And even domestically, “liberated” women and “tolerated” minorities are consistently polled as being decreasingly happy over time, almost as if our progressive policies of equality were thrusting them into arenas they were fundamentally not fit to compete in.
Way too sick of this shit on LW. And as usual, it’s by straight white middle-class dudebro who hypocritically preaches about the danger of epistemic corruption in evaluating society while connected to it.
Check your fucking privilege and let people from the groups you bring up do some talking for themselves.
Asking people who are obviously not part of the social justice movement to check their privilege does not work, asking people who are is generally unecessary if they are any good at it. There might be a way to convince people to stop writing crap like this here, that won’t work.
I know, I know. If I was writing this with any actual goal-oriented hope for positive change on LW, I would’ve tried to bridge the inferential distance. But hell, I’m just a miserable and depressed cranky guy. Not even in gender studies. Sigh.
You know part of why I’ve been posting such low quality, counter-productive (passive)-aggressive remarks recently? I still remember that buzz, that breathtaking feeling of half-delight and half-awe when I discovered the LW community and read the Sequences two years ago. Here are some of the most insightful, kickass people I could realistically talk to and learn together with, it said. And now noticing all the terrifying, fascist-leaning political undercurrents that pervade the community, I feel zero joy at the thought of just averting my eyes and staying for the “Awesome Rational Shoes” stuff and smart conversation.
Don’t get me wrong, Eliezer on his own is still just as ultra-badass as ever. But the honeymoon is definitely over for me.
I would like to apologize that the discussion that I started has upset you. I feel partly responsible that you are upset and I’d like to remedy this.
I think that what you are feeling is part of the halo effect. When we see people who have some qualities we like (Understanding of logic, need for cognition, precise and methodical thought) we assume that they will also have other qualities we like and share our other values. So when someone within that doesn’t share them, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
It’s also a reminder that your other views don’t automatically come with the intelligence-rationality package. This reminder is good for your overall rationality. It forces you not to fall back on the “anyone who isn’t an idiot can see that I am right” defense.
But keep in mind Re: sore thumbs: In a rationalist community, Disagreement is salient, Agreement is silent.. Why was I even interested in Moldbug in the first place? Because he disagrees with me!
And now noticing all the terrifying, fascist-leaning political undercurrents that pervade the community
I show you this out to demonstrate the strong, silent agreement of social values on Lesswrong forums. We just don’t feel the need to talk about it, because all our opinions are assumed by default. The “undercurrents” that concern you are feeling distressed about are an overwhelming minority. They get attention because they disagree, and therefore they are interesting.
After you’ve finished with the “learning” phase, areas of disagreement mark the places worth watching, because that’s where you are likely to be wrong. That’s why in rationalist culture, the minority-view-holding-contrarian is always correspondingly louder. I’d argue that this is, on the whole, a good thing (coordination problems pointed out by E.Y. notwithstanding). This is the reason that despite my disagreement (which has emotional components aplenty—I know what it is like to be the target of racial discrimination) I am willing to really try considering such views dispassionately and on their own merits, making effort to put myself aside.
I hope that this makes you feel better about the whole thing.
You know part of why I’ve been posting such low quality, counter-productive (passive)-aggressive remarks recently?
I am puzzled. I understand your desire to vent, and there are places to vent about this forum, like the relevant subreddit. But here people are expected to at least make an attempt at practicing rationality, even if faced with mixed success. Why post something here you know is irrational? Is the dubious satisfaction of telling me or someone else “wrong on the internet” off really worth it?
Here are some of the most insightful, kickass people I could realistically talk to and learn together with, it said. And now noticing all the terrifying, fascist-leaning political undercurrents that pervade the community,
So you’ve discovered a community of extremely rational people and some of their conclusions make you highly uncomfortable. How is this surprising? This is probably how a lot of theists feel while deconverting.
The worst thing is… my crap doesn’t just mildly degrade the “overall” signal to noise ratio (I disagree that this could be a coherent metric, especially in arguments directly related to actually existing socieies) - it outright hurts the (ever-precarious) position of “my” side, and doesn’t even encourage my allies on any problematic topic to put forward a better denouncement of “hostile” content here. Yet silence and aquiescence feel even more humiliating to me than making a fool of myself on LW.
