this site has traditionally been very sympathetic to the far right
Could you please taboo “far right”, and give specific details of what is LW sympathetic to? E.g. quotations from high-karma articles and comments (bonus points for being written by Eliezer or Luke or some other local celebrity).
I am aware that this site is more sympathetic to ideas like “markets are good heuristic for maximizing utility” than to ideas like “we could make the world a better place by killing all people we consider evil, and brainwashing the rest”. But I don’t think this is because the typical correlations with ‘left’ and ‘right’, but because of the ideas themselves.
Disingenuous racism (“race realism” or “human biodiversity” or whatever euphemism it hides behinds currently). Libertarianism. Chest-beating displays towards right-wing boogeymen like political correctness and the media-academia complex. Multiple apparently respected posters taking “Heartiste” seriously, even though his entire shtick is gay-bashing and misogyny, and despite the fact that he’s a grown-ass man who calls himself “Heartiste.” And oh yeah, Mencius Moldbug. Is there a left-wing writer of similar obscurity and extremism so widely and approvingly quoted on LessWrong?
And oh yeah, Mencius Moldbug. Is there a left-wing writer of similar obscurity and extremism so widely and approvingly quoted on LessWrong?
Well there are left-writers of similar extremism quoted approvingly on LessWrong. They just happen not to be as obscure as their right wing counterparts. Basically any far left position you can think of (say Stalinism ) has some unobscure figure arguing for it. But I can see why you’d mind Moldbug, he’s just some dude with a blog, which he himself emphasises.
What I don’t see is Heartiste/Roissy. He’s one of several pick up artists that’s name dropped and discussed when the subject of romance or sex comes up and while the online scene itself is somewhat obscure anyone who is at all familiar with it also knows about him. If PUA in general is your complaint why didn’t you just say so? Our sister site Overcoming Bias does directly link to Heartiste’s blog (under its old name of Roissy in DC) so maybe he is overrepresented in PUA discussions, but I’d argue a larger part of why he is overrepresented is that he makes a good target to straw man PUA.
A libertarian who is also a fan of Moldbug and PUAs is in my estimation almost certain to be some way out on the non-religious branch of the right. Obviously my views are not unbiased, and I hope I have not claimed them to be. Your last paragraph is good snark, but I think it’s pretty close to how a fair portion of those on the political left would see it. Anyone who identifies as liberal is likely to see Peter Thiel and Robin Hanson as far-right nutcases (assuming they’ve heard of them). Yudkowsky, as I see it, is libertarian by upbringing but generally indifferent to politics, so he can only be far-right by association. All of his really far-out opinions are elsewhere.
Our sister site Overcoming Bias does directly link to Heartiste’s blog (under its old name of Roissy in DC) so maybe he is overrepresented in PUA discussions, but I’d argue a larger part of why he is overrepresented is that he makes a good target to straw man PUA.
He is a good target to straw man PUAs! I’m glad we found something we can agree on! Naming himself Heartiste was the greatest gift any man could give to snarky enemies of the PUA movement. But he also writes some truly messed up stuff (no links because I don’t want to vomit right now), and he is linked to by Hanson, so I don’t think criticizing him is unfair.
But yes I’m fully aware people really do think like that. Check out the link I put in “evil knows no bounds”. I’ve seen hysterical diatribes elsewhere online of how utterly vile and wicked it is of Thiel to pay exceptional young people not to go to college since it RUINS THEIR FUTURE FOREVER. Contrary to all the data we have on what education actually does, which shows they will likely be fine since college is probably mostly signaling.
What I think you will have to admit, is that people like Thiel are also the kind of people who are more likely than average to take things like encouraging social or technological innovation, curing ageing, cryonic and existential risk seriously. Just inspecting the sources of funding of such efforts should give you overwhelming of evidence of this.
If you take away Robin Hanson and other people from that cluster away, cease to tolerate them, preciously little original synthesis and though beyond what academia already did would remain. I would go as far as to say that applied rationality and self-improvement that actually works is indeed a strong attractor in the context of their memeplex. One could argue that they where and still are the intellectually and socially invested backbone of the community that formed around Overcoming Bias and LessWrong!
