It’s about the defaults. The problem with political debates is that it is difficult to contain them—they are likely to grow (because for almost any topic you can find a political point of view), and they attract new people who are interested more in promoting a political idea than about improving their own rationality.
So we can either explicitly support the norm “we don’t debate politics (unless there is an exception)”, or we can either explicitly or implicitly have the norm “political debates are okay”. We have the former.
Maybe there are other possible solutions, such as trying to contain politics in specific threads, this was tried in the past (if I remember correctly, some people kept making more and more treads for debating NR pretending to be general political threads; or maybe it was other way round and all general political threads were hijacked to debate NR).
In theory, it should be possible to debate politics rationally, but in practice, we have problems keeping the debates civilized.
some people kept making more and more treads for debating NR pretending to be general political threads
NR? Neoreaction?
If you have Neoreactionary views, your general politics will naturally be Neoreactionary. So some people wanted to talk about it. Why is that a problem?
When I see a thread that I don’t want to read, I don’t. It doesn’t cause me any problem.
In theory, it should be possible to debate politics rationally, but in practice, we have problems keeping the debates civilized.
Wouldn’t that be a significant opportunity to get LessWrong?
Sorry for yesterday, I’ll try to post a more coherent reply now.
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Once in a while someone accuses Less Wrong of having a specific political bias and being intolerant towards the dissidents. The alleged political bias depends on who made the accusation. For example, neoreactionaries believe that Less Wrong is politically correct and left-wing; they would probably use the word “demotist”, which pretty much means anyone who is not a neoreactionary. Meanwhile, RationalWiki (an “Atheism+” website) believes that Less Wrong contains “cringe-inducing discussions of the merits of racism”, and the supposedly “non-political” debates in reality promote libertarianism and neoreaction.
Looking at the 2014 survey results, Less Wrong members identify mostly as Social Democratic, Liberal, Libertarian, approximately in equal numbers.
Can this result be interpreted as a unified political bias? I don’t know. Maybe yes. Maybe there is an idea of society that most Less Wrong members would approve of—I imagine something like: universal basic income, universal healthcare, minimal government required to provide security and the basic income, freedom for entrepreneurs, freedom of sexual expression and identity—while they may disagree on some technical details (such as affirmative action: yes or no) and mostly on which label is most appropriate for this idea. Or maybe I am completely wrong here.
If we map this to the traditional American politics (Democrats vs Republicans), Democrats would obviously win, cca 4:1. But this shouldn’t be surprising, considering that Less Wrong is an openly atheist website (Republicans associate with religion) and that half of members are non-American (Republicans associate with American jingoism, which non-Americans have no reason to share). Correcting for these two factors, I think the ratio is pretty much what we should expect.
My conclusion (which anyone is free to disagree with) is that the accusations of political bias more or less express frustration “why don’t these people all agree with me? they said they were rational, and rational people are supposed to agree with me! are they suggesting that I am stupid?” (exaggerated for easier comprehension).
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How to debate politics on Less Wrong without getting caught in the affective spirals? Let me quote:
On a more serious note: cut up your Great Thingy into smaller independent ideas, and treat them as independent.
For instance a marxist would cut up Marx’s Great Thingy into a theory of value of labour, a theory of the political relations between classes, a theory of wages, a theory on the ultimate political state of mankind. Then each of them should be assessed independently, and the truth or falsity of one should not halo on the others. If we can do that, we should be safe from the spiral, as each theory is too narrow to start a spiral on its own.
Same thing for every other Great Thingy out there.
Specifically for neoreaction this means that “neoreaction” is a wrong topic for a debate. (However, “tell me why do you identify as a neoreactionary” can be interesting; probably the most productive LW thread on this topic.) The best approach would be to taboo “neoreaction” (and all other political labels), choose one object-level belief and debate that. Of course this presupposes that someone could compile a list of specific object-level beliefs in simple language without links to the other beliefs (and no, “Cthulhu always swims left” is neither specific nor transparent). Then we could debate the individual beliefs, and perhaps agree on some and disagree on others; and maybe we could find out that some of those beliefs are actually not unique for neoreaction.
(And then there is the issue that people who would disagree with some neoreactionary beliefs would soon find that the karma of their comments written years ago have overnight dropped to −1. Which will require some technical changes in voting mechanism to fix, there is no other way.)
Neoreaction defines itself more in in terms of what it is opposed to than in terms of what it is in favor of.
Fine. So what is neoreaction against?
Democracy.
Neoreaction is the political philosophy that says that democracy is not merely the well-meaning god that happened to fail, but that our current wreckage was predetermined, because democracy fatally intertwined with progressivism since its birth, that it is a tool of progressivism, and that therefore, for a society to accept democracy is for a society to accept its inevitable doom at the hands of progressivism.
So at issue is democracy. Given this, with respect to that belief, it’s easy to see how LW is politically unified. In fact, doubting democracy is pretty much outside of Overton window (that’s part of what makes neoreaction interesting).
Not sure how many neoreactionaries actually agree with that definition. But anyway...
So the belief is that societies that (1) accept democracy (2) will inevitably (3) meet their progressivism-caused doom.
(1) We would need a working definition of “democracy”. Specifically, what about countries like USSR or Burma or North Korea that nominally have elections, but the winner is reliably known in advance. Do they also count as “democracies” for the purpose of our belief; that is, does even half-assed pretext of democracy inevitably bring the doom? Or do we need people to participate in real elections? What if the elections are real, but most media are in hands of a few rich owners, and most voters believe the media?
I am asking this to avoid rationalizations from hindsight, like: “Singapore seems to be doing pretty well despite being a democracy—nah, they are a democracy only in name, it’s actually People’s Action Party ruling since 1959”; “North Korea seems like hell—well, they do have elections, so this is an example of a democracy that already met its doom”.
(2) The word “inevitably” actually doesn’t predict any specific outcome, because if the prophesied thing didn’t happen, you can always add ”...yet”. Could it be made a bit more specific? For example, do countries with a lot of democracy meet their doom faster, on average, than countries with only little democracy? (For example, should we expect Switzerland to meet their doom sooner than North Korea?)
I am not a neoreactionary, so you’ll have to find somebody else to argue their side—shouldn’t be a problem, since you mentioned that they can’t shut up :-P
However I’ll explain why I find their ideology interesting. The thing is, in contemporary political discourse in the West democracy became a sacred cow. One could talk about better or worse implementations, point out issues with specific governments or policies, etc. but the notion that democracy is the best and you should always try to have as much of it as possible seems to be sanctified, enshrined, and maybe even embalmed :-)
And that is a bit of a problem. It’s a problem mostly because democracy (even in an idealized state) is not perfect and has systemic faults and shortcomings. Discussing those is… difficult because of the sacred-cow status of democracy. Trying to mitigate and ameliorate them is also difficult because that usually involves something other than “moar democracy!” and publicly suggesting it can be less than wise.
Note that debates about the merits of democracy were common in the XVIII and XIX century, but are almost extinct now (again: in the West. Asia is quite different in that respect).
And me, I don’t like blinders but I do like sacred-cow steaks :-)
I also find neoreaction interesting, or rather I did while the idea was new for me; later it became rather repetitive. But I do care about this “map reflecting the territory” thing more than I care about things being interesting.
in contemporary political discourse in the West democracy became a sacred cow
Maybe I fail to appreciate this, living in eastern Europe, having communists and nazis in parliament, hearing “democracy doesn’t work”, “Jews are controlling everything”, “vaccination causes autism” et cetera on a regular basis.
And I guess that in Russia, 90% of what neoreactionaries believe is a mainstream opinion, and you just have to turn on your TV to hear it directly from Putin. So I have a problem empathising with the argument by bravery.
I agree that everything should be open to debate, there should be no dogmas. But there is a difference between saying that, and embracing reversed stupidity. I’d rather know what makes some democracies work and other democracies fail. For example, Switzerland does a few things that neoreactionaries would agree with, despite having more democracy than any other country I know.
hearing “democracy doesn’t work”, “Jews are controlling everything”, “vaccination causes autism” et cetera on a regular basis.
The first item in your list is relevant to NRx, but I’m not sure about the rest. Are you implying that from “these people believe in A” you can conclude that “they also must believe in B, C, and D”?
And I guess that in Russia, 90% of what neoreactionaries believe is a mainstream opinion, and you just have to turn on your TV to hear it directly from Putin.
I don’t think that is true.
It looks like you have a tendency to put all the people and all the views you dislike into one big bucket and say “They are all the same”. That’s not a very good idea.
I’d rather know what makes some democracies work and other democracies fail.
You are not interested in what makes some political systems work and others fail..? :-)
It looks like you have a tendency to put all the people and all the views you dislike into one big bucket and say “They are all the same”.
That’s why I said 90%. There are also obvious differences: Putin still keeps a democratic facade in Russia, he supports Orthodox Christianity, and ethnic Russians are considered the superior race. As far as I know, NRs would abhor even pretend-democracy, would support religion but not Christianity because that inevitably leads to progressivism; and would support an idea of superior ethnic group but probably only if it includes themselves.
But they could have a nice debate about how Western civilization is weak, decadent, and doomed to failure; how giving rights to homosexuals is obviously stupid; how religion is necessary for a strong society; etc.
You are not interested in what makes some political systems work and others fail..?
