I’m disturbed that you’re considering rejecting something just because it was written by a Social Democrat, and at the same time talking about politics being the mindkiller.
I don’t think you need to be much concerned. When it comes to the politics of individual LessWrong posters I genuinely prefer not to know, but overall as a demographic LessWrong is pretty “social democratic” in its political beliefs.
To quote Konkvistador’s summary:
liberalism 34.5% (376)
libertarianism 32.3% (352)
socialism 26.6% at (290)
conservatism 2.8% (30)
communism 0.5% (5)
I think you can agree your fear is quote unfounded. Considering most of the Libertarians are probably left Libertarian and our very wide spread dislike for the religious right in the US, LessWrong if anything is likley to have a strong left wing bias.
I’m disturbed that you’re considering rejecting something just because it was written by a Social Democrat, and at the same time talking about politics being the mindkiller.
The charitable interpretation is that Orwell is known first and foremost as a political thinker, and there’s evidence that his ‘nationalist’ biases were present on the things he cared about. So if “politics is the mind-killer” can cash out as “we shouldn’t quote Hitler because that will lead to problems” it can also cash out as “we shouldn’t quote Orwell because that will lead to problems.”
But I don’t think that’s how “politics is the mind-killer” does or should cash out. It’s reasonable to be concerned about that possibility, but the answer to the concern is “nope, it’s not an issue.”
Looks like I was right about expressing wariness at the idea that some discussions would degenerate into politics: that’s exactly what happened, and I had a major part in it too, without even noticing. It cost me a surprisingly large amount of points. I’m still very bad at anticipating the reactions of my fellow lesswrongers, so I need to ask: Was it
because I was evidently biased?
because I demonstrated egregious ignorance of fundamental knowledge related to the topics I attempted to discuss?
because the opinions I expressed were themselves impopular? I can’t help but notice that those expressing right-wing and/or reactionary viewpoints, even when they weren’t even trying to rationalize them, but presented them as fact, have been treated in a much more forgiving way, and I’m having trouble understanding why.
I can’t help but notice that those expressing right-wing and/or reactionary viewpoints, even when they weren’t even trying to rationalize them, but presented them as fact, have been treated in a much more forgiving way, and I’m having trouble understanding why.
I’ve been explaining some radical right-wing views here, true, but I’ve also more or less expounded my own leftist views (in an ideological way, not a political one—there’s a difference) and have been upvoted for it :) Don’t worry, there’s no dark conspiracy on LW, the right-wing/libertarian/generally contrarian people you see around these parts are just the cream of the crop for several reasons of selection. If you try and achieve their level of eloquence and writing quality, even for the duration of one post, you’ll get plenty of karma and attention.
I was mostly referring to the Less Wrong community’s tendency to err in the side of caution when mentioning anything politically-loaded, for fear that it might be mind-killing to our own, inflame passions better left dormant, and cause unnecessary, inextricable conflict. That, and, well, many Lesswrongers being libertarians or fiscally conservative, I thought they might be unwelcoming to the works of a man such as Orwell. But, upon further reading, it turns out that this essay is politically neutral almost to a fault, and that the only side it takes is the side of truth, freedom, and the Democratic way. Which is a political stance in itself, but not one that would be subject to controversy here, I hope.
I admire Orwell for his ability to recognize and show the problems associated with his side of the political spectrum. In Animal Farm and 1984 he is improving the argument against him, even without disproving it immediately… and this is probably as far as is humanly possible to discuss politics rationally.
I only wish that famous people in all political groups were able to do the same thing. Are there any other famous examples? Perhaps Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is something similar for libertarians (except that it is less famous, less dark, happens on a different planet, and has a deus-ex-machina happy end).
EDIT: Oops, “The Dispossessed” is not libertarian, but left anarchist society. They don’t have private property, if I remember correctly.
Yes, but they tend to lose their arguments fairly quickly, and it’s usually mere Devil’s Advocacy, for the principle of the thing. Which is of course a necessary and fun exercise, but not one that is actually problematic in community cohesion terms.
