[ellyagg]

"And then accepting that status quo"

Less Wrong is a place where folks try to discuss things with a high degree of technical accuracy. For example, if a respondent were to disagree with the linked article, they would try to avoid making an outrageously stupid claim such as "Implicit in this statement...[is] accepting the status quo"--which is in NO WAY implied by the article--and then smugly toppling the argument that no one made. Derailing conversations like that is a waste of everyone's time.

I imagine a world, the world I would like to live in, where people didn't attempt to manipulate disagreements or indeed policy discussions by appeals to emotion. I want to live in a world where it's taken for granted that you can advocate for a position through a calm meeting of minds. I'm an extremely emotional person and can reconcile the search for unbiased truth--which includes my actions and the polices of my communities coming to reflect that truth--with living an emotional life just fine, since emotion is not the opposite of reason that many people try to claim it is. Mainly the people I see making this claim are those who would like to substitute emotional manipulation for making a rational case.