Anyone who identifies as liberal is likely to see Peter Thiel and Robin Hanson as far-right nutcases (assuming they’ve heard of them).
They will just have to get over that though.
And those that can’t… “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.”
I’m sure many conservatives can’t get over what kind of people the atheism filter tends to select either and don’t join us because of it. And unlike conservatives, “liberals” and “socialists” hold a supermajority here, is it really so terrible they make up just 60%+ of the site rather than 95%+?
Looking at the history of the important issues and positions I mentioned hold in society it seems pretty clear that It isn’t that this particular cluster of “far right” people is wickedly hogging them, clutching them with their slimy low status tentacles from the reach of what would otherwise be an enthusiastic mainstream.
It is precisely the traits that attracted them to their cluster that make them more likely to endorse and build upon LW-style rationality.
One could argue that they where and still are the intellectually and socially invested backbone of the community that formed around Overcoming Bias and LessWrong!
That’s the argument I wanted to make, so I think I’ll steal it. The intellectually and socially invested backbone of the community was and is distinctly right-leaning. Hence, the site is in many ways unwelcoming to people on the political left, much as was earlier claimed that the site is unwelcoming to some on the right.
They will just have to get over that though.
Right. And I think this applies equally to the right-wing readers and commenters who feel the site isn’t sufficiently sympathetic to their political views. Obviously I do not think that the political right deserves special treatment on account of somehow being innately more rational than the other tribes.
I think that you are selecting only a part of the story. For example, the official boogeyman here is the religion. (By the way, it happens to be associated with political right, at least today in USA.) Yet somehow, quotes from Chesterton often get many upvotes in “Rationality Quotes”. Does it mean that LW is secretly very sympathetic to religion? Or just that we are able to appreciate a decent quote even from people with whom we disagree on other topics? Could the second explanation possibly apply also to Heartiste or Moldbug? If you found a good rationality quote from Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Che Guevara, or Fidel Castro, would it also get upvotes? You can try, if you want.
With regard to political correctness, to me it seems that the current situation is unsatisfactory to both sides. Forbidden topics get mentioned, then they are verbally opposed and the discussion is stopped; later they are mentioned again, and then the discussion is stopped again; ad infinitum. This is what neither side wants. Some people would prefer to never see those topics reopened again. Other people would prefer to have an open discussion now and then, without being told to stop by people who don’t want to participate. Both sides take this as a proof that the other side is winning.
I think that you are selecting only a part of the story. For example, the official boogeyman here is the religion. (By the way, it happens to be associated with political right, at least today in USA.)
Definitely. But there are groups associated with the US political right that are non- or anti-religious. Objectivists are an obvious example. Unsurprisingly, these groups are overrepresented on the internet (though this is becoming less and less the case over the years). My impression is that LW has traditionally skewed toward this branch of the right.
Yet somehow, quotes from Chesterton often get many upvotes in “Rationality Quotes”. Does it mean that LW is secretly very sympathetic to religion? Or just that we are able to appreciate a decent quote even from people with whom we disagree on other topics? Could the second explanation possibly apply also to Heartiste or Moldbug?
Yes, but “possible” is a low bar. I do not believe it could entirely, or even in large part explain the frequency of references to Heartiste and Moldbug, or their reception. Chesterton is less famous and less respected than, say, George Orwell, but he is nonetheless a well-known and often quoted political writer in the English speaking world. Heartiste and Moldbug are not. They are so obscure that even having heard of them requires an unusual degree of familiarity with the fringes of the blogosphere.
Your description of political correctness makes it sound a lot like the “Politics is the Mindkiller” gag-rule. The Boogeyman version of political correctness is more like a hybrid of the Cheka and the Inquisition.
It is interesting to see Ayn Rand, Heartiste, and Chesterton as examples of “the right”. Makes me thinking what exactly does this concept mean; what exactly do these three have in common… which they don’t share with George Orwell.
Your description of political correctness makes it sound a lot like the “Politics is the Mindkiller” gag-rule.
To me it seems more like a “Blue Politics is the Mindkiller” rule.
