Yep. Both him and me have stressed the first half of that several times in one form or other. However, it's nonsense to say that trying to implement ideals is bad, period, because the problem here is that humans are very bad at some things that would be excellent in themselves - like a benevolent dictatorship. If, for example, we had some way to guarantee that one would stay benevolent, then clearly all other political systems should get the axe - to an utilitarian, there's no more justification for their evils! But in reality attempts at one usually end in tears.

However, trying to, say, keep one's desk neat & organized is also an ideal, yet many people, particularly those with OCD, are quite good at implementing it. It is clear, then, that whatever we do, we should first look to psychological realities, and manipulate ourselves in such a way that they assist our stated goals or just don't hinder them as much.

I see, so this is why you seem to often bring up such discussion on LessWrong? Because you see it as a repository of smart, under-socialized, independent thinkers? I do to a certain extent and in this light, your most recent writing appears much more targeted rather than a overblown obsession.

In brief, I fear alt-right/technocratic ideas not because they're in any way popular or "viral" at present, but because I have a nasty gut feeling that they - in a limited sense - do reflect "reality" best of all, that by most naive pragmatist reasoning they follow from facts of life, and that more and more people for whom naive reasoning is more important than social conventions will start to adopt such thinking as soon as they're alerted to its possibility.

Do you think this might already be happening? The naive social conventions ignoring utilitarianism we often find ourselves disagreeing with seems to be remarkably widespread among baseline LessWrongers. One merely needs to point out the "techno-facist" means and how well they might work and I can easily see well over a third embracing them, and even more, should criticism of "Cathedral" economic and political theory become better understood and more widespread.

But again remember the "alternative right" has plenty of anti-epistemology and mysticism springing from a fascination with old fascist and to a lesser extent new left intellectuals, this will I think restrain them from fully coalescing around the essentially materialist ethos that you accurately detect is sometimes present.

And even if some of this does happen either from the new right people or from "rationalists" and the cognitive elite, tell me honestly would such a regime and civilization have better or worse odds at creating FAI or surviving existential risk than our own?

And, crucially, in the age of the internet and such, there will be more and more such under-socialized, smart people growing up and thinking more independently

But recall what Vladimir_M pointed out, in order to gain economic or political power one must in the age of the internet be more conformist than before, because any transgression is one google search away. Doesn't this suggest there will be some stability in the social order for the foreseeable future? Or that if change does happen it will only occur if a new ideal is massively popular so that "everyone" transgresses in its favour. Then punishment via hiring practices, reputation or law becomes ineffective.

I'm following you from your links in "Nerds are Nuts" and I would like to restate your second paragraph to make sure I have your beliefs rights.

The reason the alt-right is scary is not because they are wrong in their beliefs about reality, but because they are correct about the flaws they see in modern-leftism and this makes their proposals all the more dangerous. Just because a doctor can diagnose what ails you, it does not follow that he knows how to treat you. The Alt Right is correct in it's diagnosis of societal cancers but their proposals look depressingly closer to leeching than to chemo-therapy.

Is this an accurate restatement?