There certainly needs to be some way to moderate out things that are unhelpful to the discussion. The question is who decides and how do they enforce that decision.
Other rationalist communities are able to discuss those issues without exploding. I assume that Alexander/Yvain is running Slate Star Codex as a benevolent dictatorship, which is why he can discuss hot button topics without everything exploding. Also, he doesn’t have an organizational reputation to protect—LessWrong reflects directly on MIRI.
I agree in principle that the suggestion to simply disallow upvotes would probably be counterproductive. But how are we supposed to learn to be more rational if we can’t practice by dealing with difficult issues? What’s the point of having discussions if we’re not allowed to discuss anything that we disagree on?
I guess I think we need to revisit the question of what the purpose of LessWrong is. What goal are we trying to accomplish? Maybe it’s to refine our rationality skills and then go try them out somewhere else, so that the mess of debate happens on someone else’s turf?
As I write this comment I’m starting to suspect that the purpose of the ban on politics is in place to protect the reputation of MIRI. As a donor, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to that view.
If this comment comes off as rambling, it’s because I’m trying not to jump to a conclusion. I haven’t yet decided what my recommendation to improve the quantity and quality of discussion would be.
There certainly needs to be some way to moderate out things that are unhelpful to the discussion. The question is who decides and how do they enforce that decision.
Other rationalist communities are able to discuss those issues without exploding. I assume that Alexander/Yvain is running Slate Star Codex as a benevolent dictatorship, which is why he can discuss hot button topics without everything exploding. Also, he doesn’t have an organizational reputation to protect—LessWrong reflects directly on MIRI.
I agree in principle that the suggestion to simply disallow upvotes would probably be counterproductive. But how are we supposed to learn to be more rational if we can’t practice by dealing with difficult issues? What’s the point of having discussions if we’re not allowed to discuss anything that we disagree on?
I guess I think we need to revisit the question of what the purpose of LessWrong is. What goal are we trying to accomplish? Maybe it’s to refine our rationality skills and then go try them out somewhere else, so that the mess of debate happens on someone else’s turf?
As I write this comment I’m starting to suspect that the purpose of the ban on politics is in place to protect the reputation of MIRI. As a donor, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to that view.
If this comment comes off as rambling, it’s because I’m trying not to jump to a conclusion. I haven’t yet decided what my recommendation to improve the quantity and quality of discussion would be.
There’s no ban in place on discussing politics. We do have highly controversial discussion about far out political ideas like neoreactionism.
Indeed, this ban relates to how we discuss topics, not what topics we discuss.
An example would Eliezer’s “Traditional Capitalist Values”, or suicide bombers mentioned in other articles in Sequences.