(I do not know if Moldbug was active before then.)
Somewhere on his blog, Moldbug mentions either being at university or doing this thesis in the very early ’90s. I get the impression his politics weren’t developed then, so if those sam 1993 posts are ‘immature’ or ‘undeveloped’ forms of later sam posts (as it were), I would take that as evidence for sam=Moldbug and obviously the converse as well—if those sam posts were more or less identical to later sam posts, as evidence against sam=Moldbug.
I don’t think sam being Moldbug is likely at all. For starters, from what I’ve seen of Moldbug, he doesn’t seem to usually make easily refuted factual claims—and that’s the chief definining characteristic of sam’s interactions with LessWrong: saying things as silly, unsubstantiated and easily refuted as that conservatives don’t consciously try to remake language, or claiming that marital equality and its supposed dread consequences were discussed a thousand years ago, or that Shakespeare wasn’t politically censored, or that “Bloody Mary” of England was as bad as it ever got from the point of view of oppression, etc, etc… When he’s challenged on those claims, he just makes some more random claims, again without substantiating them, again without citations, and so forth.
That and the passive-agressive self-pity about being downvoted and about him predicting we’ll downvote him (as if that takes a great genius to figure out, when he’s insulting us all over the place), which didn’t strike me as a Moldbug characteristic either. sam’s feelings towards gay people have been made clear as well, when Moldbug has instead stated that increasing tolerance of homosexuality is that bit of politics where he agrees with leftists.
Somewhere on his blog, Moldbug mentions either being at university or doing this thesis in the very early ’90s. I get the impression his politics weren’t developed then, so if those sam 1993 posts are ‘immature’ or ‘undeveloped’ forms of later sam posts (as it were), I would take that as evidence for sam=Moldbug and obviously the converse as well—if those sam posts were more or less identical to later sam posts, as evidence against sam=Moldbug.
I don’t think sam being Moldbug is likely at all. For starters, from what I’ve seen of Moldbug, he doesn’t seem to usually make easily refuted factual claims—and that’s the chief definining characteristic of sam’s interactions with LessWrong: saying things as silly, unsubstantiated and easily refuted as that conservatives don’t consciously try to remake language, or claiming that marital equality and its supposed dread consequences were discussed a thousand years ago, or that Shakespeare wasn’t politically censored, or that “Bloody Mary” of England was as bad as it ever got from the point of view of oppression, etc, etc… When he’s challenged on those claims, he just makes some more random claims, again without substantiating them, again without citations, and so forth.
That and the passive-agressive self-pity about being downvoted and about him predicting we’ll downvote him (as if that takes a great genius to figure out, when he’s insulting us all over the place), which didn’t strike me as a Moldbug characteristic either. sam’s feelings towards gay people have been made clear as well, when Moldbug has instead stated that increasing tolerance of homosexuality is that bit of politics where he agrees with leftists.
Moldbug seems several levels above sam.