It is interesting to see Ayn Rand, Heartiste, and Chesterton as examples of “the right”. Makes me thinking what exactly does this concept mean; what exactly do these three have in common… which they don’t share with George Orwell.
Not being avowed socialists. Anyway, the fact that “the right” is an incredibly broad and imprecise category doesn’t make the concept meaningless. It is empirically true that most politically aware Americans vote unerringly for one of two parties based on their identification with a broad and imprecisely defined category, even if you think they ought not to behave that way. A private citizen’s specific policy opinions are of far less practical significance than their identification with “the right” or “the left.”
Funny thing that we agree on this, because when I was writing it, “not being socialist” was the only thing that came to my mind—but I didn’t write it in hope that you will tell me something else that I missed. So perhaps there is nothing else.
But in the light of this explanation, your complaint seems to translate as “LW has traditionally been very sympathetic to some non-socialists”. Do you think that is a wrong thing? I feel like I’m making a strawman version of your arguments here.
In the lifetimes of Rand, Chesterton, and Orwell, socialist vs. anti-socialist was possibly the dividing line in the world of politics, so it’s not a minor difference. I think a slightly better translation might be “LW has traditionally been very sympathetic to non-religious anti-socialists”. I wouldn’t call it a wrong thing, because I don’t perceive this issue as having that much moral weight. I disagree on the facts with a particular assessment of site-wide political bias.
To give a flattering explanation for such activity (I cringe at the thought of being thought as far right) I can only think of the value placed by this community on tolerance of ideas. As Paul Graham says ” If a statement is false, that’s the worst thing you can say about it. You don’t need to say that it’s heretical. And if it isn’t false, it shouldn’t be suppressed.” You could interpret people quoting reactionaries like Moldbug as an attempt to shock people and show how tolerant they are by seriously entertaining the ideas. The closest analogue I can think of is Salvador Dali saying he admires Hitler in the movie “Surrealissimo”. Link to Dali here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM9E9O9tEHs
For example, the official boogeyman here is the religion.
Really? I doubt I’m the only one who thinks that religious faith is a cheap target for critiques of irrationality. It is the example that people fall back on when they don’t have a better one, because it is so obvious.
But religion isn’t taken as much of a threat or a cause for outrage here. There are communities where it is — New Atheists, skeptics, and science educators concerned about creationism all come to mind.
Really? I doubt I’m the only one who thinks that religious faith is a cheap target for critiques of irrationality. It is the example that people fall back on when they don’t have a better one, because it is so obvious.
Astrology, alternative medicine, alien abductions, etc. are the usual targets attacked by entry-level skeptics. However, I do agree that in mainstream Western culture, religion is easy to attack.
Could you please taboo “far right”, and give specific details of what is LW sympathetic to? E.g. quotations from high-karma articles and comments (bonus points for being written by Eliezer or Luke or some other local celebrity).
I am aware that this site is more sympathetic to ideas like “markets are good heuristic for maximizing utility” than to ideas like “we could make the world a better place by killing all people we consider evil, and brainwashing the rest”. But I don’t think this is because the typical correlations with ‘left’ and ‘right’, but because of the ideas themselves.
Disingenuous racism (“race realism” or “human biodiversity” or whatever euphemism it hides behinds currently). Libertarianism. Chest-beating displays towards right-wing boogeymen like political correctness and the media-academia complex. Multiple apparently respected posters taking “Heartiste” seriously, even though his entire shtick is gay-bashing and misogyny, and despite the fact that he’s a grown-ass man who calls himself “Heartiste.” And oh yeah, Mencius Moldbug. Is there a left-wing writer of similar obscurity and extremism so widely and approvingly quoted on LessWrong?
Well there are left-writers of similar extremism quoted approvingly on LessWrong. They just happen not to be as obscure as their right wing counterparts. Basically any far left position you can think of (say Stalinism ) has some unobscure figure arguing for it. But I can see why you’d mind Moldbug, he’s just some dude with a blog, which he himself emphasises.
What I don’t see is Heartiste/Roissy. He’s one of several pick up artists that’s name dropped and discussed when the subject of romance or sex comes up and while the online scene itself is somewhat obscure anyone who is at all familiar with it also knows about him. If PUA in general is your complaint why didn’t you just say so? Our sister site Overcoming Bias does directly link to Heartiste’s blog (under its old name of Roissy in DC) so maybe he is overrepresented in PUA discussions, but I’d argue a larger part of why he is overrepresented is that he makes a good target to straw man PUA.
