NancyLebovitz comments on The Nanny State Didn't Show Up, You Hired It [LINK] - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (27)
I followed the link, and wow that was a bad article. After sampling some of the structureless, self-indulgent writing, I realized I've actually read a few posts from him before. My personal favorite is this, where he takes a break from rambling about some internet celebrity to explain that we are all sheeple for not turning widescreen monitors sideways.
But what makes The Last Psychiatrist really awful is that he pretends to be wise. One very easy way to establish oneself as Wise and Profound is to baldly make some seemingly self-contradictory or obviously false statement. It's important not to actually argue for this claim, simply make it, and sneer at anyone who disagrees. A great example:
Heh, you think you don't believe in god? Think again, sheeple! The Last Psychiatrist doesn't need evidence, he just makes reality up as he goes.
For what it's worth, The Last Psychiatrist used to be interesting, but then he started ranting about how everyone (else) is a narcissist without giving any clue about what a non-narcissistic approach to life would be like.
Replace "narcissist" with "hypocrite" and that's a good description of Robin Hanson.
Which raises the question - if Hanson turns out to be massively hypocritical on something, does that undermine or support his whole Homo hypocritus paradigm?
I think Hanson's been showing more variation lately.
Possible, I stopped reading him several years ago.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Hanson's whole point that everyone is naturally hypocritical, and has been made that way via millions of years of evolution optimized to handle social politics in small forager bands? Wouldn't a "non-[hypocritical] approach to life" be something that Hanson's theory would predict wouldn't exist?
In that case what cluster in thing-space does the word "hypocrite" cut out?