You still haven’t convinced me that Switzerland is a failure. I also don’t know an example of a real country without elections where I would be tempted to move. Shall we discuss fictional evidence?
would support religion but not Christianity because that inevitably leads to progressivism
Depending on which neoreactionary. The neoreactionaries I’m familiar with, admittedly a tiny subset, are pro-traditional, i.e., non-progressive Christianity.
I also don’t know an example of a real country without elections where I would be tempted to move.
How many real countries do you know without elections, period? I here the UAE is rather nice.
But they could have a nice debate about how Western civilization is weak, decadent, and doomed to failure; how giving rights to homosexuals is obviously stupid; how religion is necessary for a strong society; etc.
That’s part of what I mean by saying that you put everyone you dislike into one big bucket. Let me link again the post I already mentioned. I don’t notice it talking about homosexuals or religion, do you? Do you expect the author to broadly agree with Putin?
You still haven’t convinced me that Switzerland is a failure.
Um, you were the one who first brought up that term in this discussion. In fact, the only reason we’re having this meta-debate is because a bunch of people didn’t want to have an object-level discussion about Donald Trump.
My conclusion (which anyone is free to disagree with) is that the accusations of political bias more or less express frustration “why don’t these people all agree with me?
My objections are not about having bias, but enacting a bias institutionally and through social pressures to shut up people you disagree with.
That impulse to shut others up by power and pressure has a marked tendency to go in one direction.
Your projection of “why don’t these people all agree with me?” sounds ridiculous to me. Can you point to a few discussions where NR folks were shocked, just shocked, that there was someone in the world that disagreed with them? I’d think that they’re probably well used to that by now. I wouldn’t expect them to be shocked.
I’ll share my conclusion. In many circles, the Left is accustomed to being able to proselytize their ideology while silencing Unbelievers. LW has a rare density of Libertarian leaning people, who generally aren’t the types to sit silently and assent. Failing to ideologically bully, the Left resorted to pressure to just not talk about politics, which achieves the main goal of silencing the Unbelievers.
LessWrong is not supposed to be a claim, but a goal. We have all sorts of wrong ideas that we share and mutually critique on our path to becoming LessWrong. But for politics, no go. More important to shut up those heretical ideas than actually get LessWrong about them.
they said they were rational, and rational people are supposed to agree with me!
No. The desire to speak, and the desire to be free to speak without being pressured to shut up, is not the demand or expectation that everyone agree.
The best approach would be to taboo “neoreaction”
Yeah, the best approach is to UnIdea “neoreaction”.
As for your suggested LWSpeak dictionary for political speech, that’s conveniently another method of control. You can’t use these symbols. You can’t talk this way.
How about instead we criticize each other’s ideas if we want, and don’t criticize them if we don’t?
I’ll share my conclusion. In many circles, the Left is accustomed to being able to proselytize their ideology while silencing Unbelievers. LW has a rare density of Libertarian leaning people, who generally aren’t the types to sit silently and assent. Failing to ideologically bully, the Left resorted to pressure to just not talk about politics, which achieves the main goal of silencing the Unbelievers.
According to LW census liberals and social democrats make up about two thirds of the whole population. If anything, the fact that talk about politics is discouraged here is good for ideological minorities, such as conservatives, communists or neoreactionaries, because there are plenty interesting LW topics that are unrelated to politics. A few years ago people understood that.
How about instead we criticize each other’s ideas if we want, and don’t criticize them if we don’t?
Discussing specific ideas one by one is different from discussing vague blobs of ideas that have a lot of connotations. The first one is much more productive than the second, because in the second case people tend to constantly move the goalposts and usė motte and bailey tactics. Discussion of specific mechanisms how elections may lead to outcomes that are contrary to the interest of population is different than discussing a vague blob of ideas that contain people as different as Moldbug’s techno-commercialists and religious traditionalists who have basically nothing in common. For any neorectionary proposal there is another idea that is almost an opposite. You can’t discuss it unless you specify exactly which ideas you are discussing. That is what tabooing the word “neoreaction” means. Discuss ideas that are specific and concrete, ideas that have empirical content, not some kind of vague symbols.
According to LW census liberals and social democrats make up about two thirds of the whole population.If anything, the fact that talk about politics is discouraged here is good for ideological minorities, such as conservatives, communists or neoreactionaries, because there are plenty interesting LW topics that are unrelated to politics. A few years ago people understood that.
Is the implication that other third, made up of libertarians, wouldn’t want to be in a political conversation where they are outnumbered?
If so, that’s a pretty good joke.
“It’s good that we don’t talk about X, because there are a lot of NotX things to talk about” is a rather peculiar claim.
Discussing specific ideas one by one is different from discussing vague blobs of ideas
I suppose one could argue that Trump the political animal is in fact a vague blob of ideas, but as a topic of conversation, it’s fairly specific, and yet the poster asking for permission to discuss him was effectively told to “shut up” by 40% of respondents. And he did so.
That is what tabooing the word “neoreaction” means.
But that is not what “shut up” means.
Can he discuss Trump, as long as he doesn’t use his name? Shall it be “He Who Must Not Be Named” then?
Yeah, the best approach is to UnIdea “neoreaction”. As for your suggested LWSpeak dictionary for political speech, that’s conveniently another method of control. You can’t use these symbols. You can’t talk this way.
I guess you have read something about “professing and cheering”, “applause lights”, “affective spirals”, “rationalist taboo”, “anticipated experiences”, and “replacing symbols with substance”. Political debates are not a separate magisterium. Neoreaction is not a separate magisterium within politics.
If your belief has the ambitions to describe the territory, you should be able to describe the same thing without using the shibboleths. A marxist could transform “capitalists exploit workers” into “people who control resources can achieve transactions disadvantageous in long term to people who must participate in transactions with them in order to survive”. A libertarian could transform “free markets lead to progress” into “when interactions between people are free of coercion, people are more likely to fully use their creativity”. A theist could transform “homosexuality is a sin” into “if you live in a universe with an omnipotent being who infinitely punishes people for sexual relationships with people of the same sex, it is prudent to avoid such relationships”.
But if your beliefs are merely cheering for your team, or if the words you use are merely mysterious formless substances, you cannot transform them. Or if your beliefs are wrong (do not match the territory), unpacking the keywords can make the wrongness more obvious. Refusing to unpack your keywords means that on some level you already know that it wouldn’t end well. Just say loudly: “countries with a lot of democracy, such as Switzerland, have lower quality of life than countries with no democracy, such as North Korea, because democracy makes people selfishly destroy the society, while a dictator will optimize for long-term prosperity” if that happens to be your belief with the symbols replaced by the corresponding substance.
LW has a rare density of Libertarian leaning people, who generally aren’t the types to sit silently and assent. Failing to ideologically bully, the Left resorted to pressure to just not talk about politics, which achieves the main goal of silencing the Unbelievers.
Reality check: is Eliezer supposed to be that leftist bully who oppresses the rare libertarians at LW? I’m asking because he wrote the articles about anticipated experiences, tabooing words, affective spirals, et cetera. Do you perhaps believe that the techniques described in the Sequences are merely a clever ploy to oppress heretics?
Because to me it seems like you simply refuse to apply some general techniques to a specific set of beliefs… for pretty much the same reason why a theist would object against using an Occam’s Razor to religion.
If you have Neoreactionary views, your general politics will naturally be Neoreactionary. So some people wanted to talk about it. Why is that a problem?
The problem was they were not able to stop talking about it. Because they had no other platform than Less Wrong where they could present their ideas to wider audience and try recruiting new people.
Also they loved to pretend that the rationalist community as a whole somehow supports their political beliefs, despite the polls showing cca 3% support.
Then at some moment Eliezer became tired of being known as “the guy who hosts the neoreactionary website” and publicly disowned them. They moved their politics to their own website called “More Right” (as you see, they still couldn’t stop making hints that they are somehow connected with LW), so they finally had some other outlet.
(It also didn’t help their PR that the known vote-manipulator Eugine was their supporter. I know, that’s merely an argument by association, but it doesn’t help to keep the debate rational and try avoiding mindkilling, if one side has a member that keeps mass-downvoting everyone who disagrees.)
Thank you for the history. That was before my time. Or maybe I just missed that.
But this is consistent with my observations. It’s not really politics that is the target of the ban, it’s a certain type of politics.
as you see, they still couldn’t stop making hints that they are somehow connected with LW
By your own reporting, they were connected to the LW site. That’s where they came from, until they were booted off as untouchables. It’s part of their own history that LW was the incubator for their site. And given that they were booted from LW for their views, sticking a thumb in the eye of LW is entirely predictable. The name is triply appropriate, given the politics. It would have been too obvious and too good a name to pass up. I would have used it.
It’s not really politics that is the target of the ban, it’s a certain type of politics.
Nope, it’s a certain type of behavior.
And given that they were booted from LW for their views,
Nope.
sticking a thumb in the eye of LW is entirely predictable.
Yes, this attitude is a part of the behavior.
Generally, you guys love to behave like predators. Never take “no” for an answer, double down when someone refuses to debate with you (but when someone does, it’s obvious you don’t listen anyway), then switch to karma assassinations when arguments fail, or otherwise threaten revenge. You probably believe that this is the right (pun intended) strategy, and if only you stay persistent enough, everyone will sooner or later bend over and take it in the ass. Thus sayeth Gnon or whichever idiotic abbreviation you worship today.
