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On a purely individual level - should they do that? As a matter of fact, what's the harm from discussing disgusting ideas? I think, in an ideal sense, 'taboo ideas' wouldn't exist in the context of discussion. Whether that's 'is pedophilia good, actually', 'is slavery good, actually', 'is eugenics good, actually' - it raises very interesting philosophical questions that flesh out aspects of reality you would otherwise understand less. The writings of history's evil reactionaries deeply influenced the thought of history's foremost progressives, even though they were at odds morally.
It's also not a coincidence that the mainstream lines of thought on every taboo topic is hopelessly confused. That's what happens when you make intellectual inquiry taboo!
At the same time, you have to strictly enforce a quality floor, and be fine with that quality floor having a 'disparate impact' on the witches.
While I think, ideally, everyone should 'not defect' and tell all of the self-excluders to suck it, TheMotte is one of the very few spaces that does that and simultaneously maintains a quality bar (and also an implicit IQ/competence filter), which makes it especially important we allow such badthink.
It's all very well to claim to be above such tribal or social associations - but I very much doubt than anyone here is. I know that there are people interested in the Motte's ostensible purpose but who have quit the community because it contained too many witches, and was going down a groupthink-y hard right hole. The Schism is the most obvious example because it's a public community, but every individual who quits and doesn't advertise it adds to the count, but does not leave an obvious record to point to.
All humans are social animals. If you want to recruit exclusively from people who don't care about social associations, you're going to get only the tiny proportion of weirdos who don't care and the people who genuinely like the social associations here (i.e. the witches). It is not at all clear that the resulting community is going to be one that's maximally open to the discussion of interesting ideas.
I'm not claiming to be above tribal and social associations, that would be stupid - both in that it's untrue, and that it'd be dumb to do so, such tendencies exist because they're very useful!
I am claiming, however, to be interested in talking to people and considering ideas, no matter how disgusting or obviously wrong or taboo the topic is (and that does include far-left stuff, like weird kinks, anarchists, gender-abolitionists, authcoms, etc). And I think everyone should do that. Obviously this goes against natural tendencies and is generally a weird idea.
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