I suppose it could be so. It doesn’t matter really, since the end result is the same. Still, I doubt it because Lesswrong is overwhelmingly left wing (and continues to be according to the polls—the right wing and NRx voices belong to just a few very prolific accounts.) And pretty much all the founding members of Lesswrong and, going back further, transhumanism in general, were of a certain sort which I hesitate to call “left” or “liberal” but… - socialists, libertarians, anarchists, all those were represented, and certainly many early users were hostile to social justice’s extremeties, which is to be expected among smart people who are exposed to leftie stupidity much more often than other kinds of stupidity… but those were differences in implementation. We all essentially agreed on the core principles of egalitarianism and not hurting people, and agreed that prejudice against race and gender expression is bad (which was an entirely separate topic from whether they’re equal in aptitude), and that conservatives, nationalists, and those sort of people were fundamentally wrongheaded in some way. It wasn’t controversial, just taken for granted that anyone who had penetrated this far into the dialogue believed that these things to be true.… in the same sense that we continue to take for granted that no one here believes in a literal theist God. (And right now, I know many former users have retreated into other more obscure spin off forums, and everything I said here pretty much remains true in those forums and blogs.)
But I’m less interested in who broke the walled garden / started eternal september / whatever you want to call it (after all, I’m not mad that they came here, I got to learn about an interesting philosophy) and more interested in the meta-level principle: per my understanding of Neoreactionary philosophy, when one finds oneself in the powerful majority, one aught to just go ahead and exert that power and not worry about the underdog (which I still don’t agree with but I’m not sure why). And, homogeneity is often more valuable than diversity in many cases, that’s something I’ve actually kind of accepted.
And pretty much all the founding members of Lesswrong and, going back further, transhumanism in general, were of a certain sort which I hesitate to call “left” or “liberal” but… - socialists, libertarians, anarchists, all those were represented, and certainly many early users were hostile to social justice’s extremeties, which is to be expected among smart people who are exposed to leftie stupidity much more often than other kinds of stupidity… but those were differences in implementation.
That’s not exactly right.
Moldbug did comment on OvercomingBias in the days before there was LW. This community came into contact with neoreactionary thought before LW existed.
Michael Anissimov who funded MoreRight was MIRI’s media director.
I mean, I still value diversity by default. Valuing homogeneity is something I’ve kind of come around to slowly and suspiciously (whereas before I just assumed it was bad by default.)
The early OB/LW community didn’t have a leftwing vibe, it had a strong Libertarian vibe. Also at the end of the day leftie radicals like to point out that liberal =/= leftist.
Yudkowsky has written articles for Cato, a site considered unbearably right wing libertarian by some.
On questions like Feminism there were quite protracted comment wars long before Neoreaction, for a while early in its history there were more people sympathetic to PUA than Feminism. Even now the consensus seems to have settled on feminist ok-ed PUA not being bad, which is not the mainstream consensus. See gentle silent rape for an early example of rational dating advice for a late example.
I recommend you also check out my early commenting history. I interacted with many core, very right wing, rationalist like Vladimir_M and so on who left later in the history of the site.
Those examples of departing from left-canon (libertarian, “feminism-isn’t-perfect”, and “pua is often questionable in practice but not fundamentally bad from first principles”) are okay by me. I depart from the left-canon on those points myself and find the leftie moral outrage tactics on some of those fronts pretty annoying. All those things are still fundamentally egalitarian in values, just different in implementation. The homogeneity I was referring to was in egalitarianism and a certain type of emotional stance, a certain agreement concerning which first principles are valid and which goals are worthy, despite diversity in implementation.
(But, as ChristainKI pointed out, Moldbug himself was a commentator, and that predates me, so it’s true that the seed has always been there.)
I suppose it could be so. It doesn’t matter really, since the end result is the same. Still, I doubt it because Lesswrong is overwhelmingly left wing (and continues to be according to the polls—the right wing and NRx voices belong to just a few very prolific accounts.) And pretty much all the founding members of Lesswrong and, going back further, transhumanism in general, were of a certain sort which I hesitate to call “left” or “liberal” but… - socialists, libertarians, anarchists, all those were represented, and certainly many early users were hostile to social justice’s extremeties, which is to be expected among smart people who are exposed to leftie stupidity much more often than other kinds of stupidity… but those were differences in implementation. We all essentially agreed on the core principles of egalitarianism and not hurting people, and agreed that prejudice against race and gender expression is bad (which was an entirely separate topic from whether they’re equal in aptitude), and that conservatives, nationalists, and those sort of people were fundamentally wrongheaded in some way. It wasn’t controversial, just taken for granted that anyone who had penetrated this far into the dialogue believed that these things to be true.… in the same sense that we continue to take for granted that no one here believes in a literal theist God. (And right now, I know many former users have retreated into other more obscure spin off forums, and everything I said here pretty much remains true in those forums and blogs.)
But I’m less interested in who broke the walled garden / started eternal september / whatever you want to call it (after all, I’m not mad that they came here, I got to learn about an interesting philosophy) and more interested in the meta-level principle: per my understanding of Neoreactionary philosophy, when one finds oneself in the powerful majority, one aught to just go ahead and exert that power and not worry about the underdog (which I still don’t agree with but I’m not sure why). And, homogeneity is often more valuable than diversity in many cases, that’s something I’ve actually kind of accepted.
That’s not exactly right. Moldbug did comment on OvercomingBias in the days before there was LW. This community came into contact with neoreactionary thought before LW existed. Michael Anissimov who funded MoreRight was MIRI’s media director.
Huh. Oh right. I knew about the Moldbug thing, and I still said that.
I’m wrong. Mind changed. Good catch.
I have actually strongly argued for the benefits of ideological diversity in a rationalist site several times.
I mean, I still value diversity by default. Valuing homogeneity is something I’ve kind of come around to slowly and suspiciously (whereas before I just assumed it was bad by default.)
The early OB/LW community didn’t have a leftwing vibe, it had a strong Libertarian vibe. Also at the end of the day leftie radicals like to point out that liberal =/= leftist.
Yudkowsky has written articles for Cato, a site considered unbearably right wing libertarian by some.
On questions like Feminism there were quite protracted comment wars long before Neoreaction, for a while early in its history there were more people sympathetic to PUA than Feminism. Even now the consensus seems to have settled on feminist ok-ed PUA not being bad, which is not the mainstream consensus. See gentle silent rape for an early example of rational dating advice for a late example.
I recommend you also check out my early commenting history. I interacted with many core, very right wing, rationalist like Vladimir_M and so on who left later in the history of the site.
Those examples of departing from left-canon (libertarian, “feminism-isn’t-perfect”, and “pua is often questionable in practice but not fundamentally bad from first principles”) are okay by me. I depart from the left-canon on those points myself and find the leftie moral outrage tactics on some of those fronts pretty annoying. All those things are still fundamentally egalitarian in values, just different in implementation. The homogeneity I was referring to was in egalitarianism and a certain type of emotional stance, a certain agreement concerning which first principles are valid and which goals are worthy, despite diversity in implementation.
(But, as ChristainKI pointed out, Moldbug himself was a commentator, and that predates me, so it’s true that the seed has always been there.)