I think dating advice has presumably the value of improving someone’s dating.
When it comes to political discussions it not as clear. To you have a political discussion on LessWrong to arm people with arguments to win arguments with their real life friends.
Do you have the discussion to effect political change?
Do you have the discussion to fulfill your obligation of being politically informed as a citizen in a democracy?
Do you have the discussion to learn something structural about how politics works and transfer your knowledge to another problem domain?
All those are plausible goals that you could have when discussing politics on LessWrong. Depending on what of those you value, you might prefer a different kind of discussion on LessWrong.
Politics, dating, anyone got a third topic where Lesswrong varies between being useless and immensely frustrating compared to the usual standards of discussion around here?
Well, mileage clearly varies, but I find these periodic superficial discussions about the nature of LessWrong to meet both criteria. Nothing really new gets said, and old stuff doesn’t get built on, just repeated at mind-numbing length.
I guess it’s not clear to me what LessWrong could contribute to political discussion that you can’t get elsewhere. The instant-failure modes that typify most political discussions, even among the highly educated, could be avoided and...then what? What correct answers to what questions would LessWrong settle upon that economists and related professionals would not?
What I’m asking here is whether you have a specific question you want answered or if you simply enjoy the conversation. If it’s the latter, I can certainly understand why you would want to have political discussions on LessWrong.
1) I would like to be able to talk about politics with rational people 2) Understanding more of how the world works could be useful in other areas. 3) I want to be able to make references to things that might be construed as political without having the entire post downvoted to −6 because I’m not allowed to talk about politics. 4) I am increasingly worried about the radicalisation (Assuming it really is increasing) of Less Wrong and I think the problem is that crazy views get too much credence here, due to an unwillingness to criticize by more rational people. (Biggest issue for me)
Edit: I don’t get why I receive so many downvotes in a matter of minutes for answering a question as honestly and helpfully as I can manage. I see the same in some of my other posts. I somewhat suspect this is entirely based on party politics, where I am perceived to be criticizing party X in the original post, and so have unrelated posts downvoted by angry people. But maybe I’m missing something.
1) I would like to be able to talk about politics with rational people
I’d suggest a distinction between “politics” and “policy”, at least in the American English prevalent on LessWrong. “Politics” implies party politics, blue versus green, horse races (by which I mean election horse races), and tribalism. I think your post suggested an interest in this. Personally, I don’t want this here.
If, however, you want to talk about policy, using the analytical language of policy, then I say go for it. However, your original post, with its reference to parties, made me doubtful.
But that doubtfulness is precisely the point. I want to be able to make references to contemporary issues, without having to worry all the time whether or not someone might interpret it as being a sneaky and subtle way to signal affiliation for… whatever. I don’t frequent too many sites, but it’s only Less Wrong where people are so paranoid about this. And what’s worse it’s skewed, because if I complain about crazy political parties the response is “How dare you insult the republican party!”, as seen in at least one post in this thread.
If you don’t want to be seen as sneaky, don’t mince your words so much. Everyone here knows what you’re alluding to anyway and to be honest your views themselves don’t seem anything other than solidly mainstream. You’re not being persecuted for being a slightly-left-of-center liberal / social democrat, it’s a question of content.
If you don’t want to be seen as signaling affiliation… signal your affiliation less? Lots of us are open about our political views, in fact that seems to be a big part of your complaint, but even then most of the time it involves more substance than just saying “Yay X” and watching the Karma counter. You can be proudly liberal / marxist / Bokononist / whatever and people will generally be cool with it as long as your posts have some substance behind them.
I don’t want to strawman your position, but I really can’t see what you would prefer other than just having more posters here agree with your politics. Is that an inaccurate assessment?
I am curious now. What makes you think I am slightly left of centre, or liberal, or a social democrat?
I mean, I admit that it’s quite obvious which party I am calling crazy in the OP. But that’s because there is only one crazy party in the US, and everyone knows this, so that’s easy to infer. But bear in mind that in Europe, almost everyone agrees that US politics are crazy, so I don’t see what you could infer from that. Maybe it was the comment that I don’t vote for the racist party? That makes you think that I am centre left? Or the fact that I don’t like Ayn Rand?
The only other thing I can think of is that I am not obviously crazy, but if that means I have to be centre-left, there is something wrong here.
As I said before, your allusions aren’t terribly subtle. If you think the Republicans are too far right then you’re left of center and if you can find anything to agree with the Democrats about you’re not very far left either. That leaves Green and Social Democrat parties mainly, and their ideologies are all variations on the same tune.
You’re assuming I frame my political beliefs in terms of US political parties. I do not. You should bear in mind that according to the average European (which I am) your entire political discourse is nuts. It’s not even a question of left or right. So no, the fact that I think one of your parties is more crazy than another of your parties does not mean I am centre left. The most right wing party in my country is to the left of the US democratic party, crazy as that may sound to American ears. The fact that politics in the US have been becoming more and more extreme over the years does not in any way mean that my country is now more left-wing, either.
Frankly, I don’t care about left vs. right. I just want people to be able to discuss individual issues based on actual argumentation without turning it into a shouting match. I want to be able to ask what if anything we should do about climate change, without people claiming that I am showing colour politics because my being “in favour” of climate change means I am clearly left wing, or something like that.
I just want people to be able to discuss individual issues based on actual argumentation without turning it into a shouting match.
Have you found calling people crazy achieves or helps achieve this goal? Can you formulate a logical and probable pattern of events where calling people crazy will help achieve this goal in the future?
1) I would like to be able to talk about politics with rational people
The problem is with who you’d consider to be “rational people”.
Rationality doesn’t touch values. Epistemic rationality is just an accurate map and instrumental rationality is just about reaching your goals whatever these goals might be.
So if, for example, if I axiomatically hate redheads and want to kill them all, that’s fine. I can be as rational about it as I want to be.
Are you quite sure you want to talk politics with rational people who have radically different goals?
Ok, a while back I had all my posts downvoted because I referred to Ayn Rand as an example of someone who I thought was crazy. Someone replied that Less Wrong should be ashamed for allowing “Ayn rand derangement syndrome” and that anyone who held the view that Ayn rand was crazy should be downvoted. His post got upvoted while my posts got downvoted to −6 as a result. This is one (small) example of what I call crazy views that get a surprising amount of support on less wrong.
Another example would be this thread about using global warming as an example. ChrisHalquist notes here that it’s pretty worrisome that that post got downvoted so much (it’s a bit higher now but still negative), which I agree with. Admittedly, it could just be that the article wasn’t very well written… but I don’t think so.
30% of Less Wrong being libertarian. Yes I think that is an example of radical views. Again it’s entirely possible to be sane and call yourself libertarian. But I definitely think this number supports my experience, where if I even vaguely mention republican policies or Ayn Rand I get instantly shot down. On the other hand, criticizing the Democratic party does not seem to have the same effect .
If my hypothesis is right, I will now get a ton more downvotes purely for having mentioned which party/group I’m talking about, by exactly those people. Let’s see.
If you say “I think Ayn Rand is crazy” what is that supposed to accomplish that waving a big Blue flag wouldn’t? You’re not starting a reasoned discussion, just drawing battle lines.
If you say “I think Ayn Rand’s philosophy is incorrect / immoral and here’s why...” then you’ll actually be able to have a constructive debate. You can learn why people might believe something you think is crazy, they can test their beliefs against your arguments, and in the end hopefully both sides will have adjusted in a more evidence-supported direction. That kind of communication is what LW is about; approaching areas where we are heavily biased with caution and rigor to separate out truth from myth.
(Note: I’m not an Objectivist and don’t vote Republican, although you’d probably consider me more radical than either of them anyway. The downvote was for poor logic, not a slight against a political group/philosophy.)
But I don’t want to talk about Ayn Rand. The article was never even about her. I just gave a list of people and things that I perceived were damaging or crazy as an example to illustrate my point in that article. As a result, I got pulled into an angry shouting match where people insisted I should be ashamed to have criticized their favourite author, and all of my (entirely unrelated) posts got downvoted. I take issue with the fact that there is this one group of people (no idea how large) on Less Wrong that gets to silence dissent like this, and everybody else just sits there and nods along because they’re not allowed to discuss politics.
It doesn’t matter to me how radical your political views are. What matters to me is whether you are willing to entertain people with other views, or just want to shut down all dissent.
What matters to me is whether you are willing to entertain people with other views, or just want to shut down all dissent.
Good, then we agree; we should avoid behaviors which shut down dissent and dismiss people with opposing views out of hand.
So the next time someone puts an unsupported personal attack on a fringe political philosopher into an article, how about we all downvote it to express that that sort of behavior is not acceptable on LW?
How about we clearly and rationally express our stance instead of assuming massive inferential silence is any more meaningful than more moderate inferential silence?
Compare your implicit expectation in this comment to how one should react to some casually mentioned their position is “crazy”, with your recommendation here to how someone should react to a casual anti-gay statement.
I think that your Ayn Rand comments were downvoted based on their anti-rational tone, rather than on substance. For example, when Multiheaded writes in a similarly emotional and combative style, he gets downvoted just as much.
I am not sure why the AGW-test post was downvoted so much. Maybe because it mentioned the US Republican party as an example?
30% of Less Wrong being libertarian. Yes I think that is an example of radical views.
This might be a confusion about definitions. Libertarianism has many different meanings, from valuing individual freedom over other considerations to advocating “radical redistribution of power”. Some of it is indeed quite radical, but when an average LWer thinks of libertarianism, they probably don’t mean to support an armed uprising.
If my hypothesis is right, I will now get a ton more downvotes
This type of remark tends to screw up the vote-measuring experiment. The subjects must be unaware that they are in an experimental setting for the results to be representative.
Can you expand “anti-rational tone” here? I’m not sure what you’re talking about and it seems like the kind of phrase that cognitive biases hide behind.
You’re right, it is indeed entirely possible that that article was downvoted for reasons unrelated to Ayn Rand. The fact that someone literally said that all of Less Wrong should be ashamed for allowing “Ayn Rand Derangement Syndrome”, however, and that that person went on to suggest that I and everyone else who’d dare criticise Rand should be downvoted, and that this person got upvoted for this post… can not be explained in such a convenient way.
The same holds for another comment in this thread, where someone calls me out for criticizing “their” party (I did not mention any party by name) and for criticizing “their” beliefs and saying that I should not be allowed to call “their” party crazy unless I could “defeat” them in a debate about economics.… and this person got upvoted for this, again. This to me signals, at least weakly, that there is way too much support on Less Wrong for the view that dissent against politics X should be culled. This worries me to say the least, since it skews Less Wrong politics in that direction.
Dissent against ANY politics should be culled. DISSENTING AGAINST POLITICS IS BAD FOR RATIONALITY. CHEERING FOR POLITICS IS BAD FOR RATIONALITY.
This is SUPER obvious because your dissent is just calling people crazy over and over, and saying it’s obvious that they’re crazy and you don’t understand how anyone could think they’re not crazy. YOU ARE MINDKILLED. You are not capable, or at least have not SHOWN yourself to be capable of dissenting against the politic you hate in anything like a reasonable fashion.
The point of this website is that lots of things that normal people take as obvious or intuitive are not in fact true, and based largely on their own biases. You seem to completely be missing this point in this and your other conversations about politics. So either do your research, come up with a refutation of objectivism based on actually reading it, or DON’T TALK ABOUT IT. Mentions of things you disagree with as crazy in an offhanded way is exactly what we don’t want.
