If we allow political debates on LessWrong, participating in them should give people no positive karma. (Like, in theory, it is possible to get upvoted for dispassionate objective consideration and summary of all relevant facts. In practice though...) Negative karma, on the other hand, should count. To avoid karma assassination of political opponents, maybe with an extra rule that downvoting someone in a political debate also burns your karma?
The political debates should only be available to people already having some minor but not trivial amount of karma. 100 points maybe? Otherwise, they probably should not even be visible; that would certainly discourage linking from outside and creating new accounts.
Downvoting the political debate itself, i.e. on the article level, should get the debate closed, like no more commenting possible. Though here I would hope that people would downvote political debates only on the merit of their actual contents, not as a blanket rule against political debates in general.
...none of which means that it is a good idea to have political debates on LessWrong. Just thinking what might be the best rules, conditional on allowing such debates.
Of course it should be possible to invite LessWrong readers to debate politics outside the website, using any rules you choose.
“To avoid karma assassination of political opponents, maybe with an extra rule that downvoting someone in a political debate also burns your karma?”—Well, someone can flood the comments with poor quality content in ordert to drain their opponents.
Of course it should be possible to invite LessWrong readers to debate politics outside the website, using any rules you choose.
This is a good point—or like how the SSC substack has a more political comment section for people who want to debate politics within the aspiring rationalist community.
At the very least...
If we allow political debates on LessWrong, participating in them should give people no positive karma. (Like, in theory, it is possible to get upvoted for dispassionate objective consideration and summary of all relevant facts. In practice though...) Negative karma, on the other hand, should count. To avoid karma assassination of political opponents, maybe with an extra rule that downvoting someone in a political debate also burns your karma?
The political debates should only be available to people already having some minor but not trivial amount of karma. 100 points maybe? Otherwise, they probably should not even be visible; that would certainly discourage linking from outside and creating new accounts.
Downvoting the political debate itself, i.e. on the article level, should get the debate closed, like no more commenting possible. Though here I would hope that people would downvote political debates only on the merit of their actual contents, not as a blanket rule against political debates in general.
...none of which means that it is a good idea to have political debates on LessWrong. Just thinking what might be the best rules, conditional on allowing such debates.
Of course it should be possible to invite LessWrong readers to debate politics outside the website, using any rules you choose.
“To avoid karma assassination of political opponents, maybe with an extra rule that downvoting someone in a political debate also burns your karma?”—Well, someone can flood the comments with poor quality content in ordert to drain their opponents.
This is a good point—or like how the SSC substack has a more political comment section for people who want to debate politics within the aspiring rationalist community.