This comment thread itself is a perfect example of why the ban on political discussion at LessWrong-itself is a good idea. Putting it simply: Sophronius and other commenters here are being absolutely clueless about what it would take to have an instrumentally-rational discussion about politics in an online environment. Make no mistake, this is an extremely hard problem which LessWrong must nonetheless take some interest in, inasmuch as it is part of the mission of ‘raising the sanity waterline’. (Perhaps AGI folks could think of it as the collective-intelligence, human-focused version of the FAI problem.)
But still, if there’s anything that we know about this problem, is that it needs to be addressed through discussing the problem itself at the meta level, not object-level discussion of political issues. Having such discussions about politics on LessWrong will necessarily be unpleasant, wasteful and quite possibly harmful to our broader goals, given the way the site currently works. Moreover, a strong case can be made that such discussions will always require some kind of specialized effort, whereas LessWrong should keep its focus on the rather different problem of promoting everyday rationality.
It’s very hard to discuss politics rationally because it has to do with decisions about a very very complex system—the aggregate activity of all human beings.
A good starting point would be to adapt the tools we have for discussing AGI, since AGI is also about very complex systems. It might be possible to talk about things in broad strokes. Again, though, AGI is a distant and abstract concept that does not stir strong feelings in people. With politics I suspect all of this would break down.
I might begin to start that discussion by suggesting that politics is a matter of everyday rationality. Possibly even one of the most rationality-relevant everyday matters. It involves complex interaction with other intelligent agents, which is certainly an everyday task, so I would posit that it is a very effective method of practicing rationality. Not the most strictly formal method of rationality, but something rational agents must tackle.
I might begin to start that discussion by suggesting that politics is a matter of everyday rationality.
Of course it is. It’s also a matter that people fight each other over, in the real world—or rather, that we need a strong framework of civics, institutional rules etc. in order to prevent people from fighting over it. This is a far stronger constraint on plausible solutions. If your solution does not satisfy sensible criteria of fairness, credibility, etc. as judged by a rough consensus of relevant real-world actors (not online sysops or website owners), then you become a political target instead of actually solving the problem. And this is but one tiny little snag that we need to care about in order to address this issue! There are many, many others.
If there are as many issues as you suggest, then we should start the discussion as soon as possible—so as to resolve it sooner. Can you imagine a LessWrong that can discuss literally any subject in a strictly rational matter and not have to worry about others getting upset or mind-killed by this or that sensitivity?
If I’m decoding your argument correctly, you’re saying that there’s no obviously good method to manage online debate?
Social and office politics seem amply covered already. Is there a point at which a social hacking discussion ought to expand to something where someone’s opinion on the Republican party is relevant?
I certainly hope not. If politics were less taboo on LessWrong, I would hope that mention of specific parties were still taboo. Politics without tribes seems a lot more useful to me than politics with tribes.
You’re just asserting that it would would be hard -or rather you are asserting that I am clueless about how hard it is- but you don’t actually provide a reason why. This isn’t adding anything to the discussion other than your personal opinion, though it is shared by many others. (It bothers me somewhat that you can get instant karma just for repeating what everyone else here already believes.) I can easily imagine you making that exact same post about how it’s impossible to have a reasonable discussion about religion, in the counterfactual world where religion was the taboo here instead of politics, and everybody would simply be repeating that piece of received wisdom instead of actually considering the issue.
Why should it be any harder than creating a culture where any knee-jerk or overly emotional reactions to politics get downvoted, in exactly the same way that any other knee-jerk or overly emotional posts on any other subject get downvoted? I will freely yield that politics especially lends itself to knee-jerk reactions, but that just means we need to take greater care than with other subjects. It’s not a fundamentally different problem than the overall “how can we keep discussions civil” issue. I have read plenty of comments elsewhere where people maintain that “you can’t have a civil discussion on the internet, it’s the internet”. Without a reason why this should be nigh-impossible, I don’t see why I should take your or their word for it, however.
