snideness + implications I don’t think hit the mark’ combination and certainly not for condemning general injunctions on topics. Some politics doesn’t seem to damage the site as a whole and the thought of people getting to arbitrarily reject topics is seriously ‘Ugh’.
In this case I do actually think that some mind killing is in place. People here (at least those for whom the politics is relevant) do seem to have a strong position on what the right political decision is. I do perceive that interfering with their judgement on the abstract idea that is the nominal topic of the post. To the ‘big picture’ of our instincts it is just a small patch of territory on a social battlefield, a fact which I think we can see in play.
This issue doesn’t really seem like partisan politics to me, which I think is the spirit of the “no current politics” rule. I don’t think anyone is suggesting that any particular failing of the president’s political ideology is to blame here, it’s just being suggest that this is a general rationality fail of the kind all politicians make routinely.
Downvoted for main (and avoidable) focus on politics to make a very narrow point.
I didn’t vote but I share that objection. I also add that that ‘very narrow point’ is not the important political factor that it is made out to be and so the combination is misleading (or naive).
Downvoted for main (and avoidable) focus on politics to make a very narrow point.
Agreed that social treatment of workers who suffer from major outside economic factors is pretty capricious, though.
Perhaps you would like to make a list of topics we should not address and the data we should avoid using on LessWrong. If politics is off-limit, certainly religion should be as well!
The LW standard is to avoid discussion of current politics unless it’s crucial to your point, which it’s not in your article. This has been the standard for a long time, for well-discussed reasons. I thought you would be familiar with that, being a long-timer.
Plus, you spend a significant amount of the article on the political predicates rather than on your ultimate point about appropriate back-inference of moral culpability.
I apologize for the snideness of my reply, since there is precedent for talk of politics being discouraged even though it’s always open season on religion. It had slipped my mind.
However, re-reading Eliezer’s original post, I interpret it as advice, not as a prohibition: “I’m not saying that I think Overcoming Bias should be apolitical, or even that we should adopt Wikipedia’s ideal of the Neutral Point of View. But try to resist getting in those good, solid digs if you can possibly avoid it.” I think my use of a political example here falls within those guidelines, particularly since I’m not a Republican or an Obama-basher and therefore conclude that I’m not trying to jab anybody other than the irrational.
As to the Wiki saying we have a gentleman’s agreement not to discuss politics, I don’t recall agreeing to that. I could easily have missed it; or this may be a case of wikiocracy (government by whomever edited the wiki last).
My interepretation is that “politics is the mind-killer” it’s up to the discretion of the poster to post, and up to the discretion of everyone else to vote up or down. In this case, I wouldn’t have posted at all if I were required to reframe everything to not refer to political events. I don’t think the question of repayments to unemployed oil workers is a political flashpoint, and I don’t know what you mean about spending a significant amount of the article on the political predicates.
Most of the article is spent discussing politics with only a little bit at the end about inferring moral culpability from the causal diagram. The reason for avoiding political references is because it makes people take sides based on their liking a person or a party, and so should be avoided if possible. It was possible to avoid discussing the specific political debate in question, and because very little of it was devoted to its non-political point, so I voted it down, per my reading of the standard and its intent.
I removed my earlier vote on the grandparent. I objected to the ‘snideness + implications I don’t think hit the mark’ combination and certainly not for condemning general injunctions on topics. Some politics doesn’t seem to damage the site as a whole and the thought of people getting to arbitrarily reject topics is seriously ‘Ugh’.
In this case I do actually think that some mind killing is in place. People here (at least those for whom the politics is relevant) do seem to have a strong position on what the right political decision is. I do perceive that interfering with their judgement on the abstract idea that is the nominal topic of the post. To the ‘big picture’ of our instincts it is just a small patch of territory on a social battlefield, a fact which I think we can see in play.
This issue doesn’t really seem like partisan politics to me, which I think is the spirit of the “no current politics” rule. I don’t think anyone is suggesting that any particular failing of the president’s political ideology is to blame here, it’s just being suggest that this is a general rationality fail of the kind all politicians make routinely.
I think you are avoiding Silas’s point.
I didn’t vote but I share that objection. I also add that that ‘very narrow point’ is not the important political factor that it is made out to be and so the combination is misleading (or naive).