I would not be so optimistic. I’m not a huge proponent of the “Democratic way”, but I don’t mind it and think there are decent arguments for it, including instrumental ethical ones. (I believe that in a better universe people should only have the right to demand things from their administration without dictating who in particular would hold office, but I understand that it helps diminish abuse of power; on the other hand, opponents of democracy bemoan other kinds of such abuse, which they say democracy facilitates… all that, and I haven’t even talked about how “the rule of people” primarily depends upon the structure of an entity’s economy and the culture & traditions of that entity, with formal political systems often being red herrings)
The densely packed “Freedom” is subtly attacked by LW and blogosphere Right all the time, however, and what’s damn scary is that some of the stuff that they claim to be superior to it looks, at least, more self-consistent than Our Way. I’m not talking about (the direct question of) individualism vs collectivism here, either, as I’m trying to combine the two; it’s mostly things like anti-egalitarianism, anti-idealism, etc that bother me. And I mean really bother me, as in “lost a few nights’ sleep”. A few times I was leaning towards the thought that such views should be officially and swiftly censored as opposed to the current culture of disapproval. Which, ironically, sounds like anathema to “Freedom” on its own.
One key question I can’t figure out is whether such reactionary approaches can be largely dismissed as operating on a diverging value system—or whether some of such unsolicited “advice” (example: making any slavery-type contract legal) is indeed “more based in reality” that our ethics and way of thought, and we’re the crazy ones for feeling sickened. Of course, we shouldn’t abandon “Freedom” just because a smart guy on the internet argues at length against it, but my point is about how what feels like a comfortable solid foundation can be shaken, and how it might well be a dilemma between giving up part of your identity and reacting less than sanely.
Would you be so kind as to link me to the relevant contents? Perhaps there is much to learn there, in a Nietzschean, thought-provoking way. Getting pissed off is a wonderful incentive to question things.
Well, you can already see it all around you, even in this thread, no? Here’s a list of the usual suspects on LW. Of those, Konkvistador is the one whose writings I enjoy most; he’s a moderate conservative/centrist/mild technocrat whom I stand by in some value-challenging problems (e.g. Dust Specks vs Torture—you are acquainted with this darling little controversy by our beloved leader, aren’t you?) and oppose in others (infanticide). I’d also recommend Unqualified Reservations, the domain of the infamous and illuminated Mencius. There you’ll find a rather repetitive and at times faulty yet fascinating procession of arguments against nearly everything that has been done on Earth since 1789.* But it’s not M.M. whose ideas make me tremble so; it is our very own Vladimir_M, who’s very, very polite and cautious and has an impeccable reputation around here. His obscure hints and cryptic clues might be wise to pursure… or not.
(Forgive me for this purple-tinted nonsense, o fellow LWers, for I’ve been playing the delightful, absorbing and astoundingly well written browser game Fallen London, and my style has been trying to take on a Dickensian aspect, in spite of my ignorance as to how a modestly educated foreigner might write that way and still not make a derping fool of oneself. PM me with Facebook names, even false ones, if interested; there’s a nice boon for invitees and inviters, as well as bonuses for interacting within a clique.)
-*(I do not support the general direction of his narrative—“Western nations only lose in wisdom and gain in suicidal insanity as ages go by, because of their horrible, evil memetics since the Reformation”—and its tone gets old fast. This has to do with his personality type and quirks, I’d wager; see e.g. his oft repeated metaphor of LSD for our supposed insanity. And—I know how underhanded and ad hominem this sounds, but hell, he mentioned it many times—the fact that his parents were Communists.)
(“Western nations only lose in wisdom and gain in suicidal insanity as ages go by, because of their horrible, evil memetics since the Reformation”
Suppose a society was consistently getting richer for a long time because of better technology. Would positional signalling of your status via your opinions and beliefs instead of say with material goods (purple cloak, rare feathers, enough food to grow fat) be more or less valuable? What would memetic evolution look like in such an environment? How would this effect the fitness of memes that are basically true beliefs that pay rent (in material gain or happiness), but happen to make you look bad?
And I’d honestly rather see heretics burned at a stake or whatever than allow some well-meaning subversives to crash that dreamtime. I’m not waking up, my friends & family are not waking up, anyone whom I sympathize with is not waking up—the most I’d be okay with is an AI or augmented human dedicated to observing the “waking” reality!
You want to know why, don’t you? You consider that a hysterical overreaction? Well, know this (but you already do, of course): there are essentially two types of brains—some rather unusual and aberrant ones are nourished by absorbing truth, but to most it’s pure, unspeakable torture that shouldn’t be acknowledged, yet alone rationally contemptated. Even if the stakes are enormous. Sure, we have hypocrisy as our saving grace, and we might get an AI to do the contemptating for us eventually. but generally there’s a vast divide between people like you who want the Truth, and most folks. And I’m very, very unsure that I shouldn’t just support the majority here.
