Failing all this I think we really should consider if the overly-strictly interpreted no mindkillers rule that was prevalent as little as a few months ago that much reduced political discourse wasn’t a good thing that should be restored.
I used to be excited about the idea of harnessing the high intellectual ability and strong norms of politeness on LW to reach accurate insight about various issues that are otherwise hard to discuss rationally. However, more recently I’ve become deeply pessimistic about the possibility of having a discussion forum that wouldn’t be either severely biased and mind-killed or strictly confined to technical topics in math and hard sciences.
It looks like even if a forum approaches this happy state of affairs, the way old Overcoming Bias and early LessWrong arguably did for some time, this can happen only as a brief and transient phenomenon. (In fact, it isn’t hard to identify the forces that inevitably make this situation unstable.) So, while OB ceased to be much of a discussion forum long ago, LW is currently in the final stages of turning into a forum that still has unusual smarts and politeness, but where on any mention of controversial issues, battle lines are immediately drawn and genuine discussion ceases, just like elsewhere. (Even if the outcome may still look very calm and polite by the usual internet standards.)
The trouble is, the only way a “no-mindkillers” rule can improve things is if it’s done in an extreme form and with ruthless severity, by reducing the permissible range of topics to strictly technical questions in some areas of math and hard science and consistently banning everything else. The worst possible outcome is to institute a partial “no-mindkillers” rule, which would work under a pretense that rational and unbiased discussion of a broad range of topics outside of math and hard sciences is possible without bringing up any controversial and charged issues, and without giving serious consideration to disreputable and low-status views. This would lead to an entrenched standard of cargo-cult “rationality” that incorporates all the biases, delusions, and taboos of the respectable opinion wholesale, under a pretense of a neutral, pragmatic, and unbiased restriction of irrelevant and distracting controversial topics.
Thus, it seems to me like the only realistic possibilities at this point are: (1) increasing ideological confrontations and mind-killing, (2) enforcement of the above-described cargo-cult rationality standards, and (3) reduction of discussion topics to strictly technical questions, backed by far stricter, MathOverflow-type standards. Neither of these looks like a fulfilment of LW’s mission statement, but (2) seems to me like the worst failure scenario from its point of view.
Uh huh. I fully endorse your analysis. Except that I’d say (1) would still leave us far better off than the typical confrontation-allowed political forum out there, because LWers would probably at least be willing to state their positions clearly, and would accept help in clarifying/refining those positions—even if the art of changing one’s mind should be lost, LW discussion would still retain some value. So I’d rather have (1) than (3).
Please consider that both Torture vs Specks and Three Worlds Collide are, as it seems to me, very much political—indeed, the latter could be construed as today’s very Blue vs Green with a touch of imagination, yet the debates on those have been quite OK.
It looks like even if a forum approaches this happy state of affairs, the way old Overcoming Bias and early LessWrong arguably did for some time, this can happen only as a brief and transient phenomenon.
Are you concluding too hastily about the cause of deterioration? In the early days, OB had two major voices with conflicting ideologies. I think that’s what lent it greater intellectual excitement. I do not think it a matter of ideological alignments being absent in the golden age. Rather, it allowed space for discussion of fundamental differences—as opposed to the analysis down to quarks of the highly obvious that’s taken front seat today.
Consider this old posting on OB. The level of objectivity wasn’t higher, but the level of engagement with fundamental issues was.
I used to be excited about the idea of harnessing the high intellectual ability and strong norms of politeness on LW to reach accurate insight about various issues that are otherwise hard to discuss rationally. However, more recently I’ve become deeply pessimistic about the possibility of having a discussion forum that wouldn’t be either severely biased and mind-killed or strictly confined to technical topics in math and hard sciences.
It looks like even if a forum approaches this happy state of affairs, the way old Overcoming Bias and early LessWrong arguably did for some time, this can happen only as a brief and transient phenomenon. (In fact, it isn’t hard to identify the forces that inevitably make this situation unstable.) So, while OB ceased to be much of a discussion forum long ago, LW is currently in the final stages of turning into a forum that still has unusual smarts and politeness, but where on any mention of controversial issues, battle lines are immediately drawn and genuine discussion ceases, just like elsewhere. (Even if the outcome may still look very calm and polite by the usual internet standards.)
The trouble is, the only way a “no-mindkillers” rule can improve things is if it’s done in an extreme form and with ruthless severity, by reducing the permissible range of topics to strictly technical questions in some areas of math and hard science and consistently banning everything else. The worst possible outcome is to institute a partial “no-mindkillers” rule, which would work under a pretense that rational and unbiased discussion of a broad range of topics outside of math and hard sciences is possible without bringing up any controversial and charged issues, and without giving serious consideration to disreputable and low-status views. This would lead to an entrenched standard of cargo-cult “rationality” that incorporates all the biases, delusions, and taboos of the respectable opinion wholesale, under a pretense of a neutral, pragmatic, and unbiased restriction of irrelevant and distracting controversial topics.
Thus, it seems to me like the only realistic possibilities at this point are: (1) increasing ideological confrontations and mind-killing, (2) enforcement of the above-described cargo-cult rationality standards, and (3) reduction of discussion topics to strictly technical questions, backed by far stricter, MathOverflow-type standards. Neither of these looks like a fulfilment of LW’s mission statement, but (2) seems to me like the worst failure scenario from its point of view.
Uh huh. I fully endorse your analysis. Except that I’d say (1) would still leave us far better off than the typical confrontation-allowed political forum out there, because LWers would probably at least be willing to state their positions clearly, and would accept help in clarifying/refining those positions—even if the art of changing one’s mind should be lost, LW discussion would still retain some value. So I’d rather have (1) than (3).
Please consider that both Torture vs Specks and Three Worlds Collide are, as it seems to me, very much political—indeed, the latter could be construed as today’s very Blue vs Green with a touch of imagination, yet the debates on those have been quite OK.
I don’t think so. At least I can’t figure out which side is supposed to be which.
Me neither. Maybe we lack the imagination...
Are you concluding too hastily about the cause of deterioration? In the early days, OB had two major voices with conflicting ideologies. I think that’s what lent it greater intellectual excitement. I do not think it a matter of ideological alignments being absent in the golden age. Rather, it allowed space for discussion of fundamental differences—as opposed to the analysis down to quarks of the highly obvious that’s taken front seat today.
Consider this old posting on OB. The level of objectivity wasn’t higher, but the level of engagement with fundamental issues was.