I see people object to political posts and I typically think: the way they phrased that objection seems wrong to me. I can see specific problems with the thought pattern in the post, and I can see how the political nature of the subject matter may have obscured them from the speaker, but I can’t see a single influence directly from political to inappropriate that doesn’t pass through intermediate nodes that are flaws in their own right.
“Don’t post political posts on LW” is an ethical injunction, which is to say: a political post is likely to have problems, I can confidently predict this without seeing the post or knowing what those problems are; furthermore, if upon reading to post I don’t see any problems with it, a much more likely explanation is that this is because I’m missing them due to agreeing with it than because there are no problems with the post. Thus having a blanket “no politics” rule is better then attempting to disqualify political posts by pointing to the specific problems they have, which will only drag us further into mind-killing territory.
But I’d say that posts with exactly one problem are fine for LW and correctable. The problems arise when politics causes someone to make at least five or so errors in a few sentences, and then the idea is so confounded that it is hard to tell which three errors attributed to him constitutes a charitable reading or best reconstruction of something resembling the original idea.
One should be possible to tell when one’s political opponents are making only one error—if one can find such a case to begin with.
“Don’t post political posts on LW” is an ethical injunction, which is to say: a political post is likely to have problems, I can confidently predict this without seeing the post or knowing what those problems are; furthermore, if upon reading to post I don’t see any problems with it, a much more likely explanation is that this is because I’m missing them due to agreeing with it than because there are no problems with the post. Thus having a blanket “no politics” rule is better then attempting to disqualify political posts by pointing to the specific problems they have, which will only drag us further into mind-killing territory.
Very good.
But I’d say that posts with exactly one problem are fine for LW and correctable. The problems arise when politics causes someone to make at least five or so errors in a few sentences, and then the idea is so confounded that it is hard to tell which three errors attributed to him constitutes a charitable reading or best reconstruction of something resembling the original idea.
One should be possible to tell when one’s political opponents are making only one error—if one can find such a case to begin with.