I think there a case to be made for more people of this community to run for office.
On the other hand there things are often harder than they appear from the outside.
There is a secret undercurrent of heavily politically-active people on Less Wrong who don’t discuss it because of prevailing mind-killer social norms
Or who participate on LW under a nickname and don’t want their LW account to read by their political enemies when an election comes up.
To the extend that might be the case there’s nothing to be gained by outing individuals. Attendance lists of LW events also shouldn’t be public to get such a hypothetical person into trouble.
Yup, people who are seriously politically active in online venues are disproportionately likely to be using nicknames, and this can only become more likely if they aim to actually run for office. This is one key reason why anonymity/pseudonymity is seen as an important free-speech issue. And sites like Facebook, which try to enforce the use of real names, are widely distrusted as places for some political discussions, for much the same reason.
(Of course all of this is very much context dependent. A Real Names policy will benefit other political contexts, which are less related to the roughness of deliberating and negotiating about political ideas, and more about things like expressing support for firmly established proposals by publicly taking a stand about them. You can see this very clearly with “Neoreaction” at its current stage—how many people would be willing to sign their name under a petition asking for a king to rule them, and for “shares” of the country to be distributed to a new aristocracy?)
I think there a case to be made for more people of this community to run for office.
On the other hand there things are often harder than they appear from the outside.
Or who participate on LW under a nickname and don’t want their LW account to read by their political enemies when an election comes up. To the extend that might be the case there’s nothing to be gained by outing individuals. Attendance lists of LW events also shouldn’t be public to get such a hypothetical person into trouble.
Yup, people who are seriously politically active in online venues are disproportionately likely to be using nicknames, and this can only become more likely if they aim to actually run for office. This is one key reason why anonymity/pseudonymity is seen as an important free-speech issue. And sites like Facebook, which try to enforce the use of real names, are widely distrusted as places for some political discussions, for much the same reason.
(Of course all of this is very much context dependent. A Real Names policy will benefit other political contexts, which are less related to the roughness of deliberating and negotiating about political ideas, and more about things like expressing support for firmly established proposals by publicly taking a stand about them. You can see this very clearly with “Neoreaction” at its current stage—how many people would be willing to sign their name under a petition asking for a king to rule them, and for “shares” of the country to be distributed to a new aristocracy?)