You are not capable, or at least have not SHOWN yourself to be capable
I find it telling that you can’t commit to one of those two possibilities. Especially since my assessment is that you’re strawmanning Sophronius pretty hard.
Why does a rant with all capital letter shouting get upvoted to +9 by Less Wrong users? Calling me mindkilled and saying I can’t be reasonable and should go away and stop talking is both rude and unhelpful.
I’m probably just going to downvote you from here on out but let me respond one last time: I did NOT tell you to go away. I did NOT tell you to stop talking. Whatever you may have thought of my tone or ALL CAPITAL LETTER SHOUTING, my message is different. When you say “I think x, and those idiot followers of y disagree with me!” and I tell you to NOT say that last part, that is not the same as telling you to stop talking or go away.
If you look through my comments, you’ll see plenty end up negative and people yell at me for saying dumb shit. But what they’re saying isn’t GO AWAY or SHUT UP, it’s BE BETTER. Obviously if you refuse to understand this I do in fact want you to go away, but I hope that instead you’ll realize what you’ve been doing wrong.
Because it’s trying to tell you why you are getting the reaction you are, and people are agreeing with it.
So either do your research, come up with a refutation of objectivism based on actually reading it, or DON’T TALK ABOUT IT. Mentions of things you disagree with as crazy in an offhanded way is exactly what we don’t want.
Of course it’s not working! When has shouting at someone in all capital letters ever worked? I don’t even know what this person is trying to accomplish, other than being rude and telling me to shut up. It bothers me extremely that this viewpoint would get so much support.
The fact that you don’t understand is the problem. It is also the problem with your main post (I’m talking about the post specifically, not your particular political opinions.) The main post is being downvoted because you fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the mindkiller sequence, and the political policy/preference of LW. In fact, your post is a prime example of why there is such a strong bias against political articles and discussion.
I wish I had a way to convey the information you’d need to figure it out. Some people just get it, some people just don’t get it. I haven’t spent much time thinking about why, or how to convey it, but my initial guess is that it wouldn’t be easy.
I don’t even know what this person is trying to accomplish, other than being rude and telling me to shut up.
Maybe get you into looking at what people are actually saying and taking some time to come up with replies that actually address that content in a meaningful way, instead of just responding with cached thoughts like “Republicans are crazy” or “shouting is rude”. And to realize that coming up with thoughtful replies isn’t just a question of figuring out the correct etiquette, but requires skill and insight which you might not always have.
Because if you read the recommendations they are none of them objectionable though some may be mistaken if taken as moral injunctions rather than as guides to bear in mind. Your post otoh, is mealy mouthed misdirection combined with “Boo blues!”.
Don’t discuss politics, discuss policy, unless you’re aiming to overthrow the system because even if you devote your entire life to one singular policy goal, and get elected to your national Parliament your chances of achieving your goal is not great.
Part of the negative reaction to your post, I think, is that this came off as disingenuous. Everyone knows the party you think is crazy is the Republican Party. I understand the point you were trying to making is more meta than that, but it’s hard not to be wary of someone who wants to talk about politics when they lead in with the suggestion that a large fraction of Less Wrong is aligned with a crazy party.
There is a harm in talking about all these things at such an abstract level: it probably exaggerates the extent of actual disagreement. I don’t really have many hard-and-fast political views right now but if I take a political identification quiz I’ll usually end up listed as a libertarian (with slight movement to the left). But the content of my libertarianism is basically “society should do the things most economists think they should do”. There are a few other assumptions built into it but it has little to do with anything Ayn Rand talked about (and I’ve never voted for the party you think is crazy).
So I wonder if people might be more receptive to a post like “Hey, guys. I see a lot of you identify as X. It seems like part of X is believing Y. Y seems like it is obviously bad to me, so I’m wondering if those of you who identify as X could explain if they identify that way despite Y, or if they really believe Y. If you believe in Y maybe you could explain why it is not as crazy as it sounds to me.”
Hm, thanks for the feedback. You might be right that couching any criticism I have in a ton of fake humbleness might be necessary to make me seem less confrontational. I’d much rather be honest about what I actually feel, though.
Anyway, I think it’s interesting that I make a post about certain parties being crazier than others, and everyone concludes that I mean the republican party.
Largely for the same reason that, when someone makes a comment about the downfall of social mores over the last fifty years, it’s going to get a comment about listening to conservative talk radio. There are certain ideas that—no matter how unique and individual your method of getting to them are—happen to have five or six decimal places worth of correlation with particular ideologies and listening to other particular sources.
Fake humbleness might be better than no humbleness. But I’d actually recommend a degree of genuine humbleness. If you’re not open to the possibility that the policies you support are the crazy ones and the people who you disagree with are right then I wouldn’t want you discussing politics on Less Wrong either. If you want to discuss politics just so you can correct the views of others, that sounds really terrible.
Doesn’t that strongly imply that everyone on Less Wrong thinks on some level that Republicans are crazy?
I think it strongly implies everyone on Less Wrong has a decent model of the average European’s politics and common political rhetoric in general.
Oh, but I am genuinely humble about things I am uncertain about. A lot of actual politics, such as economics, are sufficiently complex that I dare not have too strong an opinion about them. The same does not hold for evolution being real, or boys kissing being okay, or global warming being a thing, or a hundred of other things that people have somehow decided is political. I do not see why I have to pretend to be uncertain about subjects merely because someone said “it’s political now guys, everyone pretend you know nothing”. It frustrated me at school when I could not defend gay kids without being called gay myself. It frustrates me on Less Wrong that I cannot call certain views crazy without being called leftist.
If Less Wrong would admit that a lot of Republican held views are simply crazy, and fairly distributed criticism of craziness regardless of political allegiance so it’s not just Republicans that get criticized… I would be more than okay with this.
It frustrates me on Less Wrong that I cannot call certain views crazy without being called leftist
If one called religion “crazy”, one would be likely to be an atheist. And if an American lists a bunch of Republican views and call them all crazy, without doing anything similar about any Democrat-held view I’d consider them likely to be a Democrat (or a libertarian but, since you seem to dislike libertarianism, that’s unlikely in your case).
On my part, it frustrates me that you see calling certain views “crazy” as supposedly being dissent or an argument. No! Calling a different view “crazy” without any argument about why, is a status game—it’s an attempt to shut down dissent by deliberately lowering the status of the people that even attempt to discuss the issue.
i.e. they aren’t just in really strong disagreement with you (something which would put them on an equal level), they are insane wackos, and nobody sane could possibly hold any doubt about the issue, or worse yet defend the views, or worse yet share them. It’s an attempt to throw said views outside the Overton window.
On my part I’m actually sympathetic about such status games. I’m a progressive. I wish that e.g. neonazism in Greece had been destroyed, and same with lots of other vile crazy views. I don’t want to discuss with Greek neonazis, I want them utterly destroyed and thrown out of any political discussion completely.
But you seek the same about your political opponents (seemingly Republicans), while also seemingly denying you so seek it.
People on LessWrong, however, have the ability to recognize status games when they see them.
Right, so as ArisKatsaris says: calling something crazy without an argument is a status game. I suspect if you actually dived into the issues themselves you wouldn’t be that far away from even the most reactionary people on this site. I don’t think anyone here doesn’t believe in evolution. I don’t think anyone has strong moral issues with homosexuality—though you might hear some descriptive analyses of the cause and nature of homosexuality you might not like. “global warming being a thing” is trickier: since there are several sub-claims within it. Plus, this is a place where people like to question scientists. I mean, there is no way there aren’t large minorities here who disagree with scientific consensuses in nutrition science, pharmacology and psychology. Climate science needn’t be special.
But the issue is that you’re not actually arguing these points, you’re just waving a flag. You can tell just by the way you phrased them: “global warming being a thing” , “boys kissing being okay”. It shuts down discussion about these issues because you’ve construed them such that anyone who wants to, say, question the widespread hyperbole when Democrats discuss global warming or talk about how homosexuality can’t possibly be genetic now has to take a status hit as a result of taking the side you’ve construed has “crazy”.
it’s interesting that I make a post about certain parties being crazier than others, and everyone concludes that I mean the republican party. Doesn’t that strongly imply that everyone on Less Wrong thinks on some level that Republicans are crazy?
That is a possible explanation, indeed.
Another possible explanation could be that everyone on LessWrong thinks that saying “my enemies are crazy” without providing specific arguments why is how Democrats typically speak. (Or perhaps that a Republican would likely use some other word, such as “godless” or “commie”.) In which case, it’s a simple logical deduction that if author speaks like a Democrat, his supposedly crazy enemies are most likely Republicans.
Yet another possible explanation could be that majority of American LW readers are pro-Democrats, therefore “crazy enemies” of a random person (in context of speaking of USA’s two major political parties, which excludes Libertarians etc.) are most likely Republicans.
I’m not endorsing any of these views here; just saying that all of these are plausible explanations why someone might guess you meant Republicans, and the other explanations are not evidence for Republicans being crazy.
A different example: If you meet a guy on the street and he starts talking to you about “inferior races”, are you able to guess whom he meant? Does your ability to guess correctly imply that you agree with him?
I’m intrigued by your usage of “yield the point” in this context. Do you feel that the more likely interpretations proposed by others in this matter takes away something of value from you?
It feels really disingenuous though, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth, to have to ask those questions and pretend I don’t know the answers just because it makes me seem less confrontational.
LessWrong isn’t terribly off-put by confrontation, it’s the idea that is voted on.
The fact that someone literally said that all of Less Wrong should be ashamed for allowing “Ayn Rand Derangement Syndrome”, however, and that that person went on to suggest that I and everyone else who’d dare criticise Rand should be downvoted,
30% of Less Wrong being libertarian. Yes I think that is an example of radical views.
30% of LessWrong are liberals, 30% are socialists, and 30% are libertarian. 3% or so are conservative.
That’s the progressiveness of LessWrong showing—even if we stupidly use the sides in American politics (where libertarians are weirdly considered allied to the Republicans) that’d a 60% that would vote Democrat vs 33% that would vote Republican.
But I wouldn’t want to use the sides of American politics—the world is NOT the battleground for a fight between Republicans and Democrats and the stupid politicals alliances of America needn’t be our concern. Libertarianism is the ideology that says “stop throwing people in jail because they smoked marijuana”. I think that’s a very fine thing it says right there. Even finer than gay marriage (which I also support) btw.
And I’m saying this as someone who called himself a socialist in that poll. And who has voted for libertarians in the past also. If you’re seeing a right-wing bias in LessWrong, despite only 3% calling themselves conservatives, then you’re suffering from seeing everything through the prism of American parochialism where Only Two Sides Exist.
Libertarianism is the ideology that says “stop throwing people in jail because they smoked marijuana”.
Libertarianism as defined in the LW survey question says more than that. I agree we should stop throwing people in jail because they smoked marijuana but I still answered “socialism”. (IOW it doesn’t generically refer to the bottom half of the Political Compass plane but to the bottom right quadrant specifically.)
As I already said above, I also answered “socialism”. My point was that “the stupid political alliances of America needn’t be our concern”. My own politics of interest are such that I consider libertarianism is allied to progressivism in the issues that I’m most concerned about—Sophronius however seems so focused on the American political alliances, that, because by historical accident rightwingers in America are currently allied to libertarians, he sees this as evidence of rightwing bias.
