Meetup : West LA Meetup—Confess Your Unpopular Opinion

I will miss all of you, stuck in the middle of the mind killer out here in DC, literally spending my time mapping bureaucratic processes and how they interact.

Some of my unpopular opinions (for a lesswrong meetup:) 1) Most stereotypes are useful cognitive shortcuts, but are largely damaging and should be replaced with less efficient cognitive methods when considering actions in public. 2) The excessive focus on philosophy, while fun, is damaging in terms of how rationality is discussed outside of explicitly Rationalist circles. 3) Currently in the world, religion is a net positive, and the increasing secularization of society has led to a damaging cycle where the gap created by people no longer participating in explicitly religious groups allows many people who now exploit society to do so, and they would otherwise be constrained from doing so.

[-]A1987dM12y00

Currently in the world, religion is a net positive, and the increasing secularization of society has led to a damaging cycle where the gap created by people no longer participating in explicitly religious groups allows many people who now exploit society to do so, and they would otherwise be constrained from doing so.

Examples?

[-]Davidmanheim12y20

50 years ago, Investment bankers had to walk into the Church at the end of the week, and if the pastor/community found out that they had been involved in insider trading, their social lives were over.( Social pressure was a powerful motivator when social groups were near-mandatory religious affiliations.)

Similarly, presidents, senators, and other political figures used to need to attend church every week, and they would have been subject to extreme social pressure if it was clear that they were uninterested in the public welfare.

[-]passive_fist12y10

"Inheritance should be illegal. You deserve nothing from your parents' deaths."

Now here's a legitimately unpopular opinion (and one that is rightly unpopular, for many reasons).

[-]cousin_it12y10

Any ideas on how to stop this from turning into a "my unpopular opinion is sexier than yours" contest?

[-]Richard_Kennaway12y60

What else could it possibly be?

[-]cousin_it12y20

Maybe you could let people nominate unpopular opinions for discussion without having to endorse them. That way you might get less one-upmanship and more genuinely edgy stuff. For example, I would nominate Aristotle's "some people are slaves by nature".

[-]NancyLebovitz12y00

And add in C.S. Lewis' idea that no people are masters by nature.

From memory: Lewis presented Aristotle's idea as being that natural slaves were people who weren't responsible enough to run their own lives.

[-]satt12y00

A pretext for sniping at opposing ideologies and political positions? But yes.

[-]JenniferRM12y00

I'll be there!

[-]Emile12y00

Things on #ConfessYourUnpopularOpinion seems pretty tame to me - either me or those people is wrong about which opinions are really unpopular (though some cases can just be explained by different social environments).

[-]gwern12y100

If the responses weren't tame and people were expressing genuinely unpopular opinions, it'd basically be a suicidal let-100-flowers-bloom folly.

EDIT: my RSS reader today furnishes an excellent example of why even popular opinions can be too dangerous to tweet.

[-]wedrifid12y50

Things on #ConfessYourUnpopularOpinion seems pretty tame to me - either me or those people is wrong about which opinions are really unpopular (though some cases can just be explained by different social environments).

Obviously 'unpopular opinion' refers to wearing the rebel uniform instead of whatever uniform their parents wear. You wouldn't want to actually confess something weird.

[-]Lumifer12y20

If you have a really unpopular (socially suicidal) opinion, why would you publish it for the world to see -- just because of a twitter hashtag?

[-]wedrifid12y90

If you have a really unpopular (socially suicidal) opinion, why would you publish it for the world to see -- just because of a twitter hashtag?

#UnconvictedKillersConfessYourCrimes

#PoliticiansConfessYourCorruption

This is better than 'sudo'.

[-]Emile12y10

Sure, there's going to be a strong selection effect, most people aren't going to publish their really unpopular opinion, what I find more surprising is that so many people post opinions that they should know aren't really unpopular, like

addicts shouldn't go to mansions/nice places to recover while cancer patients have to sit in a hospital room

(seriously, who's going to disagree with that? Some people might say "that doesn't happen", or "this is taking some edge cases to muddle the pciture", but I don't expect many saying "I'm fine with that happening")

I would have expected more people who post things that are unpopular in many circles but not in their clique (like "I think Gay Marriage is wrong"), or people posting "real" unpopular opinions if they don't care or are sufficiently anonymous.

