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I am interested to discover from my karma change whether the following opinion is an unpopular one; it certainly is becoming increasingly unspeakable in the sen

I am interested to discover from my karma change whether the following opinion is an unpopular one; it certainly is becoming increasingly unspeakable in the sense of http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html. --- I think you're drawing a false dichotomy here, especially with "If you have any empathy and care about any people in those positions, you can't just be apolitical.". One could be consumed with agony about all the things you mention, and still believe that it is better to focus on other things. The mere fact that a problem exists doesn't mean you must drop everything else to go and fix it, especially such a large and intractable problem as "a third of the population unfathomably has a worldview totally incompatible with my own". You may instead choose to solve a different problem where you think you have an actual chance of making progress. For example, I am of the LessWrong school, and I consider one of the greatest sources of suffering to be the fact that people die; but I am not reskilling into the field of human longevity, and I don't think (?) society would excoriate me for that. And since I have chosen not to work on that particular infinite well of suffering, I have to not care about it so much, for the sake of my own sanity and my ability to work on other things. If mere knowledge of the existence of an infinite well of suffering obliges you to expend huge amounts of effort on fixing it, woe betide you when you discover another one! If you want to put everything you have into solving one of the problems, then you simply have to weep, put aside the others, and try not to let the constant agony affect your efforts in the place where you think you can actually help. It certainly sucks hard that many people have their country's political decisions thrust in their faces every hour of every day. Come to that, 58mm people die every year, which is an overwhelming tragedy that most people manage to ignore most of the time so that they can actually get anything done. But I have the choice of investing effort into fixing only a very limited number of problems, and I do not judge someone who runs the numbers and thinks they can do more good by not pouring all their effort into the impossible ones. I stress again that politics really is extremely hard (just look at the US election results to see how much popular support there is for both of the two highly incompatible sides of the USA election).

watwut 6y ago
You are building false dichotomy between being apolitical and "drop everything else to go and fix it".
- Smaug123 6y ago
  Well, in that case could you better define "apolitical"? For example, could you give some indication towards a maximal level of political inactivity you would accept before someone becomes evil? I literally don't know how to answer that question, especially if "not being political is political", the self-referential nature of which makes it rather difficult to know.
  - watwut 6y ago
    1.) Typical definition of apolitical is: not interested or involved in politics. Or, having aversion to politics. There is large gap between that and "dropping everything rushing to fix everything, being activist". 2.) "not being political is political" refers to the fact that even if you are completely apathetic, your apathy has political consequences - favors this or that political side. Which is why some people are strongly promoting apathy and others are strongly opposing it. 3.) All of this is standard English. Performative "I don't understand common English words and expressions" is effort and is also part of politics.
    - Smaug123 6y ago
      I promise it's not performative. I am part of another Internet community where "apolitical" means "is not ringing round door to door trying to persuade people to vote in a certain way", and of course I have a strong aversion to politics in that sense. Aside from anything else, it seems highly arrogant to expect that I am somehow so much more right than the other half of the population, in the field of politics which I have no special understanding of at all. I'm not promoting apathy; I am recognising that I have no reason to believe I'm more right than everyone else here, so I will contribute my vote and I will try to understand things, but I won't try and persuade others. On the other hand, I will try and persuade others in areas where I do feel that I have unusually good knowledge. I really am highly uncertain about what people generally expect these days from words like "apolitical", especially because I perceive this as being one of the areas where there is very strong social pressure to Not Seem Like An Arsehole and so there is no clarification in the downward direction. I think the meaning of these words has been changing quite rapidly, even over the last five years or so.
didibus 6y ago
> "If you have any empathy and care about any people in those positions, you can't just be apolitical." I always assumed apolitical implied having apathy, which is the opposite of empathy. Thus this statement seems logically coherent to me. If you have empathy about something, how can you be apathetic towards it? That's contradictory.
- Smaug123 6y ago
  I've always taken it to mean "not acting politically"; possibly I take it this way because I'm a consequentialist. This is the problem when we use words! To me, "to be political" means "to act politically", and definitely not "to hold political views"; so "to be apolitical" means "to act without regard to politics". Possibly I'm just using a different definition from everyone else. Oxford English: "not interested or involved in politics". Even that is ambiguous; does it mean "at least one of 'uninterested in politics' or 'uninvolved in politics'", or does it mean "neither interested nor involved in politics"?
  - didibus 6y ago
    The problem is that in a democracy, you cannot "not act politically". Even holding political views will influence what you tell others, and who you vote for or if you choose not to vote. All that is acting politically, since you're participating in the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power. So I take it being apolitical in a democracy is akin to saying you support the majority who voted. That's because you can't act without regards to politics, you are forced to abide by the political rules and laws, and even your choice to not vote is a choice for the majority who voted. So like, the most apolitical thing you could do would be never talk politics, never let any of your value judgment known to others about any topic, and randomly cast a vote at every elections.
    - Smaug123 6y ago
      > So I take it being apolitical in a democracy is akin to saying you support the majority who voted. I'm not sure that's true. After all, in a normal decade the majority political party changes at least once, in both the USA and the UK. With or without my action, I really don't know who would win an election that was called right this instant in the UK; I really don't know which side I'm supporting by not undertaking political activity right now. The default state of affairs without my action is not "continue as we currently are indefinitely"; the default is "every few years, change the government"! I do vote; voting is the system we have collectively landed on for aggregating preferences across the population, and I do have preferences. But if I did not vote (and am therefore implicitly "voting for" the majority), I don't see how that could be reasonably viewed as a political act, because I don't know who I'm "voting" for as I do it!