Meanwhile, in the real world, being an asshole often works short-term, but in longer term, there are some complications. Such as being publicly recognized for what you are, and not being welcome among people who have higher standards of interaction.
By the way, you guys are much less different from the SJW predators than either side would admit, except that they are pros (because they were selected from a much larger pool of candidates) and you are mostly wankers. Just saying, because you are going to downvote this comment anyway.
But don’t mind me. Follow your own strategy and see where it leads you.
Downvoted for the kind of attitude actually described in Politics Is The Mind-Killer, the NRxs historically tending v to be the worst offenders is irrelevant.
Nope. Banning a certain type of behavior was used as cover for banning a certain politics.
Then at some moment Eliezer became tired of being known as “the guy who hosts the neoreactionary website” and publicly disowned them.
I don’t see behavior as the issue identified here, I see being associated with certain political ideas.
And given that they were booted from LW for their views, Nope
If you want to be nitpicky, then yes, they personally weren’t booted, just discussion of the offending ideas was booted.
you guys
Are you passing out honorary NR degrees? Don’t think I’m entirely on board, though they make a lot of good points.
love to behave like predators.
It’s predatory to discuss ideas.
It’s not predatory to prevent people from discussing ideas through institutional power.
double down when someone refuses to debate with you
Isn’t it inconvenient when people you disagree with won’t shut up? Don’t worry, you can probably make them.
being an asshole often works short-term, but in longer term, there are some complications.
Ah yes. Maybe I was around. I do recall discussing someone’s equivalence of “NR” = “Assholes”. Or maybe that was a PUA discussion. Basically, I disagree with you, therefore you’re an asshole.
And you’re right in the sense that having unpopular ideas often comes with a cost.
you guys are much less different from the SJW predators than either side would admit
Funny, you seemed just like a SJW predator to me. “Shut up” is also their answer to ideas they disagree with.
Just saying, because you are going to downvote this comment anyway.
Actually, I’ve upvoted one of your comments in this thread, hadn’t downvoted any others, and had no intention of downvoting this one. But don’t let that keep you from feeling persecuted by a mean old predator.
The LW announcement link discusses the motivation for launching More Right. I was linking at the (already deleted) motivation for later abandoning More Right and launching The Future Primaeval.
You’re unable to see the difference between “banish heretics” and “banish cult recruiters”? Or, more to the point, between “banish heretics” and “forbid cult recruitment”?
(I am not sure how good a metaphor either of these is for neoreactionaries on Less Wrong, but the two are quite different things and it’s in no way ambiguous which Viliam is arguing for.)
First, calling them a cult when they exhibited none of the means of indoctrination and control associated with cults seems inaccurate and a boo light.
Those who successfully banned discussion of NR ideas from LW seem more accurately called cult members, using the usual cult tactic of driving out ideas that challenged their cherished beliefs, thereby refusing to engage with critiques of their ideas.
On the flip side, the supposed NR “cult” was doing the rather uncultish thing of choosing to stay in the midst of ideas predominantly hostile to their own, until forced to take their discussion elsewhere.
As for “recruitment”, what do you mean? How is that different from wanting to discuss and share ideas that they found valuable?
To me, it sounds like Viliam disliked the ideas, disliked that others exposed to them found them attractive, and approved of having what power could be mustered to prevent those ideas from spreading at LW.
but the two are quite different things and it’s in no way ambiguous which Viliam is arguing for
It’s two ways to spin what he was proposing—shutting down ideas he disapproved of. A common sarcastic definitions of a cult is “religion I disapprove of”.
Those who successfully banned discussion of NR ideas
No one has successfully (or for that matter unsuccessfully) banned discussion of NR ideas on Less Wrong. Eugine has been banned again and again because he misbehaves again and again. advancedatheist was banned for allegedly suggesting that women should be forced to have sex with men they don’t want to have sex with[1]. I can’t offhand think of anyone else who has been banned lately, nor do I recall ever hearing any moderator say anything at all like “no discussion of NRx on LW”.
[1] It’s less than clear that that was his actual intent, but that’s the reason that was given. The fact that he had a narrow range of topics that he kept going on and on and on about (and kept being downvoted heavily for it, so it’s not like these were topics LW was crying out for opportunities to talk about more) presumably didn’t help.
There is, and has been for some time, more discussion of NRx ideas on LW than anywhere else I know of that isn’t explicitly a right-wing site.
disliked that others exposed to them found them attractive
It doesn’t look to me as if NRx advocates on LW are actually getting much traction. So maybe “disliked the idea that others exposed to them might find them attractive” would be better. But actually I think what Viliam wants to avoid is having LW used for that purpose, whether or not the “cult recruiters” have any success—the point being that being proselytized at is annoying, regardless of whether the proselytism is ever successful.
“religion I disapprove of”
Yeah, that’s a common complaint. But it doesn’t actually match how most people use the word “cult”. Very few people would call Christianity or Islam a cult, for instance, even among those who strongly disapprove of Christianity or Islam. (I don’t mean that that never happens. But it very seldom does.)
So, is Viliam using “cult” to mean “movement I disapprove of” here? I don’t think so. I think he’s using it to mean something more like “very small movement with extreme views that most here find unpleasant and/or highly implausible”. If you replace “movement” with “religion” and delete “here”, that’s a pretty good approximation to how “cult” is actually used.
I see little proselytizing for cryonics here; back in the OB days there was more of it, much of it coming from Eliezer, and yes I did find it a little annoying. (Only a little, because there wasn’t very much even then.) I’m a fan of EA myself, so am not in the right target audience to be annoyed by it. My impression is that most LWers are too. There’s maybe one bit of animal welfare advocacy a year.
None of this much resembles the situation with NRx, where it seems like any time anyone says anything about race or gender you can rely on someone coming along to point out the inferiority of black people and women. I expect it isn’t actually that bad, of course; these things usually feel worse than they are. But the proselytism to pre-existing support ratio is, I’m pretty certain, much higher for NRx than for those other things.
There is a traditional definition out of The Devil’s Dictionary
Yes, I already acknowledged that it’s a common complaint that people use the word “cult” that way. I am suggesting that that isn’t actually how people use it. (You are well aware that TDD is a big mass of snark and doesn’t in any useful sense purport to give actual definitions, I assume.)
I think it was just a pretty clear fnord.
Not a fnord but an overt criticism. (Possibly an unfair criticism, but that’s not the same thing as a fnord.)
None of this much resembles the situation with NRx, where it seems like any time anyone says anything about race or gender you can rely on someone coming along to point out the inferiority of black people and women.
First, I don’t think that’s true. Second, you’re conflating NRx and HBD/race-realism/etc. and these are quite different things. And I haven’t seen anyone pointing out the general inferiority of women in a long while. Inferiority in specific areas (like upper body strength), certainly, but I don’t see why this is a problem.
No, I’m observing that they seem to overlap a lot.
I haven’t seen anyone pointing out the general inferiority of women in a long while.
No, it’s usually just a claim that women are less intelligent, or (in the more nuanced cases) not so good at the kinds of thinking required for, say, science or mathematics.
Very few people would call Christianity or Islam a cult
No, I think that’s usually the point of the snarky definition of a cult as a “religion I disapprove of”, i.e. Christianity and Islam have the same characteristics as organizations called cults, but are not called cults because they’re popular.
“If you wake up tomorrow morning thinking that saying a few Latin words over your pancakes is going to turn them into the body of Elvis Presley, you have lost your mind. But if you think more or less the same thing about a cracker and the body of Jesus, you are just a Catholic.” -Sam Harris
So let’s take the Cult of Cryonics. What do you think “banish cult recruiters” might look like? I would bet that it would look like prohibiting discussions of cryonics and be indistinguishable from “banish the heretics” in practice.
And of course NRx isn’t a cult, Yvain’s offhand comment notwithstanding.
I don’t want LW to be a recruitment place for a political cult.
What do you mean by “cult”? Many people would consider the founding purpose of LW to be a recruitment place for a cult. Or do you mean you don’t want anything that might convert people to a political position different from yours?
It seems to me that Viliam’s complaint is not that there would be more to talk about, but that more talk would be politicized.
Why is that a problem?
I don’t know for sure whether it was (I don’t think I ever paid that much attention to the politics threads) but here’s one way it could have been: suppose LW has few but very vocal neoreactionaries[1] and that most of the non-neoreactionaries are not very interested in talking about neoreaction[2]. If those few neoreactionaries arrange that every political discussion is packed with NRx stuff, then those political discussions will be annoying to everyone else because in order to read the bits they’re interested in they have to wade through lots of NRx comments (and perhaps, though here they may have only themselves to blame, lots of anti-NRx responses).
[1] I think there is some evidence that this is actually so.
[2] This seems likely to be true, but I have no evidence. (I don’t mean that most non-NRx people want never to talk about NRx; only that for most the optimal amount of NRx discussion is rather small.)
When I see a thread that I don’t want to read, I don’t. It doesn’t cause me any problem.
What about when you see a thread that you would want to read, but in which a few people obsessed with things you find uninteresting have posted hundreds of comments you don’t want to read?
Of course it doesn’t need to be neoreactionaries doing this. It could be social-justice types seizing every possible opportunity to point out heteronormative kyriarchal phallogocentric subtexts. It could be people terrified about AI risk turning every discussion of computers doing interesting things into debates about whether We Are All Doomed—or people skeptical about AI risk complaining incessantly about how LW promotes paranoia about AI risk. It could be Christians proposing Jesus as the answer to every question, or atheists leaping on every case of suffering or successful scientific explanation to remind us that it’s evidence against God. Etc., etc., etc.
