I feel like “Politics is the Mind-Killer” made two points that came out pretty clearly to me and, I’d assume, most other people.
It is very hard to discuss politics rationally.
Therefore, avoid political examples (or use historical ones) when discussing rationality.
For example, Eliezer would advocate against saying “Hey, those stupid [political party] people made a huge mistake in supporting [candidate] in the 20XX election. Let’s learn from their mistake,” unless you were quite confident people could discuss the rationality and not the politics.
I think a lot of the “might”s and “could”s were avoided mainly for emphasis. Unless you have a strong reason to believe that someone will be able to be rational about politics, you can very safely assume they won’t be. “You have to support every argument on one side,” for example, is basically saying that most people don’t understand the nuance in saying that you think an argument is flawed even if you agree with its conclusion. I very commonly see people male horribly incorrect arguments for positions I strongly support, but pointing these out as flawed is rarely looked upon nicely among people who lack rationality skills.
While the conclusions you drew from the post were obviously harmful, I feel like very few people interpreted it that way.
I feel like “Politics is the Mind-Killer” made two points that came out pretty clearly to me and, I’d assume, most other people.
It is very hard to discuss politics rationally.
Therefore, avoid political examples (or use historical ones) when discussing rationality.
For example, Eliezer would advocate against saying “Hey, those stupid [political party] people made a huge mistake in supporting [candidate] in the 20XX election. Let’s learn from their mistake,” unless you were quite confident people could discuss the rationality and not the politics.
I think a lot of the “might”s and “could”s were avoided mainly for emphasis. Unless you have a strong reason to believe that someone will be able to be rational about politics, you can very safely assume they won’t be. “You have to support every argument on one side,” for example, is basically saying that most people don’t understand the nuance in saying that you think an argument is flawed even if you agree with its conclusion. I very commonly see people male horribly incorrect arguments for positions I strongly support, but pointing these out as flawed is rarely looked upon nicely among people who lack rationality skills.
While the conclusions you drew from the post were obviously harmful, I feel like very few people interpreted it that way.