[-]Lumifer12y40

what I find more surprising is that so many people post opinions that they should know aren't really unpopular

I think you take all this at face value, while you really should be looking at the meta-game since that's what most people are playing.

[-]gwern12y30

(seriously, who's going to disagree with that? Some people might say "that doesn't happen", or "this is taking some edge cases to muddle the pciture", but I don't expect many saying "I'm fine with that happening")

Personally, comrade, I think we need not 1 mansion for cancer patients, but 50 mansions!

[-]iamesco12y-10

I think Slavoj Zizek pulls off the beard better than Eliezer.

[-]Multiheaded12y-10

(OT: Ms. Evans certainly has a very good opinion of herself...)

[-]OpenThreadGuy12y20

wouldn't you, if you were her?

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7 Meetup : West LA Meetup—Confess Your Unpopular Opinion

by OpenThreadGuy

9th Aug 2013

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[-][anonymous]12y40

"objects are syllables in a message/one aspect of god's lonely edge"

What is this even supposed to mean?

[-]OpenThreadGuy12y00

I have no idea. I just included it because it was Sister Y

[-]Davidmanheim12y30

I will miss all of you, stuck in the middle of the mind killer out here in DC, literally spending my time mapping bureaucratic processes and how they interact.

[-]A1987dM12y00

Currently in the world, religion is a net positive, and the increasing secularization of society has led to a damaging cycle where the gap created by people no longer participating in explicitly religious groups allows many people who now exploit society to do so, and they would otherwise be constrained from doing so.

Examples?

[-]Davidmanheim12y20

[-]passive_fist12y10

"Inheritance should be illegal. You deserve nothing from your parents' deaths."

Now here's a legitimately unpopular opinion (and one that is rightly unpopular, for many reasons).

[-]cousin_it12y10

Any ideas on how to stop this from turning into a "my unpopular opinion is sexier than yours" contest?

[-]Richard_Kennaway12y60

What else could it possibly be?

[-]cousin_it12y20

[-]NancyLebovitz12y00

And add in C.S. Lewis' idea that no people are masters by nature.

From memory: Lewis presented Aristotle's idea as being that natural slaves were people who weren't responsible enough to run their own lives.

[-]satt12y00

A pretext for sniping at opposing ideologies and political positions? But yes.

[-]JenniferRM12y00

I'll be there!

[-]Emile12y00

[-]gwern12y100

If the responses weren't tame and people were expressing genuinely unpopular opinions, it'd basically be a suicidal let-100-flowers-bloom folly.

EDIT: my RSS reader today furnishes an excellent example of why even popular opinions can be too dangerous to tweet.

[-]wedrifid12y50

Things on #ConfessYourUnpopularOpinion seems pretty tame to me - either me or those people is wrong about which opinions are really unpopular (though some cases can just be explained by different social environments).

Obviously 'unpopular opinion' refers to wearing the rebel uniform instead of whatever uniform their parents wear. You wouldn't want to actually confess something weird.

[-]Lumifer12y20

If you have a really unpopular (socially suicidal) opinion, why would you publish it for the world to see -- just because of a twitter hashtag?

[-]wedrifid12y90

If you have a really unpopular (socially suicidal) opinion, why would you publish it for the world to see -- just because of a twitter hashtag?

#UnconvictedKillersConfessYourCrimes

#PoliticiansConfessYourCorruption

This is better than 'sudo'.

[-]Emile12y10

addicts shouldn't go to mansions/nice places to recover while cancer patients have to sit in a hospital room

[-]Lumifer12y40

what I find more surprising is that so many people post opinions that they should know aren't really unpopular

I think you take all this at face value, while you really should be looking at the meta-game since that's what most people are playing.

[-]gwern12y30

(seriously, who's going to disagree with that? Some people might say "that doesn't happen", or "this is taking some edge cases to muddle the pciture", but I don't expect many saying "I'm fine with that happening")

Personally, comrade, I think we need not 1 mansion for cancer patients, but 50 mansions!