My problem with him is the general problem with radicals—he needs to offer better arguments that what he’s suggesting will be reliably better than the current set-up. Speaking of Nazis and Communists, it’s possible to make things a lot worse because your theory sounds so attractive.
I agree. A strong argument in favour of our current order (social democracy) is the Burkean conservative one. I’ve said in the past that Moldbug is good at diagnosing but bad at providing treatments and I think his plan as it stands is more likely to go terribly wrong than terribly right. But hey we tried socialism so many times in so many different places, and we still haven’t given up on it, can’t we try Neocameralism in a charter city somewhere?
However, in the US and Europe, there are violent neo-Nazis but (unless I’ve missed something) little or nothing in the way of violent communists, so it makes sense to be more concerned about Nazis.
There are plenty of violent left anarchists / anti-fa (Communists in the sense Moldbug is using) in Europe. To cite an example from Greece:
Protesters set fire to a Marfin Bank branch on Stadiou Street with Molotov cocktails; witnesses said that protestors marching past the bank ignored the employees’ cries for help, while others chanted anti-capitalist slogans.[33][34][45] Most of the bank’s employees managed to escape the burning building, but two employees who jumped from the second-story balcony were injured and two women and a man were found dead after the fire was extinguished.
Social Justice in action, I’m sure the protesters had “legitimate grievances” which foreign media where sympathetic to. Question time, if Neo-Nazis had burned down a building do you think it more or less likely for you to have heard of an incident like this? Can Neo-Nazis ever have “legitimate grievances”?
Indeed we have a ready made test case for this, check out foreign reports on Golden Dawn then compare them to their actual relevance. The double standard regarding this is ridiculous.
As is the amount of resources spent on “fighting” the far right in the EU compared to the amount dedicated to fighting the far left. Even if ceteris paribus Nazis (in the wider sense of the word) are more competent at takeovers and causing damage than Commies (in the wider sense of the word), diminishing returns have almost certainly kicked in for fighting Nazis but not for fighting Commies.
It was amusing to see that Mencius Moldbug, Dark Lord of the Convoluted Sentence, is a pretty average speaker.
Yeah Good writer =/= Good speaker. Unfortunately Eliezer seems to be another example of this.
The murderousness of certain Greek left-wingers is true, but I would wish that you didn’t downplay the murderousness of Golden Dawn. They contributed to the slaughter of Srebenica in Bosnia—they are currently killing immigrants, They are officially in the parliament and yet they’ve not ceased with their numerous death threats against everyone who stands in their way.
Sorry, but though the murderousness of certain off-parliament Greek left-wingers is certainly a fact, and the sympathy they receive from inside the parliament likewise, the actual bloody neonazi murderers are in the Greek parliament. With 7% vote they’re already killing people and nobody here really gives a damn, are you sure they won’t commit acts of genocide when they reach 30%?
They contributed to the slaughter of Srebenica in Bosnia
You are referring to the Greek Volunteer Guard? Some allegedly had links to Greek Neo-Nazi groups including Golden Dawn, though you have to admit terming that as “Golden Dawn contributed to the slaughter at Screbrenica” is importing stronger connotations.
but I would wish that you didn’t downplay the murderousness of Golden Dawn.
I didn’t intend to downplay their murderousness, I wished to downplay the relevance of media reports on them. Which I think are disproportionate to their importance for non-Greeks. Also I hoped people would note the soft handed treatment anarchist/communist/anti-fa violence is given compared to the uniform condemnation of far right violence.
I upvoted for the first paragraph. Then I wanted to cancel the upvote when I read the paragraphs after the quote about Greece (which I deemed too adversarial for a friendly discussion). In the process I discovered the nonobvious fact that one must click again in the upvote button to cancel it: clicking downvote brings it to −1 instead of just canceling the upvote.
Didn’t meant to be adversarial towards Nancy I hope she doesn’t take it that way. I was taking a strong stance that is of course political on what interests and biases Western media generally have. I edited the style, is it better now?
To be honest, I don’t think you should revise your writing based on what just one random LWer (me) thinks. I just wanted to share the discovery I made about canceling upvotes, which was new and unintuitive to me. If I had read your last paragraphs before upvoting, I would have just refrained from voting in either direction and I would not have written any critical comment.
If you really want to know, though, the part that bugged me most was the paragraph immediately after the quote. (“Social justice in action…”) It is snarky; maybe not towards Nancy as such, but certainly against the general opposed political position. I think the “no mindkilling” general code should preclude using snark in a political discussion, since its purpose, roughly, is to lower the status of the opposed viewpoint without adding substance (relative to a non-snarky rewrite).
