I had a sense this post wasn’t actually particularly political in the usual mindkilly sense, mostly because it talked about stuff that’s far in the future, and skimming it, I didn’t have a sense that it was super much falling into usual tribal error modes.
Useful, novel, and relevant to many LessWrong members
“Timeless”, i.e. minimizes references to current events and is likely to remain useful even after a few years
The post attempts to explain rather than persuade
Political discussion usually fails on the timeless dimension or the “’persuade instead of explain” dimension. But I felt like this post didn’t do either.
Ok, to clarify: It doesn’t really matter that this is a politics post because you think that it fulfills the three criteria? Then where do the “tribal error modes” enter the criteria? Or do you think they only follow from violating timelessness or explanation style?
Yeah, basically. I am not claiming those three principles capture everything, they are definitely not perfect. But they were chosen to capture most of the bad aspects, and posts about politics that avoid all three do feel a lot less doomy to me (though some definitely remains, and if we notice bad consequences from frontpaging things like this, we should expand those criteria).
Politics is politics. US vs China is about as divisive and tribal as you can go, on the same level as pro- vs anti-Trump. Would you encourage political discussions of the latter type on Lesswrong, too?
I do have a sense that it’s less likely to explode in bad ways, and less likely to attract bad people to the site. Also, we chose our criteria trying to capture most of the bad consequences while not being too restrictive, and sacrificing some detailed fidelity on edge-cases to make the whole system more predictable and easier to interface with seems worth it. I do think that if we see bad consequences as a result of frontpaging things like this, we should expand our criteria.
I do have a sense that it’s less likely to explode in bad ways, and less likely to attract bad people to the site.
I agree with the first part of the sentence but disagree with the second part. In my view, Lesswrong’s best defense thus far has been a frontpage filled with content that appears bland to anyone with a combative attitude coming from other, more toxic social media environments. Posts like this one though stick out like a sore thumb and signal to onlookers that discussions about politics and geopolitics are now an integral part of Lesswrong, even when the discussions themselves are respectful and benign so far. If my hypothesis is correct, an early sign of deterioration would be an accumulation of newly registered accounts that solely leave comments on one or two politics-related posts.
I like that you specify a prediction what the problem with politics is, but I think this will not be the case.
As I see it, the “politics” part in this post is not so much that country conflicts are discussed, but rather that statements like “The United States’ … primary objective is to maintain the liberal world order (LWO), also known as the “rules-based international order”. ” are presented as if they were established, undisputed common-knowledge facts that do not need discussion, argument, evidence or references. This creates an atmosphere suggesting that a certain specific worldview is not even a specific worldview. (This is strange in a forum that originated from something called “overcoming bias”.) It hampers generation and growth of knowledge, also with respect to politics.
Every community has such established facts. They may change over time. This may come along with a change in atmosphere and attitudes. I think that the atmosphere of lw with regards to politics has already changed in 2020-21. In particular, I perceive a change in what is an acceptable style and tone of discussing politics from a certain perspective. The addition of geopolitics as a frontpage topics is somewhat consequent.
In principle, it is possible to discuss politics while maintaining high standards of discourse. But it seems to be a field of knowledge where people don’t even see a problem of subjectivity, tribalism or whatever as long as their own worldview is the standard.
However, I do not expect the “newly registered accounts” problem. I would expect it to happen if the forum combined politics with non-partisanship (of the forum itself). But lesswrong has the Karma system and the “well-kept garden” belief.
Suppose you have a chess club. The strength of this club is its rigorous and reflective analysis of chess problems. People in the club are friendly, in particular when discussing chess, also regarding non-members. The chess club has officially banned discussion of diets; they know that dietary discussions are divise; some people are vegans, others aren’t, and both groups are convinced of themselves.
However, one day people in the town start panicking about deep-fried chocolate bars, due to some news report. Several senior chess players find that it’s completely obvious that eating only deep-fried meals is best and chocolate bars are fantastic; combining that (obviously) improves your ability to focus on chess, and this conclusion immediately follows from applying the rigour of their chess analysis to dietary problems! This is not a dietary partisan issue, it’s just obvious! Knowing that is useful information, and nobody around dislikes deep-fried chocolate bars. (Also, sneering at the chocolate-bar panic is refreshing, because the panic is not based on science, and it’s just the typical overreaction of the public, and does it really make sense to ban all deep-fried chocolate bars? You will hardly die because of one or two.)
Discussion of how best to deep-fry chocolate bars is interesting for many of the chess players; the junior players find eating more deep-fried chocolate bars worthwhile because the senior players like it and so maybe it’s related to playing chess. (OTOH, some senior players just don’t care and just want to play chess.) Additionally, maybe you will see some people becoming members of the club mainly to discuss deep-frying chocolate bars; some of them will even think “wow, I like this whole chess thing more than I did some years ago, I guess I am a better chess player now because I apply the principle of rigorous and reflective analysis to chess problems”. But no people would join e.g. just because of potential controversy about deep-frying (there is no controversy). And even if no new members join, I think the chess club has changed its character. And it’s not even because the chess club now discusses dietary problems, but because the chess club now has a somewhat official belief on dietary problems and an approach towards dietary problems that is not as rigorous as its approach towards chess.
I also have a personal interest in trying to keep Lesswrong politics-free because for me fighting down the urge to engage in political discussions is a burden, like an ex-junkie constantly tempted with easily available drugs. Old habits die hard, so I immediately committed to not participate in any object-level discussions upon seeing the title of this post. I’m not sure whether this applies to anyone else.
My current impression was that both sides of the aisle are pretty frustrated with China right now. Not sure if that’s what you meant, but it doesn’t seem like a red-tribe vs. blue-tribe issue like Trump.
No that’s not what I meant; these two issues divide different tribes but the level of toxicity and fanaticism is similar. Heated debates around US-China war scenarios are very common in Taiwanese/Chinese overseas communities.
Not sure whether we made the right call.
I had a sense this post wasn’t actually particularly political in the usual mindkilly sense, mostly because it talked about stuff that’s far in the future, and skimming it, I didn’t have a sense that it was super much falling into usual tribal error modes.
The three principles that determine frontpage status are:
Useful, novel, and relevant to many LessWrong members
“Timeless”, i.e. minimizes references to current events and is likely to remain useful even after a few years
The post attempts to explain rather than persuade
Political discussion usually fails on the timeless dimension or the “’persuade instead of explain” dimension. But I felt like this post didn’t do either.
Ok, to clarify: It doesn’t really matter that this is a politics post because you think that it fulfills the three criteria? Then where do the “tribal error modes” enter the criteria? Or do you think they only follow from violating timelessness or explanation style?
Yeah, basically. I am not claiming those three principles capture everything, they are definitely not perfect. But they were chosen to capture most of the bad aspects, and posts about politics that avoid all three do feel a lot less doomy to me (though some definitely remains, and if we notice bad consequences from frontpaging things like this, we should expand those criteria).
Politics is politics. US vs China is about as divisive and tribal as you can go, on the same level as pro- vs anti-Trump. Would you encourage political discussions of the latter type on Lesswrong, too?
I do have a sense that it’s less likely to explode in bad ways, and less likely to attract bad people to the site. Also, we chose our criteria trying to capture most of the bad consequences while not being too restrictive, and sacrificing some detailed fidelity on edge-cases to make the whole system more predictable and easier to interface with seems worth it. I do think that if we see bad consequences as a result of frontpaging things like this, we should expand our criteria.
I agree with the first part of the sentence but disagree with the second part. In my view, Lesswrong’s best defense thus far has been a frontpage filled with content that appears bland to anyone with a combative attitude coming from other, more toxic social media environments. Posts like this one though stick out like a sore thumb and signal to onlookers that discussions about politics and geopolitics are now an integral part of Lesswrong, even when the discussions themselves are respectful and benign so far. If my hypothesis is correct, an early sign of deterioration would be an accumulation of newly registered accounts that solely leave comments on one or two politics-related posts.
I like that you specify a prediction what the problem with politics is, but I think this will not be the case.
As I see it, the “politics” part in this post is not so much that country conflicts are discussed, but rather that statements like “The United States’ … primary objective is to maintain the liberal world order (LWO), also known as the “rules-based international order”. ” are presented as if they were established, undisputed common-knowledge facts that do not need discussion, argument, evidence or references. This creates an atmosphere suggesting that a certain specific worldview is not even a specific worldview. (This is strange in a forum that originated from something called “overcoming bias”.) It hampers generation and growth of knowledge, also with respect to politics.
Every community has such established facts. They may change over time. This may come along with a change in atmosphere and attitudes. I think that the atmosphere of lw with regards to politics has already changed in 2020-21. In particular, I perceive a change in what is an acceptable style and tone of discussing politics from a certain perspective. The addition of geopolitics as a frontpage topics is somewhat consequent.
In principle, it is possible to discuss politics while maintaining high standards of discourse. But it seems to be a field of knowledge where people don’t even see a problem of subjectivity, tribalism or whatever as long as their own worldview is the standard.
However, I do not expect the “newly registered accounts” problem. I would expect it to happen if the forum combined politics with non-partisanship (of the forum itself). But lesswrong has the Karma system and the “well-kept garden” belief.
Suppose you have a chess club. The strength of this club is its rigorous and reflective analysis of chess problems. People in the club are friendly, in particular when discussing chess, also regarding non-members. The chess club has officially banned discussion of diets; they know that dietary discussions are divise; some people are vegans, others aren’t, and both groups are convinced of themselves.
However, one day people in the town start panicking about deep-fried chocolate bars, due to some news report. Several senior chess players find that it’s completely obvious that eating only deep-fried meals is best and chocolate bars are fantastic; combining that (obviously) improves your ability to focus on chess, and this conclusion immediately follows from applying the rigour of their chess analysis to dietary problems! This is not a dietary partisan issue, it’s just obvious! Knowing that is useful information, and nobody around dislikes deep-fried chocolate bars. (Also, sneering at the chocolate-bar panic is refreshing, because the panic is not based on science, and it’s just the typical overreaction of the public, and does it really make sense to ban all deep-fried chocolate bars? You will hardly die because of one or two.)
Discussion of how best to deep-fry chocolate bars is interesting for many of the chess players; the junior players find eating more deep-fried chocolate bars worthwhile because the senior players like it and so maybe it’s related to playing chess. (OTOH, some senior players just don’t care and just want to play chess.) Additionally, maybe you will see some people becoming members of the club mainly to discuss deep-frying chocolate bars; some of them will even think “wow, I like this whole chess thing more than I did some years ago, I guess I am a better chess player now because I apply the principle of rigorous and reflective analysis to chess problems”. But no people would join e.g. just because of potential controversy about deep-frying (there is no controversy). And even if no new members join, I think the chess club has changed its character. And it’s not even because the chess club now discusses dietary problems, but because the chess club now has a somewhat official belief on dietary problems and an approach towards dietary problems that is not as rigorous as its approach towards chess.
I also have a personal interest in trying to keep Lesswrong politics-free because for me fighting down the urge to engage in political discussions is a burden, like an ex-junkie constantly tempted with easily available drugs. Old habits die hard, so I immediately committed to not participate in any object-level discussions upon seeing the title of this post. I’m not sure whether this applies to anyone else.
My current impression was that both sides of the aisle are pretty frustrated with China right now. Not sure if that’s what you meant, but it doesn’t seem like a red-tribe vs. blue-tribe issue like Trump.
I think “this is bipartisan in the US” is not the same as “this is not an ideology-based, nontribal politics discussion”.
No that’s not what I meant; these two issues divide different tribes but the level of toxicity and fanaticism is similar. Heated debates around US-China war scenarios are very common in Taiwanese/Chinese overseas communities.