Wait libertarianism is scary far right now?
Well ok I guess a third of LessWrong is now far right. I’m not even going to mentioning Robin Hanson’s writings. Also LWs founder is a shady figure who occasionally writes on dangerous far right sites, wants to live forever and his day job is mostly founded by a another rich far right figure who’s evil knows no bounds. Thiel pays kids not to go to college, doesn’t like democracy and wants to settle the seas to escape bad government! Where have he heard that before!
A libertarian who is also a fan of Moldbug and PUAs is in my estimation almost certain to be some way out on the non-religious branch of the right. Obviously my views are not unbiased, and I hope I have not claimed them to be. Your last paragraph is good snark, but I think it’s pretty close to how a fair portion of those on the political left would see it. Anyone who identifies as liberal is likely to see Peter Thiel and Robin Hanson as far-right nutcases (assuming they’ve heard of them). Yudkowsky, as I see it, is libertarian by upbringing but generally indifferent to politics, so he can only be far-right by association. All of his really far-out opinions are elsewhere.
He is a good target to straw man PUAs! I’m glad we found something we can agree on! Naming himself Heartiste was the greatest gift any man could give to snarky enemies of the PUA movement. But he also writes some truly messed up stuff (no links because I don’t want to vomit right now), and he is linked to by Hanson, so I don’t think criticizing him is unfair.
Good, I was aiming for snark.
But yes I’m fully aware people really do think like that. Check out the link I put in “evil knows no bounds”. I’ve seen hysterical diatribes elsewhere online of how utterly vile and wicked it is of Thiel to pay exceptional young people not to go to college since it RUINS THEIR FUTURE FOREVER. Contrary to all the data we have on what education actually does, which shows they will likely be fine since college is probably mostly signaling.
What I think you will have to admit, is that people like Thiel are also the kind of people who are more likely than average to take things like encouraging social or technological innovation, curing ageing, cryonic and existential risk seriously. Just inspecting the sources of funding of such efforts should give you overwhelming of evidence of this.
If you take away Robin Hanson and other people from that cluster away, cease to tolerate them, preciously little original synthesis and though beyond what academia already did would remain. I would go as far as to say that applied rationality and self-improvement that actually works is indeed a strong attractor in the context of their memeplex. One could argue that they where and still are the intellectually and socially invested backbone of the community that formed around Overcoming Bias and LessWrong!
They will just have to get over that though.
And those that can’t… “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.”
I’m sure many conservatives can’t get over what kind of people the atheism filter tends to select either and don’t join us because of it. And unlike conservatives, “liberals” and “socialists” hold a supermajority here, is it really so terrible they make up just 60%+ of the site rather than 95%+?
Looking at the history of the important issues and positions I mentioned hold in society it seems pretty clear that It isn’t that this particular cluster of “far right” people is wickedly hogging them, clutching them with their slimy low status tentacles from the reach of what would otherwise be an enthusiastic mainstream.
It is precisely the traits that attracted them to their cluster that make them more likely to endorse and build upon LW-style rationality.
That’s the argument I wanted to make, so I think I’ll steal it. The intellectually and socially invested backbone of the community was and is distinctly right-leaning. Hence, the site is in many ways unwelcoming to people on the political left, much as was earlier claimed that the site is unwelcoming to some on the right.
Right. And I think this applies equally to the right-wing readers and commenters who feel the site isn’t sufficiently sympathetic to their political views. Obviously I do not think that the political right deserves special treatment on account of somehow being innately more rational than the other tribes.
I hope I didn’t imply this.
Regardless of what you think of his opinions, Mencius Moldbug is, if nothing else, eloquent.
I strongly disagree connotationally, but thank you for the explanation.