Yet silence and aquiescence feel even more humiliating to me than making a fool of myself on LW.
I recommend developing emotional self-control to the point that you can put your political goals above your personal emotional satisfaction, or alternatively realizing that your terminal goals appear to be emotional, not political, and you can adjust your political goals to make your emotional goals easier to satisfy.
How about I “poll” you about your current happiness, check your body language and such, then kidnap you, screw with your mind through typical abuser tactics, then pump you full of heroin and repeat the “poll”?
Check your fucking privilege and let people from the gruops you bring up do some talking for themselves.
Like… Ann Coulter, suffrage pessimist?
It’s not obvious to me that one needs to be of a group to comment about that group, and when it comes to statistical statements the collector of the statistics seems entirely irrelevant. “Check your fucking privilege” is not a helpful addition to the conversation, whereas Ishaan’s “I’ve seen the data, and it isn’t that significant” is.
Well, you’re going to find literally hundreds of women with outspoken feminist ideas to one outspoken Ann Coulter, so… Okay, let’s be generous and say that she and Andrea Dworkin, a fierce critic of anti-feminist women, cancel each other out. Then you’re still going to get far more women with explicitly and implicitly feminist aliefs. Even when they self-identify as “conservative” for cultural or political reasons, have a negative perception of feminist activism, etc. The public image of “feminism” might not be so great, but women by and large seem to genuinely stand behind feminist convictions Could it be because most women recognize women’s social and economic self-interest better than most men?
It’s not obvious to me that one needs to be of a group to comment about that group
Making certain types of comments from certain socioeconomic positions relative to the group in question is a huge, terrible epistemic hazard, which is so for pretty much the same reasons as the generally corrupting nature of power.
Way too sick of this shit on LW. And as usual, it’s by straight white middle-class dudebro who hypocritically preaches about the danger of epistemic corruption in evaluating society while connected to it.
Check your fucking privilege and let people from the groups you bring up do some talking for themselves.
Asking people who are obviously not part of the social justice movement to check their privilege does not work, asking people who are is generally unecessary if they are any good at it. There might be a way to convince people to stop writing crap like this here, that won’t work.
I know, I know. If I was writing this with any actual goal-oriented hope for positive change on LW, I would’ve tried to bridge the inferential distance. But hell, I’m just a miserable and depressed cranky guy. Not even in gender studies. Sigh.
You know part of why I’ve been posting such low quality, counter-productive (passive)-aggressive remarks recently? I still remember that buzz, that breathtaking feeling of half-delight and half-awe when I discovered the LW community and read the Sequences two years ago. Here are some of the most insightful, kickass people I could realistically talk to and learn together with, it said. And now noticing all the terrifying, fascist-leaning political undercurrents that pervade the community, I feel zero joy at the thought of just averting my eyes and staying for the “Awesome Rational Shoes” stuff and smart conversation.
Don’t get me wrong, Eliezer on his own is still just as ultra-badass as ever. But the honeymoon is definitely over for me.
I would like to apologize that the discussion that I started has upset you. I feel partly responsible that you are upset and I’d like to remedy this.
I think that what you are feeling is part of the halo effect. When we see people who have some qualities we like (Understanding of logic, need for cognition, precise and methodical thought) we assume that they will also have other qualities we like and share our other values. So when someone within that doesn’t share them, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
It’s also a reminder that your other views don’t automatically come with the intelligence-rationality package. This reminder is good for your overall rationality. It forces you not to fall back on the “anyone who isn’t an idiot can see that I am right” defense.
But keep in mind Re: sore thumbs: In a rationalist community, Disagreement is salient, Agreement is silent.. Why was I even interested in Moldbug in the first place? Because he disagrees with me!