Wouldn’t that be a significant opportunity to get LessWrong?
It might be. Or it might be so only in the sense that for an alcoholic, having a glass of whisky is a significant opportunity to practice the discipline of self-control. (That is: in principle it might be but in practice the outcome might be almost certain to be bad.)
suppose LW has few but very vocal neoreactionaries[1] and that most of the non-neoreactionaries are not very interested in talking about neoreaction[2].
What do you mean by that? Do you mean that they’re not interested in becoming lesswrong about the issue or that they only want to become lesswrong to the extent it doesn’t involve being similar to those weird NRx’s?
Obviously I mean neither (btw: hi, Eugine!). I mean what I say: for whatever reason they are not very interested in talking about NRx here. Possible reasons other than your maximally-uncharitable ones:
They are just not very interested in the things neoreactionaries get excited about (race, gender, political structures—though it occurs to me that LW’s small but vocal NRx contingent appears to be much more interested in race and gender than in any of the other things theoretically characteristic of NRx).
Is that the same as “not interested in becoming less wrong”? No, it’s broader and typically indicative of a different state of mind. Contrast a hyperzealously closed-minded Christian missionary, who is extremely interested in his religion and not at all interested in becoming less wrong about it, with an apathetic agnostic, who just doesn’t give a damn about religion. Neither will be very interested in a presentation of the merits of Hinduism, but their attitudes are quite different. (It’s not clear that one is better than the other.)
They have already given the matter plenty of thought and done their best to get less wrong about it. At this point they find little value in going over it again and again.
They are interested in becoming less wrong about political structures, gender, race, etc., but NRx positions on these lie outside the range they find credible.
Is that the same as “only to the extent it doesn’t involve being similar to those weird NRx’s”? No, it’s about finding the ideas implausible rather than finding the people offputting. (Though of course the two may go together. If you find people offputting you may dismiss their ideas; if you find an idea repellent or crazy you may think ill of people who hold it.)
They have observed some discussions of NRx, seen that they consistently generate much more heat than light, and decided that whatever the facts of the matter an internet debate about it is likely to do more harm than good.
They have found that they find NRx advocates consistently unpleasant, and the benefits of possibly becoming less wrong don’t (for them) outweigh the cost of having an unpleasant argument.
They have found that they find NRx opponents consistently unpleasant, and (etc.).
Interesting theories, let’s see how they square with the evidence.
•They are just not very interested in the things neoreactionaries get excited about (race, gender, political structures—though it occurs to me that LW’s small but vocal NRx contingent appears to be much more interested in race and gender than in any of the other things theoretically characteristic of NRx).
On the other hand they are interested in questions where where race, gender, and political structures are relevant to the answers.
•They have already given the matter plenty of thought and done their best to get less wrong about it. At this point they find little value in going over it again and again.
•They are interested in becoming less wrong about political structures, gender, race, etc., but NRx positions on these lie outside the range they find credible.
If that was the case, one would expect them to be able to produce counter arguments to say the “NRx” (although it’s not unique to NRx) positions on race and gender. Instead the best they can do is link to SSC (which agrees that the NRx’s have a point in that respect), or say things that amount to saying how they don’t want to think about it.
•They have observed some discussions of NRx, seen that they consistently generate much more heat than light, and decided that whatever the facts of the matter an internet debate about it is likely to do more harm than good.
To the extent that’s true its not the “NRx” people generating the heat.
•They have found that they find NRx advocates consistently unpleasant, and the benefits of possibly becoming less wrong don’t (for them) outweigh the cost of having an unpleasant argument.
•They have found that they find NRx opponents consistently unpleasant, and (etc.).
These are just rephrasing of my hypothesis that they only want to become lesswrong to the extent it doesn’t involve being similar to those weird NRx’s. Good to hear you’re willing to agree with it.
On the other hand they are interested in questions where race, gender and political structures are relevant to the answers.
Maybe, though in some cases their opinion as to that relevance may reasonably differ from yours. But that doesn’t in any way mean that they should be interested in NRx. Consider the following parallel. I am making plans concerning the next 10 years of my life—whether to take a new job, move house, get married or divorced, etc. It is highly relevant to my deliberations whether some time in the next few years a vengeful god is going to step in and put an end to the world as we know it. That doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be annoyed when my attempts to discuss the next few years are repeatedly interrupted by people wanting to warn me about the coming apocalypse.
one would expect them to be able to produce counterarguments
Yup. But one wouldn’t necessarily expect them to do it. (If I’m talking about the likely state of the world economy 5 years from now and some guy bursts in to tell me excitedly about how Cthulhu will have risen from the depths by then and started eating everyone, I am not going to waste my time telling him exactly why I don’t think Cthulhu is real and why I wouldn’t expect him to start eating people so soon even if he were.)
To the extent that’s true it’s not the “NRx” people generating the heat.
Heat arises from friction. It takes two to generate the friction. I’m not terribly interested deciding which of the sticks getting rubbed together is responsible for the flames.
These are just rephrasing of my hypothesis
No, they’re not. Your hypothesis is that these people want to avoid becoming like the NRx people; mine is that they want to avoid having to interact with the NRx people. (There might be some overlap. If someone thinks NRx people are unpleasant, they might avoid being convinced lest they become unpleasant themselves or find themselves spending more time around unpleasant people.)
I’m not, for the avoidance of doubt, claiming that your hypotheses are never correct. Just that they’re a very long way from exhausting the possibilities for why someone might not want to engage in a lot of argument about NRx, which is one reason why it is wrong to take the general statement I made and “explain” it as the more specific one you claimed was what I actually meant.
Consider the following parallel. I am making plans concerning the next 10 years of my life—whether to take a new job, move house, get married or divorced, etc. It is highly relevant to my deliberations whether some time in the next few years a vengeful god is going to step in and put an end to the world as we know it.
This is an example of these beliefs lying outside the range they find credible, which I addressed in the next point.
Yup. But one wouldn’t necessarily expect them to do it. (If I’m talking about the likely state of the world economy 5 years from now and some guy bursts in to tell me excitedly about how Cthulhu will have risen from the depths by then and started eating everyone, I am not going to waste my time telling him exactly why I don’t think Cthulhu is real and why I wouldn’t expect him to start eating people so soon even if he were.)
The difference is that the NRx’s (or at least the HBD-people) can present arguments for their beliefs, like the fact that things like race and gender, do in fact correlate with IQ, SAT scores, success in various professions, etc.
Heat arises from friction. It takes two to generate the friction. I’m not terribly interested deciding which of the sticks getting rubbed together is responsible for the flames.
You’re taking the metaphor too literally in an attempt to pretend to be wise. In this case “heat” means bad arguments or no arguments at all. One side presents arguments for its positions, the other side presents a variety of ever-shifting excuses for why the topic shouldn’t be brought up at all.
This is an example of those beliefs lying outside the range they find credible, which I addressed in the next point.
Sure. I was just making the point that you can’t get from “X could be relevant to Y, which Z finds important” to “Z should be interested in X”.
the NRx’s (or at least the HBD-people) can present arguments for their beliefs
I don’t know about actual literal Cthulhu-worshippers, if any there be, but the preachers of pending apocalypse have arguments for their beliefs too. And, again, I think you may be misunderstanding the point I was making, which is simply that you can’t get from “Z has good arguments against X” to “Z will present arguments against X whenever someone comes along proclaiming X”, and therefore you can’t get from “X came up and Z blew it off without presenting counterarguments” to “Z doesn’t have good arguments against X”.
in an attempt to
This is far from the first time that you have claimed to know my motives. I’m sorry to inform you that your track record on getting them right appears to me to be very poor.
In this case “heat” means [...]
It was I, not you, who made the more-heat-than-light metaphor in this case, and you don’t get to tell me what I meant by it. I did not, in fact, mean “bad arguments or no arguments at all”; I meant “rudeness and crossness and people getting upset at one another”.
As for taking it too literally: no, I am observing that the metaphor happens to correspond to reality in a possibly-unexpected way. “Heat” in an argument really does come from “friction” between people, from them “rubbing one another up the wrong way”.
(Incidentally, it feels very odd to be criticized for doing that by an admirer of Chesterton, who did the same thing all the time. (More stylishly than me, no doubt, but if writing as well as Chesterton were a requirement for participation here it would be a quiet place indeed.)
why the topic shouldn’t be brought up at all
I think the problem many people have isn’t that it’s “brought up at all” but that some of those who want to talk about NRx and HBD seem to want to talk about those things all the time. That may mean that the only actually-achievable options are (1) a strict “no talking about this stuff” policy and (2) having every discussion to which race, gender, drawbacks of democracy, etc., could possibly be relevant being full of (neo-)reactionary stuff. Those both seem like bad outcomes, and if we end up with bad outcome #1 I wouldn’t want to blame whoever chooses #1 over #2 for its badness, because #2 is bad too.
It was I, not you, who made the more-heat-than-light metaphor in this case, and you don’t get to tell me what I meant by it.
Yes, I have a habit of assuming the most sensible interpretation of what my interlocutor says, it appears to be a bad habit with some people.
I meant “rudeness and crossness and people getting upset at one another”.
