This is like saying, “I’m really sorry about how I’m going to slap you”. If you have need to apologize for something, just don’t do it. If what you are doing isn’t wrong, don’t apologize.
But really how hard did you try to avoid politics? I doubt it was very hard.
This strikes me as a form of “logical rudeness”. Since these are “just little examples”, you get to make little jabs at people you disagree with by tarring them with a strawman argument. And if anyone responds to these rude little dismissals of enemy political ideas (and all of these “worst arguments” happen to be things most LWers oppose) , they look like idiots who are missing the point of the article.
If you want to avoid a comments derail (i.e. eridu’s), avoid insulting people’s political ideas. Frankly, this post should have been downvoted to oblivion for that alone. Congratulations though, you managed to hit the usual LW applause lights well enough to avoid that.
I think it is time to think critically about LW’s “politics is the mind-killer” meme. As interesting as it is to discuss free will and AI metaethics (no sarcasm, I do think they’re interesting), there are two main things for which LW really, genuinely has the potential to be quite useful: (1) instrumental rationality as applied to daily life (what job to take, what to invest in, personal ethics); (2) political issues.
Refusing to talk about the latter is missing out on a lot of low-hanging fruit.
Also, for what it’s worth, all of these ARE instances of The Worst Argument. Yvain never implied that e.g., anti-abortion people are necessarily driven only by TWAITW, only that that particular argument “abortion is murder” is in fact TWAITW.
This is like saying, “I’m really sorry about how I’m going to slap you”. If you have need to apologize for something, just don’t do it. If what you are doing isn’t wrong, don’t apologize.
But really how hard did you try to avoid politics? I doubt it was very hard.
This strikes me as a form of “logical rudeness”. Since these are “just little examples”, you get to make little jabs at people you disagree with by tarring them with a strawman argument. And if anyone responds to these rude little dismissals of enemy political ideas (and all of these “worst arguments” happen to be things most LWers oppose) , they look like idiots who are missing the point of the article.
If you want to avoid a comments derail (i.e. eridu’s), avoid insulting people’s political ideas. Frankly, this post should have been downvoted to oblivion for that alone. Congratulations though, you managed to hit the usual LW applause lights well enough to avoid that.
I think it is time to think critically about LW’s “politics is the mind-killer” meme. As interesting as it is to discuss free will and AI metaethics (no sarcasm, I do think they’re interesting), there are two main things for which LW really, genuinely has the potential to be quite useful: (1) instrumental rationality as applied to daily life (what job to take, what to invest in, personal ethics); (2) political issues.
Refusing to talk about the latter is missing out on a lot of low-hanging fruit.
Also, for what it’s worth, all of these ARE instances of The Worst Argument. Yvain never implied that e.g., anti-abortion people are necessarily driven only by TWAITW, only that that particular argument “abortion is murder” is in fact TWAITW.