I was on LW and overcoming bias for a fair amount of time without knowing they existed, and now it’s impossible not to see them—sharp contrast to the present, when people who talk about almost nothing but nrx are disproportionately top contributors. (I don’t know how long you were here, but if your username is a reference to what I think it is and marks your time of arrival, you arrived after the Nrx influx. I’m talking about back when Yudkowski was a top contributor.)
Of course, it’s impossible to know whether or not NRx were quietly reading and commenting, but if they were, they were quiet about nrx and didn’t talk about politics, because LW was not really a politically centered forum. People generally didn’t like talking about politics because it was “mindkilling”, but whenever people did talk about politics everyone turned out to be either a liberal or a libertarian so there wasn’t much interesting to talk about in any case.
I remember when they first arrived it was kind of new and exciting, to have a group that disagreed with us in a language that made sense.
Rather many of them at best considered the SJ mote obviously true.
Fair. I’d actually consider Yvain and Slatestarcodex in general to be a fair representation of my own views and probably that of old-Lesswrong, even though Scott explicitly dislikes SJ and does not identify as a liberal. He does talk about politics a lot more than old-Lesswrong did though, so I might be projecting about what old-Lesswrong’s views were. That’s just the thing though—it was impossible to tell because no one talked about it.
I’d go so far as to suggest that in any situation where you can identify a mott and bailey, most lesswrongers would hate the bailey.
Perhaps. I would not have identified that post as associated with “neoreaction” back in 2009, but maybe that’s just my lack of awareness. Admittedly, I read Lesswrong a lot more than I did Overcoming Bias, so I might have missed it if it started out in OB.
In hindsight it does seem linked, but Race and Sex portions of NRx were their own Things before they were NRx Things. In my mind it’s only within the past 2-3 years that they’ve joined up with Moldbug’s ideas and formed this whole Dark Enlightenment trilogy. (I mean, it might have happened earlier, but it wasn’t mainstream on places like, say, Reddit. We had PUA and HBD back then, but we didn’t have TheRedPill). Hanson taking a weird stance on gender issues wouldn’t have made me thing “Oh, that’s the NRx side”.
I don’t want to move the goal-posts and you did provide an example which was counter to my impression. I was really talking about the overall picture though—the impression of someone who was unaware of NRx and not sharply looking with a political eye, the top contributors, the general content of threads...but i get that it’s not really easy to provide evidence for what a “trend” is without actually doing work, so this probably won’t be settled.
What reactionary “influx”? Most of the future Neoreactionaries were here pretty early. The NRx site MoreRight was a spin-off of LW.
Rather many of them at best considered the SJ mote obviously true.
I was on LW and overcoming bias for a fair amount of time without knowing they existed, and now it’s impossible not to see them—sharp contrast to the present, when people who talk about almost nothing but nrx are disproportionately top contributors. (I don’t know how long you were here, but if your username is a reference to what I think it is and marks your time of arrival, you arrived after the Nrx influx. I’m talking about back when Yudkowski was a top contributor.)
Of course, it’s impossible to know whether or not NRx were quietly reading and commenting, but if they were, they were quiet about nrx and didn’t talk about politics, because LW was not really a politically centered forum. People generally didn’t like talking about politics because it was “mindkilling”, but whenever people did talk about politics everyone turned out to be either a liberal or a libertarian so there wasn’t much interesting to talk about in any case.
I remember when they first arrived it was kind of new and exciting, to have a group that disagreed with us in a language that made sense.
Fair. I’d actually consider Yvain and Slatestarcodex in general to be a fair representation of my own views and probably that of old-Lesswrong, even though Scott explicitly dislikes SJ and does not identify as a liberal. He does talk about politics a lot more than old-Lesswrong did though, so I might be projecting about what old-Lesswrong’s views were. That’s just the thing though—it was impossible to tell because no one talked about it.
I’d go so far as to suggest that in any situation where you can identify a mott and bailey, most lesswrongers would hate the bailey.
To use an example that recently exploded on twitter Robin Hanson was posting things like this back in 2009.
Perhaps. I would not have identified that post as associated with “neoreaction” back in 2009, but maybe that’s just my lack of awareness. Admittedly, I read Lesswrong a lot more than I did Overcoming Bias, so I might have missed it if it started out in OB.
In hindsight it does seem linked, but Race and Sex portions of NRx were their own Things before they were NRx Things. In my mind it’s only within the past 2-3 years that they’ve joined up with Moldbug’s ideas and formed this whole Dark Enlightenment trilogy. (I mean, it might have happened earlier, but it wasn’t mainstream on places like, say, Reddit. We had PUA and HBD back then, but we didn’t have TheRedPill). Hanson taking a weird stance on gender issues wouldn’t have made me thing “Oh, that’s the NRx side”.
I don’t want to move the goal-posts and you did provide an example which was counter to my impression. I was really talking about the overall picture though—the impression of someone who was unaware of NRx and not sharply looking with a political eye, the top contributors, the general content of threads...but i get that it’s not really easy to provide evidence for what a “trend” is without actually doing work, so this probably won’t be settled.