Nearlly everything you mentioned will not get downvoted in discussion section. Indeed direct discussion of polyamory for example has even been seen on Main. The only one I can see downovoted “liberalism vs. libertarianism” (what no one remembers us reactionaries running around here?), but that is because of the “politics is the mindkiller” norm. If you think we can preserve high quality of discussion on OT when it comes to politics, why haven’t we been able to do so when wearing our rationalist hats (see any gender/sex/feminism/PUA thread ever)?
Huh? I thought you were a conservative, not a reactionary, seeing as you’re generally cautious about change and not really advocating the superiority of some historical social arrangement. With the sole exception that you’re for dictatorship and against democracy, but there’s plenty of quite modern dictatorships, as you recently pointed out.
Yes I guess conservative is a better word, since while we disagree on some things you generally seem to grok my positions well. Since we are on this subject I hope I always approach your arguments in good faith and competently since you’ve earned quite some intelectual respect from me in our public and PM exchanges.
The reason I put it there is that I don’t see myself having much in common with conservative politics in nearly any relevant country, though other people are probably a better judge of this than me. While I do agree with at least a few of the people one finds on say a site like Unqualified Reservations. I try very hard not to let such labels influence my self-conception, my identity so to speak, but I do unfortunately need one word summaries of my current positions.
As to democracy and dictatorship… I do think we are biased in favour of democracy and that it probably isn’t as good as we seem to think it is. I think there exist better social and governmental arrangmenets than those found in modern Western countries. These might be some kinds of dictatorship or they might not. I’m certainly not discounting the possibility that we may be just plain mistaken about our actual preferences and that many of us might prefer life in a existing “technocratic city state” as I think you recently termed it. It is actually my conservative streak that still leads me to prefer living in a regular social democracy than to say a experimental neocameralist or futarchist state.
But again it was a throwaway line I didn’t mean to start a discussion on politics.
But again it was a throwaway line I didn’t mean to start a discussion on politics.
Yeah, sure, I should’ve guessed you were ironic; the reason I asked was simply that it’s the first time I remember you applying any political label to yourself. I’m not overly concerned or distressed by your (or anyone’s) ideas about the relative merits of political systems, seeing as in my mind it’s inevitably largely a “red herring”, disguising other factors of a society’s nature. E.g. I think that the formal dissolution of the USSR, the adoption of a new constitution, Putin’s (much-criticized and now rolled-back) electoral reforms and other post-Soviet political rearrangements were not among the factors that seriously impacted life in Russia, with the exception of the severed links with other Soviet republics and the effects of those.
(Of course, when e.g. I’m arguing about the merits of liberal vs. restrictive laws, or censorship, or whatever, I’m usually genuinely concerned—as I always try to be when it’s about real people’s lives.)
Man, I’d love to hear some thoughts from you on these topics—preferrably in a form and tone optimized for Less Wrong, and not copypasted from your website.
intellectual property, polyamory, liberalism vs libertarianism; the kind of stuff that robin hanson posts on OB; tech/science/philosophy
Nearlly everything you mentioned will not get downvoted in discussion section. Indeed direct discussion of polyamory for example has even been seen on Main. The only one I can see downovoted “liberalism vs. libertarianism” (what no one remembers us reactionaries running around here?), but that is because of the “politics is the mindkiller” norm. If you think we can preserve high quality of discussion on OT when it comes to politics, why haven’t we been able to do so when wearing our rationalist hats (see any gender/sex/feminism/PUA thread ever)?
Huh? I thought you were a conservative, not a reactionary, seeing as you’re generally cautious about change and not really advocating the superiority of some historical social arrangement. With the sole exception that you’re for dictatorship and against democracy, but there’s plenty of quite modern dictatorships, as you recently pointed out.
I was being humorous.
Yes I guess conservative is a better word, since while we disagree on some things you generally seem to grok my positions well. Since we are on this subject I hope I always approach your arguments in good faith and competently since you’ve earned quite some intelectual respect from me in our public and PM exchanges.
The reason I put it there is that I don’t see myself having much in common with conservative politics in nearly any relevant country, though other people are probably a better judge of this than me. While I do agree with at least a few of the people one finds on say a site like Unqualified Reservations. I try very hard not to let such labels influence my self-conception, my identity so to speak, but I do unfortunately need one word summaries of my current positions.
As to democracy and dictatorship… I do think we are biased in favour of democracy and that it probably isn’t as good as we seem to think it is. I think there exist better social and governmental arrangmenets than those found in modern Western countries. These might be some kinds of dictatorship or they might not. I’m certainly not discounting the possibility that we may be just plain mistaken about our actual preferences and that many of us might prefer life in a existing “technocratic city state” as I think you recently termed it. It is actually my conservative streak that still leads me to prefer living in a regular social democracy than to say a experimental neocameralist or futarchist state.
But again it was a throwaway line I didn’t mean to start a discussion on politics.
Yeah, sure, I should’ve guessed you were ironic; the reason I asked was simply that it’s the first time I remember you applying any political label to yourself. I’m not overly concerned or distressed by your (or anyone’s) ideas about the relative merits of political systems, seeing as in my mind it’s inevitably largely a “red herring”, disguising other factors of a society’s nature. E.g. I think that the formal dissolution of the USSR, the adoption of a new constitution, Putin’s (much-criticized and now rolled-back) electoral reforms and other post-Soviet political rearrangements were not among the factors that seriously impacted life in Russia, with the exception of the severed links with other Soviet republics and the effects of those.
(Of course, when e.g. I’m arguing about the merits of liberal vs. restrictive laws, or censorship, or whatever, I’m usually genuinely concerned—as I always try to be when it’s about real people’s lives.)
Man, I’d love to hear some thoughts from you on these topics—preferrably in a form and tone optimized for Less Wrong, and not copypasted from your website.