I saw those comments. they were of terrible quality and largely based on nothing but hearsay about Rand. They deserved to be downvoted regardless of your viewpoint.
This Is almost certainly the chain of conversation Sophronius is referring to.
While I’m unaware of any official rules related to upvoting or downvoting individual posts or comments, karma’s primary use at this time is to act as a gate on posting threads to Main. I did not read that thread at that time (and have not voted Sophronius’ content there one way or the other), but it’s pretty much the precise sort of stuff I would prefer not to see on Main.
The content that started the chain was a post, rather than comments to a post; I linked to the comment chain by another poster that quoted the particular relevant sections, for simplicity and clarity.
Honestly, the content of the text I don’t think I’d like to see even as a comment in the Main section—it’s basically a burst of preaching to the crowd, except the crowd here won’t even know most of the point—but Karma only controls the content of posts in the Main section and is thus most relevant in that context.
I don’t consider the comment section useful or relevant in any way. I can see voting on articles being useful, with articles scoring high enough being shifted into discussion automatically. You could even have a second tier of voting for when a post has enough votes to pass the threshold into Main for the votes it gets once there.
The main problem with karma sorting is that the people that actually control things are the ones that read through all content, indiscriminately. Either all of LessWrong does this, making karma pointless, or a sufficiently dedicated agent could effectively control LessWrong’s perception of how other rationalists feel.
I’m sorting by Controversial for this thread to see what LessWrong is actually split about.
Mechanically, I’m not sure how you’d handle automatically upvoting articles into Discussion: people do that by hand often, but they have to do it by hand because most contents lose usefulness and sometimes even readability when pulled from context.
((At a deeper level, it’s quite easy to imagine or select posts that belong in Discussion or solely as comment and will quickly get high Karma values, and just as easy to think of posts that belong in Main but shouldn’t have anything that would make folk upvote them to start with.))
The main problem with karma sorting is that the people that actually control things are the ones that read through all content, indiscriminately.
At least at this point, it’s easy enough (and often necessary enough) to change Sorting regularly just to find an article more than once, so I’m not sure sorting is the most meaningful part of Karma. The ability to prevent posters from regularly creating Main articles seems more relevant, and a number of folk at least treat Main articles more seriously.
Someone replied that Less Wrong should be ashamed for allowing “Ayn rand derangement syndrome” and that anyone who held the view that Ayn rand was crazy should be downvoted.
That was me! And it’s you again! I should have known!
Although you’re mischaracterizing what I said. Again. Though I’m not surprised, as it was your modus operandi the last time we spoke. First of Rand, then sympathizers of Rand, then me, then the LW community as a whole.
If my hypothesis is right, I will now get a ton more downvotes purely for having mentioned which party/group I’m talking about, by exactly those people.
I’ll give you another hypothesis. You’re getting the response you’re getting because you’re screaming that you’re an internet crank at the top of your lungs. And I’m guessing that many of those downvotes are coming from the Progressive side of the field. Maybe most, as another guess is that the Progressives are more intent on driving cranks out of the LW community than the Libertarians are.
Do you really fail to see how your last was the usual ridiculous posturing of the internet crank who can only see disagreement with him as a moral and intellectual failure of others, and then tell it to them, like they’re going to believe it and be impressed by it?
And your initial post here was condemning the Progressives here for not condemning the Libertarians loudly and viciously enough.
Did you expect gratitude from that self supposed keen insight?
By the way—responding 25 times in a thread? Crank crank crank.
The only thing missing are the red and green flashing gifs.
Ok, a while back I had all my posts downvoted because I referred to Ayn Rand as an example of someone who I thought was crazy.
Saying that Ayn Rand is crazy is contains no useful political information that helps someone who reads your post to update his map of the world in a productive way.
Saying Ayn Rand is crazy is no criticism of Ayn Rand. It might be defamation.
Another example would be this thread about using global warming as an example.
The post basically says that you should judge someone rationality by he willingness to believe in scientific authorities and signal that belief instead of judging his rationality by direct empiricism or by choosing effective strategies that help him win.
One of the core Lesswrong dogma’s is that rationality is about winning. The post basically disagrees and doesn’t explain why he disagrees.
If my hypothesis is right, I will now get a ton more downvotes purely for having mentioned which party/group I’m talking about, by exactly those people. Let’s see.
How do you plan to tell who downvoted you, and why they did so??? Doesn’t look like very sound experiment design to me.
I don’t need to, all I need to examine is whether I suddenly get a huge influx of downvotes after this. This happened before when I off-handedly mentioned Ayn Rand as an example of a crazy person. If it happens again, it’s weak evidence in favour. You’re right though, the lack of control and analysis makes this mostly just a joke hypothesis.
Edit: Oh there we go, I’m at −12 now. It didn’t seem to happen until after I mentioned Ayn Rand though, so maybe it’s exclusively mentioning her that somehow causes people to go off their rocker. Or possibly it’s entirely unrelated, but still.
Edit 2: And now I went from −12 to +20 within minutes. I guess the other team just arrived? This is actually pretty funny to watch. It’s a bit like a football match, only my ego is the ball.
Edit 3: And now I am at −5 again. Looks like some people just downvoted all my posts in this thead again. I wonder if there is any pattern behind these waves of up-and-down voting, or if it’s just statistical clustering.
Wait, what? At the moment, this comment is at −3 with 33% positive… which implies it has gotten 3 upvotes and 6 downvotes; 9 votes total. This is not strictly inconsistent with it going from −12 to +20 to −5… it’s possible that 6-12 of the initial downvoters retracted their votes while 20-26 new voters upvoted, and then 17-23 of the upvoters retracted their votes and 0-6 new voters downvoted, but this seems so implausible as to not be worth taking seriously.
I assume I’m just misunderstanding you. Are you perhaps comparing time-stamps of your overall karma and deciding that this comment is the cause, rather than anything (or everything) else you’re posting at roughly the same time?
Someone replied that Less Wrong should be ashamed for allowing “Ayn rand derangement syndrome” and that anyone who held the view that Ayn rand was crazy should be downvoted. His post got upvoted while my posts got downvoted to −6 as a result. This is one (small) example of what I call crazy views that get a surprising amount of support on less wrong.
Please link to the comment so people can verify the context for themselves.
The comments above include suggest this as the thread under discussion.
That link is not provided by the OP, though, so it’s possible they meant something else. OTOH, Googling site:http://lesswrong.com “Ayn rand derangement syndrome” only turns up that thread, so it seems likely referent. (To my amazement, removing the site parameter still only turns up that thread, which seems implausible… is this some kind of automatic Google-tuning? Do others get the same result?)
For my own part, I think a charitable reading of the OP’s summary is close enough to accurate, but in the context of their comments more generally I’m no longer willing to extend them the benefit of the doubt implied by a charitable reading.
(To my amazement, removing the site parameter still only turns up that thread, which seems implausible… is this some kind of automatic Google-tuning? Do others get the same result?)
I’m getting the same results. It’s a relatively recent neologism (~10 years), and most uses focus on modern political leadership or modern organizations, which may be why.
I would like to be able to talk about politics with rational people …[but]...the problem is that crazy views get too much credence here, due to an unwillingness to criticize by more rational people.
Right. It’s those damn greens. Damn those greens, with their votes for… crazy green things! Not like us blues, who want nothing but good and rational blueness!
[ETA] My mind has been killed. This is why I don’t want party politics—as opposed to policy—on LessWrong.
4) I am increasingly worried about the radicalisation (Assuming it really is increasing) of Less Wrong and I think the problem is that crazy views get too much credence here, due to an unwillingness to criticize by more rational people. (Biggest issue for me)
The last survey compared to the previous one showed a big shift in favor of socialism away from the libertarian/liberal founding crowd. But I’m pretty that isn’t what you mean. What is actually happening is that people are noticing the initial demographics had views that are at odds with the average views of the New Atheist cluster (with which we are converging) and this bothers them.
It would be nice—I think there’s significant overlap between libertarian and progressive ideas on drug legalization, immigration, and probably other issues, but each group has built up a huge ugh field around the other.
I suggest that such the ugh field is largely one way, of Progressives for Libertarians.
One example. Years ago I bumped into a Progressive fellow from my freshman college dorm who I remembered having your typical freshman dorm political arguments with. On seeing and recognizing each other, I say hi and reach out my hand to shake his hand—and he refused. Ha! What an ideological ass! Yet it still cheered me to see him, though he apparently still gnawed the bones of his ideological resentments decades after we had last seen each other. Progressives think nothing of showing such personal resentment and animosity toward those they disagree with. Indeed, as our current poster demonstrates, they often consider such public displays of hostility a feature, and not a bug.
Libertarians are too much an ideological minority to hate unbelievers with much fervor—we’d have to hate most everyone. We don’t have the luxury of living a life in an intellectual walled garden where we can get away with the same kind of venom, loathing, and intolerance. If we couldn’t divorce the memes from the meme carriers in our minds, we’d all be in prison for mass murder.
For example, I think the Bible is a moral abomination. But I often quite like serious religious believers, and end up gravitating toward them. Similarly, one gal I know started with plans for the seminary, then became a Marxist, and now is a Wiccan Progressive dirt over humans tree hugging Socialist. Likely she’s a utilitarian as well. She’s endorsed most every ideological horror common in western societies, but I like her just fine. In fact, I feel a bond to her because of her lunacy.
For me, the salient division isn’t between what people profess to believe is true, but whether they seem to care about what is true.
Progressives think nothing of showing such personal resentment and animosity toward those they disagree with.
...
I’m a libertarian, loathe Progressive doctrines, and would remake the world to efface their effects from existence.
If you are genuinely interested in that dialog you shouldn’t use language like this (Edited for unnecessary harshness). Come on, you know how progressives reading that first sentence will react. You basically describe them as heartless. You know that even the exceptions to your statement will take it personally. Why phrase it that way? You could just as easily write: “Since there are so many progressives it is easy for them to isolate themselves from ideological opponents and avoid considering that possibility that libertarians aren’t evil. The fraction of libertarians open to that conversation is much higher.”
With the second sentence why “loathe”? Why load your mental model of progressive policies with negative emotional valence? That kind of stake-raising is exactly why conversations about politics are so hard. Surely “disagree” or “believe misguided” convey your position without telling progressives you think their ideas are loathsome. “Remake the world to efface their effects” is scary, stake-raising language too. I understand that it doesn’t literally mean anything other than “I would like to replace progressive policies with libertarian policies” but words have connotations and imagery.
you know how progressives reading that first sentence will react.
Do I? First, I doubt that projecting their emotional reaction was foremost in my mind.
And no, this is not all Progressives, all the time. Context of my comments—Progressives have a greater Ugh field for Libertarians than Libertarians for Progressives. Which I think is true, and I think shows up as them displaying more of the behavior in my generalization than LIbertarians.
You basically describe them as heartless.
No. Plenty of heart. But a human heart has more emotional range than Barney’s.
Why load your mental model of progressive policies with negative emotional valence?
Because I have values. The negative emotional valence comes as a by product of those values when confronted with things that contradict those values.
HPMOR:
Star Wars was the only universe in which the answer actually was that you were supposed to cut yourself
off completely from negative emotions, and something about Yoda had always made Harry hate the little green moron.
Yet another moment where I cheered Harry.