But as I said, I doubt you should care too much about this opinion and rewrite your post.
Don’t be silly you are a member of the LessWrong community in good standing, I appreciate such feedback. I now see your point about snark, but I was also trying to refer to a particular post by Moldbug, to make this more explicit I’ve added a link there.
It didn’t feel adversarial to me—I’d forgotten about far left violence in Europe.
I did hear about it—you can more or less assume that if it’s on the BBC radio news programs, I’ve heard about it. This doesn’t mean it will come to mind when I’m making sweeping generalizations.
I agree. A strong argument in favour of our current order (social democracy) is the Burkean conservative one. I’ve said in the past that Moldbug is good at diagnosing but bad at providing treatments and I think his plan as it stands is more likely to go terribly wrong than terribly right. But hey we tried socialism so many times in so many different places, and we still haven’t given up on it, can’t we try Neocameralism in a charter city somewhere?
There are plenty of violent left anarchists / anti-fa (Communists in the sense Moldbug is using) in Europe. To cite an example from Greece:
Social Justice in action, I’m sure the protesters had “legitimate grievances” which foreign media where sympathetic to. Question time, if Neo-Nazis had burned down a building do you think it more or less likely for you to have heard of an incident like this? Can Neo-Nazis ever have “legitimate grievances”?
Indeed we have a ready made test case for this, check out foreign reports on Golden Dawn then compare them to their actual relevance. The double standard regarding this is ridiculous.
As is the amount of resources spent on “fighting” the far right in the EU compared to the amount dedicated to fighting the far left. Even if ceteris paribus Nazis (in the wider sense of the word) are more competent at takeovers and causing damage than Commies (in the wider sense of the word), diminishing returns have almost certainly kicked in for fighting Nazis but not for fighting Commies.
Yeah Good writer =/= Good speaker. Unfortunately Eliezer seems to be another example of this.
The murderousness of certain Greek left-wingers is true, but I would wish that you didn’t downplay the murderousness of Golden Dawn. They contributed to the slaughter of Srebenica in Bosnia—they are currently killing immigrants, They are officially in the parliament and yet they’ve not ceased with their numerous death threats against everyone who stands in their way.
Sorry, but though the murderousness of certain off-parliament Greek left-wingers is certainly a fact, and the sympathy they receive from inside the parliament likewise, the actual bloody neonazi murderers are in the Greek parliament. With 7% vote they’re already killing people and nobody here really gives a damn, are you sure they won’t commit acts of genocide when they reach 30%?
You are referring to the Greek Volunteer Guard? Some allegedly had links to Greek Neo-Nazi groups including Golden Dawn, though you have to admit terming that as “Golden Dawn contributed to the slaughter at Screbrenica” is importing stronger connotations.
I didn’t intend to downplay their murderousness, I wished to downplay the relevance of media reports on them. Which I think are disproportionate to their importance for non-Greeks. Also I hoped people would note the soft handed treatment anarchist/communist/anti-fa violence is given compared to the uniform condemnation of far right violence.
I upvoted for the first paragraph. Then I wanted to cancel the upvote when I read the paragraphs after the quote about Greece (which I deemed too adversarial for a friendly discussion). In the process I discovered the nonobvious fact that one must click again in the upvote button to cancel it: clicking downvote brings it to −1 instead of just canceling the upvote.
Didn’t meant to be adversarial towards Nancy I hope she doesn’t take it that way. I was taking a strong stance that is of course political on what interests and biases Western media generally have. I edited the style, is it better now?
To be honest, I don’t think you should revise your writing based on what just one random LWer (me) thinks. I just wanted to share the discovery I made about canceling upvotes, which was new and unintuitive to me. If I had read your last paragraphs before upvoting, I would have just refrained from voting in either direction and I would not have written any critical comment.
If you really want to know, though, the part that bugged me most was the paragraph immediately after the quote. (“Social justice in action…”) It is snarky; maybe not towards Nancy as such, but certainly against the general opposed political position. I think the “no mindkilling” general code should preclude using snark in a political discussion, since its purpose, roughly, is to lower the status of the opposed viewpoint without adding substance (relative to a non-snarky rewrite).
But as I said, I doubt you should care too much about this opinion and rewrite your post.
Don’t be silly you are a member of the LessWrong community in good standing, I appreciate such feedback. I now see your point about snark, but I was also trying to refer to a particular post by Moldbug, to make this more explicit I’ve added a link there.
It didn’t feel adversarial to me—I’d forgotten about far left violence in Europe.
I did hear about it—you can more or less assume that if it’s on the BBC radio news programs, I’ve heard about it. This doesn’t mean it will come to mind when I’m making sweeping generalizations.