Ok, plugging that definition into your argument, and removing the metaphor, your argument appears to come down to “arguing ‘NRx-type’ positions gets makes my side upset therefore the ‘NRx’ side should stop doing it”.
That is pretty much the reverse of what you have been doing.
I think your actual habit is of assuming the interpretation that makes most sense to you. Unfortunately that isn’t the same, and in particular it gives very wrong results when your mental model of your interlocutors is very inaccurate.
your argument appears to come down to “arguing ‘NRx-type’ positions gets makes my side upset therefore the ‘NRx’ side should stop doing it”.
Not quite. (Though, as entirelyuseless says, that wouldn’t in fact be such a bad argument.) Here’s a link to where I came in; as you can see, I was explaining how having NRx discussions tend to proliferate could be a problem. My answer was that I didn’t know whether it actually is, but it could be so in a situation where (1) there are very few NRx’s (but vocal enough to have a lot of impact) and (2) most of the other people aren’t interested in NRx discussions. And then we got into a lengthy discussion of why #2 might be; rudeness-and-crossness was one of many possibilities.
So the argument is: in this hypothetical situation that may or may not be actual, most LWers don’t want to have a lot of NRx discussions. One of the many possible reasons is (as you put it) that these arguments get their side upset. Since (in this hypothetical situation) most LWers don’t want these discussions, and very few actively do want them, LWers as a whole would be happier without them.
(Although I’ve adopted your spin-laden language in the paragraph above, I would like to point out that it’s actually quite far from what I meant. My hypothetical person-who-doesn’t-want-to-talk-about-NRx is concerned not only that his allies might get upset, but also that his opponents might; and that the result of all this getting-upset on both sides is likely to be that no one learns much from anyone else. That’s why the metaphor is “more heat than light” and not just “lots of heat”.)
Assuming that was his argument, it seems like a pretty good one. You do not persuade people by making them upset. You make them more convinced than ever of their original position.
So, being “less wrong” is measured by “how much time one spends debating neoreaction”? If you refuse to keep endlessly debating neoreaction, you are closed-minded. Don’t worry about evidence; the signalling is cool!
I was running monthly politics threads. I don’t recall that conversations involved NR specifically, but I do recall that the discussions taking place were so specific they had no general/popular appeal, and conversations were short, muted, and didn’t go anywhere.
I was left reading the discussions taking place with the impression that people were looking for things to try to argue about, rather than having anything particularly meaningful they wanted to argue about which they previously couldn’t. Given that one of my purposes was to try to arrange a safety valve for a perceived growing political pressure (which eventually exploded in the feminism war that got Eugine Nier banned and which caused most of the more prominent feminist-leaning members to leave), they were failing for my intended purpose, so I stopped creating them.
The debates didn’t generally have an issue staying civilized, though, as I recall.
It’s about the defaults. The problem with political debates is that it is difficult to contain them—they are likely to grow (because for almost any topic you can find a political point of view), and they attract new people who are interested more in promoting a political idea than about improving their own rationality.
So we can either explicitly support the norm “we don’t debate politics (unless there is an exception)”, or we can either explicitly or implicitly have the norm “political debates are okay”. We have the former.
Maybe there are other possible solutions, such as trying to contain politics in specific threads, this was tried in the past (if I remember correctly, some people kept making more and more treads for debating NR pretending to be general political threads; or maybe it was other way round and all general political threads were hijacked to debate NR).
In theory, it should be possible to debate politics rationally, but in practice, we have problems keeping the debates civilized.
And having more to talk about is a problem how?
NR? Neoreaction?
If you have Neoreactionary views, your general politics will naturally be Neoreactionary. So some people wanted to talk about it. Why is that a problem?
When I see a thread that I don’t want to read, I don’t. It doesn’t cause me any problem.
Wouldn’t that be a significant opportunity to get LessWrong?
Sorry for yesterday, I’ll try to post a more coherent reply now.
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Once in a while someone accuses Less Wrong of having a specific political bias and being intolerant towards the dissidents. The alleged political bias depends on who made the accusation. For example, neoreactionaries believe that Less Wrong is politically correct and left-wing; they would probably use the word “demotist”, which pretty much means anyone who is not a neoreactionary. Meanwhile, RationalWiki (an “Atheism+” website) believes that Less Wrong contains “cringe-inducing discussions of the merits of racism”, and the supposedly “non-political” debates in reality promote libertarianism and neoreaction.
Looking at the 2014 survey results, Less Wrong members identify mostly as Social Democratic, Liberal, Libertarian, approximately in equal numbers.
Can this result be interpreted as a unified political bias? I don’t know. Maybe yes. Maybe there is an idea of society that most Less Wrong members would approve of—I imagine something like: universal basic income, universal healthcare, minimal government required to provide security and the basic income, freedom for entrepreneurs, freedom of sexual expression and identity—while they may disagree on some technical details (such as affirmative action: yes or no) and mostly on which label is most appropriate for this idea. Or maybe I am completely wrong here.
If we map this to the traditional American politics (Democrats vs Republicans), Democrats would obviously win, cca 4:1. But this shouldn’t be surprising, considering that Less Wrong is an openly atheist website (Republicans associate with religion) and that half of members are non-American (Republicans associate with American jingoism, which non-Americans have no reason to share). Correcting for these two factors, I think the ratio is pretty much what we should expect.
My conclusion (which anyone is free to disagree with) is that the accusations of political bias more or less express frustration “why don’t these people all agree with me? they said they were rational, and rational people are supposed to agree with me! are they suggesting that I am stupid?” (exaggerated for easier comprehension).
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How to debate politics on Less Wrong without getting caught in the affective spirals? Let me quote:
Specifically for neoreaction this means that “neoreaction” is a wrong topic for a debate. (However, “tell me why do you identify as a neoreactionary” can be interesting; probably the most productive LW thread on this topic.) The best approach would be to taboo “neoreaction” (and all other political labels), choose one object-level belief and debate that. Of course this presupposes that someone could compile a list of specific object-level beliefs in simple language without links to the other beliefs (and no, “Cthulhu always swims left” is neither specific nor transparent). Then we could debate the individual beliefs, and perhaps agree on some and disagree on others; and maybe we could find out that some of those beliefs are actually not unique for neoreaction.
(And then there is the issue that people who would disagree with some neoreactionary beliefs would soon find that the karma of their comments written years ago have overnight dropped to −1. Which will require some technical changes in voting mechanism to fix, there is no other way.)
Right. And let me quote from a post (again):
So at issue is democracy. Given this, with respect to that belief, it’s easy to see how LW is politically unified. In fact, doubting democracy is pretty much outside of Overton window (that’s part of what makes neoreaction interesting).
Not sure how many neoreactionaries actually agree with that definition. But anyway...
So the belief is that societies that (1) accept democracy (2) will inevitably (3) meet their progressivism-caused doom.
(1) We would need a working definition of “democracy”. Specifically, what about countries like USSR or Burma or North Korea that nominally have elections, but the winner is reliably known in advance. Do they also count as “democracies” for the purpose of our belief; that is, does even half-assed pretext of democracy inevitably bring the doom? Or do we need people to participate in real elections? What if the elections are real, but most media are in hands of a few rich owners, and most voters believe the media?
I am asking this to avoid rationalizations from hindsight, like: “Singapore seems to be doing pretty well despite being a democracy—nah, they are a democracy only in name, it’s actually People’s Action Party ruling since 1959”; “North Korea seems like hell—well, they do have elections, so this is an example of a democracy that already met its doom”.
(2) The word “inevitably” actually doesn’t predict any specific outcome, because if the prophesied thing didn’t happen, you can always add ”...yet”. Could it be made a bit more specific? For example, do countries with a lot of democracy meet their doom faster, on average, than countries with only little democracy? (For example, should we expect Switzerland to meet their doom sooner than North Korea?)
I am not a neoreactionary, so you’ll have to find somebody else to argue their side—shouldn’t be a problem, since you mentioned that they can’t shut up :-P
However I’ll explain why I find their ideology interesting. The thing is, in contemporary political discourse in the West democracy became a sacred cow. One could talk about better or worse implementations, point out issues with specific governments or policies, etc. but the notion that democracy is the best and you should always try to have as much of it as possible seems to be sanctified, enshrined, and maybe even embalmed :-)
And that is a bit of a problem. It’s a problem mostly because democracy (even in an idealized state) is not perfect and has systemic faults and shortcomings. Discussing those is… difficult because of the sacred-cow status of democracy. Trying to mitigate and ameliorate them is also difficult because that usually involves something other than “moar democracy!” and publicly suggesting it can be less than wise.
Note that debates about the merits of democracy were common in the XVIII and XIX century, but are almost extinct now (again: in the West. Asia is quite different in that respect).
And me, I don’t like blinders but I do like sacred-cow steaks :-)
I also find neoreaction interesting, or rather I did while the idea was new for me; later it became rather repetitive. But I do care about this “map reflecting the territory” thing more than I care about things being interesting.
Maybe I fail to appreciate this, living in eastern Europe, having communists and nazis in parliament, hearing “democracy doesn’t work”, “Jews are controlling everything”, “vaccination causes autism” et cetera on a regular basis.
And I guess that in Russia, 90% of what neoreactionaries believe is a mainstream opinion, and you just have to turn on your TV to hear it directly from Putin. So I have a problem empathising with the argument by bravery.