And in this case, the emotional valence was particularly relevant to my point: it’s not just that you don’t have to hate people with ideas you disagree with, but you don’t have to hate people whose ideas you hate. And, you don’t have to hate them if they hate your ideas either.
Your suggestion seems the be that the latter is too much to hope for.
but words have connotations and imagery.
Yes, and in this case they’re relevant to the point.
Do I? First, I doubt that projecting their emotional reaction was foremost in my mind.
Seems like it should have been somewhere in your mind. I mean, I guess if you were just complaining to other Libertarians it’s fine, but it seems like the productive audience for your comment would be progressives.
And no, this is not all Progressives, all the time. Context of my comments—Progressives have a greater Ugh field for Libertarians than Libertarians for Progressives. Which I think is true, and I think shows up as them displaying more of the behavior in my generalization than LIbertarians.
Don’t disagree.
Because I have values. The negative emotional valence comes as a by product of those values when confronted with things that contradict those values.
I have values too. They result in negative emotional valence for bad things happening to people. And inevitably they leak over a bit into the policies and people I think cause those bad things. But I do my best to hold the tides back and keep my values judgments out of my policy analysis. That way I can change my mind on policy if I hear new arguments or learn new information. I don’t think that’s the same as Yoda’s poor advice.
it’s not just that you don’t have to hate people with ideas you disagree with, but you don’t have to hate people whose ideas you hate. And, you don’t have to hate them if they hate your ideas either. Your suggestion seems the be that the latter is too much to hope for.
I have no idea if it is too much to hope for or not. How is it going so far? It would be great if political discourse lived up to your ideals—but why not make it easier for everyone?
But I do my best to hold the tides back and keep my values judgments out of my policy analysis.
Analysis disconnected from values sounds rather pointless to me. Particularly in politics. The first step in good faith negotiation is a communication of values. If I don’t clearly communicate my values, how is a Progressive supposed to come up with an argument to satisfy them?
It would be great if political discourse lived up to your ideals—but why not make it easier for everyone?
I’m trying. The goal isn’t yet another pointless political discussion, or talk for talk’s sake.
If they don’t know my values, the discussion will be unproductive. If knowing my values means they can’t have a productive conversation with me, then we won’t be having a productive conversation. End of story. The only people I might have a productive conversation with are people who can talk to the enemy.
Further, having to self censor information flow does not make the conversation easier for me. In fact, it doesn’t make it easier on anyone. It’s a cost, an impediment, a friction in the exchange in information. This is where I disagree with Crocker. Why should I have to pay that cost, if I’m not requiring it in others? Two people playing by Crocker’s rules can get things done.
On a more personal note, I find people who require their tender feelings to be stroked and soothed 24⁄7 tiresome. If soothing their feelings requires me not being honest about mine, I find it even more tiresome. No doubt they find me tiresome too. Fine. I’m not an appropriate playmate for those people. And they aren’t for me. I can live with that.
Also, I find the culture of offensitivity highly manipulative. Hurt feelings become a trump card to stifle expression of opinion. It’s the new blasphemy. I’m not interested in playing that card, particularly in a political discussion on the web, and see no compelling reason to consent to having it played on me.
I’ve had this discussion before on LW. It’s admittedly a trade off, and one that varies by personality.
But in the case of radically opposed political views, demanding that one side refuse to fully communicate their position strikes me as a non starter. Saying that I “disagree” really isn’t communicating. I find the proposed system grotesque, and the moral foundations an abomination. IMO, one of the problems with those on my side of the argument is that they don’t question the moral premises of Progressivism. Another problem is that Progressives do their best not to hear them. One of the immunizing strategies of the majority is refusing to talk to the Devil.
Saying that I “disagree” really isn’t communicating. I find the proposed system grotesque, and the moral foundations an abomination.
Can you unpack “grotesque” and “abomination”? When people use words like that I mostly understand them to be conveying disagreement, along with the desire to rile people up in unproductive ways, but I understand you here to be claiming to have different goals than that. I’m not sure what they are.
Disagree really isn’t right at all. I disagree that 2+2=5. Progressivism is a set of values and programs to implement those values that runs counter to my values. Strongly counter to my values. I’m not disagreeing, I’m disvaluing.
For my own part, I have no difficulty talking about people disagreeing over values, but I’m content to talk about people having values that run counter to each other’s values instead, if you prefer that.
So… when you call a system “grotesque” or a moral foundation an “abomination,” you’re conveying that your values run strongly counter to it? Did I understand that right?
Well, I’m not Spock tallying up a spreadsheet of values, so another part of what I’m communicating is my emotional reaction, and the intensity thereof. And indeed, that my reaction is a moral reaction, with some of the associated multi-ordinal punishing and disapproval characteristic of moral reactions. Though in this case, not punishing as much as a withdrawal of goodwill and a will to protect when they get screwed by the systems they advocate.
Grotesque and abomination also connote the twisted evil of the systems. One example. The poor who are supposedly so cared for are systematically punished if they take actions to improve their situation. Get a job, and face effective marginal tax rates, counting government benefits, often in excess of 100%. Find a partner to share the burdens of life, and likewise lose benefits.
Not just harmful, but a perverse and twisted harm, punishing someone for trying to do the right thing and improve their lot in life. When the “unintended consequences” of the system look similar to what a sadist would do who was trying to cripple people, I think “grotesque” and “abomination” applies.
So “grotesque” and “abomination” are meant to convey that the other side is not only incorrect, but also to express your moral judgment of the other side’s position as twisted, evil, and perverse, and also to express your withdrawal of goodwill from the individuals who hold that position, and your reduced willingness to protect them from certain kinds of harm (specifically, from harmful consequences of that position).
The same issue as “disagree”. 2+2=5 is incorrect. I’m not saying that their position is incorrect. Clippy isn’t “incorrect” either.
your withdrawal of goodwill from the individuals...
Both the loss of goodwill and willingness to protect are contextual on the same types of situation, while I read what you wrote as making the loss of goodwill general.
Analysis disconnected from values sounds rather pointless to me.
Analysis that is connected to values doesn’t have to mean embedding the values in the analysis. Pick a policy. Talk, in neutral terms, about what you think it will do. Then express how you feel about those impacts. Then the progressive you’re talking with can say “oh, I don’t care about that impact at all” or “I certainly care about that impact but disagree that the policy does it.” You can’t have conversations about terminal values. You can have them about policies which is why you have to take terminal values out of your conversations about policies.
If I don’t clearly communicate my values, how is a Progressive supposed to come up with an argument to satisfy them?
Right, so clearly express those values. But don’t attach the values to progressive policies. If it is the policies themselves that you loathe, how is a progressive supposed to argue for them?
Further, having to self censor information flow does not make the conversation easier for me. In fact, it doesn’t make it easier on anyone. It’s a cost, an impediment, a friction in the exchange in information.
I think this is probably wrong for (most) humans. We’re immediately distracted by status signals and emotions. Once the conversation is about that that is all it’s about.
Why should I have to pay that cost, if I’m not requiring it in others? Two people playing by Crocker’s rules can get things done.
Most people can’t play by Crocker’s rules. I’m not even sure the people who say they play by Crocker’s rules do all that well.
I’ve had this discussion before on LW. It’s admittedly a trade off, and one that varies by personality.
Fair enough.
But in the case of radically opposed political views, demanding that one side refuse to fully communicate their position strikes me as a non starter.
To be clear: if you had said “I loathe libertarian policies” I would have made the same objection. Both sides ought to lower the stakes.
IMO, one of the problems with those on my side of the argument is that they don’t question the moral premises of Progressivism. Another problem is that Progressives do their best not to hear them. One of the immunizing strategies of the majority is refusing to talk to the Devil.
This is interesting and I would be interested in hearing you expand on them. Part of why your language seems unnecessary to me is that I’m somewhere between a libertarian and a Progressive and I don’t see any differences in values so much as I see Progressives not understanding how incentives work.
You can’t have conversations about terminal values.
Sure you can. You can explain yours to the other guy, and likely discover something about them yourself in the process.
I agree about the possibility of discussing the likely outcomes of a policy divorced from the valuation of the policy. But the valuation provides both the motivation for the discussion and the punchline to it.
If it is the policies themselves that you loathe, how is a progressive supposed to argue for them?
He argues by showing me how I am mistaken or not fully aware of things entailed by the policy that I would value positively.
Once the conversation is about that that is all it’s about.
I suppose for some people. But since I think the valuations are an important part of the conversation, if those people can’t do valuations and objective analysis, they won’t be very fruitful partners in the discussion.
Both sides ought to lower the stakes.
Nope. Both sides should be as clear as they can about what the stakes are. I think that’s what’s missing. Here are my values. Here’s why I loathe your policies. Once put on the table, I think there is some hope of setting aside for moments and doing the objective analysis. But until honestly confronted, I’d expect the “objective” discussion to be polluted by both attempts to insert them, and interpretations on the look out for them.
I don’t see any differences in values
There aren’t, necessarily. But I think statistically, there are.
I see Progressives not understanding how incentives work.
I don’t think they care to understand. It’s not rocket science. They are motivated by something other than achieving outcomes. Some people want to do something. Some people want to be something. I think they tend toward the latter.
Normally, one conflates ideas, and not people. Do these libertarians see similarities between Progressivism and Stalinism, or do they have the same emotional reaction to Progressives that they have for Stalin?
As nearly as I can figure it, they think that the ideas held by progressives and liberals are so similar to state communism that anything faintly leftish is on the short route to genocide.
People failing to see degrees of a problem, is a problem. But notice that you’ve identified hatred of ideas, though unfairly exaggerated, and not hatred of people, or even attributing malicious intent.
Even Hayek, who had some of that all or nothing attitude, didn’t even attribute malicious intent to Socialists, to whom he dedicated The Road to Serfdom.
Me, I’ve started to question intent more closely, as I see the theocratic impulse to force others to live by your values as one of the worst possible intents.
What you describe sounds pretty common among people who are either capable of detaching emotionally from the topic at hand, or who lack emotional investment to it in the first place, as a description of people who aren’t and don’t.
There’s a lot of different labels that can be applied to this condition depending on how one wants to frame it; rather than get into framing wars I’ll just label it X for convenience. And X is hardly limited to how libertarians view progressives, of course.
All of that said, you may be right that libertarians are more likely to demonstrate X than progressives are. You might further be right that this is because libertarians are too much of a minority, because they lack the luxurious walled-garden privileges that progressives enjoy, because they would otherwise commit mass murder, etc.
That said, I would caution against inferring any of that with significant confidence solely from personal experiences.
I would also caution against describing the situation the way you do here unless your intention is to upset progressives who lack X.
That said, upsetting people in this way can of course be a very effective way of maneuvering for status, as the people you upset will typically express their emotions, which in a social community like this one allows you to roll your eyes and dismiss them with community support. If that sort of social status maneuvering is your goal in the first place, then of course neither of those cautions apply.
If that sort of social status maneuvering is your goal in the first place, then of course neither of those cautions apply.
Not as goal in itself, but it appears to frequently be a necessary first step to getting progressives to the point where it’s possible to have a reasonable discussion.
I would caution against inferring any of that with significant confidence solely from personal experiences.
I’m sure my generalizations would be wrong for lots of individual Progressives and Libertarians, but that won’t make me dismiss my conclusions from my lifetime of observations. What can we reason, but from what we know?
I would also caution against describing the situation the way you do here unless your intention is to upset progressives who lack X.