This comment thread itself is a perfect example of why the ban on political discussion at LessWrong-itself is a good idea. Putting it simply: Sophronius and other commenters here are being absolutely clueless about what it would take to have an instrumentally-rational discussion about politics in an online environment. Make no mistake, this is an extremely hard problem which LessWrong must nonetheless take some interest in, inasmuch as it is part of the mission of ‘raising the sanity waterline’. (Perhaps AGI folks could think of it as the collective-intelligence, human-focused version of the FAI problem.)
But still, if there’s anything that we know about this problem, is that it needs to be addressed through discussing the problem itself at the meta level, not object-level discussion of political issues. Having such discussions about politics on LessWrong will necessarily be unpleasant, wasteful and quite possibly harmful to our broader goals, given the way the site currently works. Moreover, a strong case can be made that such discussions will always require some kind of specialized effort, whereas LessWrong should keep its focus on the rather different problem of promoting everyday rationality.
It’s very hard to discuss politics rationally because it has to do with decisions about a very very complex system—the aggregate activity of all human beings.
A good starting point would be to adapt the tools we have for discussing AGI, since AGI is also about very complex systems. It might be possible to talk about things in broad strokes. Again, though, AGI is a distant and abstract concept that does not stir strong feelings in people. With politics I suspect all of this would break down.
I might begin to start that discussion by suggesting that politics is a matter of everyday rationality. Possibly even one of the most rationality-relevant everyday matters. It involves complex interaction with other intelligent agents, which is certainly an everyday task, so I would posit that it is a very effective method of practicing rationality. Not the most strictly formal method of rationality, but something rational agents must tackle.
Of course it is. It’s also a matter that people fight each other over, in the real world—or rather, that we need a strong framework of civics, institutional rules etc. in order to prevent people from fighting over it. This is a far stronger constraint on plausible solutions. If your solution does not satisfy sensible criteria of fairness, credibility, etc. as judged by a rough consensus of relevant real-world actors (not online sysops or website owners), then you become a political target instead of actually solving the problem. And this is but one tiny little snag that we need to care about in order to address this issue! There are many, many others.
If there are as many issues as you suggest, then we should start the discussion as soon as possible—so as to resolve it sooner. Can you imagine a LessWrong that can discuss literally any subject in a strictly rational matter and not have to worry about others getting upset or mind-killed by this or that sensitivity?
If I’m decoding your argument correctly, you’re saying that there’s no obviously good method to manage online debate?
Social and office politics seem amply covered already. Is there a point at which a social hacking discussion ought to expand to something where someone’s opinion on the Republican party is relevant?
I certainly hope not. If politics were less taboo on LessWrong, I would hope that mention of specific parties were still taboo. Politics without tribes seems a lot more useful to me than politics with tribes.
You’re just asserting that it would would be hard -or rather you are asserting that I am clueless about how hard it is- but you don’t actually provide a reason why. This isn’t adding anything to the discussion other than your personal opinion, though it is shared by many others. (It bothers me somewhat that you can get instant karma just for repeating what everyone else here already believes.) I can easily imagine you making that exact same post about how it’s impossible to have a reasonable discussion about religion, in the counterfactual world where religion was the taboo here instead of politics, and everybody would simply be repeating that piece of received wisdom instead of actually considering the issue.
Why should it be any harder than creating a culture where any knee-jerk or overly emotional reactions to politics get downvoted, in exactly the same way that any other knee-jerk or overly emotional posts on any other subject get downvoted? I will freely yield that politics especially lends itself to knee-jerk reactions, but that just means we need to take greater care than with other subjects. It’s not a fundamentally different problem than the overall “how can we keep discussions civil” issue. I have read plenty of comments elsewhere where people maintain that “you can’t have a civil discussion on the internet, it’s the internet”. Without a reason why this should be nigh-impossible, I don’t see why I should take your or their word for it, however.