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arborealhominid comments on Why is Mencius Moldbug so popular on Less Wrong? [Answer: He's not.] - Less Wrong
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He is? Since when?
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.