I’m a libertarian, loathe Progressive doctrines, and would remake the world to efface their effects from existence. If they’re Progressives and lack X, I don’t see a way to sugar coat those facts that will make them happy. Do you?
That said, upsetting people in this way can of course be a very effective way of maneuvering for status
Yes, and framing someone’s statements as intentionally upsetting people to maneuver for status is effective in maneuvering for status with some people too.
I guess it’s not clear to me what LessWrong could contribute to political discussion that you can’t get elsewhere.
People here generally put in their due diligence in constructing reasoned well-sourced arguments, tend to admit when they were wrong on something and most importantly force you to look at your own assumptions. That puts it leaps and bounds over any other political debate I’ve ever seen.
If a group of economists and other relevant experts were polled on various policy matters and compared to the answers reached by LessWrong users if policy was discussed on LessWrong, how much do you think the answers would differ, and would it be the experts’ errors or LessWrong’s errors causing whatever discrepancies?
This depends a lot on the proportions of the economists that are from each school and what constitutes “other experts.”
If you get a representative slice of economists, I’d expect much better predictive value on any given policy than LW because a) they have a quite a bit more expertise dealing with the models and b) we’ve got a lot of Austrian School / Prediction Markets people here to skew away from the consensus. If you weight them too heavily to any one school, especially the really funky ones, then you might see us start to pull closer but I still doubt the gap would close.
If you get a representative slice of Sociologists, PoliSci folks, X-studies professors and whatever other political talking heads you can find in academia and put them in a room together, it’ll disprove the notion of a just universe when the building isn’t hit immediately by an asteroid. And they’ll also be wrong much more than LW, although we still wouldn’t beat any of the handful of real scientists hiding in the back (Anthropologists / Social Psychologists mostly).
I’m not saying we’re some kind of amazing truth engine here, just that this is an abnormally reasonable environment with a lot of abnormally smart and well educated people.
For the same reason that there are articles on Less Wrong that give dating advice. Because people are interested in it.
I think dating advice has presumably the value of improving someone’s dating.
When it comes to political discussions it not as clear. To you have a political discussion on LessWrong to arm people with arguments to win arguments with their real life friends. Do you have the discussion to effect political change? Do you have the discussion to fulfill your obligation of being politically informed as a citizen in a democracy? Do you have the discussion to learn something structural about how politics works and transfer your knowledge to another problem domain?
All those are plausible goals that you could have when discussing politics on LessWrong. Depending on what of those you value, you might prefer a different kind of discussion on LessWrong.
There are already way more discussions of politics than discussions of dating here!
Politics, dating, anyone got a third topic where Lesswrong varies between being useless and immensely frustrating compared to the usual standards of discussion around here?
Well, mileage clearly varies, but I find these periodic superficial discussions about the nature of LessWrong to meet both criteria. Nothing really new gets said, and old stuff doesn’t get built on, just repeated at mind-numbing length.
Oooh, right, and discussions of how the rules for karma etc. should be changed! (probably falls under the same heading though)
I guess it’s not clear to me what LessWrong could contribute to political discussion that you can’t get elsewhere. The instant-failure modes that typify most political discussions, even among the highly educated, could be avoided and...then what? What correct answers to what questions would LessWrong settle upon that economists and related professionals would not?
What I’m asking here is whether you have a specific question you want answered or if you simply enjoy the conversation. If it’s the latter, I can certainly understand why you would want to have political discussions on LessWrong.
Ok, here are my reasons:
1) I would like to be able to talk about politics with rational people
2) Understanding more of how the world works could be useful in other areas.
3) I want to be able to make references to things that might be construed as political without having the entire post downvoted to −6 because I’m not allowed to talk about politics.
4) I am increasingly worried about the radicalisation (Assuming it really is increasing) of Less Wrong and I think the problem is that crazy views get too much credence here, due to an unwillingness to criticize by more rational people. (Biggest issue for me)
Edit: I don’t get why I receive so many downvotes in a matter of minutes for answering a question as honestly and helpfully as I can manage. I see the same in some of my other posts. I somewhat suspect this is entirely based on party politics, where I am perceived to be criticizing party X in the original post, and so have unrelated posts downvoted by angry people. But maybe I’m missing something.
I’d suggest a distinction between “politics” and “policy”, at least in the American English prevalent on LessWrong. “Politics” implies party politics, blue versus green, horse races (by which I mean election horse races), and tribalism. I think your post suggested an interest in this. Personally, I don’t want this here.
If, however, you want to talk about policy, using the analytical language of policy, then I say go for it. However, your original post, with its reference to parties, made me doubtful.
But that doubtfulness is precisely the point. I want to be able to make references to contemporary issues, without having to worry all the time whether or not someone might interpret it as being a sneaky and subtle way to signal affiliation for… whatever. I don’t frequent too many sites, but it’s only Less Wrong where people are so paranoid about this. And what’s worse it’s skewed, because if I complain about crazy political parties the response is “How dare you insult the republican party!”, as seen in at least one post in this thread.
If you don’t want to be seen as sneaky, don’t mince your words so much. Everyone here knows what you’re alluding to anyway and to be honest your views themselves don’t seem anything other than solidly mainstream. You’re not being persecuted for being a slightly-left-of-center liberal / social democrat, it’s a question of content.
If you don’t want to be seen as signaling affiliation… signal your affiliation less? Lots of us are open about our political views, in fact that seems to be a big part of your complaint, but even then most of the time it involves more substance than just saying “Yay X” and watching the Karma counter. You can be proudly liberal / marxist / Bokononist / whatever and people will generally be cool with it as long as your posts have some substance behind them.
I don’t want to strawman your position, but I really can’t see what you would prefer other than just having more posters here agree with your politics. Is that an inaccurate assessment?
I am curious now. What makes you think I am slightly left of centre, or liberal, or a social democrat?
I mean, I admit that it’s quite obvious which party I am calling crazy in the OP. But that’s because there is only one crazy party in the US, and everyone knows this, so that’s easy to infer. But bear in mind that in Europe, almost everyone agrees that US politics are crazy, so I don’t see what you could infer from that. Maybe it was the comment that I don’t vote for the racist party? That makes you think that I am centre left? Or the fact that I don’t like Ayn Rand?
The only other thing I can think of is that I am not obviously crazy, but if that means I have to be centre-left, there is something wrong here.
As I said before, your allusions aren’t terribly subtle. If you think the Republicans are too far right then you’re left of center and if you can find anything to agree with the Democrats about you’re not very far left either. That leaves Green and Social Democrat parties mainly, and their ideologies are all variations on the same tune.
You’re assuming I frame my political beliefs in terms of US political parties. I do not. You should bear in mind that according to the average European (which I am) your entire political discourse is nuts. It’s not even a question of left or right. So no, the fact that I think one of your parties is more crazy than another of your parties does not mean I am centre left. The most right wing party in my country is to the left of the US democratic party, crazy as that may sound to American ears. The fact that politics in the US have been becoming more and more extreme over the years does not in any way mean that my country is now more left-wing, either.
Frankly, I don’t care about left vs. right. I just want people to be able to discuss individual issues based on actual argumentation without turning it into a shouting match. I want to be able to ask what if anything we should do about climate change, without people claiming that I am showing colour politics because my being “in favour” of climate change means I am clearly left wing, or something like that.
Have you found calling people crazy achieves or helps achieve this goal? Can you formulate a logical and probable pattern of events where calling people crazy will help achieve this goal in the future?
For what value of “anything”? It can’t be the literal one, as I’d guess that Obama and Stalin both agree(d) that 2 + 2 = 4.
LOL. There’s one party that’s conventionally called “crazy” in the mainstream media. And..?
The problem is with who you’d consider to be “rational people”.
Rationality doesn’t touch values. Epistemic rationality is just an accurate map and instrumental rationality is just about reaching your goals whatever these goals might be.
So if, for example, if I axiomatically hate redheads and want to kill them all, that’s fine. I can be as rational about it as I want to be.
Are you quite sure you want to talk politics with rational people who have radically different goals?
Two spaces at the end of a line forces a linebreak.
Can you please expand on 4)? Maybe give some examples of “crazy views”, “radicalization” or “unwillingness to criticize”?
Ok, a while back I had all my posts downvoted because I referred to Ayn Rand as an example of someone who I thought was crazy. Someone replied that Less Wrong should be ashamed for allowing “Ayn rand derangement syndrome” and that anyone who held the view that Ayn rand was crazy should be downvoted. His post got upvoted while my posts got downvoted to −6 as a result. This is one (small) example of what I call crazy views that get a surprising amount of support on less wrong.
Another example would be this thread about using global warming as an example. ChrisHalquist notes here that it’s pretty worrisome that that post got downvoted so much (it’s a bit higher now but still negative), which I agree with. Admittedly, it could just be that the article wasn’t very well written… but I don’t think so.
30% of Less Wrong being libertarian. Yes I think that is an example of radical views. Again it’s entirely possible to be sane and call yourself libertarian. But I definitely think this number supports my experience, where if I even vaguely mention republican policies or Ayn Rand I get instantly shot down. On the other hand, criticizing the Democratic party does not seem to have the same effect .
If my hypothesis is right, I will now get a ton more downvotes purely for having mentioned which party/group I’m talking about, by exactly those people. Let’s see.
If you say “I think Ayn Rand is crazy” what is that supposed to accomplish that waving a big Blue flag wouldn’t? You’re not starting a reasoned discussion, just drawing battle lines.
If you say “I think Ayn Rand’s philosophy is incorrect / immoral and here’s why...” then you’ll actually be able to have a constructive debate. You can learn why people might believe something you think is crazy, they can test their beliefs against your arguments, and in the end hopefully both sides will have adjusted in a more evidence-supported direction. That kind of communication is what LW is about; approaching areas where we are heavily biased with caution and rigor to separate out truth from myth.
(Note: I’m not an Objectivist and don’t vote Republican, although you’d probably consider me more radical than either of them anyway. The downvote was for poor logic, not a slight against a political group/philosophy.)
But I don’t want to talk about Ayn Rand. The article was never even about her. I just gave a list of people and things that I perceived were damaging or crazy as an example to illustrate my point in that article. As a result, I got pulled into an angry shouting match where people insisted I should be ashamed to have criticized their favourite author, and all of my (entirely unrelated) posts got downvoted. I take issue with the fact that there is this one group of people (no idea how large) on Less Wrong that gets to silence dissent like this, and everybody else just sits there and nods along because they’re not allowed to discuss politics.
It doesn’t matter to me how radical your political views are. What matters to me is whether you are willing to entertain people with other views, or just want to shut down all dissent.
Good, then we agree; we should avoid behaviors which shut down dissent and dismiss people with opposing views out of hand.
So the next time someone puts an unsupported personal attack on a fringe political philosopher into an article, how about we all downvote it to express that that sort of behavior is not acceptable on LW?
How about we clearly and rationally express our stance instead of assuming massive inferential silence is any more meaningful than more moderate inferential silence?
Compare your implicit expectation in this comment to how one should react to some casually mentioned their position is “crazy”, with your recommendation here to how someone should react to a casual anti-gay statement.
What accounts for the glaring difference?
I think that your Ayn Rand comments were downvoted based on their anti-rational tone, rather than on substance. For example, when Multiheaded writes in a similarly emotional and combative style, he gets downvoted just as much.
I am not sure why the AGW-test post was downvoted so much. Maybe because it mentioned the US Republican party as an example?
