Hmm, really ? Can you offer some examples ? I’ve browsed some of the articles on the site, and they didn’t strike me as unduly biased—unless snark counts as bias. But then again, I’m not sure what you mean by “controversial”; some topics, such as creationism or global warming, are controversial in mainstream culture, but fairly mundane here on Less Wrong.
Knowing Vladimir [1], he likely means that they use exposition of stupid things like Conservapedia and Christian fundamentalism to bash all kinds of right-wing thought, especially the American variety, while not investigating liberal cognitive failures enough.
(Note that the article above, while ridiculously biased, does have one good section, the one on the relativity of the term. And, aside from any ideological neutrality, even a moderately smart left-wing fanatic wouldn’t list Ann Coulter among “Prominent conservatives” but exclude Burke or William Buckley. So my impression is that the people who were writing it are not necessarily all that politically motivated and “brainwashed”—just unintelligent and/or ignorant.)
[1] Not knowing him, of course, just having read his many previous comments on the issue.
I could be wrong, but the biggest problem with that article is that they keep conflating the US-ian meaning of the word “Conservative” with the more general meaning. As you said, they tried to separate the two, but pretty much failed. IMO their article on Liberals is much more disappointing, as it’s just self-indulgent satire without any meat behind it.
That said, RW’s mission statement is to combat pseudoscience and authoritarianism; so at least they wear their biases on their sleeves. They don’t claim to advocate for rationality in general, despite the name. I think that, when they stick to their core mission (as opposed to venturing into politics in general), they are relatively successful.
I have to admit, though, that I don’t have an opinion on the Ann Coulter thing. I don’t know much about her, besides that she’s a pundit who said some crazy stuff at some point.
It’s really a skeptics’ wiki. And just as there’s absolutely no cluefulness bar to being an atheist, there’s not much cluefulness bar to being a skeptic. The name skepticwiki.org was already taken when it started. (Though they’ve since given up and redirected their site to RW! I’ve suggested the RationalWiki Foundation buy the name from them—we’ve already taken on evowiki.org, for example.)
Hmm, really ? Can you offer some examples ? I’ve browsed some of the articles on the site, and they didn’t strike me as unduly biased—unless snark counts as bias. But then again, I’m not sure what you mean by “controversial”; some topics, such as creationism or global warming, are controversial in mainstream culture, but fairly mundane here on Less Wrong.
Knowing Vladimir [1], he likely means that they use exposition of stupid things like Conservapedia and Christian fundamentalism to bash all kinds of right-wing thought, especially the American variety, while not investigating liberal cognitive failures enough.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conservative
(Note that the article above, while ridiculously biased, does have one good section, the one on the relativity of the term. And, aside from any ideological neutrality, even a moderately smart left-wing fanatic wouldn’t list Ann Coulter among “Prominent conservatives” but exclude Burke or William Buckley.
So my impression is that the people who were writing it are not necessarily all that politically motivated and “brainwashed”—just unintelligent and/or ignorant.)
[1] Not knowing him, of course, just having read his many previous comments on the issue.
I could be wrong, but the biggest problem with that article is that they keep conflating the US-ian meaning of the word “Conservative” with the more general meaning. As you said, they tried to separate the two, but pretty much failed. IMO their article on Liberals is much more disappointing, as it’s just self-indulgent satire without any meat behind it.
That said, RW’s mission statement is to combat pseudoscience and authoritarianism; so at least they wear their biases on their sleeves. They don’t claim to advocate for rationality in general, despite the name. I think that, when they stick to their core mission (as opposed to venturing into politics in general), they are relatively successful.
I have to admit, though, that I don’t have an opinion on the Ann Coulter thing. I don’t know much about her, besides that she’s a pundit who said some crazy stuff at some point.
It’s really a skeptics’ wiki. And just as there’s absolutely no cluefulness bar to being an atheist, there’s not much cluefulness bar to being a skeptic. The name skepticwiki.org was already taken when it started. (Though they’ve since given up and redirected their site to RW! I’ve suggested the RationalWiki Foundation buy the name from them—we’ve already taken on evowiki.org, for example.)