The question isn’t whether an issue is political or not (I’m not sure that’s an interesting/meaningful question); the point is to avoid the problems of partisan thinking, and one way of doing that is to pay less attention to political alignment.
If you put a big banner over a discussion saying “HEY THIS IS A POLITICAL DISCUSSION”, and you have people adding “AND THEREFORE, REPUBLICANS ARE RIGHT!” at the end of their posts, or reply with “OH, THAT’S A SOCIALIST ARGUMENT YOU’RE MAKING THERE”, then everybody is necessarily going to pay more attention to partisan alignment. They may suspect others of trying to advance partisan points. They may be more selective in what arguments they accept. They may be less inclined points that go against their political inclination. It may degenerate into “Well you’re just saying that because you’re an anarcho-monarchist!”.
If you put a big banner over a discussion saying “HEY THIS IS A POLITICAL DISCUSSION”, and you have people adding “AND THEREFORE, REPUBLICANS ARE RIGHT!” at the end of their posts, or reply with “OH, THAT’S A SOCIALIST ARGUMENT YOU’RE MAKING THERE”
I don’t see any examples of people actually doing that, though.
Well, the first one is basically this thread, I don’t think the second one happens without being downvoted to oblivion, and I think there have been a few cases where replies highlighted the political alignment of a post or comment that wasn’t ostentatiously about color politics (probably in one episode of The Konkvistador And Multiheaded Show).
By “the first one” do you mean “AND THEREFORE, REPUBLICANS ARE RIGHT!”? If so, please cite examples.
probably in one episode of The Konkvistador And Multiheaded Show
I’ve been abstaining from LessWrong for awhile now, so I’ve missed a lot. Can you link me to some examples of what you mean by “The Konkvistador And Multiheaded Show”? It sounds highly entertaining.
I agree that talking about partisan labels is unlikely to lead to useful analysis (although the game-theoretic and principal-agent issues in the recent budget stand-off in the US are interesting).
But I think noting the contours of ideological movements (like socialism, feminism, or Moldbuggery) is valuable. The sentence:
That point by Moldbug is interesting, but it is not unique to his philosophy. Economists, feminists, psychologists, socialists, and dwarves all assert essentially identical points.
Just as useful:
For consistency, socialists must also assert position Y, which most non-socialists reject.
Some of our disagreement might be that in the US, socialist (or green or monarchist) is not a partisan label because there is no serious political party that asserts those views. Europe has more diverse active political movements.
The question isn’t whether an issue is political or not (I’m not sure that’s an interesting/meaningful question); the point is to avoid the problems of partisan thinking, and one way of doing that is to pay less attention to political alignment.
If you put a big banner over a discussion saying “HEY THIS IS A POLITICAL DISCUSSION”, and you have people adding “AND THEREFORE, REPUBLICANS ARE RIGHT!” at the end of their posts, or reply with “OH, THAT’S A SOCIALIST ARGUMENT YOU’RE MAKING THERE”, then everybody is necessarily going to pay more attention to partisan alignment. They may suspect others of trying to advance partisan points. They may be more selective in what arguments they accept. They may be less inclined points that go against their political inclination. It may degenerate into “Well you’re just saying that because you’re an anarcho-monarchist!”.
I don’t see any examples of people actually doing that, though.
Well, the first one is basically this thread, I don’t think the second one happens without being downvoted to oblivion, and I think there have been a few cases where replies highlighted the political alignment of a post or comment that wasn’t ostentatiously about color politics (probably in one episode of The Konkvistador And Multiheaded Show).
By “the first one” do you mean “AND THEREFORE, REPUBLICANS ARE RIGHT!”? If so, please cite examples.
I’ve been abstaining from LessWrong for awhile now, so I’ve missed a lot. Can you link me to some examples of what you mean by “The Konkvistador And Multiheaded Show”? It sounds highly entertaining.
I agree that talking about partisan labels is unlikely to lead to useful analysis (although the game-theoretic and principal-agent issues in the recent budget stand-off in the US are interesting).
But I think noting the contours of ideological movements (like socialism, feminism, or Moldbuggery) is valuable. The sentence:
Just as useful:
Some of our disagreement might be that in the US, socialist (or green or monarchist) is not a partisan label because there is no serious political party that asserts those views. Europe has more diverse active political movements.