This might be a confusion about definitions. Libertarianism has many different meanings, from valuing individual freedom over other considerations to advocating “radical redistribution of power”. Some of it is indeed quite radical, but when an average LWer thinks of libertarianism, they probably don’t mean to support an armed uprising.
This type of remark tends to screw up the vote-measuring experiment. The subjects must be unaware that they are in an experimental setting for the results to be representative.
Can you expand “anti-rational tone” here? I’m not sure what you’re talking about and it seems like the kind of phrase that cognitive biases hide behind.
You’re right, it is indeed entirely possible that that article was downvoted for reasons unrelated to Ayn Rand. The fact that someone literally said that all of Less Wrong should be ashamed for allowing “Ayn Rand Derangement Syndrome”, however, and that that person went on to suggest that I and everyone else who’d dare criticise Rand should be downvoted, and that this person got upvoted for this post… can not be explained in such a convenient way.
The same holds for another comment in this thread, where someone calls me out for criticizing “their” party (I did not mention any party by name) and for criticizing “their” beliefs and saying that I should not be allowed to call “their” party crazy unless I could “defeat” them in a debate about economics.… and this person got upvoted for this, again. This to me signals, at least weakly, that there is way too much support on Less Wrong for the view that dissent against politics X should be culled. This worries me to say the least, since it skews Less Wrong politics in that direction.
Dissent against ANY politics should be culled. DISSENTING AGAINST POLITICS IS BAD FOR RATIONALITY. CHEERING FOR POLITICS IS BAD FOR RATIONALITY.
This is SUPER obvious because your dissent is just calling people crazy over and over, and saying it’s obvious that they’re crazy and you don’t understand how anyone could think they’re not crazy. YOU ARE MINDKILLED. You are not capable, or at least have not SHOWN yourself to be capable of dissenting against the politic you hate in anything like a reasonable fashion.
The point of this website is that lots of things that normal people take as obvious or intuitive are not in fact true, and based largely on their own biases. You seem to completely be missing this point in this and your other conversations about politics. So either do your research, come up with a refutation of objectivism based on actually reading it, or DON’T TALK ABOUT IT. Mentions of things you disagree with as crazy in an offhanded way is exactly what we don’t want.
I find it telling that you can’t commit to one of those two possibilities. Especially since my assessment is that you’re strawmanning Sophronius pretty hard.
Why does a rant with all capital letter shouting get upvoted to +9 by Less Wrong users? Calling me mindkilled and saying I can’t be reasonable and should go away and stop talking is both rude and unhelpful.
I’m probably just going to downvote you from here on out but let me respond one last time: I did NOT tell you to go away. I did NOT tell you to stop talking. Whatever you may have thought of my tone or ALL CAPITAL LETTER SHOUTING, my message is different. When you say “I think x, and those idiot followers of y disagree with me!” and I tell you to NOT say that last part, that is not the same as telling you to stop talking or go away.
If you look through my comments, you’ll see plenty end up negative and people yell at me for saying dumb shit. But what they’re saying isn’t GO AWAY or SHUT UP, it’s BE BETTER. Obviously if you refuse to understand this I do in fact want you to go away, but I hope that instead you’ll realize what you’ve been doing wrong.
Because it’s trying to tell you why you are getting the reaction you are, and people are agreeing with it.
Looks like it’s not working too well though.
Of course it’s not working! When has shouting at someone in all capital letters ever worked? I don’t even know what this person is trying to accomplish, other than being rude and telling me to shut up. It bothers me extremely that this viewpoint would get so much support.
The fact that you don’t understand is the problem. It is also the problem with your main post (I’m talking about the post specifically, not your particular political opinions.) The main post is being downvoted because you fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the mindkiller sequence, and the political policy/preference of LW. In fact, your post is a prime example of why there is such a strong bias against political articles and discussion.
I wish I had a way to convey the information you’d need to figure it out. Some people just get it, some people just don’t get it. I haven’t spent much time thinking about why, or how to convey it, but my initial guess is that it wouldn’t be easy.
Maybe get you into looking at what people are actually saying and taking some time to come up with replies that actually address that content in a meaningful way, instead of just responding with cached thoughts like “Republicans are crazy” or “shouting is rude”. And to realize that coming up with thoughtful replies isn’t just a question of figuring out the correct etiquette, but requires skill and insight which you might not always have.
Because if you read the recommendations they are none of them objectionable though some may be mistaken if taken as moral injunctions rather than as guides to bear in mind. Your post otoh, is mealy mouthed misdirection combined with “Boo blues!”.
Don’t discuss politics, discuss policy, unless you’re aiming to overthrow the system because even if you devote your entire life to one singular policy goal, and get elected to your national Parliament your chances of achieving your goal is not great.
Part of the negative reaction to your post, I think, is that this came off as disingenuous. Everyone knows the party you think is crazy is the Republican Party. I understand the point you were trying to making is more meta than that, but it’s hard not to be wary of someone who wants to talk about politics when they lead in with the suggestion that a large fraction of Less Wrong is aligned with a crazy party.
There is a harm in talking about all these things at such an abstract level: it probably exaggerates the extent of actual disagreement. I don’t really have many hard-and-fast political views right now but if I take a political identification quiz I’ll usually end up listed as a libertarian (with slight movement to the left). But the content of my libertarianism is basically “society should do the things most economists think they should do”. There are a few other assumptions built into it but it has little to do with anything Ayn Rand talked about (and I’ve never voted for the party you think is crazy).
So I wonder if people might be more receptive to a post like “Hey, guys. I see a lot of you identify as X. It seems like part of X is believing Y. Y seems like it is obviously bad to me, so I’m wondering if those of you who identify as X could explain if they identify that way despite Y, or if they really believe Y. If you believe in Y maybe you could explain why it is not as crazy as it sounds to me.”
Hm, thanks for the feedback. You might be right that couching any criticism I have in a ton of fake humbleness might be necessary to make me seem less confrontational. I’d much rather be honest about what I actually feel, though.
(Rest of post retracted, agree with criticism)
Largely for the same reason that, when someone makes a comment about the downfall of social mores over the last fifty years, it’s going to get a comment about listening to conservative talk radio. There are certain ideas that—no matter how unique and individual your method of getting to them are—happen to have five or six decimal places worth of correlation with particular ideologies and listening to other particular sources.
Fake humbleness might be better than no humbleness. But I’d actually recommend a degree of genuine humbleness. If you’re not open to the possibility that the policies you support are the crazy ones and the people who you disagree with are right then I wouldn’t want you discussing politics on Less Wrong either. If you want to discuss politics just so you can correct the views of others, that sounds really terrible.
I think it strongly implies everyone on Less Wrong has a decent model of the average European’s politics and common political rhetoric in general.
Oh, but I am genuinely humble about things I am uncertain about. A lot of actual politics, such as economics, are sufficiently complex that I dare not have too strong an opinion about them. The same does not hold for evolution being real, or boys kissing being okay, or global warming being a thing, or a hundred of other things that people have somehow decided is political. I do not see why I have to pretend to be uncertain about subjects merely because someone said “it’s political now guys, everyone pretend you know nothing”. It frustrated me at school when I could not defend gay kids without being called gay myself. It frustrates me on Less Wrong that I cannot call certain views crazy without being called leftist.
If Less Wrong would admit that a lot of Republican held views are simply crazy, and fairly distributed criticism of craziness regardless of political allegiance so it’s not just Republicans that get criticized… I would be more than okay with this.
If one called religion “crazy”, one would be likely to be an atheist. And if an American lists a bunch of Republican views and call them all crazy, without doing anything similar about any Democrat-held view I’d consider them likely to be a Democrat (or a libertarian but, since you seem to dislike libertarianism, that’s unlikely in your case).
On my part, it frustrates me that you see calling certain views “crazy” as supposedly being dissent or an argument. No! Calling a different view “crazy” without any argument about why, is a status game—it’s an attempt to shut down dissent by deliberately lowering the status of the people that even attempt to discuss the issue.
i.e. they aren’t just in really strong disagreement with you (something which would put them on an equal level), they are insane wackos, and nobody sane could possibly hold any doubt about the issue, or worse yet defend the views, or worse yet share them. It’s an attempt to throw said views outside the Overton window.
On my part I’m actually sympathetic about such status games. I’m a progressive. I wish that e.g. neonazism in Greece had been destroyed, and same with lots of other vile crazy views. I don’t want to discuss with Greek neonazis, I want them utterly destroyed and thrown out of any political discussion completely.
But you seek the same about your political opponents (seemingly Republicans), while also seemingly denying you so seek it.
People on LessWrong, however, have the ability to recognize status games when they see them.
Right, so as ArisKatsaris says: calling something crazy without an argument is a status game. I suspect if you actually dived into the issues themselves you wouldn’t be that far away from even the most reactionary people on this site. I don’t think anyone here doesn’t believe in evolution. I don’t think anyone has strong moral issues with homosexuality—though you might hear some descriptive analyses of the cause and nature of homosexuality you might not like. “global warming being a thing” is trickier: since there are several sub-claims within it. Plus, this is a place where people like to question scientists. I mean, there is no way there aren’t large minorities here who disagree with scientific consensuses in nutrition science, pharmacology and psychology. Climate science needn’t be special.
But the issue is that you’re not actually arguing these points, you’re just waving a flag. You can tell just by the way you phrased them: “global warming being a thing” , “boys kissing being okay”. It shuts down discussion about these issues because you’ve construed them such that anyone who wants to, say, question the widespread hyperbole when Democrats discuss global warming or talk about how homosexuality can’t possibly be genetic now has to take a status hit as a result of taking the side you’ve construed has “crazy”.
That is a possible explanation, indeed.
Another possible explanation could be that everyone on LessWrong thinks that saying “my enemies are crazy” without providing specific arguments why is how Democrats typically speak. (Or perhaps that a Republican would likely use some other word, such as “godless” or “commie”.) In which case, it’s a simple logical deduction that if author speaks like a Democrat, his supposedly crazy enemies are most likely Republicans.
Yet another possible explanation could be that majority of American LW readers are pro-Democrats, therefore “crazy enemies” of a random person (in context of speaking of USA’s two major political parties, which excludes Libertarians etc.) are most likely Republicans.
I’m not endorsing any of these views here; just saying that all of these are plausible explanations why someone might guess you meant Republicans, and the other explanations are not evidence for Republicans being crazy.
A different example: If you meet a guy on the street and he starts talking to you about “inferior races”, are you able to guess whom he meant? Does your ability to guess correctly imply that you agree with him?
I will yield the point made by you and several others that yes, other interpretations are possible and in fact more likely.
I’m intrigued by your usage of “yield the point” in this context. Do you feel that the more likely interpretations proposed by others in this matter takes away something of value from you?
LessWrong isn’t terribly off-put by confrontation, it’s the idea that is voted on.
Again, mischaracterization of what I wrote.
My original post: http://lesswrong.com/lw/iqq/a_game_of_angels_and_devils/9tat
I suggest that’s one reason you’re downvoted—mischaracterizing what others say in a self serving way.
30% of LessWrong are liberals, 30% are socialists, and 30% are libertarian. 3% or so are conservative.
That’s the progressiveness of LessWrong showing—even if we stupidly use the sides in American politics (where libertarians are weirdly considered allied to the Republicans) that’d a 60% that would vote Democrat vs 33% that would vote Republican.
