No, it wasn’t. The question is about issues where liberals and libertarians can together engage in effective political action.
No! That was never the question.
From the post:
Instead, I believe there are projects which could appeal to rationalists across a wide range of the political spectrum. A couple I can think of are opposing the war on drugs and improving judicial systems. Any other suggestions?
I was giving more suggestions of places where a lot of LWer might find agreement. And since the major political split seems to be left vs libertarian (with a vocal minority of rightists) the natural way to start was to look at what issues liberals and libertarians end up agreeing on when they study policy issues! This explains why this entire exchange has been so odd: like you were making demands of me when all I was doing was answering a question.
Politics is inherently about the motivations of people. If you want to shield yourself from motivations
Good lord… yes, I know that. But we’re trying to find out what people in the Less Wrong community could cooperate on, not solve politics.
I’m not trying to model any political actor. I’m trying to model LW people as political actors. That’s the point of the exercise.
Being rational is about winning, so stop thinking of the policies that are hardest to change as low-hanging fruits.
Low-hanging fruit as possibilities for agreement in this community. Not low-hanging as possibilities for actually changing something. Nevertheless, “hardest to change” policies might be the policies one has most confidence in being correct and that can conceivably outweigh easier to change but more more ambiguous policies. Hard to change also often means that the issue presently has little political interest such that the marginal difference of a small number of people doing something is higher. Immigration policy (say) might be much easier to change but joining in that shouting match is not likely to make a significant difference.
No! That was never the question.
From the post:
I was giving more suggestions of places where a lot of LWer might find agreement. And since the major political split seems to be left vs libertarian (with a vocal minority of rightists) the natural way to start was to look at what issues liberals and libertarians end up agreeing on when they study policy issues! This explains why this entire exchange has been so odd: like you were making demands of me when all I was doing was answering a question.
Good lord… yes, I know that. But we’re trying to find out what people in the Less Wrong community could cooperate on, not solve politics.
I’m not trying to model any political actor. I’m trying to model LW people as political actors. That’s the point of the exercise.
Low-hanging fruit as possibilities for agreement in this community. Not low-hanging as possibilities for actually changing something. Nevertheless, “hardest to change” policies might be the policies one has most confidence in being correct and that can conceivably outweigh easier to change but more more ambiguous policies. Hard to change also often means that the issue presently has little political interest such that the marginal difference of a small number of people doing something is higher. Immigration policy (say) might be much easier to change but joining in that shouting match is not likely to make a significant difference.