This is a most excellent point, that I need to consider more. Honestly I have no desire to force people to “Truth”, but I do want the liberty to seek it and act on it. If this means my segregation or secession from the vast majority of humanity and posthumanity, since they can’t be protected in any other way, so be it.
I’m disturbed that you’re considering rejecting something just because it was written by a Social Democrat, and at the same time talking about politics being the mindkiller.
Orwell might have been right about doublethink.
I don’t think you need to be much concerned. When it comes to the politics of individual LessWrong posters I genuinely prefer not to know, but overall as a demographic LessWrong is pretty “social democratic” in its political beliefs.
To quote Konkvistador’s summary:
I think you can agree your fear is quote unfounded. Considering most of the Libertarians are probably left Libertarian and our very wide spread dislike for the religious right in the US, LessWrong if anything is likley to have a strong left wing bias.
The charitable interpretation is that Orwell is known first and foremost as a political thinker, and there’s evidence that his ‘nationalist’ biases were present on the things he cared about. So if “politics is the mind-killer” can cash out as “we shouldn’t quote Hitler because that will lead to problems” it can also cash out as “we shouldn’t quote Orwell because that will lead to problems.”
But I don’t think that’s how “politics is the mind-killer” does or should cash out. It’s reasonable to be concerned about that possibility, but the answer to the concern is “nope, it’s not an issue.”
Looks like I was right about expressing wariness at the idea that some discussions would degenerate into politics: that’s exactly what happened, and I had a major part in it too, without even noticing. It cost me a surprisingly large amount of points. I’m still very bad at anticipating the reactions of my fellow lesswrongers, so I need to ask: Was it
because I was evidently biased?
because I demonstrated egregious ignorance of fundamental knowledge related to the topics I attempted to discuss?
because the opinions I expressed were themselves impopular? I can’t help but notice that those expressing right-wing and/or reactionary viewpoints, even when they weren’t even trying to rationalize them, but presented them as fact, have been treated in a much more forgiving way, and I’m having trouble understanding why.
I’ve been explaining some radical right-wing views here, true, but I’ve also more or less expounded my own leftist views (in an ideological way, not a political one—there’s a difference) and have been upvoted for it :) Don’t worry, there’s no dark conspiracy on LW, the right-wing/libertarian/generally contrarian people you see around these parts are just the cream of the crop for several reasons of selection. If you try and achieve their level of eloquence and writing quality, even for the duration of one post, you’ll get plenty of karma and attention.
I was mostly referring to the Less Wrong community’s tendency to err in the side of caution when mentioning anything politically-loaded, for fear that it might be mind-killing to our own, inflame passions better left dormant, and cause unnecessary, inextricable conflict. That, and, well, many Lesswrongers being libertarians or fiscally conservative, I thought they might be unwelcoming to the works of a man such as Orwell. But, upon further reading, it turns out that this essay is politically neutral almost to a fault, and that the only side it takes is the side of truth, freedom, and the Democratic way. Which is a political stance in itself, but not one that would be subject to controversy here, I hope.
I admire Orwell for his ability to recognize and show the problems associated with his side of the political spectrum. In Animal Farm and 1984 he is improving the argument against him, even without disproving it immediately… and this is probably as far as is humanly possible to discuss politics rationally.
I only wish that famous people in all political groups were able to do the same thing. Are there any other famous examples? Perhaps Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is something similar for libertarians (except that it is less famous, less dark, happens on a different planet, and has a deus-ex-machina happy end).
EDIT: Oops, “The Dispossessed” is not libertarian, but left anarchist society. They don’t have private property, if I remember correctly.
Well, you could probably find people here opposing the “freedom and the Democratic way” on here.
Yes, but they tend to lose their arguments fairly quickly, and it’s usually mere Devil’s Advocacy, for the principle of the thing. Which is of course a necessary and fun exercise, but not one that is actually problematic in community cohesion terms.
I would not be so optimistic. I’m not a huge proponent of the “Democratic way”, but I don’t mind it and think there are decent arguments for it, including instrumental ethical ones. (I believe that in a better universe people should only have the right to demand things from their administration without dictating who in particular would hold office, but I understand that it helps diminish abuse of power; on the other hand, opponents of democracy bemoan other kinds of such abuse, which they say democracy facilitates… all that, and I haven’t even talked about how “the rule of people” primarily depends upon the structure of an entity’s economy and the culture & traditions of that entity, with formal political systems often being red herrings)
The densely packed “Freedom” is subtly attacked by LW and blogosphere Right all the time, however, and what’s damn scary is that some of the stuff that they claim to be superior to it looks, at least, more self-consistent than Our Way. I’m not talking about (the direct question of) individualism vs collectivism here, either, as I’m trying to combine the two; it’s mostly things like anti-egalitarianism, anti-idealism, etc that bother me. And I mean really bother me, as in “lost a few nights’ sleep”. A few times I was leaning towards the thought that such views should be officially and swiftly censored as opposed to the current culture of disapproval. Which, ironically, sounds like anathema to “Freedom” on its own.