But I wouldn’t want to use the sides of American politics—the world is NOT the battleground for a fight between Republicans and Democrats and the stupid politicals alliances of America needn’t be our concern. Libertarianism is the ideology that says “stop throwing people in jail because they smoked marijuana”. I think that’s a very fine thing it says right there. Even finer than gay marriage (which I also support) btw.
And I’m saying this as someone who called himself a socialist in that poll. And who has voted for libertarians in the past also. If you’re seeing a right-wing bias in LessWrong, despite only 3% calling themselves conservatives, then you’re suffering from seeing everything through the prism of American parochialism where Only Two Sides Exist.
Libertarianism as defined in the LW survey question says more than that. I agree we should stop throwing people in jail because they smoked marijuana but I still answered “socialism”. (IOW it doesn’t generically refer to the bottom half of the Political Compass plane but to the bottom right quadrant specifically.)
As I already said above, I also answered “socialism”. My point was that “the stupid political alliances of America needn’t be our concern”. My own politics of interest are such that I consider libertarianism is allied to progressivism in the issues that I’m most concerned about—Sophronius however seems so focused on the American political alliances, that, because by historical accident rightwingers in America are currently allied to libertarians, he sees this as evidence of rightwing bias.
I saw those comments. they were of terrible quality and largely based on nothing but hearsay about Rand. They deserved to be downvoted regardless of your viewpoint.
Can you expand “deserved” here? I’ve never known karma to be about something I could classify as being “deserved” or not.
This Is almost certainly the chain of conversation Sophronius is referring to.
While I’m unaware of any official rules related to upvoting or downvoting individual posts or comments, karma’s primary use at this time is to act as a gate on posting threads to Main. I did not read that thread at that time (and have not voted Sophronius’ content there one way or the other), but it’s pretty much the precise sort of stuff I would prefer not to see on Main.
As a Main post or as comments in the Main section?
The content that started the chain was a post, rather than comments to a post; I linked to the comment chain by another poster that quoted the particular relevant sections, for simplicity and clarity.
Honestly, the content of the text I don’t think I’d like to see even as a comment in the Main section—it’s basically a burst of preaching to the crowd, except the crowd here won’t even know most of the point—but Karma only controls the content of posts in the Main section and is thus most relevant in that context.
I don’t consider the comment section useful or relevant in any way. I can see voting on articles being useful, with articles scoring high enough being shifted into discussion automatically. You could even have a second tier of voting for when a post has enough votes to pass the threshold into Main for the votes it gets once there.
The main problem with karma sorting is that the people that actually control things are the ones that read through all content, indiscriminately. Either all of LessWrong does this, making karma pointless, or a sufficiently dedicated agent could effectively control LessWrong’s perception of how other rationalists feel.
I’m sorting by Controversial for this thread to see what LessWrong is actually split about.
In this case, the content was already in a post.
Mechanically, I’m not sure how you’d handle automatically upvoting articles into Discussion: people do that by hand often, but they have to do it by hand because most contents lose usefulness and sometimes even readability when pulled from context.
((At a deeper level, it’s quite easy to imagine or select posts that belong in Discussion or solely as comment and will quickly get high Karma values, and just as easy to think of posts that belong in Main but shouldn’t have anything that would make folk upvote them to start with.))
At least at this point, it’s easy enough (and often necessary enough) to change Sorting regularly just to find an article more than once, so I’m not sure sorting is the most meaningful part of Karma. The ability to prevent posters from regularly creating Main articles seems more relevant, and a number of folk at least treat Main articles more seriously.
That was me! And it’s you again! I should have known!
Although you’re mischaracterizing what I said. Again. Though I’m not surprised, as it was your modus operandi the last time we spoke. First of Rand, then sympathizers of Rand, then me, then the LW community as a whole.
For anyone who wants to claim that my characterization here is unfair, I invite them to read the original thread and get back to me if they still think so: http://lesswrong.com/lw/iqq/a_game_of_angels_and_devils/
You continue true to form here:
I’ll give you another hypothesis. You’re getting the response you’re getting because you’re screaming that you’re an internet crank at the top of your lungs. And I’m guessing that many of those downvotes are coming from the Progressive side of the field. Maybe most, as another guess is that the Progressives are more intent on driving cranks out of the LW community than the Libertarians are.
Do you really fail to see how your last was the usual ridiculous posturing of the internet crank who can only see disagreement with him as a moral and intellectual failure of others, and then tell it to them, like they’re going to believe it and be impressed by it?
And your initial post here was condemning the Progressives here for not condemning the Libertarians loudly and viciously enough.
Did you expect gratitude from that self supposed keen insight?
By the way—responding 25 times in a thread? Crank crank crank.
The only thing missing are the red and green flashing gifs.
Saying that Ayn Rand is crazy is contains no useful political information that helps someone who reads your post to update his map of the world in a productive way.
Saying Ayn Rand is crazy is no criticism of Ayn Rand. It might be defamation.
The post basically says that you should judge someone rationality by he willingness to believe in scientific authorities and signal that belief instead of judging his rationality by direct empiricism or by choosing effective strategies that help him win.
One of the core Lesswrong dogma’s is that rationality is about winning. The post basically disagrees and doesn’t explain why he disagrees.
How do you plan to tell who downvoted you, and why they did so??? Doesn’t look like very sound experiment design to me.
I don’t need to, all I need to examine is whether I suddenly get a huge influx of downvotes after this. This happened before when I off-handedly mentioned Ayn Rand as an example of a crazy person. If it happens again, it’s weak evidence in favour. You’re right though, the lack of control and analysis makes this mostly just a joke hypothesis.
Edit: Oh there we go, I’m at −12 now. It didn’t seem to happen until after I mentioned Ayn Rand though, so maybe it’s exclusively mentioning her that somehow causes people to go off their rocker. Or possibly it’s entirely unrelated, but still.
Edit 2: And now I went from −12 to +20 within minutes. I guess the other team just arrived? This is actually pretty funny to watch. It’s a bit like a football match, only my ego is the ball.
Edit 3: And now I am at −5 again. Looks like some people just downvoted all my posts in this thead again. I wonder if there is any pattern behind these waves of up-and-down voting, or if it’s just statistical clustering.
I think of Rand as someone who took a few steps outside the consensus and found both true and false things there. She wasn’t simply crazy.
Your ego is entangled with your karma on LW?
What a poor choice.
Wait, what?
At the moment, this comment is at −3 with 33% positive… which implies it has gotten 3 upvotes and 6 downvotes; 9 votes total.
This is not strictly inconsistent with it going from −12 to +20 to −5… it’s possible that 6-12 of the initial downvoters retracted their votes while 20-26 new voters upvoted, and then 17-23 of the upvoters retracted their votes and 0-6 new voters downvoted, but this seems so implausible as to not be worth taking seriously.
I assume I’m just misunderstanding you. Are you perhaps comparing time-stamps of your overall karma and deciding that this comment is the cause, rather than anything (or everything) else you’re posting at roughly the same time?
He’s probably talking about either votes on his top-level post, or maybe his 30-day karma. Doesn’t matter much.
Please link to the comment so people can verify the context for themselves.
The comments above include suggest this as the thread under discussion.
That link is not provided by the OP, though, so it’s possible they meant something else. OTOH, Googling site:http://lesswrong.com “Ayn rand derangement syndrome” only turns up that thread, so it seems likely referent. (To my amazement, removing the site parameter still only turns up that thread, which seems implausible… is this some kind of automatic Google-tuning? Do others get the same result?)
For my own part, I think a charitable reading of the OP’s summary is close enough to accurate, but in the context of their comments more generally I’m no longer willing to extend them the benefit of the doubt implied by a charitable reading.
I’m getting the same results. It’s a relatively recent neologism (~10 years), and most uses focus on modern political leadership or modern organizations, which may be why.
Still, a surprising Googlebomb.
Right. It’s those damn greens. Damn those greens, with their votes for… crazy green things! Not like us blues, who want nothing but good and rational blueness!
[ETA] My mind has been killed. This is why I don’t want party politics—as opposed to policy—on LessWrong.
Couldn’t you instead exercise self-control?
Don’t worry, the last crazy post on politics I saw was voted down to −10
The last survey compared to the previous one showed a big shift in favor of socialism away from the libertarian/liberal founding crowd. But I’m pretty that isn’t what you mean. What is actually happening is that people are noticing the initial demographics had views that are at odds with the average views of the New Atheist cluster (with which we are converging) and this bothers them.
How about very progressive and very libertarian people having a less wrong discussion about politics?
It would be nice—I think there’s significant overlap between libertarian and progressive ideas on drug legalization, immigration, and probably other issues, but each group has built up a huge ugh field around the other.
I suggest that such the ugh field is largely one way, of Progressives for Libertarians.
One example. Years ago I bumped into a Progressive fellow from my freshman college dorm who I remembered having your typical freshman dorm political arguments with. On seeing and recognizing each other, I say hi and reach out my hand to shake his hand—and he refused. Ha! What an ideological ass! Yet it still cheered me to see him, though he apparently still gnawed the bones of his ideological resentments decades after we had last seen each other. Progressives think nothing of showing such personal resentment and animosity toward those they disagree with. Indeed, as our current poster demonstrates, they often consider such public displays of hostility a feature, and not a bug.
Libertarians are too much an ideological minority to hate unbelievers with much fervor—we’d have to hate most everyone. We don’t have the luxury of living a life in an intellectual walled garden where we can get away with the same kind of venom, loathing, and intolerance. If we couldn’t divorce the memes from the meme carriers in our minds, we’d all be in prison for mass murder.
For example, I think the Bible is a moral abomination. But I often quite like serious religious believers, and end up gravitating toward them. Similarly, one gal I know started with plans for the seminary, then became a Marxist, and now is a Wiccan Progressive dirt over humans tree hugging Socialist. Likely she’s a utilitarian as well. She’s endorsed most every ideological horror common in western societies, but I like her just fine. In fact, I feel a bond to her because of her lunacy.
For me, the salient division isn’t between what people profess to believe is true, but whether they seem to care about what is true.
...
If you are genuinely interested in that dialog you shouldn’t use language like this (Edited for unnecessary harshness). Come on, you know how progressives reading that first sentence will react. You basically describe them as heartless. You know that even the exceptions to your statement will take it personally. Why phrase it that way? You could just as easily write: “Since there are so many progressives it is easy for them to isolate themselves from ideological opponents and avoid considering that possibility that libertarians aren’t evil. The fraction of libertarians open to that conversation is much higher.”
With the second sentence why “loathe”? Why load your mental model of progressive policies with negative emotional valence? That kind of stake-raising is exactly why conversations about politics are so hard. Surely “disagree” or “believe misguided” convey your position without telling progressives you think their ideas are loathsome. “Remake the world to efface their effects” is scary, stake-raising language too. I understand that it doesn’t literally mean anything other than “I would like to replace progressive policies with libertarian policies” but words have connotations and imagery.
Do I? First, I doubt that projecting their emotional reaction was foremost in my mind.
And no, this is not all Progressives, all the time. Context of my comments—Progressives have a greater Ugh field for Libertarians than Libertarians for Progressives. Which I think is true, and I think shows up as them displaying more of the behavior in my generalization than LIbertarians.
No. Plenty of heart. But a human heart has more emotional range than Barney’s.
Because I have values. The negative emotional valence comes as a by product of those values when confronted with things that contradict those values.
