I think people downvoting you may not have realized that you were the original poster, and thus may have thought you should not reply at all if you didn’t know more. (Since you are the OP I think your reply is justified in answering “as best you know, what exactly is it you’re asking us about?”)
Posting questions is totally reasonable. There is the option to post to Open Thread instead of Discussion, which would give your post less prominence; but there’s been a push towards posting more things in Discussion recently because it wasn’t getting that much traffic.
It’s good to do a certain amount of background research, but you’ve clearly done some, and I think it would be bad for us to discourage people from posting questions without doing “enough” research, where “enough” is some hazily-defined large amount.
The fact that this is a political topic might weigh a bit more in favor of doing more research before posting about it, since political topics are more likely to cause conflict.
It’s also worth noting that, despite the name, RationalWiki is not closely aligned with LessWrong, and in fact the two are often at odds and do not always have a lot of respect for each other. It’s an understandable mistake.
Well I have read RW page on LW and on Eliezer, which aren’t very nice, but I was under the impression that they are generally a, you know, rational resource.
Yes. I once went to the RW article about human biodiversity hoping to find a non-ridiculous rebuttal of some HBD ideas, and it sounded like “These people say that Asians are smart but have small dicks, Africans have big dicks but are dumb, and Europeans are just right! How silly is that? LOL”.
Well I have read RW page on LW and on Eliezer, which aren’t very nice, but I was under the impression that they are generally a, you know, rational resource.
Technically speaking, they are politically mindkilledundiscriminating skeptics. They make a list of things they don’t believe (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes merely for associating them with a different political tribe), and make fun of them. They use “rationality” as an applause light, but not as modus operandi. They are usually correct in situations where being correct is trivial for a generally educated person. That is already better than a great part of internet, but people can also do much better.
I am no expert. I hope there are others here who can explain better than me, since I’m just going to link you to wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary
What are the downvotes for? If I don’t have great understanding, should I say nothing?
[Not a rhetorical question.]
I didn’t downvote, but linking to a rationalwiki attack post about neoreactionaries isn’t a good way to inform people.
Well, I suppose that should be obvious. I had read the page some months ago and didn’t bother to reread before linking. Sloppy mistake.
Thank you.
I think people downvoting you may not have realized that you were the original poster, and thus may have thought you should not reply at all if you didn’t know more. (Since you are the OP I think your reply is justified in answering “as best you know, what exactly is it you’re asking us about?”)
Well, maybe there’s a lesson about posting on topics that I don’t know much about (even if the post are questioning). Are there mores regarding that?
Posting questions is totally reasonable. There is the option to post to Open Thread instead of Discussion, which would give your post less prominence; but there’s been a push towards posting more things in Discussion recently because it wasn’t getting that much traffic.
It’s good to do a certain amount of background research, but you’ve clearly done some, and I think it would be bad for us to discourage people from posting questions without doing “enough” research, where “enough” is some hazily-defined large amount.
The fact that this is a political topic might weigh a bit more in favor of doing more research before posting about it, since political topics are more likely to cause conflict.
It’s also worth noting that, despite the name, RationalWiki is not closely aligned with LessWrong, and in fact the two are often at odds and do not always have a lot of respect for each other. It’s an understandable mistake.
Well I have read RW page on LW and on Eliezer, which aren’t very nice, but I was under the impression that they are generally a, you know, rational resource.
I’ll do better vetting before linking.
They’re rational on subjects that Progressives are rational about.
Yes. I once went to the RW article about human biodiversity hoping to find a non-ridiculous rebuttal of some HBD ideas, and it sounded like “These people say that Asians are smart but have small dicks, Africans have big dicks but are dumb, and Europeans are just right! How silly is that? LOL”.
My muse is inspired:
The clowns of RationalWiki
Are ever so clever and witty
They say “LOL!” and “Hur!”
And sometimes “Fer shurr!”
And their acme of wit’s “tiny dicky!”
My personal judgement: they’re a bunch of clowns.
Technically speaking, they are politically mindkilled undiscriminating skeptics. They make a list of things they don’t believe (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes merely for associating them with a different political tribe), and make fun of them. They use “rationality” as an applause light, but not as modus operandi. They are usually correct in situations where being correct is trivial for a generally educated person. That is already better than a great part of internet, but people can also do much better.
Unfortunately they managed to overcome nominative determinism.
This was spur of the moment, but I thought others might be interested in what responders might have to say.
Linking to a rationalwiki attack post on a subject isn’t really a good way to give people an understanding of that subject.
I’d guess that the OP is too vaguely formulated and additionally loosely political. It is not trolling but standards are high here you know.
Ok. Is there a way that I could have made it better, or is the topic better left alone?
You could have put it in the discussion thread.
I defer to FiftyTwo, but this article give a good intro in a few sentences.