In short, engaging in the coalition-building necessary to do politics is claimed to cause belief in empirically false things. I.e. “Politics is the Mindkiller.”
To me, this just shows that a ban on political argumentation is the very last thing that Lesswrong needs. The accusation of being “mind-killed” is levied by those whose minds are too emotionally dysfunctional for them to tell the difference between abolition and slave ownership (after all, one is blue and the other is green, and there couldn’t very well be an objective reason for either side holding their position, could there?).
The ability to stifle debate with an ad hominem and a karmic downgrade is the mark of a totalitarian (objectively unintelligent) forum, not a democratic (more intelligent than totalitarian) one. Now a libertarian and democratic forum with smart filters? That’s smarter still. In hindsight, everyone agrees so, but in present scenarios, many people are corrupted or uneducated, and lack comprehension.
This is one of the primary reason posts are labeled as mind-killed—because those posts are actually higher-level comprehension and what people don’t understand, they often attempt to destroy (especially where force is involved—people generally hate to be held accountable for possessing evil beliefs, and politics is the domain of force).
Every argument I make, no matter how seemingly mind-killed it is, is always able to be defended by direct appeal to the evidence. Many people don’t understand the evidence, though, or they deny it. Evidence that places sociopaths and their conformists on the wrong side of morality will always be fought, tooth and nail. To test this out, tell your entire family that they’re all thieves, no better than the Nazis who watched train cars of Jews go by in the distance, at your next Thanksgiving meal. (Don’t actually try this. LOL.)
Still, at some point, there was a family gathering prior to Nazi Germany, where all hope hadn’t been lost, and someone told their family that they should all buy rifles and join the resistance. That person was right. He was reported, sent to prison, and murdered by the prevailing “consensus view.” …So the Warsaw Jews had to figure it out later, and resist with a far smaller chance of success.
As John Ross wrote in “Unintended Consequences” if you wait to stand up for what’s right until you’re 98 pounds and being herded onto a cattle car with only the clothes on your back, it’s too late for you to have a chance at winning. You need to deploy soldiers when you’ll be hooted down for deploying soldiers. And, you need to be certain you’re in the right, while deploying soldiers.
The best thing possible is to make sure that your soldiers are defending something defensible at its core. The best way to do this is to quickly show that such soldiers are not in the wrong, and clearly aren’t in the wrong. If you’re defending Democrats, Republicans, most Libertarians, Greens, or Constitution Party candidates, you have a difficult row to hoe if this is your goal.
Far less difficult is an issue-based stance, and philosophical stance, on any given political subject. So yes, soldiers can be deployed, and here at LW, one would ideally wish to distance oneself from identification with bad arguments or poor defenses of an idea. …So just refrain from up-voting it. Not difficult.
Of course, once someone is tarred with “bad Karma” that’s a scarlet letter that prevents anything useful from that account from ever being considered—an ad hominem attack on all ideas from that account, no matter how valid they are.
If you cannot speak without insulting your audience, you probably aren’t going to convince anyone.
This comment would be much better, therefore, without the insults — the “emotional dysfunction”, the “totalitarian (objectively unintelligent)”, the “corrupted or uneducated”, the “sociopaths and their conformists”, and so on, and so on, ad nauseam.
Still, at some point, there was a family gathering prior to Nazi Germany, where all hope hadn’t been lost, and someone told their family that they should all buy rifles and join the resistance. That person was right.
No, he was wrong. The right thing to buy was tickets overseas.
You need to deploy soldiers when you’ll be hooted down for deploying soldiers. And, you need to be certain you’re in the right, while deploying soldiers.
I see a certain… tension between these two sentences.
To me, this just shows that a ban on political argumentation is the very last thing that Lesswrong needs. The accusation of being “mind-killed” is levied by those whose minds are too emotionally dysfunctional for them to tell the difference between abolition and slave ownership (after all, one is blue and the other is green, and there couldn’t very well be an objective reason for either side holding their position, could there?).
The ability to stifle debate with an ad hominem and a karmic downgrade is the mark of a totalitarian (objectively unintelligent) forum, not a democratic (more intelligent than totalitarian) one. Now a libertarian and democratic forum with smart filters? That’s smarter still. In hindsight, everyone agrees so, but in present scenarios, many people are corrupted or uneducated, and lack comprehension.
This is one of the primary reason posts are labeled as mind-killed—because those posts are actually higher-level comprehension and what people don’t understand, they often attempt to destroy (especially where force is involved—people generally hate to be held accountable for possessing evil beliefs, and politics is the domain of force).
Every argument I make, no matter how seemingly mind-killed it is, is always able to be defended by direct appeal to the evidence. Many people don’t understand the evidence, though, or they deny it. Evidence that places sociopaths and their conformists on the wrong side of morality will always be fought, tooth and nail. To test this out, tell your entire family that they’re all thieves, no better than the Nazis who watched train cars of Jews go by in the distance, at your next Thanksgiving meal. (Don’t actually try this. LOL.)
Still, at some point, there was a family gathering prior to Nazi Germany, where all hope hadn’t been lost, and someone told their family that they should all buy rifles and join the resistance. That person was right. He was reported, sent to prison, and murdered by the prevailing “consensus view.” …So the Warsaw Jews had to figure it out later, and resist with a far smaller chance of success.
As John Ross wrote in “Unintended Consequences” if you wait to stand up for what’s right until you’re 98 pounds and being herded onto a cattle car with only the clothes on your back, it’s too late for you to have a chance at winning. You need to deploy soldiers when you’ll be hooted down for deploying soldiers. And, you need to be certain you’re in the right, while deploying soldiers.
The best thing possible is to make sure that your soldiers are defending something defensible at its core. The best way to do this is to quickly show that such soldiers are not in the wrong, and clearly aren’t in the wrong. If you’re defending Democrats, Republicans, most Libertarians, Greens, or Constitution Party candidates, you have a difficult row to hoe if this is your goal.
Far less difficult is an issue-based stance, and philosophical stance, on any given political subject. So yes, soldiers can be deployed, and here at LW, one would ideally wish to distance oneself from identification with bad arguments or poor defenses of an idea. …So just refrain from up-voting it. Not difficult.
Of course, once someone is tarred with “bad Karma” that’s a scarlet letter that prevents anything useful from that account from ever being considered—an ad hominem attack on all ideas from that account, no matter how valid they are.
If you cannot speak without insulting your audience, you probably aren’t going to convince anyone.
This comment would be much better, therefore, without the insults — the “emotional dysfunction”, the “totalitarian (objectively unintelligent)”, the “corrupted or uneducated”, the “sociopaths and their conformists”, and so on, and so on, ad nauseam.
No, he was wrong. The right thing to buy was tickets overseas.
I see a certain… tension between these two sentences.