How do you become a rationalist political being if you aren’t able to practice rationalist politics in the supportive company of other rationalists?
I don’t think LW qualifies as a sufficiently supportive company of rationalists for at least two major reasons: (1) Eugine and his army of sockpuppets, (2) anyone can join, rationalist or not, and talking about politics would most likely attract the wrong kind people, so even if LW would qualify as a sufficiently supportive company of rationalists now, that could easily change overnight.
I imagine that if we could solve the problem of sockpuppets and/or create a system of “trusted users” who could moderate the debate, we would have a chance to debate politics rationally. But I suspect that a rational political debate would be quite boring for most people.
To give an example of “boring politics”, when Trump was elected, half people on internet were posting messages like “that’s great, now Americal will be great again”, half people on internet were posting messages like “that’s horrible, now racists and sexist will be everywhere, and we are all doomed”… and there was a tiny group of people posting messages like “having Trump elected increased value of funds in sectors A, B, C, and decreased value of funds in sectors X, Y, Z, so by hedging against this outcome I made N% money”. You didn’t have to tell these people that rationalists are supposed to bet on their beliefs, because they already did.
and there was a tiny group of people posting messages like “having Trump elected increased value of funds in sectors A, B, C, and decreased value of funds in sectors X, Y, Z, so by hedging against this outcome I made N% money”.
Funnily enough, I heard rumors that George Soros placed a big bet on the markets going down after the election and lost very very badly.
I think it is a rather unsympathetic strawman characterization of what they rationalist political debate would be. Even if one could make money off of purely thinking—and I don’t want to debate the efficient market hypothesis here—I would hope that the purpose of the debate would be over rational government policies that address the underlying concerns of all sides. For example, what underlying fears and insecurities lead to support for trumps anti-immigration, anti-Muslim position? What legitimate basis exists, charitably, for these fears? What potential policy could both address these underlying concerns, and be supported by both parties and independents? More to the point, what additional data would be useful to have, in the form of polls that are not currently being conducted or some such?
Nate Silver’s 538 blog is an example of such a rationalist resource, but he only covers politics during election season and there isn’t much community building going on.
I don’t think LW qualifies as a sufficiently supportive company of rationalists for at least two major reasons: (1) Eugine and his army of sockpuppets, (2) anyone can join, rationalist or not, and talking about politics would most likely attract the wrong kind people, so even if LW would qualify as a sufficiently supportive company of rationalists now, that could easily change overnight.
I imagine that if we could solve the problem of sockpuppets and/or create a system of “trusted users” who could moderate the debate, we would have a chance to debate politics rationally. But I suspect that a rational political debate would be quite boring for most people.
To give an example of “boring politics”, when Trump was elected, half people on internet were posting messages like “that’s great, now Americal will be great again”, half people on internet were posting messages like “that’s horrible, now racists and sexist will be everywhere, and we are all doomed”… and there was a tiny group of people posting messages like “having Trump elected increased value of funds in sectors A, B, C, and decreased value of funds in sectors X, Y, Z, so by hedging against this outcome I made N% money”. You didn’t have to tell these people that rationalists are supposed to bet on their beliefs, because they already did.
Funnily enough, I heard rumors that George Soros placed a big bet on the markets going down after the election and lost very very badly.
I think it is a rather unsympathetic strawman characterization of what they rationalist political debate would be. Even if one could make money off of purely thinking—and I don’t want to debate the efficient market hypothesis here—I would hope that the purpose of the debate would be over rational government policies that address the underlying concerns of all sides. For example, what underlying fears and insecurities lead to support for trumps anti-immigration, anti-Muslim position? What legitimate basis exists, charitably, for these fears? What potential policy could both address these underlying concerns, and be supported by both parties and independents? More to the point, what additional data would be useful to have, in the form of polls that are not currently being conducted or some such?
Nate Silver’s 538 blog is an example of such a rationalist resource, but he only covers politics during election season and there isn’t much community building going on.