We ought to be giving neoreaction about as much credence as we give Creationism: it’s founded on bad ethics, false facts, and bad reasoning, and should be dismissed, not discussed to death.
If this were as obvious to the rest of LW as it is to you, I think neoreaction would already have been dismissed by us.
Something like 95% of LWers self-classify as social liberals. Why would such a phenomenally non-socially-conservative group fixate on neoreaction unless it had some surface plausibility? (Prismattic observes that neoreaction is relatively new, and uses our jargon. I think the former fact doesn’t actually explain much, because new a-priori-unappealing-to-LW ideas are surely being born all the time, yet we don’t hear about them. That neoreaction uses bits of LW argot is probably more relevant, but it’s hard for me to imagine it being the whole explanation. Would a serious creationist last long here just because they larded their comments with our jargon?)
Something like 95% of LWers self-classify as social liberals.
Regrettable! I’d hope more would have the good sense to be Communists ;-).
Why would such a phenomenally non-socially-conservative group fixate on neoreaction unless it had some surface plausibility?
Because people are often attracted to things which offend them, like Republican Senators and homosexual prostitution ;-). This is pretty obvious if you model LWers as human beings rather than Bayesian utility maximizers.
That neoreaction uses bits of LW argot is probably more relevant, but it’s hard for me to imagine it being the whole explanation. Would a serious creationist last long here just because they larded their comments with our jargon?
That depends. Was he once a spokesman for the Singularity Institute?
Regrettable! I’d hope more would have the good sense to be Communists ;-).
At least you can console yourself with communism’s infinite growth rate since our first survey!
Because people are often attracted to things which offend them, like Republican Senators and homosexual prostitution ;-). This is pretty obvious if you model LWers as human beings rather than Bayesian utility maximizers.
It may be “pretty obvious”, but does it work as an explanation? Other socially conservative ideologies (like the mainstream US conservatism represented by “Republican Senators”; Nazism; and old-school, pre-Internet reaction) haven’t captured LW’s attention as neoreaction has, despite landing in the same category of “things which offend” social liberals. (And I’m not even considering left-wing ideologies fitting that criterion. I’ve yet to see any Holodomor-denying Stalinists here, for instance.)
That depends. Was he once a spokesman for the Singularity Institute?
If this were as obvious to the rest of LW as it is to you, I think neoreaction would already have been dismissed by us.
Something like 95% of LWers self-classify as social liberals. Why would such a phenomenally non-socially-conservative group fixate on neoreaction unless it had some surface plausibility? (Prismattic observes that neoreaction is relatively new, and uses our jargon. I think the former fact doesn’t actually explain much, because new a-priori-unappealing-to-LW ideas are surely being born all the time, yet we don’t hear about them. That neoreaction uses bits of LW argot is probably more relevant, but it’s hard for me to imagine it being the whole explanation. Would a serious creationist last long here just because they larded their comments with our jargon?)
Regrettable! I’d hope more would have the good sense to be Communists ;-).
Because people are often attracted to things which offend them, like Republican Senators and homosexual prostitution ;-). This is pretty obvious if you model LWers as human beings rather than Bayesian utility maximizers.
That depends. Was he once a spokesman for the Singularity Institute?
At least you can console yourself with communism’s infinite growth rate since our first survey!
It may be “pretty obvious”, but does it work as an explanation? Other socially conservative ideologies (like the mainstream US conservatism represented by “Republican Senators”; Nazism; and old-school, pre-Internet reaction) haven’t captured LW’s attention as neoreaction has, despite landing in the same category of “things which offend” social liberals. (And I’m not even considering left-wing ideologies fitting that criterion. I’ve yet to see any Holodomor-denying Stalinists here, for instance.)
Ba-dum-tssh!
I was media director and also came up for the idea for Singularity Summit, yes.