AFAIU discussing charged political issues is not allowed, or at least very frowned upon on LW, and for good reasons. So, I can’t discuss the object level. On the other hand, the meta level is too vague. That is, the error is in the way the abstract reasoning is applied to case X (it’s just not the right model), rather than in the abstract reasoning itself.
Note: you can generally talk about political stuff on your personal blog section. Part of the point of the frontpage/personal-blog distinction is so that there can be a bit of soft-pressure there without actually preventing people from talking about things.
There are certain areas that we might need to make individual judgement calls about (see Vaniver’s comment elsethread). And in general when discussing hot-button political issues I’d suggest you reflect on your goals and life choices (since I think it’s an easy domain to think you’re discussing something important when you’re mostly not). But that’s different from a ban.
Wait, what? If non-promoted posts (if that’s what you mean by “personal blogs”—I can’t find any other way to separate a post) have very different expectations and standards, why is the voting and karma identical and additive between personal blogs and the main site? Political hotbutton topics are difficult or impossible to discuss on LW.
I totally support the personal blogs being more lightly moderated, so things that push boundaries or even cross a line may not be noticed as quickly or at all. I expect to be downvoted massively if I post an unpopular political topic, regardless of whether I check “may promote” or not. It used to be I’d expect the same even for a popular political position, but looking at some recent vote totals for posts, I may be wrong on that.
why is the voting and karma identical and additive between personal blogs and the main site?
This is mostly for technical reasons, which we haven’t invested in fixing because the discussion of hot-button political issues hasn’t really been a problem for the last year in a way that would make me highly concerned about the overlapping vote systems.
I don’t know precisely yet what the best voting system would look like to account for this, but the two obvious options would be to either completely deactivate karma accumulation for non-frontpage posts and comments (which feels a bit bad to me, but might be fine, and was our initial plan), or to add a special flag that we selectively add to posts that deactivates karma accumulation (which adds more judgement on our part).
the meta level is too vague. That is, the error is in the way the abstract reasoning is applied to case X (it’s just not the right model), rather than in the abstract reasoning itself
Why not write a meta-level post about the general class of problem for which the abstract reasoning doesn’t apply? That could be an interesting post!
I’m guessing you might be thinking something along the lines of, “The ‘draw category boundaries around clusters of high density in configuration space’ moral doesn’t apply straightfowardly to things that are socially constructed by collective agreement”? (Examples: money, or Christmas. These things exist, but only because everyone agrees that they exist.)
I personally want to do more thinking about how social construction works (I have some preliminary thoughts on the matter that I haven’t finished fleshing out yet), and might write such a post myself eventually!
Given that Zack chose “Easy Going—I just delete obvious spam and trolling” as the commenting guidelines, I don’t see how it’s not allowed to write an object level comment about “this principle A is often wrongly applied in case X, but it shouldn’t be applied in case X as case X is different for reasons”.
If you actually add something interesting in for reasons* I would be very surprised if your posts gets downvoted. If you actually are able to articulate reasons that address blindspots that people have when thinking about principle A, such a comment would also likely be strongly upvoted given how LW functions even if it would partly political.
*and in this case it would be good to have object level reasons and not appeal to personal feelings.
Do you have a blog? If so, discussing the matter there may be sensible.
If you have no blog (or only have one that’s purposed for technical / professional / etc. topics), then it may be worthwhile to set up a third-party LessWrongMeta forum, for discussions of topics like this one. (There would, of course, be many challenges surrounding such a project, but it seems worth trying, and from a technical perspective the barriers to the attempt are low.)
AFAIU discussing charged political issues is not allowed, or at least very frowned upon on LW, and for good reasons. So, I can’t discuss the object level. On the other hand, the meta level is too vague. That is, the error is in the way the abstract reasoning is applied to case X (it’s just not the right model), rather than in the abstract reasoning itself.
Note: you can generally talk about political stuff on your personal blog section. Part of the point of the frontpage/personal-blog distinction is so that there can be a bit of soft-pressure there without actually preventing people from talking about things.
There are certain areas that we might need to make individual judgement calls about (see Vaniver’s comment elsethread). And in general when discussing hot-button political issues I’d suggest you reflect on your goals and life choices (since I think it’s an easy domain to think you’re discussing something important when you’re mostly not). But that’s different from a ban.
Wait, what? If non-promoted posts (if that’s what you mean by “personal blogs”—I can’t find any other way to separate a post) have very different expectations and standards, why is the voting and karma identical and additive between personal blogs and the main site? Political hotbutton topics are difficult or impossible to discuss on LW.
I totally support the personal blogs being more lightly moderated, so things that push boundaries or even cross a line may not be noticed as quickly or at all. I expect to be downvoted massively if I post an unpopular political topic, regardless of whether I check “may promote” or not. It used to be I’d expect the same even for a popular political position, but looking at some recent vote totals for posts, I may be wrong on that.
This is mostly for technical reasons, which we haven’t invested in fixing because the discussion of hot-button political issues hasn’t really been a problem for the last year in a way that would make me highly concerned about the overlapping vote systems.
I don’t know precisely yet what the best voting system would look like to account for this, but the two obvious options would be to either completely deactivate karma accumulation for non-frontpage posts and comments (which feels a bit bad to me, but might be fine, and was our initial plan), or to add a special flag that we selectively add to posts that deactivates karma accumulation (which adds more judgement on our part).
Why not write a meta-level post about the general class of problem for which the abstract reasoning doesn’t apply? That could be an interesting post!
I’m guessing you might be thinking something along the lines of, “The ‘draw category boundaries around clusters of high density in configuration space’ moral doesn’t apply straightfowardly to things that are socially constructed by collective agreement”? (Examples: money, or Christmas. These things exist, but only because everyone agrees that they exist.)
I personally want to do more thinking about how social construction works (I have some preliminary thoughts on the matter that I haven’t finished fleshing out yet), and might write such a post myself eventually!
Given that Zack chose “Easy Going—I just delete obvious spam and trolling” as the commenting guidelines, I don’t see how it’s not allowed to write an object level comment about “this principle A is often wrongly applied in case X, but it shouldn’t be applied in case X as case X is different for reasons”.
If you actually add something interesting in for reasons* I would be very surprised if your posts gets downvoted. If you actually are able to articulate reasons that address blindspots that people have when thinking about principle A, such a comment would also likely be strongly upvoted given how LW functions even if it would partly political.
*and in this case it would be good to have object level reasons and not appeal to personal feelings.
Do you have a blog? If so, discussing the matter there may be sensible.
If you have no blog (or only have one that’s purposed for technical / professional / etc. topics), then it may be worthwhile to set up a third-party LessWrongMeta forum, for discussions of topics like this one. (There would, of course, be many challenges surrounding such a project, but it seems worth trying, and from a technical perspective the barriers to the attempt are low.)