the costs of replacing it with a less-bad example seem fairly minimal.
Can you elaborate? I think the costs (in the form of damaging the integrity of the inquiry) are quite high. If you’re going to crowdsource a list of unpopular beliefs, and carry out that job honestly, then the list is inevitably going to contain a lot of morally objectionable ideas. After all, being morally objectionable is a good reason for an idea to be unpopular! (I suppose the holders of such ideas might argue that the causal relationship between unpopularity and perception-of-immorality runs in the other direction, but we don’t care what they think.)
Now, I also enjoy our apolitical site culture, which I think reflects an effective separation of concerns: here, we talk aboout Bayesian epistemology. When we want to apply our epistemology skills to contentious object-level topics that are likely to generate “more heat than light”, we take it to someone else’s website. (I recommend /r/TheMotte.) That separation is a good reason to explicitly ban specific topics or hypotheses as being outside of the site’s charter. But if we do that, then we can’t compile a list of unpopular beliefs without lying about the results. Blatant censorship is the best kind!
(Keeping in mind that I have nothing to do with the inquiry and can’t speak for OP)
Why is it desirable for the inquiry to turn up a representative sample of unpopular beliefs? If that were explicitly the goal, I would agree with you; I’d also agree (?) that questions with that goal shouldn’t be allowed. However, I thought the idea was to have some examples of unpopular opinions to use in a separate research study, rather than to directly research what unpopular beliefs LW holds.
If the conclusion of the research turns out to be “here is a representative sample of unpopular LW beliefs: <a set of beliefs that doesn’t include anything too reactionary/politically controversial>”, that would be a dishonest & unfortunate conclusion.
Heh. It’s interesting to even try to define what “representative” means for something that is defined by unpopularity. I guess the best examples are those that are so reprehensible or ludicrous that nobody is willing to even identify them.
I do understand your reluctance to give any positive feedback to an idea you abhor, even when it’s relevant and limited to one post. I look forward to seeing what results from it—maybe it will move the window, as you seem to fear. Maybe it’ll just be forgotten, as I expect.
Can you elaborate? I think the costs (in the form of damaging the integrity of the inquiry) are quite high. If you’re going to crowdsource a list of unpopular beliefs, and carry out that job honestly, then the list is inevitably going to contain a lot of morally objectionable ideas. After all, being morally objectionable is a good reason for an idea to be unpopular! (I suppose the holders of such ideas might argue that the causal relationship between unpopularity and perception-of-immorality runs in the other direction, but we don’t care what they think.)
Now, I also enjoy our apolitical site culture, which I think reflects an effective separation of concerns: here, we talk aboout Bayesian epistemology. When we want to apply our epistemology skills to contentious object-level topics that are likely to generate “more heat than light”, we take it to someone else’s website. (I recommend /r/TheMotte.) That separation is a good reason to explicitly ban specific topics or hypotheses as being outside of the site’s charter. But if we do that, then we can’t compile a list of unpopular beliefs without lying about the results. Blatant censorship is the best kind!
(Keeping in mind that I have nothing to do with the inquiry and can’t speak for OP)
Why is it desirable for the inquiry to turn up a representative sample of unpopular beliefs? If that were explicitly the goal, I would agree with you; I’d also agree (?) that questions with that goal shouldn’t be allowed. However, I thought the idea was to have some examples of unpopular opinions to use in a separate research study, rather than to directly research what unpopular beliefs LW holds.
If the conclusion of the research turns out to be “here is a representative sample of unpopular LW beliefs: <a set of beliefs that doesn’t include anything too reactionary/politically controversial>”, that would be a dishonest & unfortunate conclusion.
Heh. It’s interesting to even try to define what “representative” means for something that is defined by unpopularity. I guess the best examples are those that are so reprehensible or ludicrous that nobody is willing to even identify them.
I do understand your reluctance to give any positive feedback to an idea you abhor, even when it’s relevant and limited to one post. I look forward to seeing what results from it—maybe it will move the window, as you seem to fear. Maybe it’ll just be forgotten, as I expect.
Okay, that makes sense.