Something I wanted to write a post about, but I keep procrastinating, and I don’t actually have much to say, so let’s put it here.
People occasionally mention how it is not reasonable for rationalists to ignore politics. And they have a good point; even if you are not interested in politics, politics is still sometimes interested in you. On the other hand… well, the obvious things, already mentioned in the Sequences.
As I see it, the reasonable way to do politics is to focus on the local level. Don’t discuss national elections and culture wars; instead get some understanding about how your city works, meet the people who do reasonable things, find out how you could help them. That will help you get familiar with the territory, and the competition is smaller; you have greater chance to achieve something and remain sane.
Unfortunately, Less Wrong is an internet community, the problem is that if we tried to focus on local politics, many of us couldn’t debate it here, at least not the specific details (but those are exactly the ones that matter and keep you sane).
I am not saying that no one should ever try national politics, just that the reasonable approach is to start small, and perhaps expand gradually later. You will get some experience during the way. And you can do something useful even if you never make it to the top. Also, this is how many actual politicians have started.
Yelling at the TV screen instead, that is the stupid way, and we should not do the online version of that. When people “discuss politics”, even on rationalist or rationalist-adjacent places, that is usually what they do.
On Lesswrong being a dispersed internet community:
If the ACX survey is informative here, discussing local policy works surprisingly well here! I’d say a significant chunk of people are in the Bay Area at large and Boston/NYC/DC area—it should be enough of a cluster to support discussions of local policy. And policies in California/DC has an oversized effect on things we care about as well.
I wondee whether more people from those areas take part in the survey. They can assume that there are many people from the same area and often same age and same jobs, which implies that they can be sure their entries will remain anonymous.
Something I wanted to write a post about, but I keep procrastinating, and I don’t actually have much to say, so let’s put it here.
People occasionally mention how it is not reasonable for rationalists to ignore politics. And they have a good point; even if you are not interested in politics, politics is still sometimes interested in you. On the other hand… well, the obvious things, already mentioned in the Sequences.
As I see it, the reasonable way to do politics is to focus on the local level. Don’t discuss national elections and culture wars; instead get some understanding about how your city works, meet the people who do reasonable things, find out how you could help them. That will help you get familiar with the territory, and the competition is smaller; you have greater chance to achieve something and remain sane.
Unfortunately, Less Wrong is an internet community, the problem is that if we tried to focus on local politics, many of us couldn’t debate it here, at least not the specific details (but those are exactly the ones that matter and keep you sane).
I am not saying that no one should ever try national politics, just that the reasonable approach is to start small, and perhaps expand gradually later. You will get some experience during the way. And you can do something useful even if you never make it to the top. Also, this is how many actual politicians have started.
Yelling at the TV screen instead, that is the stupid way, and we should not do the online version of that. When people “discuss politics”, even on rationalist or rationalist-adjacent places, that is usually what they do.
On Lesswrong being a dispersed internet community:
If the ACX survey is informative here, discussing local policy works surprisingly well here! I’d say a significant chunk of people are in the Bay Area at large and Boston/NYC/DC area—it should be enough of a cluster to support discussions of local policy. And policies in California/DC has an oversized effect on things we care about as well.
I agree that the places you mention have a sufficiently large local community. I am not aware of how much they have achieved politically.
Unfortunately, I live on the opposite side of the planet, with less than 10 rationalists in my entire country.
I wondee whether more people from those areas take part in the survey. They can assume that there are many people from the same area and often same age and same jobs, which implies that they can be sure their entries will remain anonymous.