One key question I can’t figure out is whether such reactionary approaches can be largely dismissed as operating on a diverging value system—or whether some of such unsolicited “advice” (example: making any slavery-type contract legal) is indeed “more based in reality” that our ethics and way of thought, and we’re the crazy ones for feeling sickened. Of course, we shouldn’t abandon “Freedom” just because a smart guy on the internet argues at length against it, but my point is about how what feels like a comfortable solid foundation can be shaken, and how it might well be a dilemma between giving up part of your identity and reacting less than sanely.
Would you be so kind as to link me to the relevant contents? Perhaps there is much to learn there, in a Nietzschean, thought-provoking way. Getting pissed off is a wonderful incentive to question things.
Well, you can already see it all around you, even in this thread, no? Here’s a list of the usual suspects on LW. Of those, Konkvistador is the one whose writings I enjoy most; he’s a moderate conservative/centrist/mild technocrat whom I stand by in some value-challenging problems (e.g. Dust Specks vs Torture—you are acquainted with this darling little controversy by our beloved leader, aren’t you?) and oppose in others (infanticide).
I’d also recommend Unqualified Reservations, the domain of the infamous and illuminated Mencius. There you’ll find a rather repetitive and at times faulty yet fascinating procession of arguments against nearly everything that has been done on Earth since 1789.* But it’s not M.M. whose ideas make me tremble so; it is our very own Vladimir_M, who’s very, very polite and cautious and has an impeccable reputation around here. His obscure hints and cryptic clues might be wise to pursure… or not.
(Forgive me for this purple-tinted nonsense, o fellow LWers, for I’ve been playing the delightful, absorbing and astoundingly well written browser game Fallen London, and my style has been trying to take on a Dickensian aspect, in spite of my ignorance as to how a modestly educated foreigner might write that way and still not make a derping fool of oneself. PM me with Facebook names, even false ones, if interested; there’s a nice boon for invitees and inviters, as well as bonuses for interacting within a clique.)
-*(I do not support the general direction of his narrative—“Western nations only lose in wisdom and gain in suicidal insanity as ages go by, because of their horrible, evil memetics since the Reformation”—and its tone gets old fast. This has to do with his personality type and quirks, I’d wager; see e.g. his oft repeated metaphor of LSD for our supposed insanity. And—I know how underhanded and ad hominem this sounds, but hell, he mentioned it many times—the fact that his parents were Communists.)
Suppose a society was consistently getting richer for a long time because of better technology. Would positional signalling of your status via your opinions and beliefs instead of say with material goods (purple cloak, rare feathers, enough food to grow fat) be more or less valuable? What would memetic evolution look like in such an environment? How would this effect the fitness of memes that are basically true beliefs that pay rent (in material gain or happiness), but happen to make you look bad?
We are living in dreamtime.
And I’d honestly rather see heretics burned at a stake or whatever than allow some well-meaning subversives to crash that dreamtime. I’m not waking up, my friends & family are not waking up, anyone whom I sympathize with is not waking up—the most I’d be okay with is an AI or augmented human dedicated to observing the “waking” reality!
You want to know why, don’t you? You consider that a hysterical overreaction? Well, know this (but you already do, of course): there are essentially two types of brains—some rather unusual and aberrant ones are nourished by absorbing truth, but to most it’s pure, unspeakable torture that shouldn’t be acknowledged, yet alone rationally contemptated. Even if the stakes are enormous. Sure, we have hypocrisy as our saving grace, and we might get an AI to do the contemptating for us eventually. but generally there’s a vast divide between people like you who want the Truth, and most folks. And I’m very, very unsure that I shouldn’t just support the majority here.
This is a most excellent point, that I need to consider more. Honestly I have no desire to force people to “Truth”, but I do want the liberty to seek it and act on it. If this means my segregation or secession from the vast majority of humanity and posthumanity, since they can’t be protected in any other way, so be it.
It just occurred to me that this is basically the state of humanity in Brave New World.
I choose dust specs, obviously. I know a negligible value when I see it.
Thanks for the clarification.