Eugine_Nier comments on Rationality Quotes May 2012 - Less Wrong
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Oh I didn't mean to imply you would! But surely you would like to move our current society towards that at some (slow or otherwise) rate, or at least learn enough about the world to eventually get a good plan of doing so.
Nearly every human is I think. Socialism and its variants tap into primal parts of our mind and its ethical and political intuitions. And taking seriously most of our stated ethics one is hard pressed to not end up a libertarian or a communist or even a fascist. Fortunately most people don't think too hard about politics. I don't want the conversation to go down this path too far though since I fear the word "socialist" is a problematic one.
Specifically the great power structures opposing moves towards your ideal. It almost dosen't matter which ideal, since those that I see would oppose most change and I have a hard time considering them benevolent. Even milquetoast regular leftism thinks itself fighting a few such forces, and I would actually agree they are there. You don't need to agree with their bogeyman, surely you see some much more potent forces shaping our world, that don't seem inherently interested in your ideals, that are far more powerful than.... the writer of a photocopied essay you picked up on the street?
For Moldbug himself points out, since the barrier to entry to writing a online blog is so low, absent other evidence, you should take him precisely as seriously as a person distributing such photocopied essays. How many people have read anything by Moldbug? Of those how many agree? Of those how many are likely to act? What if you take the entire "alternative" or "dissident" or "new" right and add these people together. Do you get million people? Do you even get 100 thousand? And recall these are dissidents! By the very nature of society outcasts, malcontent's and misfits are attracted to such thinking.
While I have no problem with you reading right wing blogs, even a whole lot of them, since I certainly do, I feel the need to point out, that you cite some pretty obscure ones that even I have heard about let alone followed, dosen't that perhaps tell you that you may be operating under a distorted view or intuition of how popular these ideas are? By following their links and comment section your brain is tricked into seeing a different reality from the one that exists, take a survey of political opinion into your hands and check the scale of the phenomena you find troubling.
Putting things into perspective, It seems a waste to lose sleep over them, does it not? Many of them are intelligent and consistent, but then so is Will Newsome and I don't spend much time worrying about everlasting damnation. If you want anything that can be described as "utopian" or "socialist" your work is cut out for you, you should be wondering how to move mountains, not stomp on molehills.
Keep in mind that while every improvement is a change, most potential changes are not improvements and for most ideals, attempting to implement them leads to total disaster.
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.