I’m a conservative, so I might be biased, but the notion that Lesswrong is culturally unwelcome to lefties strikes me as not just wrong, but funny. In any given scan of the site, I’ll see 3-4 things that offend me.
Threads will contain, not as the point of the thread, but just as background noise, as assumptions with which the writer presumes everyone will agree, atheism, pro choice stuff, polyamory (usually with same sex stuff relationships in there), discussions of how cool it will be once we turn out bodies into robots, etc.
I recognize that it is possible that the site is somehow also offensive to progressives and I simply miss out on all of the conservative talking points because they are transparent to me (fish don’t see the water that they swim in, etc.), but I don’t think that’s the case.
I’m not claiming that LW is generally hostile to lefties, nor that there aren’t things that happen here that might annoy righties or push them away, nor that overall it’s worse for lefties than for righties. Only that one particular thing that happens here makes LW more unpleasant for lefties than it need be and drives some away.
(I would prefer LW to be a place where people with any political proclivities at all can feel welcome, unless those proclivities are severely and overtly anti-rational or so obnoxious as to render them unwelcome pretty much everywhere.)
I agree with this if you simply look at the site as it is, but the kind of movement that gjm is talking about has certainly happened, and Eugene’s downvoting may have contributed to that.
Some years ago, if you even mentioned religion or a culturally conservative practice without saying something negative about it, you would very likely be downvoted. I’m pretty sure that even happened to gjm on at least one occasion—he was downvoted and added, “I don’t see what’s wrong with this comment,” and I’m pretty sure it was downvoted just because he didn’t add something negative when he mentioned religion.
That is obviously not the case anymore with religion. And I just recently was giving some arguments favoring a policy of no sex before marriage, without that kind of result. Of course people still disagreed, but they didn’t object to the fact that someone was arguing that point.
So it seems to me true that there has been a substantial amount of movement, even if it is still true overall that LW is more leftwing than not.
I’m a conservative, so I might be biased, but the notion that Lesswrong is culturally unwelcome to lefties strikes me as not just wrong, but funny. In any given scan of the site, I’ll see 3-4 things that offend me.
Threads will contain, not as the point of the thread, but just as background noise, as assumptions with which the writer presumes everyone will agree, atheism, pro choice stuff, polyamory (usually with same sex stuff relationships in there), discussions of how cool it will be once we turn out bodies into robots, etc.
I recognize that it is possible that the site is somehow also offensive to progressives and I simply miss out on all of the conservative talking points because they are transparent to me (fish don’t see the water that they swim in, etc.), but I don’t think that’s the case.
I’m not claiming that LW is generally hostile to lefties, nor that there aren’t things that happen here that might annoy righties or push them away, nor that overall it’s worse for lefties than for righties. Only that one particular thing that happens here makes LW more unpleasant for lefties than it need be and drives some away.
(I would prefer LW to be a place where people with any political proclivities at all can feel welcome, unless those proclivities are severely and overtly anti-rational or so obnoxious as to render them unwelcome pretty much everywhere.)
I agree with this if you simply look at the site as it is, but the kind of movement that gjm is talking about has certainly happened, and Eugene’s downvoting may have contributed to that.
Some years ago, if you even mentioned religion or a culturally conservative practice without saying something negative about it, you would very likely be downvoted. I’m pretty sure that even happened to gjm on at least one occasion—he was downvoted and added, “I don’t see what’s wrong with this comment,” and I’m pretty sure it was downvoted just because he didn’t add something negative when he mentioned religion.
That is obviously not the case anymore with religion. And I just recently was giving some arguments favoring a policy of no sex before marriage, without that kind of result. Of course people still disagreed, but they didn’t object to the fact that someone was arguing that point.
So it seems to me true that there has been a substantial amount of movement, even if it is still true overall that LW is more leftwing than not.