Generally, half the time we get visiting leftwingers accusing us of being rightwing reactionaries, and the other half of the time we get visiting rightwingers accusing us of being leftwing sheep.
I think the site is clearly left wing slanted if you look at the demographics. Two thirds are liberal, communist or socialist with the remainder being libertarian. Conservative users especially are incredibly under-represented compared to the general population or even the university educated population.
It may however be noticeably less left wing on economic questions than similar high brow sites.
Conservative users especially are incredibly under-represented compared to the general population or even the university educated population.
Atheism and IQ are enough to explain most of that. See this Kanazawa paper, or this Gene Expression post (using data which does not have ‘libertarian’, we know from elsewhere that atheist ‘conservatives’ are mostly fiscal and not social conservatives).
We are less likley to hear the strongest arguments in favour of those political positions
We are less likely to realize we are straw manning a position
Convenient but unjustified assumptions are less likely to be called out
Our thought and speculation about ethics and values in humans will be skewed
Conservative rationalists feel excluded from the intended audience
Since there are many many more people in the world who hold “conservative” positions than “progressive” ones we may not be properly mining a source of valuable community members.
In other words the standard pro-diversity arguments apply and arguably they applies more strongly than for some other categories it has been invoked for. I think value and political diversity is one of the best ways to as a community be able to detect motivated cognition.
“When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong.”—Richard Dawkins
I’m perfectly okay with telling people with specific political opinions that they’re wrong and should shut up. To try to use an uncontroversial example… should someone in the 1960s have cared about underrepresentation of segregationists in their discussions?
I will flat out say that I think people with reactionary view points from the past 200 years have had a remarkable prescience in predicting outcomes. It is simply that once those outcomes come about we don’t consider them bad any more, indeed we develop sacred feelings around them.
Assume you agree with all changes that occurred in the mentioned time period. Indeed assume you agree with the changes that are likely to occur in the next 20 years as well. Unless you have a good reason to believe “moral progress” is coherent and happening right now history has shown there is literally no way from preventing inhuman processes of memetic and biological evolution from grinding down your complex values.
I will bite that bullet. Actually yes they should have! Since segregationists where right about specific undesirable consequences of integration that could have been avoided with a better thought out approach or more modest goals. Indeed very basic segregationist arguments against social engineering measures that where undertaken such as forced busing are surprisingly hard to beat.
Now obviously being against such invasive social engineering or affirmative action or disparate impact doctrine is also a possible principled libertarian stance but the result is segregation so segregationists often made those arguments as well and often made them well. They where engaged in motivated cognition finding the best possible reasons against a policy just as many people where engaged in motivated cognition to find the best possible reasons for policies. You need to set up a system where those offset each other as much as possible if you want to be confident in your epistemology. If you don’t you are just writing the bottom line first and then generating the system that comes to the conclusion you want.
If you are a normal educated Western person, you have probably never read (certainly not in the course of a normal education) a non-straw-man argument against women’s suffrage, for eugenics, against parliamentary democracy or nearly any other kind of social political change our society has done for the past several centuries.
This should scare you unless you believe society without much well informed designing happens to function very much like a FAI when editing our instrumental and terminal values in unpredictable ways.
If you are a normal educated Western person, you have probably never read (certainly not in the course of a normal education) a non-straw-man argument against women’s suffrage, for eugenics, against parliamentary democracy
Contrarians often make the mistake of taking their opponents straw man seriously. My point was more that you certainly haven’t read about such arguments in your high school history textbook or on a politics debate on the BCC or in a book on the NYT best-seller list.
I’m perfectly okay with telling people with specific political opinions that they’re wrong and should shut up.
You should be open to the possibility that you are wrong.
This obviously does not mean the people you want to shut up are right, but you are very much likely to pattern match people who are right and don’t agree with you with them anyway.
That’s true… most political facts aren’t as strongly confirmed as scientific facts, so you’re somewhat less justified in telling, say, someone with Mencius Moldbug’s opinions to shut up and let the grownups talk about politics than you are telling a young-earth creationist to shut up and let the grown ups talk about geology.
