I first saw LW as a node on a map of neoreactionary web sites [...] LW doesn’t seem to fit the map. You have to stretch pretty far to connect some of those nodes.
That brings up some interesting questions. The last survey placed self-identified neoreactionaries as a very small percentage of LW readership (scroll down to “Alternate Politics Question”). Progressivism appears to be the most popular political philosophy around here, with libertarianism a strong competitor; nothing else is in the running.
That’s not the first time I’ve heard LW referred to as a neoreactionary site, though; once might be coincidence, but twice needs explanation. With the survey in mind it’s clearly not a matter of explicitly endorsed philosophy, so I’m left to assume that we’re propagating ideas or cultural artifacts that’re popular in neoreactionary circles. I’m not sure what those might be, though. It might just be our general skepticism of academically dominant narratives, but that seems like too glib an explanation to me.
Imagine a society with 10 neoreactionaries and 10000 liberals (or any other mainstream political group). Let’s suppose that 5 of the neoreactionaries and 500 of the liberals read LessWrong.
In this society, neoreactionaries would consider LessWrong one of “their” websites, because half of them are reading it. Yet the LessWrong survey would show that neoreactionaries are just a tiny minority of its readers.
That’s a heck of a coincidence, but it would explain a perception among neoreactionaries. It wouldn’t, however, explain perceptions among (to use your example) liberals; unless the latter spend a lot of time reading blogs from the former, they’re probably going to be using an outside view, which would give them the same ratios we see in the survey. Out in the wild, I’ve seen the characterization coming from both sides.
Although the graph in the ancestor is from a neoreactionary blog.
While I’m not sure what “neoreactionary” refers to specifically there are lots of reasons that certain types of liberals see LessWrong as reactionary:
A somewhat strong libertarian component
Belief in evolutionary psychology
Anti-religous (or generally the belief that beliefs can be right or wrong)
LessWrong’s more technical understanding of evidence is incompatible with standpoint theory and similar epistemic frameworks favored by some groups of liberals.
Those older discussions around PUA where it’s presented in a pretty positive light
That’s not the first time I’ve heard LW referred to as a neoreactionary site, though; once might be coincidence, but twice needs explanation. With the survey in mind it’s clearly not a matter of explicitly endorsed philosophy, so I’m left to assume that we’re propagating ideas or cultural artifacts that’re popular in neoreactionary circles. I’m not sure what those might be, though. It might just be our general skepticism of academically dominant narratives, but that seems like too glib an explanation to me.
Viliam’s explanation seems like a strong one to me, but doesn’t explain the historical accident of (to use his made up numbers) half of neoreactionaries reading LW.
I suspect that LW has a vibe of “actually think through everything, question your implicit assumptions, and follow logic to its conclusion.” The neoreactionary believes that doing so ends up at the neoreactionary position- even if that is true for only 1% of people, that leads to a 10X higher concentration of neoreactionaries at LW. At the very least, it seems that LW has a strong tendency to destroy strong political leanings, and especially affection for popular government-supporting narratives.
The impression I got from looking at their graph is that a strong libertarian component is enough by itself. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen people consider libertarianism inherently very regressive.
Edit: Originally I assumed that it was accusing Less Wrong of being neoreactionary, but looking a bit around the site it looks like they might be praising it.
I don’t think that’s a powerful enough explanation. Setting aside the differences between libertarianism and neoreaction, there are far more libertarian-leaning blogs than that graph can account for, and many of the missing ones are more popular than we.
It might be worth noting that in this thread, the other thread where we just crossed paths, there are two different posters who blog at other nodes in that graph.
That brings up some interesting questions. The last survey placed self-identified neoreactionaries as a very small percentage of LW readership (scroll down to “Alternate Politics Question”). Progressivism appears to be the most popular political philosophy around here, with libertarianism a strong competitor; nothing else is in the running.
That’s not the first time I’ve heard LW referred to as a neoreactionary site, though; once might be coincidence, but twice needs explanation. With the survey in mind it’s clearly not a matter of explicitly endorsed philosophy, so I’m left to assume that we’re propagating ideas or cultural artifacts that’re popular in neoreactionary circles. I’m not sure what those might be, though. It might just be our general skepticism of academically dominant narratives, but that seems like too glib an explanation to me.
Could this be explained by the base rates?
Imagine a society with 10 neoreactionaries and 10000 liberals (or any other mainstream political group). Let’s suppose that 5 of the neoreactionaries and 500 of the liberals read LessWrong.
In this society, neoreactionaries would consider LessWrong one of “their” websites, because half of them are reading it. Yet the LessWrong survey would show that neoreactionaries are just a tiny minority of its readers.
That’s a heck of a coincidence, but it would explain a perception among neoreactionaries. It wouldn’t, however, explain perceptions among (to use your example) liberals; unless the latter spend a lot of time reading blogs from the former, they’re probably going to be using an outside view, which would give them the same ratios we see in the survey. Out in the wild, I’ve seen the characterization coming from both sides.
Although the graph in the ancestor is from a neoreactionary blog.
While I’m not sure what “neoreactionary” refers to specifically there are lots of reasons that certain types of liberals see LessWrong as reactionary:
A somewhat strong libertarian component
Belief in evolutionary psychology
Anti-religous (or generally the belief that beliefs can be right or wrong)
LessWrong’s more technical understanding of evidence is incompatible with standpoint theory and similar epistemic frameworks favored by some groups of liberals.
Those older discussions around PUA where it’s presented in a pretty positive light
Glorification of the enlightenment.
Viliam’s explanation seems like a strong one to me, but doesn’t explain the historical accident of (to use his made up numbers) half of neoreactionaries reading LW.
I suspect that LW has a vibe of “actually think through everything, question your implicit assumptions, and follow logic to its conclusion.” The neoreactionary believes that doing so ends up at the neoreactionary position- even if that is true for only 1% of people, that leads to a 10X higher concentration of neoreactionaries at LW. At the very least, it seems that LW has a strong tendency to destroy strong political leanings, and especially affection for popular government-supporting narratives.
The impression I got from looking at their graph is that a strong libertarian component is enough by itself. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen people consider libertarianism inherently very regressive.
Edit: Originally I assumed that it was accusing Less Wrong of being neoreactionary, but looking a bit around the site it looks like they might be praising it.
I don’t think that’s a powerful enough explanation. Setting aside the differences between libertarianism and neoreaction, there are far more libertarian-leaning blogs than that graph can account for, and many of the missing ones are more popular than we.
I agree.
It might be worth noting that in this thread, the other thread where we just crossed paths, there are two different posters who blog at other nodes in that graph.