One worry I have about having a norm of not discussing politics is that sometimes politics will affect the rationality community. For example, the rationality community will have to deal with claims of harassment or making people feeling unwelcome. How you handle that probably depends on your stance on feminism. So avoiding discussing politics could make these decisions worse. (That said, I’m not actually claiming that discussing these issues would lead to an improvement, rather than everyone just sticking to whatever view they had before)
Debating politics is meta-complicated, because even the decisions on whether/how to debate politics can themselves be (or be interpreted as) moves in the political game.
“You don’t want to have a debate about X? That means you agree with the majority opinion on X! While pretending to be neutral! And these people call themselves ‘rationalists’ without anyone calling you out on such blatant political move?” (Heh, heh, I just made them debate X anyway, again.)
One worry I have about having a norm of not discussing politics is that sometimes politics will affect the rationality community. For example, the rationality community will have to deal with claims of harassment or making people feeling unwelcome. How you handle that probably depends on your stance on feminism. So avoiding discussing politics could make these decisions worse. (That said, I’m not actually claiming that discussing these issues would lead to an improvement, rather than everyone just sticking to whatever view they had before)
Debating politics is meta-complicated, because even the decisions on whether/how to debate politics can themselves be (or be interpreted as) moves in the political game.
“You don’t want to have a debate about X? That means you agree with the majority opinion on X! While pretending to be neutral! And these people call themselves ‘rationalists’ without anyone calling you out on such blatant political move?” (Heh, heh, I just made them debate X anyway, again.)