I agree that everything should be open to debate, there should be no dogmas. But there is a difference between saying that, and embracing reversed stupidity. I’d rather know what makes some democracies work and other democracies fail. For example, Switzerland does a few things that neoreactionaries would agree with, despite having more democracy than any other country I know.
The first item in your list is relevant to NRx, but I’m not sure about the rest. Are you implying that from “these people believe in A” you can conclude that “they also must believe in B, C, and D”?
I don’t think that is true.
It looks like you have a tendency to put all the people and all the views you dislike into one big bucket and say “They are all the same”. That’s not a very good idea.
You are not interested in what makes some political systems work and others fail..? :-)
That’s why I said 90%. There are also obvious differences: Putin still keeps a democratic facade in Russia, he supports Orthodox Christianity, and ethnic Russians are considered the superior race. As far as I know, NRs would abhor even pretend-democracy, would support religion but not Christianity because that inevitably leads to progressivism; and would support an idea of superior ethnic group but probably only if it includes themselves.
But they could have a nice debate about how Western civilization is weak, decadent, and doomed to failure; how giving rights to homosexuals is obviously stupid; how religion is necessary for a strong society; etc.
You still haven’t convinced me that Switzerland is a failure. I also don’t know an example of a real country without elections where I would be tempted to move. Shall we discuss fictional evidence?
Depending on which neoreactionary. The neoreactionaries I’m familiar with, admittedly a tiny subset, are pro-traditional, i.e., non-progressive Christianity.
How many real countries do you know without elections, period? I here the UAE is rather nice.
That’s part of what I mean by saying that you put everyone you dislike into one big bucket. Let me link again the post I already mentioned. I don’t notice it talking about homosexuals or religion, do you? Do you expect the author to broadly agree with Putin?
I do not believe I have tried.
Um, you were the one who first brought up that term in this discussion. In fact, the only reason we’re having this meta-debate is because a bunch of people didn’t want to have an object-level discussion about Donald Trump.
My objections are not about having bias, but enacting a bias institutionally and through social pressures to shut up people you disagree with.
That impulse to shut others up by power and pressure has a marked tendency to go in one direction.
Your projection of “why don’t these people all agree with me?” sounds ridiculous to me. Can you point to a few discussions where NR folks were shocked, just shocked, that there was someone in the world that disagreed with them? I’d think that they’re probably well used to that by now. I wouldn’t expect them to be shocked.
I’ll share my conclusion. In many circles, the Left is accustomed to being able to proselytize their ideology while silencing Unbelievers. LW has a rare density of Libertarian leaning people, who generally aren’t the types to sit silently and assent. Failing to ideologically bully, the Left resorted to pressure to just not talk about politics, which achieves the main goal of silencing the Unbelievers.
LessWrong is not supposed to be a claim, but a goal. We have all sorts of wrong ideas that we share and mutually critique on our path to becoming LessWrong. But for politics, no go. More important to shut up those heretical ideas than actually get LessWrong about them.
No. The desire to speak, and the desire to be free to speak without being pressured to shut up, is not the demand or expectation that everyone agree.
Yeah, the best approach is to UnIdea “neoreaction”.
As for your suggested LWSpeak dictionary for political speech, that’s conveniently another method of control. You can’t use these symbols. You can’t talk this way.
How about instead we criticize each other’s ideas if we want, and don’t criticize them if we don’t?
According to LW census liberals and social democrats make up about two thirds of the whole population. If anything, the fact that talk about politics is discouraged here is good for ideological minorities, such as conservatives, communists or neoreactionaries, because there are plenty interesting LW topics that are unrelated to politics. A few years ago people understood that.
Discussing specific ideas one by one is different from discussing vague blobs of ideas that have a lot of connotations. The first one is much more productive than the second, because in the second case people tend to constantly move the goalposts and usė motte and bailey tactics. Discussion of specific mechanisms how elections may lead to outcomes that are contrary to the interest of population is different than discussing a vague blob of ideas that contain people as different as Moldbug’s techno-commercialists and religious traditionalists who have basically nothing in common. For any neorectionary proposal there is another idea that is almost an opposite. You can’t discuss it unless you specify exactly which ideas you are discussing. That is what tabooing the word “neoreaction” means. Discuss ideas that are specific and concrete, ideas that have empirical content, not some kind of vague symbols.
Is the implication that other third, made up of libertarians, wouldn’t want to be in a political conversation where they are outnumbered?
If so, that’s a pretty good joke.
“It’s good that we don’t talk about X, because there are a lot of NotX things to talk about” is a rather peculiar claim.
I suppose one could argue that Trump the political animal is in fact a vague blob of ideas, but as a topic of conversation, it’s fairly specific, and yet the poster asking for permission to discuss him was effectively told to “shut up” by 40% of respondents. And he did so.
But that is not what “shut up” means.
Can he discuss Trump, as long as he doesn’t use his name? Shall it be “He Who Must Not Be Named” then?
I guess you have read something about “professing and cheering”, “applause lights”, “affective spirals”, “rationalist taboo”, “anticipated experiences”, and “replacing symbols with substance”. Political debates are not a separate magisterium. Neoreaction is not a separate magisterium within politics.
If your belief has the ambitions to describe the territory, you should be able to describe the same thing without using the shibboleths. A marxist could transform “capitalists exploit workers” into “people who control resources can achieve transactions disadvantageous in long term to people who must participate in transactions with them in order to survive”. A libertarian could transform “free markets lead to progress” into “when interactions between people are free of coercion, people are more likely to fully use their creativity”. A theist could transform “homosexuality is a sin” into “if you live in a universe with an omnipotent being who infinitely punishes people for sexual relationships with people of the same sex, it is prudent to avoid such relationships”.
But if your beliefs are merely cheering for your team, or if the words you use are merely mysterious formless substances, you cannot transform them. Or if your beliefs are wrong (do not match the territory), unpacking the keywords can make the wrongness more obvious. Refusing to unpack your keywords means that on some level you already know that it wouldn’t end well. Just say loudly: “countries with a lot of democracy, such as Switzerland, have lower quality of life than countries with no democracy, such as North Korea, because democracy makes people selfishly destroy the society, while a dictator will optimize for long-term prosperity” if that happens to be your belief with the symbols replaced by the corresponding substance.
Reality check: is Eliezer supposed to be that leftist bully who oppresses the rare libertarians at LW? I’m asking because he wrote the articles about anticipated experiences, tabooing words, affective spirals, et cetera. Do you perhaps believe that the techniques described in the Sequences are merely a clever ploy to oppress heretics?
Because to me it seems like you simply refuse to apply some general techniques to a specific set of beliefs… for pretty much the same reason why a theist would object against using an Occam’s Razor to religion.
The problem was they were not able to stop talking about it. Because they had no other platform than Less Wrong where they could present their ideas to wider audience and try recruiting new people.
Also they loved to pretend that the rationalist community as a whole somehow supports their political beliefs, despite the polls showing cca 3% support.
Then at some moment Eliezer became tired of being known as “the guy who hosts the neoreactionary website” and publicly disowned them. They moved their politics to their own website called “More Right” (as you see, they still couldn’t stop making hints that they are somehow connected with LW), so they finally had some other outlet.
(It also didn’t help their PR that the known vote-manipulator Eugine was their supporter. I know, that’s merely an argument by association, but it doesn’t help to keep the debate rational and try avoiding mindkilling, if one side has a member that keeps mass-downvoting everyone who disagrees.)
Thank you for the history. That was before my time. Or maybe I just missed that.
But this is consistent with my observations. It’s not really politics that is the target of the ban, it’s a certain type of politics.
By your own reporting, they were connected to the LW site. That’s where they came from, until they were booted off as untouchables. It’s part of their own history that LW was the incubator for their site. And given that they were booted from LW for their views, sticking a thumb in the eye of LW is entirely predictable. The name is triply appropriate, given the politics. It would have been too obvious and too good a name to pass up. I would have used it.
Nope, it’s a certain type of behavior.
Nope.
Yes, this attitude is a part of the behavior.
Generally, you guys love to behave like predators. Never take “no” for an answer, double down when someone refuses to debate with you (but when someone does, it’s obvious you don’t listen anyway), then switch to karma assassinations when arguments fail, or otherwise threaten revenge. You probably believe that this is the right (pun intended) strategy, and if only you stay persistent enough, everyone will sooner or later bend over and take it in the ass. Thus sayeth Gnon or whichever idiotic abbreviation you worship today.
Meanwhile, in the real world, being an asshole often works short-term, but in longer term, there are some complications. Such as being publicly recognized for what you are, and not being welcome among people who have higher standards of interaction.
By the way, you guys are much less different from the SJW predators than either side would admit, except that they are pros (because they were selected from a much larger pool of candidates) and you are mostly wankers. Just saying, because you are going to downvote this comment anyway.
But don’t mind me. Follow your own strategy and see where it leads you.
Oh, boy. Who’s that “you guys”? I don’t think bbdd is one of the NRx.
In any case, let me point out that you just threw a hissy fit. That wasn’t a good move… X-/
Sure. I’m going to spend the rest of the day offline, to clear my mind.
Downvoted for the kind of attitude actually described in Politics Is The Mind-Killer, the NRxs historically tending v to be the worst offenders is irrelevant.
Nope. Banning a certain type of behavior was used as cover for banning a certain politics.
I don’t see behavior as the issue identified here, I see being associated with certain political ideas.
