Open Thread, June 1-15, 2012

OpenThreadGuy

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.

I'm thinking of writing a series of essays regarding applied rationality in terms of politics and utilitarianism, and the ways we can apply instrumental rationality to better help fight the mind-killingness of political arguments, but I'd like to make sure that lesswrong is open to this kind of thing. Is there any interest in this kind of thing? Is this against the no-politics rule?

I'm definitely interested. It's probably worth distinguishing between avoiding getting mind-killed oneself and trying to get other people out of mind-killed mode.

5[anonymous]14y

In other words, you want to write essays on how people can have political conversations without being mindkilled? I don't think it would violate the "no politics" rule. Just please keep it sufficiently meta to avoid mindkilling people reading the essay. So if you give an example of a non-mindkilling political conversation, don't talk about a current day issue. Instead, talk about 17th century France and it's use of mercantilism. How might a king and his advisers come to the best policy decision regarding whether or not to allow free trade with England? If they so choose, people can apply those principles to actual political discussions somewhere other than LW. That said, I don't think I'd read the essay. I try to avoid politics, meta or otherwise. It does sounding interesting, though. Best of luck with it. ( I hope it's obvious, but just in case... This is just my view, not necessarily an expression of LW policy or consensus.)