HPMOR:
Yet another moment where I cheered Harry.
And in this case, the emotional valence was particularly relevant to my point: it’s not just that you don’t have to hate people with ideas you disagree with, but you don’t have to hate people whose ideas you hate. And, you don’t have to hate them if they hate your ideas either.
Your suggestion seems the be that the latter is too much to hope for.
Yes, and in this case they’re relevant to the point.
Seems like it should have been somewhere in your mind. I mean, I guess if you were just complaining to other Libertarians it’s fine, but it seems like the productive audience for your comment would be progressives.
Don’t disagree.
I have values too. They result in negative emotional valence for bad things happening to people. And inevitably they leak over a bit into the policies and people I think cause those bad things. But I do my best to hold the tides back and keep my values judgments out of my policy analysis. That way I can change my mind on policy if I hear new arguments or learn new information. I don’t think that’s the same as Yoda’s poor advice.
I have no idea if it is too much to hope for or not. How is it going so far? It would be great if political discourse lived up to your ideals—but why not make it easier for everyone?
Analysis disconnected from values sounds rather pointless to me. Particularly in politics. The first step in good faith negotiation is a communication of values. If I don’t clearly communicate my values, how is a Progressive supposed to come up with an argument to satisfy them?
I’m trying. The goal isn’t yet another pointless political discussion, or talk for talk’s sake.
If they don’t know my values, the discussion will be unproductive. If knowing my values means they can’t have a productive conversation with me, then we won’t be having a productive conversation. End of story. The only people I might have a productive conversation with are people who can talk to the enemy.
Further, having to self censor information flow does not make the conversation easier for me. In fact, it doesn’t make it easier on anyone. It’s a cost, an impediment, a friction in the exchange in information. This is where I disagree with Crocker. Why should I have to pay that cost, if I’m not requiring it in others? Two people playing by Crocker’s rules can get things done.
On a more personal note, I find people who require their tender feelings to be stroked and soothed 24⁄7 tiresome. If soothing their feelings requires me not being honest about mine, I find it even more tiresome. No doubt they find me tiresome too. Fine. I’m not an appropriate playmate for those people. And they aren’t for me. I can live with that.
Also, I find the culture of offensitivity highly manipulative. Hurt feelings become a trump card to stifle expression of opinion. It’s the new blasphemy. I’m not interested in playing that card, particularly in a political discussion on the web, and see no compelling reason to consent to having it played on me.
I’ve had this discussion before on LW. It’s admittedly a trade off, and one that varies by personality.
But in the case of radically opposed political views, demanding that one side refuse to fully communicate their position strikes me as a non starter. Saying that I “disagree” really isn’t communicating. I find the proposed system grotesque, and the moral foundations an abomination. IMO, one of the problems with those on my side of the argument is that they don’t question the moral premises of Progressivism. Another problem is that Progressives do their best not to hear them. One of the immunizing strategies of the majority is refusing to talk to the Devil.
Can you unpack “grotesque” and “abomination”? When people use words like that I mostly understand them to be conveying disagreement, along with the desire to rile people up in unproductive ways, but I understand you here to be claiming to have different goals than that. I’m not sure what they are.
Disagree really isn’t right at all. I disagree that 2+2=5. Progressivism is a set of values and programs to implement those values that runs counter to my values. Strongly counter to my values. I’m not disagreeing, I’m disvaluing.
For my own part, I have no difficulty talking about people disagreeing over values, but I’m content to talk about people having values that run counter to each other’s values instead, if you prefer that.
So… when you call a system “grotesque” or a moral foundation an “abomination,” you’re conveying that your values run strongly counter to it? Did I understand that right?
Well, I’m not Spock tallying up a spreadsheet of values, so another part of what I’m communicating is my emotional reaction, and the intensity thereof. And indeed, that my reaction is a moral reaction, with some of the associated multi-ordinal punishing and disapproval characteristic of moral reactions. Though in this case, not punishing as much as a withdrawal of goodwill and a will to protect when they get screwed by the systems they advocate.
Grotesque and abomination also connote the twisted evil of the systems. One example. The poor who are supposedly so cared for are systematically punished if they take actions to improve their situation. Get a job, and face effective marginal tax rates, counting government benefits, often in excess of 100%. Find a partner to share the burdens of life, and likewise lose benefits.
Not just harmful, but a perverse and twisted harm, punishing someone for trying to do the right thing and improve their lot in life. When the “unintended consequences” of the system look similar to what a sadist would do who was trying to cripple people, I think “grotesque” and “abomination” applies.
So “grotesque” and “abomination” are meant to convey that the other side is not only incorrect, but also to express your moral judgment of the other side’s position as twisted, evil, and perverse, and also to express your withdrawal of goodwill from the individuals who hold that position, and your reduced willingness to protect them from certain kinds of harm (specifically, from harmful consequences of that position).
Do I have it right now?
No, not right.
The same issue as “disagree”. 2+2=5 is incorrect. I’m not saying that their position is incorrect. Clippy isn’t “incorrect” either.
Both the loss of goodwill and willingness to protect are contextual on the same types of situation, while I read what you wrote as making the loss of goodwill general.
OK.
Analysis that is connected to values doesn’t have to mean embedding the values in the analysis. Pick a policy. Talk, in neutral terms, about what you think it will do. Then express how you feel about those impacts. Then the progressive you’re talking with can say “oh, I don’t care about that impact at all” or “I certainly care about that impact but disagree that the policy does it.” You can’t have conversations about terminal values. You can have them about policies which is why you have to take terminal values out of your conversations about policies.
Right, so clearly express those values. But don’t attach the values to progressive policies. If it is the policies themselves that you loathe, how is a progressive supposed to argue for them?
I think this is probably wrong for (most) humans. We’re immediately distracted by status signals and emotions. Once the conversation is about that that is all it’s about.
Most people can’t play by Crocker’s rules. I’m not even sure the people who say they play by Crocker’s rules do all that well.
Fair enough.
To be clear: if you had said “I loathe libertarian policies” I would have made the same objection. Both sides ought to lower the stakes.
This is interesting and I would be interested in hearing you expand on them. Part of why your language seems unnecessary to me is that I’m somewhere between a libertarian and a Progressive and I don’t see any differences in values so much as I see Progressives not understanding how incentives work.
Sure you can. You can explain yours to the other guy, and likely discover something about them yourself in the process.
I agree about the possibility of discussing the likely outcomes of a policy divorced from the valuation of the policy. But the valuation provides both the motivation for the discussion and the punchline to it.
He argues by showing me how I am mistaken or not fully aware of things entailed by the policy that I would value positively.
I suppose for some people. But since I think the valuations are an important part of the conversation, if those people can’t do valuations and objective analysis, they won’t be very fruitful partners in the discussion.
Nope. Both sides should be as clear as they can about what the stakes are. I think that’s what’s missing. Here are my values. Here’s why I loathe your policies. Once put on the table, I think there is some hope of setting aside for moments and doing the objective analysis. But until honestly confronted, I’d expect the “objective” discussion to be polluted by both attempts to insert them, and interpretations on the look out for them.
There aren’t, necessarily. But I think statistically, there are.
I don’t think they care to understand. It’s not rocket science. They are motivated by something other than achieving outcomes. Some people want to do something. Some people want to be something. I think they tend toward the latter.
That’s an interesting statement. Would you mind expanding on it?
Preferences, likes, dislikes. I prefer A to B. I value A more than B.
I wish I could agree with you, but I run into (Reaction-influenced?) libertarians who conflate liberals, progressives, and Stalin.
When you say conflate, what do you mean?
Normally, one conflates ideas, and not people. Do these libertarians see similarities between Progressivism and Stalinism, or do they have the same emotional reaction to Progressives that they have for Stalin?
As nearly as I can figure it, they think that the ideas held by progressives and liberals are so similar to state communism that anything faintly leftish is on the short route to genocide.
Or at least the Road to Serfdom.
People failing to see degrees of a problem, is a problem. But notice that you’ve identified hatred of ideas, though unfairly exaggerated, and not hatred of people, or even attributing malicious intent.
Even Hayek, who had some of that all or nothing attitude, didn’t even attribute malicious intent to Socialists, to whom he dedicated The Road to Serfdom.
Me, I’ve started to question intent more closely, as I see the theocratic impulse to force others to live by your values as one of the worst possible intents.
What you describe sounds pretty common among people who are either capable of detaching emotionally from the topic at hand, or who lack emotional investment to it in the first place, as a description of people who aren’t and don’t.
There’s a lot of different labels that can be applied to this condition depending on how one wants to frame it; rather than get into framing wars I’ll just label it X for convenience. And X is hardly limited to how libertarians view progressives, of course.
All of that said, you may be right that libertarians are more likely to demonstrate X than progressives are. You might further be right that this is because libertarians are too much of a minority, because they lack the luxurious walled-garden privileges that progressives enjoy, because they would otherwise commit mass murder, etc.
That said, I would caution against inferring any of that with significant confidence solely from personal experiences.
I would also caution against describing the situation the way you do here unless your intention is to upset progressives who lack X.
That said, upsetting people in this way can of course be a very effective way of maneuvering for status, as the people you upset will typically express their emotions, which in a social community like this one allows you to roll your eyes and dismiss them with community support. If that sort of social status maneuvering is your goal in the first place, then of course neither of those cautions apply.
Not as goal in itself, but it appears to frequently be a necessary first step to getting progressives to the point where it’s possible to have a reasonable discussion.
I’m sure my generalizations would be wrong for lots of individual Progressives and Libertarians, but that won’t make me dismiss my conclusions from my lifetime of observations. What can we reason, but from what we know?
I’m a libertarian, loathe Progressive doctrines, and would remake the world to efface their effects from existence. If they’re Progressives and lack X, I don’t see a way to sugar coat those facts that will make them happy. Do you?
Yes, and framing someone’s statements as intentionally upsetting people to maneuver for status is effective in maneuvering for status with some people too.
We can’t. But we can do things that increase the reliability of what we know.
Nope.
Absolutely.
People here generally put in their due diligence in constructing reasoned well-sourced arguments, tend to admit when they were wrong on something and most importantly force you to look at your own assumptions. That puts it leaps and bounds over any other political debate I’ve ever seen.
If a group of economists and other relevant experts were polled on various policy matters and compared to the answers reached by LessWrong users if policy was discussed on LessWrong, how much do you think the answers would differ, and would it be the experts’ errors or LessWrong’s errors causing whatever discrepancies?
This depends a lot on the proportions of the economists that are from each school and what constitutes “other experts.”
If you get a representative slice of economists, I’d expect much better predictive value on any given policy than LW because a) they have a quite a bit more expertise dealing with the models and b) we’ve got a lot of Austrian School / Prediction Markets people here to skew away from the consensus. If you weight them too heavily to any one school, especially the really funky ones, then you might see us start to pull closer but I still doubt the gap would close.
If you get a representative slice of Sociologists, PoliSci folks, X-studies professors and whatever other political talking heads you can find in academia and put them in a room together, it’ll disprove the notion of a just universe when the building isn’t hit immediately by an asteroid. And they’ll also be wrong much more than LW, although we still wouldn’t beat any of the handful of real scientists hiding in the back (Anthropologists / Social Psychologists mostly).
I’m not saying we’re some kind of amazing truth engine here, just that this is an abnormally reasonable environment with a lot of abnormally smart and well educated people.