View source for Mind-killer

'''Mind-killer''' is a name given to topics (such as [[color politics|politics]] or Nazism) that tend to produce extremely [[Bias|biased]] discussions.

Politics is one obvious cause of '''mind-killer''' disputes:  Political disputes are not limited to standard disagreements about factual matters, nor to disputes of personality or perspective or even [[faction]]: they involve matters that people physically fight over in the real world&mdash;or at least, matters that are to be enforced by the government's monopoly of violence.  Accordingly, politically-motivated people may come here to [[Less Wrong]] in order to diligently reduce their casualties and add more recruits to their side.

Successfully mediating a political dispute is clearly beyond our scope, since real-world [[virtue]]s are required which go far beyond rationality.  Many of these virtues were identified by [[wikipedia:Bernard Crick|Bernard Crick]] in his work ''In Defense of Politics''.

Another cause of mind-killers is social taboo. Negative [[connotation|connotations]] are associated with some topics, thus creating a strong bias supported by [[signaling]] drives that makes non-negative characterization of these topics appear [[absurdity heuristic|absurd]].

It may be particularly important for Less Wrong to encourage a rational perspective with respect to these contentious topics.   Nevertheless, introducing these topics into an otherwise [[Epistemic hygiene|healthy]] discussion (for example, to present an analogy) may ruin it, encouraging fallacious modes of thinking.

==See also==
*[[Color politics]]
*[[Epistemic hygiene]]
*[[Affect heuristic]]
*[[Dark arts]]
*[[Signaling]]

==Blog posts==

*[http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ Politics is the Mind-Killer] by [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]]
*[http://lesswrong.com/lw/ee/the_mindkiller/ The mind-killer] by [[ciphergoth]]
*[http://lesswrong.com/lw/12w/absolute_denial_for_atheists/ Absolute denial for atheists] by [[taw]]

==External links==

*[http://paulgraham.com/say.html What You Can't Say] by [[Paul Graham]] - Discusses "moral fashions" and social taboos and how they mind-kill certain topics.

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