A request

[mhdousa]

This board has be incredibly valuable to my development as an investor.  I'm still nowhere near as good as most of you but I'm getting there.  I check it multiple times a day and have acted on many of the ideas so wonderfully discussed and debated on here.

 

Where this board is not successful is when discussions of politics and personal ideology predominate.  I don't know of anyone who has ever been swayed to change their political views by reading a differing opinion on a message board. I don't presume to speak for Parsad, but I don't think political discussions are the mandate of this board.

 

There's a non-trivial Supreme Court decision about to be handed down.  I'd love to not have every interesting investing discussion pushed off the Corner of Berkshire and Fairfax main page only to be replaced by tens of posts decrying "YAY OBAMACARE SUCKS" or "DUDE SCALIA IS A FAT IDIOT".

 

Feel free to disagree.

Many thanks.

-M

[Guest FFHfan]

Where this board is not successful is when discussions of politics and personal ideology predominate.  I don't know of anyone who has ever been swayed to change their political views by reading a differing opinion on a message board. I don't presume to speak for Parsad, but I don't think political discussions are the mandate of this board.

 

There's a non-trivial Supreme Court decision about to be handed down.  I'd love to not have every interesting investing discussion pushed off the Corner of Berkshire and Fairfax main page only to be replaced by tens of posts decrying "YAY OBAMACARE SUCKS" or "DUDE SCALIA IS A FAT IDIOT".

 

Feel free to disagree.

Many thanks.

-M

 

I totally agree !

[Liberty]

http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

[racemize]

+1

[biaggio]

http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

 

Interesting web site. Thanks for posting.

[Liberty]

http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

 

Interesting web site. Thanks for posting.

 

If you want to explore it, the best way is through the Sequences:

 

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences

[rkbabang]

http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

 

Excellent article.  Politics is indeed a violent and primitive way to address social problems.  The fact that it is still employed by us as a species goes to show how far our society still needs to evolve to become the civilized beings we can and should be.

[alwaysinvert]

I pretty much agree and I admit to making the mistake of entering a few pointless political discussions in the past.

 

But you should keep in mind that the purpose of a debate never is to sway the opponent but to influence the people who have no strong opinion.

[Rabbitisrich]

Lesswrong has a few gems.

 

This study argues that domestic politics predicts elevated levels of anti-american sentiment. Such sentiment increases in countries where an islamic group competes with a secular group compared to countries where the islamic group has secured power.

 

http://www.volokh.com/2012/06/24/why-do-they-hate-us-4/

 

Analysis of a huge amount of survey data collected from 13,000 Muslims in 21 countries showed that those countries where people expressed the most anti-American views were also those where two powerful political elites (one Islamist and one secular) were competing fiercely with each other for supporters. In countries where this did not apply, the amount of anti-Americanism expressed was significantly lower. … Blaydes comments:

“When the struggle for political control between two factions escalates, they both tend to ramp up anti-American appeals to boost their own mass support with the result that political debate in certain countries is more or less saturated with anti-American messages. This means that larger numbers of Muslims hear, consider, and are led to adopt anti-American attitudes.

“Conversely we found that in Islamic countries where the battle for local supremacy has already been won by those who are more religious, neither side of the political divide had strong incentives to invoke grievances against the US to recruit supporters and hence the level of anti-Americanism among citizens was lower.”

 

 

 

[Parsad]

Mdhousa,

 

I totally agree with you.  But if you take a look at the pages and pages of threads, the thread titles are almost all universally non-political.  Often, an investment-related discussion disintegrates into political ideology, and that's where I could use some help from the boardmembers, as I don't have enough time to read every single post. 

 

If anyone sees a post that is way off topic and completely political, alert me through the "Report to Moderator" on the bottom right side of every post.  That way I can view the post and delete it. 

 

The more I delete those types of posts, the more likely a boardmember will get the message that the post was political and not completely appropriate.  At the same time, I do give some leeway to political posts if they have a direct influence or ramification for the investment industry or your finances, so they won't go away completely.  Cheers!

[PlanMaestro]

A couple of good mental models about organizational change and political rhetoric:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rhetoric_of_Reaction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_O._Hirschman

[mhdousa]

This board has be incredibly valuable to my development as an investor.  I'm still nowhere near as good as most of you but I'm getting there.  I check it multiple times a day and have acted on many of the ideas so wonderfully discussed and debated on here.

 

Where this board is not successful is when discussions of politics and personal ideology predominate.  I don't know of anyone who has ever been swayed to change their political views by reading a differing opinion on a message board. I don't presume to speak for Parsad, but I don't think political discussions are the mandate of this board.

 

There's a non-trivial Supreme Court decision about to be handed down.  I'd love to not have every interesting investing discussion pushed off the Corner of Berkshire and Fairfax main page only to be replaced by tens of posts decrying "YAY OBAMACARE SUCKS" or "DUDE SCALIA IS A FAT IDIOT".

 

Feel free to disagree.

Many thanks.

-M

 

Just bumping my own thread and quoting my own post because, well...

[Parsad]

Actually what was a devolving political thread eventually turned into a very enlightening thread.  I would recommend that boardmembers read from thread page 9 and on.  StahleyP and Liberty were having one hell of an interesting discussion.  We're fortunate to have such a broad-minded group of members.  Cheers!