My impression is that the material covered on OB/LW is more than sufficient to allow people that really understand the material to talk politics without exploding. I don’t think we need any politics specific tricks for those that are likely to be helpful contributors.
This came up in the Santa Barbara LW meetup, and I felt like that group could have talked politics the right way. The implicit consensus seemed to be “Yeah, it’d probably work”, though we didn’t try.
Of course, with a smaller group and stronger selection pressures it is less likely to have a group member or two that can’t hold it together when compared to a larger and online community (ie LW).
To summarize: I think there are plenty of people here that can handle it, but probably enough that can’t to ruin it if there aren’t any preventative measures. Hopefully a merciless downvoting policy will be enough, but failing that, I’m sure we could come up with a way to select a subset of people that are allowed to talk politics.
Im not sure its just a matter of rationality (which it is), but also of complexity, ie predicting or estimating utility for policy A vs B can be impossible to model because of chaotic effects etc.
Just because most of the mistakes we see when people argue politics are rather obvious (from a rationalistic pov) doesnt mean they are the only ones. Otherwise social science and economics would be sciences, with capital S.
My impression is that the material covered on OB/LW is more than sufficient to allow people that really understand the material to talk politics without exploding. I don’t think we need any politics specific tricks for those that are likely to be helpful contributors.
This came up in the Santa Barbara LW meetup, and I felt like that group could have talked politics the right way. The implicit consensus seemed to be “Yeah, it’d probably work”, though we didn’t try.
Of course, with a smaller group and stronger selection pressures it is less likely to have a group member or two that can’t hold it together when compared to a larger and online community (ie LW).
To summarize: I think there are plenty of people here that can handle it, but probably enough that can’t to ruin it if there aren’t any preventative measures. Hopefully a merciless downvoting policy will be enough, but failing that, I’m sure we could come up with a way to select a subset of people that are allowed to talk politics.
You also need to sufficiently care about the specific question to work on it, which is not a given. Less general, less popular.
Im not sure its just a matter of rationality (which it is), but also of complexity, ie predicting or estimating utility for policy A vs B can be impossible to model because of chaotic effects etc.
Just because most of the mistakes we see when people argue politics are rather obvious (from a rationalistic pov) doesnt mean they are the only ones. Otherwise social science and economics would be sciences, with capital S.