While writing about international standards(/laws) and how they often get trumped I made mental comparison on how people alledgedly can speak civilly about things but when things get heated a lot of gloves come off. This is related in that omnilibrium is supposed to be "rational discussion of controversial topics". That kinda of phasement is similar in that it is a lofty goal on idealistic paper but pretty open to interpretation when it comes to practical detail on what it means. It would be a shame if we would call our discussion "rational" only because it is us doing the talking. So I have recognised some fractions of principles what I kinda make the concept mean to myself.
*"rational vs usual", just because you want to say something about someting isn't a reason enough for the community to invite you to say stuff. Users are picked from scenes where people have a personal adherence to some sort of epistemic art. The Lesswrong Elizer legacy is the vanilla kind but any comparable would suffice. But you can't be super relaxed about it, you have atleast to try.
* That you try doesn't mean that you succeed. There isn't a decisive difference between a padawan and a jedi or a aspiring rationalist and rationalist. The site is going to include someone doing stuff and say stuff that is included in why political talk is normally looked down upon. But the thing is that one is supposed to notice it and minimise it and not run rampant.
* Degree of trying. This is where I am a little more torn and confused about. Since one is supposed to try, it might be tempting that if someone says something very unconvincing one might try to reason that there must not have been very much trying behind the comment. This might lead into a situation where a good faith attempt at arguing is deemed as bad faith trolling if the starting beliefs are just of low quality. On the one hadn one would like to raise the sanity level but one the other hand there is strenght in steelmanning arguments instead of maknig them into strawmans.
* Rational discussion refers to method not content. Rational discussion doesn'ty mean that the purpoted views should be derivable from some sort of shared axioms. In particular being a silicon valley caucasian american rightist is not a requirement and not inherently favoured as a position, althought it tends to be the culture the core memes are phrased in and from which a large part of the audience hails from.
* Gracefull failure. Focus on increasing reflection and informativeness. If someone fails to be rational by for example being overlty angry about something one should not be angry in return or be angry about that they are angry. However just because somebody says something angrily doesn't mean that the part of their arguments that are actually based on facts or are based on logic instead of irrational emotions could not (or should not) be discussed. you focus on the part that can be argued for in explicitable and objective (or whatever is opposite to "irrational emotions") ways. People have bad days and people are not emotionless machines. Here I am torn on whether one should just stoically receive and deal with the valid part while not feeding the troll by giving the invalid part as little attention as feasible or whether one should point out and help the other person realise that they are angry and that they could approach things less heatedly. There are Crockers rules but not all live by them or atleast can't be assumed to live by. And a person that doesn't have a personal commitment to receive that kind of attention can feel insulted.
* No communal judgement. Everybody is expected to be able to form their own opinion and the attitude should be to inform and support others forming more informed, more thought and more understood viewpoints. There is no reason to "decide what is the best option" and the discussion ending with different people thinking that different options are supportable/argued for is fine. |
