For the benefit of others (I know you saw this already), Rival Voices also had a previous article making a very similar argument on how the content of the Sequences are separate from their vibe, and how that has affected the way they’ve been received. Excerpt:
This thesis shows how ambient meaning can be encoded in a work of literature, above and beyond the truth-value of the propositions in that work. The thesis is long (150 words) so here’s an intuition pump instead, using hyperintentionality: basically there’s a million things of saying the same thing, in terms of referents and their relations. (The usual example is contrasting “the evening star” to “the morning star”. They both refer to the same thing “out there” but there is a stylistic difference in using one or another and thus the choice of using one or another is informative.) So we get that stylistic choices—which don’t affect content! - are informative, but what are they informative of? The claim is that it is informative of the author’s worldview. Of how it is like that the world feels to them, of the what-it’s-liketo be them, in the world. [...]
If you don’t wanna read that just think of Eliezer, Moldbugg’s, or Zero HP’s writing. They each have a super strong and distinct from one another vibe to their work. Ask each of the to express the same proposition and you get three very different works that feel very different.
So I’m trying to make the point that you can conceptually separate a work’s content from its vibe.
Given that, and that EY’s has a body of work, his work can be separated into two parts: (1) content, and (2) vibe.
I’d claim that the vibe can be summed up with one word: “disembodied”. Reading him you get the what-it’s-like, the feeling, of being an extremely smart mind that forgot it even has a body, much less it is one. [...]
As the work can be divided into content and vibe you can get objections to the former or the latter.
The objections to the latter, to its vibe, its mood, its aesthetics, give you the post-rats. They don’t deny Eliezer’s content, but they very much deny his vibe. In this denial they substitute Eliezer’s vibe with whichever other vibe. There is no coherent doctrine, no issue positioning, nothing unifying other than the criticism of rats—knowingly or unknowingly because of their disembodied aesthetic—and an attention to aesthetics, since that is what was being disregarded. This is why postrats aren’t a coherent group and why postrat is just an umbrella term. This is why there are “1000 schools of post-rationality”. Everyone sides in their favorite aesthetic and there is no quorum on it so there isn’t a real group.
Thank you for sharing the post. :)
For the benefit of others (I know you saw this already), Rival Voices also had a previous article making a very similar argument on how the content of the Sequences are separate from their vibe, and how that has affected the way they’ve been received. Excerpt: