Given that politics is problematic it’s worthwhile to discourage people from posting low quality political posts on LessWrong
I did not say “low quality” and I do not think this post is low quality. I think it is of middling quality, around what I would expect an average LessWrong member to be capable of writing. It is less specific than I would like and I think overreaches in the amount the key insight is able to explain but there is a key insight. One I found useful and novel and well constructed.
Further, while it would be very bad to have LessWrong become solely about politics, looking at the front page there are very few posts with a political focus. Politics is a part of our world and if we cannot discuss it then that is a weakness in our epistemology. If we strongly discourage mid-quality posts that deal with political topics then it could have an intellectual chilling effect.
That said, the post has positive karma right now and while it’s not quite where I would place it, it’s within a range that I would expect to see for most posts like this so I am no longer as terrified as I was that LessWrong had suddenly caught groupthink.
I did not say “low quality” and I do not think this post is low quality. I think it is of middling quality, around what I would expect an average LessWrong member to be capable of writing. It is less specific than I would like and I think overreaches in the amount the key insight is able to explain but there is a key insight. One I found useful and novel and well constructed.
Further, while it would be very bad to have LessWrong become solely about politics, looking at the front page there are very few posts with a political focus. Politics is a part of our world and if we cannot discuss it then that is a weakness in our epistemology. If we strongly discourage mid-quality posts that deal with political topics then it could have an intellectual chilling effect.
That said, the post has positive karma right now and while it’s not quite where I would place it, it’s within a range that I would expect to see for most posts like this so I am no longer as terrified as I was that LessWrong had suddenly caught groupthink.