This is from the Lesswrong 2012 survey:
POLITICS:
Liberal: 427, 36%
Libertarian: 359, 30.3%
Socialist: 326, 27.5%
Conservative: 35, 3%
Communist: 8, 0.7%
No answer: 30, 2.5%
ALTERNATIVE POLITICS QUESTION:
Progressive: 429, 36.3%
Libertarian: 278, 23.5%
Reactionary: 30, 2.5%
Conservative: 24, 2%
Communist: 22, 1.9%
Other: 156, 13.2%
ALTERNATIVE ALTERNATIVE POLITICS QUESTION:
Left-Libertarian: 102, 8.6%
Progressive: 98, 8.3%
Libertarian: 91, 7.7%
Pragmatist: 85, 7.2%
Social Democrat: 80, 6.8%
Socialist: 66, 5.6%
Anarchist: 50, 4.1%
Futarchist: 29, 2.5%
Moderate: 18, 1.5%
Moldbuggian: 19, 1.6%
Objectivist: 11, 0.9%
I show you this out to demonstrate the strong, silent agreement of social values on Lesswrong forums. We just don’t feel the need to talk about it, because all our opinions are assumed by default. The “undercurrents” that concern you are feeling distressed about are an overwhelming minority. They get attention because they disagree, and therefore they are interesting.
After you’ve finished with the “learning” phase, areas of disagreement mark the places worth watching, because that’s where you are likely to be wrong. That’s why in rationalist culture, the minority-view-holding-contrarian is always correspondingly louder. I’d argue that this is, on the whole, a good thing (coordination problems pointed out by E.Y. notwithstanding). This is the reason that despite my disagreement (which has emotional components aplenty—I know what it is like to be the target of racial discrimination) I am willing to really try considering such views dispassionately and on their own merits, making effort to put myself aside.
I hope that this makes you feel better about the whole thing.
I am puzzled. I understand your desire to vent, and there are places to vent about this forum, like the relevant subreddit. But here people are expected to at least make an attempt at practicing rationality, even if faced with mixed success. Why post something here you know is irrational? Is the dubious satisfaction of telling me or someone else “wrong on the internet” off really worth it?
So you’ve discovered a community of extremely rational people and some of their conclusions make you highly uncomfortable. How is this surprising? This is probably how a lot of theists feel while deconverting.
The worst thing is… my crap doesn’t just mildly degrade the “overall” signal to noise ratio (I disagree that this could be a coherent metric, especially in arguments directly related to actually existing socieies) - it outright hurts the (ever-precarious) position of “my” side, and doesn’t even encourage my allies on any problematic topic to put forward a better denouncement of “hostile” content here. Yet silence and aquiescence feel even more humiliating to me than making a fool of myself on LW.
I recommend developing emotional self-control to the point that you can put your political goals above your personal emotional satisfaction, or alternatively realizing that your terminal goals appear to be emotional, not political, and you can adjust your political goals to make your emotional goals easier to satisfy.
So you mean… I could really use another drink right now? Yeah, sure, that’s what I was thinking too! Can’t hurt...
That sounds like the opposite of emotional self-control.
Oh, you mean, like… do some cough syrup? Nah, that stuff is good, but I decided I need a tolerance break from it.
giggles stupidly
Looking the text you’re quoting: ”...are consistently polled as being decreasingly happy over time”. That’s them talking, right?
How about I “poll” you about your current happiness, check your body language and such, then kidnap you, screw with your mind through typical abuser tactics, then pump you full of heroin and repeat the “poll”?
Like… Ann Coulter, suffrage pessimist?
It’s not obvious to me that one needs to be of a group to comment about that group, and when it comes to statistical statements the collector of the statistics seems entirely irrelevant. “Check your fucking privilege” is not a helpful addition to the conversation, whereas Ishaan’s “I’ve seen the data, and it isn’t that significant” is.
Well, you’re going to find literally hundreds of women with outspoken feminist ideas to one outspoken Ann Coulter, so… Okay, let’s be generous and say that she and Andrea Dworkin, a fierce critic of anti-feminist women, cancel each other out. Then you’re still going to get far more women with explicitly and implicitly feminist aliefs. Even when they self-identify as “conservative” for cultural or political reasons, have a negative perception of feminist activism, etc. The public image of “feminism” might not be so great, but women by and large seem to genuinely stand behind feminist convictions Could it be because most women recognize women’s social and economic self-interest better than most men?
Making certain types of comments from certain socioeconomic positions relative to the group in question is a huge, terrible epistemic hazard, which is so for pretty much the same reasons as the generally corrupting nature of power.