If you want to be nitpicky, then yes, they personally weren’t booted, just discussion of the offending ideas was booted.
Are you passing out honorary NR degrees? Don’t think I’m entirely on board, though they make a lot of good points.
It’s predatory to discuss ideas. It’s not predatory to prevent people from discussing ideas through institutional power.
Isn’t it inconvenient when people you disagree with won’t shut up? Don’t worry, you can probably make them.
Ah yes. Maybe I was around. I do recall discussing someone’s equivalence of “NR” = “Assholes”. Or maybe that was a PUA discussion. Basically, I disagree with you, therefore you’re an asshole.
And you’re right in the sense that having unpopular ideas often comes with a cost.
Funny, you seemed just like a SJW predator to me. “Shut up” is also their answer to ideas they disagree with.
Actually, I’ve upvoted one of your comments in this thread, hadn’t downvoted any others, and had no intention of downvoting this one. But don’t let that keep you from feeling persecuted by a mean old predator.
FWIW, I agree despite being very unfavourably disposed towards their political views.
Apparently they’ve also splintered to another site:
http://thefutureprimaeval.net/
LW announcement on More Right—A Good Time Thread
http://lesswrong.com/lw/hcy/link_more_right_launched/
Too bad they already deleted the reasons why.
I believe there was some discussion of the motivation on the LW announcement link.
The LW announcement link discusses the motivation for launching More Right. I was linking at the (already deleted) motivation for later abandoning More Right and launching The Future Primaeval.
I saw that in there as well. That’s where I got the link for the new site.
In which way is this is a problem on an internet forum the purpose of which is to let people talk about things?
I know some people who can’t stop talking about existential risk or quantum immortality X-) Is that a problem, too?
If you want to say “I don’t want to be associated with people of such political beliefs”, well, just say so.
I don’t want LW to be a recruitment place for a political cult.
If the political cult is unable to find a better recruitment place, well, sucks to be them.
Banish the Heretics!
You’re unable to see the difference between “banish heretics” and “banish cult recruiters”? Or, more to the point, between “banish heretics” and “forbid cult recruitment”?
(I am not sure how good a metaphor either of these is for neoreactionaries on Less Wrong, but the two are quite different things and it’s in no way ambiguous which Viliam is arguing for.)
First, calling them a cult when they exhibited none of the means of indoctrination and control associated with cults seems inaccurate and a boo light.
Those who successfully banned discussion of NR ideas from LW seem more accurately called cult members, using the usual cult tactic of driving out ideas that challenged their cherished beliefs, thereby refusing to engage with critiques of their ideas.
On the flip side, the supposed NR “cult” was doing the rather uncultish thing of choosing to stay in the midst of ideas predominantly hostile to their own, until forced to take their discussion elsewhere.
As for “recruitment”, what do you mean? How is that different from wanting to discuss and share ideas that they found valuable?
To me, it sounds like Viliam disliked the ideas, disliked that others exposed to them found them attractive, and approved of having what power could be mustered to prevent those ideas from spreading at LW.
It’s two ways to spin what he was proposing—shutting down ideas he disapproved of. A common sarcastic definitions of a cult is “religion I disapprove of”.
I agree. “Cult” is not a great description.
No one has successfully (or for that matter unsuccessfully) banned discussion of NR ideas on Less Wrong. Eugine has been banned again and again because he misbehaves again and again. advancedatheist was banned for allegedly suggesting that women should be forced to have sex with men they don’t want to have sex with[1]. I can’t offhand think of anyone else who has been banned lately, nor do I recall ever hearing any moderator say anything at all like “no discussion of NRx on LW”.
[1] It’s less than clear that that was his actual intent, but that’s the reason that was given. The fact that he had a narrow range of topics that he kept going on and on and on about (and kept being downvoted heavily for it, so it’s not like these were topics LW was crying out for opportunities to talk about more) presumably didn’t help.
There is, and has been for some time, more discussion of NRx ideas on LW than anywhere else I know of that isn’t explicitly a right-wing site.
It doesn’t look to me as if NRx advocates on LW are actually getting much traction. So maybe “disliked the idea that others exposed to them might find them attractive” would be better. But actually I think what Viliam wants to avoid is having LW used for that purpose, whether or not the “cult recruiters” have any success—the point being that being proselytized at is annoying, regardless of whether the proselytism is ever successful.
Yeah, that’s a common complaint. But it doesn’t actually match how most people use the word “cult”. Very few people would call Christianity or Islam a cult, for instance, even among those who strongly disapprove of Christianity or Islam. (I don’t mean that that never happens. But it very seldom does.)
So, is Viliam using “cult” to mean “movement I disapprove of” here? I don’t think so. I think he’s using it to mean something more like “very small movement with extreme views that most here find unpleasant and/or highly implausible”. If you replace “movement” with “religion” and delete “here”, that’s a pretty good approximation to how “cult” is actually used.
Cryonics? EA? Occasional animal welfare?
There is a traditional definition out of The Devil’s Dictionary:
Religion—a large successful cult
Cult—a small unsuccessful religion
:-)
I think it was just a pretty clear fnord.
I see little proselytizing for cryonics here; back in the OB days there was more of it, much of it coming from Eliezer, and yes I did find it a little annoying. (Only a little, because there wasn’t very much even then.) I’m a fan of EA myself, so am not in the right target audience to be annoyed by it. My impression is that most LWers are too. There’s maybe one bit of animal welfare advocacy a year.
None of this much resembles the situation with NRx, where it seems like any time anyone says anything about race or gender you can rely on someone coming along to point out the inferiority of black people and women. I expect it isn’t actually that bad, of course; these things usually feel worse than they are. But the proselytism to pre-existing support ratio is, I’m pretty certain, much higher for NRx than for those other things.
Yes, I already acknowledged that it’s a common complaint that people use the word “cult” that way. I am suggesting that that isn’t actually how people use it. (You are well aware that TDD is a big mass of snark and doesn’t in any useful sense purport to give actual definitions, I assume.)
Not a fnord but an overt criticism. (Possibly an unfair criticism, but that’s not the same thing as a fnord.)
First, I don’t think that’s true. Second, you’re conflating NRx and HBD/race-realism/etc. and these are quite different things. And I haven’t seen anyone pointing out the general inferiority of women in a long while. Inferiority in specific areas (like upper body strength), certainly, but I don’t see why this is a problem.
No, I’m observing that they seem to overlap a lot.
No, it’s usually just a claim that women are less intelligent, or (in the more nuanced cases) not so good at the kinds of thinking required for, say, science or mathematics.
No, I think that’s usually the point of the snarky definition of a cult as a “religion I disapprove of”, i.e. Christianity and Islam have the same characteristics as organizations called cults, but are not called cults because they’re popular.
Note that “unpopular movement” and “movement I disapprove of” are very (and relevantly) different things.
So let’s take the Cult of Cryonics. What do you think “banish cult recruiters” might look like? I would bet that it would look like prohibiting discussions of cryonics and be indistinguishable from “banish the heretics” in practice.
And of course NRx isn’t a cult, Yvain’s offhand comment notwithstanding.
What do you mean by “cult”? Many people would consider the founding purpose of LW to be a recruitment place for a cult. Or do you mean you don’t want anything that might convert people to a political position different from yours?
We are not a phyg! We are not a phyg! We are not a phyg!
Because nothing says “we are not a phyg!” quite like having to rot13 the Unholy Word.
Perhaps that’s one reason why (to a very good approximation) no one actually does that any more.
I thought he said it pretty clearly. EY didn’t want to be associated with NR, untouchable heathens that they are.
It seems to me that Viliam’s complaint is not that there would be more to talk about, but that more talk would be politicized.
I don’t know for sure whether it was (I don’t think I ever paid that much attention to the politics threads) but here’s one way it could have been: suppose LW has few but very vocal neoreactionaries[1] and that most of the non-neoreactionaries are not very interested in talking about neoreaction[2]. If those few neoreactionaries arrange that every political discussion is packed with NRx stuff, then those political discussions will be annoying to everyone else because in order to read the bits they’re interested in they have to wade through lots of NRx comments (and perhaps, though here they may have only themselves to blame, lots of anti-NRx responses).
[1] I think there is some evidence that this is actually so.
[2] This seems likely to be true, but I have no evidence. (I don’t mean that most non-NRx people want never to talk about NRx; only that for most the optimal amount of NRx discussion is rather small.)
What about when you see a thread that you would want to read, but in which a few people obsessed with things you find uninteresting have posted hundreds of comments you don’t want to read?
Of course it doesn’t need to be neoreactionaries doing this. It could be social-justice types seizing every possible opportunity to point out heteronormative kyriarchal phallogocentric subtexts. It could be people terrified about AI risk turning every discussion of computers doing interesting things into debates about whether We Are All Doomed—or people skeptical about AI risk complaining incessantly about how LW promotes paranoia about AI risk. It could be Christians proposing Jesus as the answer to every question, or atheists leaping on every case of suffering or successful scientific explanation to remind us that it’s evidence against God. Etc., etc., etc.
It might be. Or it might be so only in the sense that for an alcoholic, having a glass of whisky is a significant opportunity to practice the discipline of self-control. (That is: in principle it might be but in practice the outcome might be almost certain to be bad.)
What do you mean by that? Do you mean that they’re not interested in becoming lesswrong about the issue or that they only want to become lesswrong to the extent it doesn’t involve being similar to those weird NRx’s?