I think that you are selecting only a part of the story. For example, the official boogeyman here is the religion. (By the way, it happens to be associated with political right, at least today in USA.) Yet somehow, quotes from Chesterton often get many upvotes in “Rationality Quotes”. Does it mean that LW is secretly very sympathetic to religion? Or just that we are able to appreciate a decent quote even from people with whom we disagree on other topics? Could the second explanation possibly apply also to Heartiste or Moldbug? If you found a good rationality quote from Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Che Guevara, or Fidel Castro, would it also get upvotes? You can try, if you want.
With regard to political correctness, to me it seems that the current situation is unsatisfactory to both sides. Forbidden topics get mentioned, then they are verbally opposed and the discussion is stopped; later they are mentioned again, and then the discussion is stopped again; ad infinitum. This is what neither side wants. Some people would prefer to never see those topics reopened again. Other people would prefer to have an open discussion now and then, without being told to stop by people who don’t want to participate. Both sides take this as a proof that the other side is winning.
Definitely. But there are groups associated with the US political right that are non- or anti-religious. Objectivists are an obvious example. Unsurprisingly, these groups are overrepresented on the internet (though this is becoming less and less the case over the years). My impression is that LW has traditionally skewed toward this branch of the right.
Yes, but “possible” is a low bar. I do not believe it could entirely, or even in large part explain the frequency of references to Heartiste and Moldbug, or their reception. Chesterton is less famous and less respected than, say, George Orwell, but he is nonetheless a well-known and often quoted political writer in the English speaking world. Heartiste and Moldbug are not. They are so obscure that even having heard of them requires an unusual degree of familiarity with the fringes of the blogosphere.
Your description of political correctness makes it sound a lot like the “Politics is the Mindkiller” gag-rule. The Boogeyman version of political correctness is more like a hybrid of the Cheka and the Inquisition.
It is interesting to see Ayn Rand, Heartiste, and Chesterton as examples of “the right”. Makes me thinking what exactly does this concept mean; what exactly do these three have in common… which they don’t share with George Orwell.
To me it seems more like a “Blue Politics is the Mindkiller” rule.
Not being avowed socialists. Anyway, the fact that “the right” is an incredibly broad and imprecise category doesn’t make the concept meaningless. It is empirically true that most politically aware Americans vote unerringly for one of two parties based on their identification with a broad and imprecisely defined category, even if you think they ought not to behave that way. A private citizen’s specific policy opinions are of far less practical significance than their identification with “the right” or “the left.”
Funny thing that we agree on this, because when I was writing it, “not being socialist” was the only thing that came to my mind—but I didn’t write it in hope that you will tell me something else that I missed. So perhaps there is nothing else.
But in the light of this explanation, your complaint seems to translate as “LW has traditionally been very sympathetic to some non-socialists”. Do you think that is a wrong thing? I feel like I’m making a strawman version of your arguments here.
In the lifetimes of Rand, Chesterton, and Orwell, socialist vs. anti-socialist was possibly the dividing line in the world of politics, so it’s not a minor difference. I think a slightly better translation might be “LW has traditionally been very sympathetic to non-religious anti-socialists”. I wouldn’t call it a wrong thing, because I don’t perceive this issue as having that much moral weight. I disagree on the facts with a particular assessment of site-wide political bias.
To give a flattering explanation for such activity (I cringe at the thought of being thought as far right) I can only think of the value placed by this community on tolerance of ideas. As Paul Graham says ” If a statement is false, that’s the worst thing you can say about it. You don’t need to say that it’s heretical. And if it isn’t false, it shouldn’t be suppressed.” You could interpret people quoting reactionaries like Moldbug as an attempt to shock people and show how tolerant they are by seriously entertaining the ideas. The closest analogue I can think of is Salvador Dali saying he admires Hitler in the movie “Surrealissimo”. Link to Dali here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM9E9O9tEHs
Really? I doubt I’m the only one who thinks that religious faith is a cheap target for critiques of irrationality. It is the example that people fall back on when they don’t have a better one, because it is so obvious.
But religion isn’t taken as much of a threat or a cause for outrage here. There are communities where it is — New Atheists, skeptics, and science educators concerned about creationism all come to mind.
Astrology, alternative medicine, alien abductions, etc. are the usual targets attacked by entry-level skeptics. However, I do agree that in mainstream Western culture, religion is easy to attack.