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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Why is Mencius Moldbug so popular on Less Wrong? [Answer: He's not.] - Less Wrong
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Comments (259)
He is? Since when?
You've read at least some of his material (since you commented on the ring of Fnargl thought experiment). I would be very interested in your opinion if you don't think this will cause those who agree or disagree with him to go funny in the head.
Politics mindkilled him; he cannot separate the normative and the descriptive.
One thing I noticed when I was archive-binging his site was that there was a very distinct threshold (which I think occurred sometime in '09, but don't quote me on that), when the primary message Moldbug was trying to convey abruptly switched from "Silly progressives! Democracy doesn't work like you think it works" to "Democracy is the worst thing that ever happened in the history of forever". This transition was accompanied by a marked upswing in his general level of bitterness.
And his inability to say anything in less than a zillion words. He can't get started in less than a thousand.
In general, life is too short to spend it working out what Moldbug's actual substantive point is.
This is in part a strategy to keep out the wrong contrarian cluster. But yes reading say Vladimir_M is a better use of time. Moldbug does have some very good essays though.
That sounds very like using the reader's sunk cost fallacy as a marketing move.
I did like Moldbug's essay on the problem with academic computer science, and his rants on computer technology in general. I get more of a sense he knows what he's talking about, rather than pontificating as an interested amateur. (Even when I think he's wrong, it seems a more informed wrong.) It could just be greater subject interest on my part, of course.
I think I agree with this.
I too think I agree but I think there is a spectrum when it comes to the separation of normative claims. Example: Both Marx and Kaczynski failed in distinguishing the normative from the descriptive, but Kaczynski less so.
I do agree with this.
Can you provide an example?
Name three.
See my previous comment re: mistaking a vocal minority for a group consensus.
I don't even think they're particularly vocal. I can recall like two loud Moldbuggians: Konk and Vlad_M, who is inactive and doesn't even mention Moldbug by name, to my knowledge.
I think it looks like these Moldbuggians are active because a lot of Moldbuggianism is deconstructing assumptions about how politics works. So there's a lot of mainstream ideological assumptions that aren't seen as ideological at all by most people (democracy is good, the media is an observer not a participant in government, etc) yet are seen as incorrect and/or political claims by Moldbuggians. So then Moldbuggians say things like "wait now, democracy isn't all that great" and it looks like they suddenly injected Moldbuggery in a non-politics thread, when they see it as just adding another comment on an existing politics thread.
I haven't read Moldbug, so maybe you mean something else by this than what it sounds like, but I don't think I know of anyone with an interest in politics who'd agree with this statement as written. Pretty much everybody thinks that the media has a huge influence on government, up to the point of often determining what decisions the government can make, and which politicians grow popular or fall out of favor. There's a reason why it's called the fourth estate.
I think Moldbug's main point is that even if cynical people acknowledge that the media often uses its powers in biased ways, there's still an ideal that the media should be this fair and balanced impartial observer that just provides information and then lets the people decide. Moldbug beleives such an ideal to be naive and unworkable: the media will allways be biased, and will always use its powers to influence the secular political enviroment, and expecting it not to grossly misunderstands what the media actually is, how it operates and what its incentives are.
There's also the fact that when people think of "biased" media, their minds tend to jump immediately to media that is biased against their own political views, while being blind to the biases of their own favorite media source (witness all the liberals, who rightly decry Fox News while putting NPR on a pedastal).
I think it's also worth noting that (particularly in the context of ideological assumptions about democracy that are not generally perceived to be ideological) there are many forms that bias in the media can take while not even coming close to setting off any warnings of partisan bias.
It is in the basic function of conveyance of seemingly apolitical news that the media continuously privileges the null hypothesis.
Or it may be the case that the biases of media of different affiliation cancel out so that the overall effect of media is near zero (that is, removing media would not dramatically change the public opinion). It is far from obvious that the media have a common systematic bias which is absent in general population.
Isn't this exactly what Moldbug thinks? Well, he has no favourite media, but that's the fate of all fringe ideologues and extremists; if you move sufficiently away from the mainstream, you'll have to expect finding few allies.
Also, having no favourite media source is not that rare; I recall that in my country not long ago the boss of the strongest right wing party said that all media are either leftist or German leftist, while the chairman of the strongest left wing party claimed that all media are biased against him.
[redacted]
You must hang out with smarter people than me.
I'm not sure vocal is a good word, people who have read Moldbug and his ideas mention him certainly but no more than people who read and cite different bloggers like say Sister Y or Razib Khan.
The main reason I think references to his writing stand out as they seem to is because the models he proposes depart so radically from the formal description our society has for itself, yet is taken seriously by some not obviously crazy people.
For "popular", read "gets any attention at all", which he pretty much doesn't elsewhere. (Not, to be fair, that he looks for attention particularly.)