Obviously I mean neither (btw: hi, Eugine!). I mean what I say: for whatever reason they are not very interested in talking about NRx here. Possible reasons other than your maximally-uncharitable ones:
They are just not very interested in the things neoreactionaries get excited about (race, gender, political structures—though it occurs to me that LW’s small but vocal NRx contingent appears to be much more interested in race and gender than in any of the other things theoretically characteristic of NRx).
Is that the same as “not interested in becoming less wrong”? No, it’s broader and typically indicative of a different state of mind. Contrast a hyperzealously closed-minded Christian missionary, who is extremely interested in his religion and not at all interested in becoming less wrong about it, with an apathetic agnostic, who just doesn’t give a damn about religion. Neither will be very interested in a presentation of the merits of Hinduism, but their attitudes are quite different. (It’s not clear that one is better than the other.)
They have already given the matter plenty of thought and done their best to get less wrong about it. At this point they find little value in going over it again and again.
They are interested in becoming less wrong about political structures, gender, race, etc., but NRx positions on these lie outside the range they find credible.
Is that the same as “only to the extent it doesn’t involve being similar to those weird NRx’s”? No, it’s about finding the ideas implausible rather than finding the people offputting. (Though of course the two may go together. If you find people offputting you may dismiss their ideas; if you find an idea repellent or crazy you may think ill of people who hold it.)
They have observed some discussions of NRx, seen that they consistently generate much more heat than light, and decided that whatever the facts of the matter an internet debate about it is likely to do more harm than good.
They have found that they find NRx advocates consistently unpleasant, and the benefits of possibly becoming less wrong don’t (for them) outweigh the cost of having an unpleasant argument.
They have found that they find NRx opponents consistently unpleasant, and (etc.).
Interesting theories, let’s see how they square with the evidence.
On the other hand they are interested in questions where where race, gender, and political structures are relevant to the answers.
If that was the case, one would expect them to be able to produce counter arguments to say the “NRx” (although it’s not unique to NRx) positions on race and gender. Instead the best they can do is link to SSC (which agrees that the NRx’s have a point in that respect), or say things that amount to saying how they don’t want to think about it.
To the extent that’s true its not the “NRx” people generating the heat.
These are just rephrasing of my hypothesis that they only want to become lesswrong to the extent it doesn’t involve being similar to those weird NRx’s. Good to hear you’re willing to agree with it.
Maybe, though in some cases their opinion as to that relevance may reasonably differ from yours. But that doesn’t in any way mean that they should be interested in NRx. Consider the following parallel. I am making plans concerning the next 10 years of my life—whether to take a new job, move house, get married or divorced, etc. It is highly relevant to my deliberations whether some time in the next few years a vengeful god is going to step in and put an end to the world as we know it. That doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be annoyed when my attempts to discuss the next few years are repeatedly interrupted by people wanting to warn me about the coming apocalypse.
Yup. But one wouldn’t necessarily expect them to do it. (If I’m talking about the likely state of the world economy 5 years from now and some guy bursts in to tell me excitedly about how Cthulhu will have risen from the depths by then and started eating everyone, I am not going to waste my time telling him exactly why I don’t think Cthulhu is real and why I wouldn’t expect him to start eating people so soon even if he were.)
Heat arises from friction. It takes two to generate the friction. I’m not terribly interested deciding which of the sticks getting rubbed together is responsible for the flames.
No, they’re not. Your hypothesis is that these people want to avoid becoming like the NRx people; mine is that they want to avoid having to interact with the NRx people. (There might be some overlap. If someone thinks NRx people are unpleasant, they might avoid being convinced lest they become unpleasant themselves or find themselves spending more time around unpleasant people.)
I’m not, for the avoidance of doubt, claiming that your hypotheses are never correct. Just that they’re a very long way from exhausting the possibilities for why someone might not want to engage in a lot of argument about NRx, which is one reason why it is wrong to take the general statement I made and “explain” it as the more specific one you claimed was what I actually meant.
This is an example of these beliefs lying outside the range they find credible, which I addressed in the next point.
The difference is that the NRx’s (or at least the HBD-people) can present arguments for their beliefs, like the fact that things like race and gender, do in fact correlate with IQ, SAT scores, success in various professions, etc.
You’re taking the metaphor too literally in an attempt to pretend to be wise. In this case “heat” means bad arguments or no arguments at all. One side presents arguments for its positions, the other side presents a variety of ever-shifting excuses for why the topic shouldn’t be brought up at all.
Sure. I was just making the point that you can’t get from “X could be relevant to Y, which Z finds important” to “Z should be interested in X”.
I don’t know about actual literal Cthulhu-worshippers, if any there be, but the preachers of pending apocalypse have arguments for their beliefs too. And, again, I think you may be misunderstanding the point I was making, which is simply that you can’t get from “Z has good arguments against X” to “Z will present arguments against X whenever someone comes along proclaiming X”, and therefore you can’t get from “X came up and Z blew it off without presenting counterarguments” to “Z doesn’t have good arguments against X”.
This is far from the first time that you have claimed to know my motives. I’m sorry to inform you that your track record on getting them right appears to me to be very poor.
It was I, not you, who made the more-heat-than-light metaphor in this case, and you don’t get to tell me what I meant by it. I did not, in fact, mean “bad arguments or no arguments at all”; I meant “rudeness and crossness and people getting upset at one another”.
As for taking it too literally: no, I am observing that the metaphor happens to correspond to reality in a possibly-unexpected way. “Heat” in an argument really does come from “friction” between people, from them “rubbing one another up the wrong way”.
(Incidentally, it feels very odd to be criticized for doing that by an admirer of Chesterton, who did the same thing all the time. (More stylishly than me, no doubt, but if writing as well as Chesterton were a requirement for participation here it would be a quiet place indeed.)
I think the problem many people have isn’t that it’s “brought up at all” but that some of those who want to talk about NRx and HBD seem to want to talk about those things all the time. That may mean that the only actually-achievable options are (1) a strict “no talking about this stuff” policy and (2) having every discussion to which race, gender, drawbacks of democracy, etc., could possibly be relevant being full of (neo-)reactionary stuff. Those both seem like bad outcomes, and if we end up with bad outcome #1 I wouldn’t want to blame whoever chooses #1 over #2 for its badness, because #2 is bad too.
Yes, I have a habit of assuming the most sensible interpretation of what my interlocutor says, it appears to be a bad habit with some people.
Ok, plugging that definition into your argument, and removing the metaphor, your argument appears to come down to “arguing ‘NRx-type’ positions gets makes my side upset therefore the ‘NRx’ side should stop doing it”.
That is pretty much the reverse of what you have been doing.
I think your actual habit is of assuming the interpretation that makes most sense to you. Unfortunately that isn’t the same, and in particular it gives very wrong results when your mental model of your interlocutors is very inaccurate.
Not quite. (Though, as entirelyuseless says, that wouldn’t in fact be such a bad argument.) Here’s a link to where I came in; as you can see, I was explaining how having NRx discussions tend to proliferate could be a problem. My answer was that I didn’t know whether it actually is, but it could be so in a situation where (1) there are very few NRx’s (but vocal enough to have a lot of impact) and (2) most of the other people aren’t interested in NRx discussions. And then we got into a lengthy discussion of why #2 might be; rudeness-and-crossness was one of many possibilities.
So the argument is: in this hypothetical situation that may or may not be actual, most LWers don’t want to have a lot of NRx discussions. One of the many possible reasons is (as you put it) that these arguments get their side upset. Since (in this hypothetical situation) most LWers don’t want these discussions, and very few actively do want them, LWers as a whole would be happier without them.
(Although I’ve adopted your spin-laden language in the paragraph above, I would like to point out that it’s actually quite far from what I meant. My hypothetical person-who-doesn’t-want-to-talk-about-NRx is concerned not only that his allies might get upset, but also that his opponents might; and that the result of all this getting-upset on both sides is likely to be that no one learns much from anyone else. That’s why the metaphor is “more heat than light” and not just “lots of heat”.)
Assuming that was his argument, it seems like a pretty good one. You do not persuade people by making them upset. You make them more convinced than ever of their original position.
So, being “less wrong” is measured by “how much time one spends debating neoreaction”? If you refuse to keep endlessly debating neoreaction, you are closed-minded. Don’t worry about evidence; the signalling is cool!
I was running monthly politics threads. I don’t recall that conversations involved NR specifically, but I do recall that the discussions taking place were so specific they had no general/popular appeal, and conversations were short, muted, and didn’t go anywhere.
I was left reading the discussions taking place with the impression that people were looking for things to try to argue about, rather than having anything particularly meaningful they wanted to argue about which they previously couldn’t. Given that one of my purposes was to try to arrange a safety valve for a perceived growing political pressure (which eventually exploded in the feminism war that got Eugine Nier banned and which caused most of the more prominent feminist-leaning members to leave), they were failing for my intended purpose, so I stopped creating them.
The debates didn’t generally have an issue staying civilized, though, as I recall.
Is this actually true? I don’t think LW is having this kind of problems.
Same with “difficult to contain”—I do not observe these difficulties.
Hint: “civilized” is a euphemism for “not reaching conclusions that make Villiam feel uncomfortable”.
No, it’s an umbrella term for things including “not mass-downvoting people because they disagreed with you once”, etc.
Hello back, Eugine.