watwut 6y ago

You are building false dichotomy between being apolitical and "drop everything else to go and fix it".

Smaug123 6y ago
Well, in that case could you better define "apolitical"? For example, could you give some indication towards a maximal level of political inactivity you would accept before someone becomes evil? I literally don't know how to answer that question, especially if "not being political is political", the self-referential nature of which makes it rather difficult to know.
- watwut 6y ago
  1.) Typical definition of apolitical is: not interested or involved in politics. Or, having aversion to politics. There is large gap between that and "dropping everything rushing to fix everything, being activist". 2.) "not being political is political" refers to the fact that even if you are completely apathetic, your apathy has political consequences - favors this or that political side. Which is why some people are strongly promoting apathy and others are strongly opposing it. 3.) All of this is standard English. Performative "I don't understand common English words and expressions" is effort and is also part of politics.
  - Smaug123 6y ago
    I promise it's not performative. I am part of another Internet community where "apolitical" means "is not ringing round door to door trying to persuade people to vote in a certain way", and of course I have a strong aversion to politics in that sense. Aside from anything else, it seems highly arrogant to expect that I am somehow so much more right than the other half of the population, in the field of politics which I have no special understanding of at all. I'm not promoting apathy; I am recognising that I have no reason to believe I'm more right than everyone else here, so I will contribute my vote and I will try to understand things, but I won't try and persuade others. On the other hand, I will try and persuade others in areas where I do feel that I have unusually good knowledge. I really am highly uncertain about what people generally expect these days from words like "apolitical", especially because I perceive this as being one of the areas where there is very strong social pressure to Not Seem Like An Arsehole and so there is no clarification in the downward direction. I think the meaning of these words has been changing quite rapidly, even over the last five years or so.

didibus 6y ago

> "If you have any empathy and care about any people in those positions, you can't just be apolitical." I always assumed apolitical implied having apathy, which is the opposite of empathy. Thus this statement seems logically coherent to me. If you have empathy about something, how can you be apathetic towards it? That's contradictory.

Smaug123 6y ago
I've always taken it to mean "not acting politically"; possibly I take it this way because I'm a consequentialist. This is the problem when we use words! To me, "to be political" means "to act politically", and definitely not "to hold political views"; so "to be apolitical" means "to act without regard to politics". Possibly I'm just using a different definition from everyone else. Oxford English: "not interested or involved in politics". Even that is ambiguous; does it mean "at least one of 'uninterested in politics' or 'uninvolved in politics'", or does it mean "neither interested nor involved in politics"?
- didibus 6y ago
  The problem is that in a democracy, you cannot "not act politically". Even holding political views will influence what you tell others, and who you vote for or if you choose not to vote. All that is acting politically, since you're participating in the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power. So I take it being apolitical in a democracy is akin to saying you support the majority who voted. That's because you can't act without regards to politics, you are forced to abide by the political rules and laws, and even your choice to not vote is a choice for the majority who voted. So like, the most apolitical thing you could do would be never talk politics, never let any of your value judgment known to others about any topic, and randomly cast a vote at every elections.
  - Smaug123 6y ago
    > So I take it being apolitical in a democracy is akin to saying you support the majority who voted. I'm not sure that's true. After all, in a normal decade the majority political party changes at least once, in both the USA and the UK. With or without my action, I really don't know who would win an election that was called right this instant in the UK; I really don't know which side I'm supporting by not undertaking political activity right now. The default state of affairs without my action is not "continue as we currently are indefinitely"; the default is "every few years, change the government"! I do vote; voting is the system we have collectively landed on for aggregating preferences across the population, and I do have preferences. But if I did not vote (and am therefore implicitly "voting for" the majority), I don't see how that could be reasonably viewed as a political act, because I don't know who I'm "voting" for as I do it!