We’ve have a norm against discussing politics since before LessWrong 2.0, which doesn’t seem to have had any noticeable negative effects on our ability to discuss other topics.
I’m not sure whether that’s true, but separately, the norm against politics has definitely impact our ability to discuss politics. Perhaps that’s a necessary sacrifice, but it’s a sacrifice. In this particular case, both the object level (why is our society the way it is) and the meta-level (what are the actual views in this piece that got severe backlash) are relevant to our modeling of the world and I think it’d be a loss to not have this piece.
I do think that if we order all posts by where they appear on this spectrum, I would put this farther to the right than any other post I remember, so we genuniely seem to differ in our judgment here.
I’m not sure where this post would fall in my ranking (along the dimension you’re pointing at). It’s possible I agree with you that it’s at the extreme end–but there has to be a post at the extreme end. The posts that are imo (or other moderator’s opinions) over the line are ones you wouldn’t see.
I echo anon03 in that the title is extremely provocative, but minus the claim that this is only a descriptive statement.
I’d guess that it was intentionally provocative (to what degree the intention was, I don’t know), but I don’t feel inclined to tell the author they can’t do that in this case.
If I had written the post, I’d have named it differently and added caveats, etc. But I didn’t and wouldn’t have because of timidness, which makes me hesitant to place requirements on the person who actually did.
In this particular case, both the object level (why is our society the way it is) and the meta-level (what are the actual views in this piece that got severe backlash) are relevant to our modeling of the world and I think it’d be a loss to not have this piece.
I agree that the politics ban is a big sacrifice (regardless of whether the benefits outweigh it or not), and also that this particular post has a lot of value. But if you look at the set of all books for which (1) a largely positive reivew could plausibly been written by a super smart guy like lsusr, and (2) the backlash could plausibly be really bad, I think it literally contains a single element. It’s only TBC. There are a bunch of non-bookreview posts that I also wouldn’t want, but they’re very rare. It seems like we’re talking about a much smaller set of topics than what’s covered by the norm around politics.
I feel like if we wanted to find the optimal point in the value-risk space, there’s no way it’s “ban on all politics but no restriction on social justice”. There have got to be political areas with less risk and more payoff, like just all non-US politics or something.
I agree that the politics ban is a big sacrifice (regardless of whether the benefits outweigh it or not)
A global ban on political discussion by rationalists might be a big sacrifice, but it seems to me there are no major costs to asking people to take it elsewhere.
(I just edited “would be a big sacrifice” to “might be a big sacrifice”, because the same forces that cause a ban to seem like a good idea will still distort discussions even in the absence of a ban, and perhaps make them worse than useless because they encourage the false belief that a rational discussion is being had.)
I’m not sure whether that’s true, but separately, the norm against politics has definitely impact our ability to discuss politics. Perhaps that’s a necessary sacrifice, but it’s a sacrifice. In this particular case, both the object level (why is our society the way it is) and the meta-level (what are the actual views in this piece that got severe backlash) are relevant to our modeling of the world and I think it’d be a loss to not have this piece.
I’m not sure where this post would fall in my ranking (along the dimension you’re pointing at). It’s possible I agree with you that it’s at the extreme end–but there has to be a post at the extreme end. The posts that are imo (or other moderator’s opinions) over the line are ones you wouldn’t see.
I’d guess that it was intentionally provocative (to what degree the intention was, I don’t know), but I don’t feel inclined to tell the author they can’t do that in this case.
If I had written the post, I’d have named it differently and added caveats, etc. But I didn’t and wouldn’t have because of timidness, which makes me hesitant to place requirements on the person who actually did.
I agree that the politics ban is a big sacrifice (regardless of whether the benefits outweigh it or not), and also that this particular post has a lot of value. But if you look at the set of all books for which (1) a largely positive reivew could plausibly been written by a super smart guy like lsusr, and (2) the backlash could plausibly be really bad, I think it literally contains a single element. It’s only TBC. There are a bunch of non-bookreview posts that I also wouldn’t want, but they’re very rare. It seems like we’re talking about a much smaller set of topics than what’s covered by the norm around politics.
I feel like if we wanted to find the optimal point in the value-risk space, there’s no way it’s “ban on all politics but no restriction on social justice”. There have got to be political areas with less risk and more payoff, like just all non-US politics or something.
A global ban on political discussion by rationalists might be a big sacrifice, but it seems to me there are no major costs to asking people to take it elsewhere.
(I just edited “would be a big sacrifice” to “might be a big sacrifice”, because the same forces that cause a ban to seem like a good idea will still distort discussions even in the absence of a ban, and perhaps make them worse than useless because they encourage the false belief that a rational discussion is being had.)