I think the site is clearly left wing slanted if you look at the demographics. Two thirds are liberal, communist or socialist with the remainder being libertarian. Conservative users especially are incredibly under-represented compared to the general population or even the university educated population.
It may however be noticeably less left wing on economic questions than similar high brow sites.
Atheism and IQ are enough to explain most of that. See this Kanazawa paper, or this Gene Expression post (using data which does not have ‘libertarian’, we know from elsewhere that atheist ‘conservatives’ are mostly fiscal and not social conservatives).
I wouldn’t expect it not to be, but this doesn’t change the problems caused by the under-representation of the political position.
Which are?
We are less likley to hear the strongest arguments in favour of those political positions
We are less likely to realize we are straw manning a position
Convenient but unjustified assumptions are less likely to be called out
Our thought and speculation about ethics and values in humans will be skewed
Conservative rationalists feel excluded from the intended audience
Since there are many many more people in the world who hold “conservative” positions than “progressive” ones we may not be properly mining a source of valuable community members.
In other words the standard pro-diversity arguments apply and arguably they applies more strongly than for some other categories it has been invoked for. I think value and political diversity is one of the best ways to as a community be able to detect motivated cognition.
“When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong.”—Richard Dawkins
I’m perfectly okay with telling people with specific political opinions that they’re wrong and should shut up. To try to use an uncontroversial example… should someone in the 1960s have cared about underrepresentation of segregationists in their discussions?
I will flat out say that I think people with reactionary view points from the past 200 years have had a remarkable prescience in predicting outcomes. It is simply that once those outcomes come about we don’t consider them bad any more, indeed we develop sacred feelings around them.
Assume you agree with all changes that occurred in the mentioned time period. Indeed assume you agree with the changes that are likely to occur in the next 20 years as well. Unless you have a good reason to believe “moral progress” is coherent and happening right now history has shown there is literally no way from preventing inhuman processes of memetic and biological evolution from grinding down your complex values.
This should be deeply disturbing.
I will bite that bullet. Actually yes they should have! Since segregationists where right about specific undesirable consequences of integration that could have been avoided with a better thought out approach or more modest goals. Indeed very basic segregationist arguments against social engineering measures that where undertaken such as forced busing are surprisingly hard to beat.
Now obviously being against such invasive social engineering or affirmative action or disparate impact doctrine is also a possible principled libertarian stance but the result is segregation so segregationists often made those arguments as well and often made them well. They where engaged in motivated cognition finding the best possible reasons against a policy just as many people where engaged in motivated cognition to find the best possible reasons for policies. You need to set up a system where those offset each other as much as possible if you want to be confident in your epistemology. If you don’t you are just writing the bottom line first and then generating the system that comes to the conclusion you want.
If you are a normal educated Western person, you have probably never read (certainly not in the course of a normal education) a non-straw-man argument against women’s suffrage, for eugenics, against parliamentary democracy or nearly any other kind of social political change our society has done for the past several centuries.
This should scare you unless you believe society without much well informed designing happens to function very much like a FAI when editing our instrumental and terminal values in unpredictable ways.
I’ve seen the lot, and far wackier, on teh webz.
Contrarians often make the mistake of taking their opponents straw man seriously. My point was more that you certainly haven’t read about such arguments in your high school history textbook or on a politics debate on the BCC or in a book on the NYT best-seller list.
You should be open to the possibility that you are wrong.
This obviously does not mean the people you want to shut up are right, but you are very much likely to pattern match people who are right and don’t agree with you with them anyway.
That’s true… most political facts aren’t as strongly confirmed as scientific facts, so you’re somewhat less justified in telling, say, someone with Mencius Moldbug’s opinions to shut up and let the grownups talk about politics than you are telling a young-earth creationist to shut up and let the grown ups talk about geology.
Untrue. Paper rejected. ;)