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DBreneman comments on Should LessWrong be Interested in the Occupy Movements? - Less Wrong
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Comments (63)
I voted this down because I disapprove of the sarcastic "translations" of OP. Such rhetoric antagonizes (me, anyway), which makes taking sides easier than it otherwise would be. There's some irony there.
Bravo for recommending a specific post for the author to read, though.
Disingenuity deserves skewering. The attempt to dress up political recruitment as "interesting to rationalists", whilst claiming naivety, is disingenuous.
Incidentally I would say the same thing if someone asked if LWers should be interested in putting their weight behind the Tea Party movement (of whom it could also be said that their "goal is lasting societal change, and they have a good deal of momentum already") or any other political group.
That wasn't my core intent, and I'm sorry I angered you by making it look like it was. Honestly I'm a bit of a pop-politics junkie. I also followed the tea party closely, as well as the campaigns of minor candidates like ron paul, because I found it interesting to see how well non-core-party rhetoric would work.
I guess I wanted LW to have a discussion page about it or something because we are a big powerful monkey tribe, and because the stupid ancestral part of my brain respects that, and wants to see what the tribe thinks of my interests. Putting in that little bit about potentially getting involved in the party was going too far, and I'm sorry about that.
Actually, a quick google search of your username leads me to believe you. I apologise for being harsh. Your post came across very badly because of that "little bit", which seemed like its focal point, though. Perhaps you were unaware of the strong taboo against overtly political discussion here.
I would suggest you sate your interest in politics and community organisation by reading books instead. Implying no necessary endorsement of any of these thinkers, here are some that you might find interesting: The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli is the original article; Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals should be relevant to understanding OWS; (selections from) Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks outlines progressive bureaucratic incrementalism; Mencius Moldbug's political writings offer a reactionary perspective; The Machiavellians by James Burnham is a lesser known classic of political science from the mid-20th century; and Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann discusses the interaction of journalism and democracy.
That would be James Burnham. The book certainly can't be recommended highly enough, though! The opening essay clicks particularly strongly with some of the central OB/LW themes about signaling.
Thanks, fixed. Duh.
Thanks for that, it looks like a great selection. The only one of those I've read before is The Prince, and that was a long, long time ago. I definitely need to track all of those down and give my brain a nice warm bath.
I'd read about politics being the mind killer and all that, and that makes my mistakes even more silly in retrospect. I think I wanted my main focus to be on looking at what's useful/worth discussing about the movements, and whether or not they're something that knowledge could be gained from. I thought that would be apolitical enough, but then I went and injected politics into it anyway.