And also not something I would write on the old LW. But it seems weird to censor out snark when cross-posting things from Putanumonit, although I’m beginning to think that I should have done so.
demon threads are not as inevitable
That’s actually part of why I wanted to write this. I’ve written some moderately controversial stuff on Putanumonit, and yet I hadn’t had to moderate any demon threads. And the barrier to participation on LW is even higher than on Putanumonit, with the karma system and the prevailing norms here. My post on Jordan Peterson has >150 comments on LW, and almost all of them are good. It’s important to remember that sometimes you can mention a demon by name and the demon *isn’t* summoned.
if you wanted to partition the population into two clusters as cleanly as possible
I wouldn’t really want to do that, because the US is made up of dozens of clusters who end up in tenuous alliances, not two groups. Some people mostly care about abortion, some about the economy of their small town, some about preserving their Christian/hippie/Pakistani/furry subculture, some about X-risk and climate change, and many don’t really care about any policy topic at all, just about fitting in with their friends and neighbors.
A plausible model of Dave Rubin is that he cares about gay rights and free speech, so 10 years ago he was a leftist (because gay rights issues were salient and leftists were his allies), and today he’s an anti-leftist (because gay marriage is a done deal, and leftists are now his enemies on free speech). The issues didn’t change, but the clusters of alliances did.
And also not something I would write on the old LW. But it seems weird to censor out snark when cross-posting things from Putanumonit, although I’m beginning to think that I should have done so.
That’s actually part of why I wanted to write this. I’ve written some moderately controversial stuff on Putanumonit, and yet I hadn’t had to moderate any demon threads. And the barrier to participation on LW is even higher than on Putanumonit, with the karma system and the prevailing norms here. My post on Jordan Peterson has >150 comments on LW, and almost all of them are good. It’s important to remember that sometimes you can mention a demon by name and the demon *isn’t* summoned.
I wouldn’t really want to do that, because the US is made up of dozens of clusters who end up in tenuous alliances, not two groups. Some people mostly care about abortion, some about the economy of their small town, some about preserving their Christian/hippie/Pakistani/furry subculture, some about X-risk and climate change, and many don’t really care about any policy topic at all, just about fitting in with their friends and neighbors.
A plausible model of Dave Rubin is that he cares about gay rights and free speech, so 10 years ago he was a leftist (because gay rights issues were salient and leftists were his allies), and today he’s an anti-leftist (because gay marriage is a done deal, and leftists are now his enemies on free speech). The issues didn’t change, but the clusters of alliances did.