I’m familiar with that conversation, since you mostly had it with me. :)
The fact that there is no political faction that supports your cluster of political ideas does not mean that you don’t have political opinions or that you don’t push them in this community. Your lack of mainstream partisan identification speaks well of your rationality. But the norm in the community is no political opinions rather than no partisan opinions. To be clear, I disagree with that norm and think that your contributions are a net benefit to the community. But as far as I can tell, the stated norm of the community conflicts with talking about the topics you discuss.
In short, your (deservedly) high status in this community is protecting you from pushback that a newcomer would receive if he posted substantially similar content to what you post.
In this particular case, I think there has been a bit of misunderstanding among your critics. Your reference to Heterosexual White Males was interpreted (by me and others) as a reference to feminism, when you intended to reference conspiracy theories like “CIA caused crack epidemic” or “CIA made AIDS”.
I would not agree that the existing community norm precludes all discussions of policy proposals, even those not affiliated with any partisan group.
I would agree that it precludes discussions of proposals affiliated with any partisan group, even if raised by individuals who don’t identify as members of that group.
That is, if I picked some example to talk about that was, strictly speaking, political, but that no significant political group had made into a partisan point of contention, I would not expect to be censured for it; if I were censured for it I would treat that as evidence that it was partisan in some way I hadn’t previously noticed.
On reflection, I think you explain the data better than I, but I maintain that the equilibrium you describe is not stable.
Specifically, it is not a neutral principal—one side on a substantive disagreement can be suppressed by creation of a social norm that the side is too close to a live partisan political debate while the other side far enough from the live debate not to be suppressed.
Or, rather, I agree that some ideas violate the local norm more strongly than others (and, in particular, more than a given opposed idea) and that consequently the local norm isn’t ideologically neutral. There exist partisan positions that LW collectively implicitly supports, and partisan positions that LW collectively implicitly rejects.
Whether that makes the norm unstable in any practical sense, I’m not quite sure, though it seems intuitively plausible. (I agree that the norm is unstable in a technical sense, but I can’t see why anyone ought to care.)
I recognize that there are people here who would at least claim to disagree with you, on grounds I don’t entirely understand but which at least sometimes have to do with the idea that this community is “exceptionally rational” and that this renders us relatively immune to normal primate social dynamics. I’m not one of them. (I’m also not entirely convinced that anyone actually believes this.)
Konkvistador,
I’m familiar with that conversation, since you mostly had it with me. :)
The fact that there is no political faction that supports your cluster of political ideas does not mean that you don’t have political opinions or that you don’t push them in this community. Your lack of mainstream partisan identification speaks well of your rationality. But the norm in the community is no political opinions rather than no partisan opinions. To be clear, I disagree with that norm and think that your contributions are a net benefit to the community. But as far as I can tell, the stated norm of the community conflicts with talking about the topics you discuss.
In short, your (deservedly) high status in this community is protecting you from pushback that a newcomer would receive if he posted substantially similar content to what you post.
In this particular case, I think there has been a bit of misunderstanding among your critics. Your reference to Heterosexual White Males was interpreted (by me and others) as a reference to feminism, when you intended to reference conspiracy theories like “CIA caused crack epidemic” or “CIA made AIDS”.
I would not agree that the existing community norm precludes all discussions of policy proposals, even those not affiliated with any partisan group.
I would agree that it precludes discussions of proposals affiliated with any partisan group, even if raised by individuals who don’t identify as members of that group.
That is, if I picked some example to talk about that was, strictly speaking, political, but that no significant political group had made into a partisan point of contention, I would not expect to be censured for it; if I were censured for it I would treat that as evidence that it was partisan in some way I hadn’t previously noticed.
On reflection, I think you explain the data better than I, but I maintain that the equilibrium you describe is not stable.
Specifically, it is not a neutral principal—one side on a substantive disagreement can be suppressed by creation of a social norm that the side is too close to a live partisan political debate while the other side far enough from the live debate not to be suppressed.
(nods) Oh, absolutely.
Or, rather, I agree that some ideas violate the local norm more strongly than others (and, in particular, more than a given opposed idea) and that consequently the local norm isn’t ideologically neutral. There exist partisan positions that LW collectively implicitly supports, and partisan positions that LW collectively implicitly rejects.
Whether that makes the norm unstable in any practical sense, I’m not quite sure, though it seems intuitively plausible. (I agree that the norm is unstable in a technical sense, but I can’t see why anyone ought to care.)
I recognize that there are people here who would at least claim to disagree with you, on grounds I don’t entirely understand but which at least sometimes have to do with the idea that this community is “exceptionally rational” and that this renders us relatively immune to normal primate social dynamics. I’m not one of them. (I’m also not entirely convinced that anyone actually believes this.)
That . . . makes me feel a lot better, actually. I suppose that fragile is a better adjective than unstable for what I was trying to say.
Oh I know you are. Its just the casual reader might not be and I felt a bit uncomfortable being quiet as other people debate me.