Re: #2, it seems like most of the politics discussion places online quickly become dominated by one view or another. If you wanted to solve this problem, one idea is
Start an apolitical discussion board.
Gather lots of members. Try to make your members a representative cross-section of smart people.
Start discussing politics, but with strong norms in place to guard against the failure mode where people whose view is in the minority leave the board.
I explained here why I think reducing political polarization through this sort of project could be high-impact.
Re: #3, I explain why I think this is wrong in this post. “Strong writers enjoy their independence”—I’m not sure what you’re pointing at with this. I see lots of people who seem like strong writers writing for Medium.com or doing newspaper columns or even contributing to Less Wrong (back in the day).
Re: #2, it seems like most of the politics discussion places online quickly become dominated by one view or another. If you wanted to solve this problem, one idea is
Start an apolitical discussion board.
Gather lots of members. Try to make your members a representative cross-section of smart people.
Start discussing politics, but with strong norms in place to guard against the failure mode where people whose view is in the minority leave the board.
I explained here why I think reducing political polarization through this sort of project could be high-impact.
Re: #3, I explain why I think this is wrong in this post. “Strong writers enjoy their independence”—I’m not sure what you’re pointing at with this. I see lots of people who seem like strong writers writing for Medium.com or doing newspaper columns or even contributing to Less Wrong (back in the day).
(I largely agree otherwise.)