The logical end point of universalism isn't even superhappies, the logical endpoint is a singularity of holier than thou signaling inspired behaviour.
I think not, I think you're strawmanning Universalism without having given it as much thought as I have, and we need much more time and space if we are to pursue this disagreement further. Thanks for letting us seize upon it, at least!
(Damn, just imagine how batshit crazy we must be looking to the average liberal here right now. :D)
P.S.: from Muflax' post about Catholicism that you've linked to above:
I sometimes wonder, just for the lulz, what would the most un-progressive kind of belief system look like? It would have no salvation, no deliverance, no unity, no equality, no hope, no mercy. It would be painful, and gladly so. It would have strict hierarchies you couldn’t even in principle overcome. There would be no goal, and only purity. It would want you to be alone, sick and other.
Sounds reasonable enough. So... um... WTF? Why would the most progressive belief system apply the same torture to you, except with guilt-tripping you about Universalist morality instead of simpler, generic ways?
My line of reasoning here is dead simple. I just think that if there are only two possible stable equilibriums of values, and they are both at extreme ends of this ideological spectrum we see, and one equilibrium is like what Muflax describes above... the Universalist one has to be better for you and me.
I think not, I think you're strawmanning Universalism without having given it as much thought as I have, and we need much more time and space if we are to pursue this disagreement further. Thanks for letting us seize upon it, at least!
I have thought about universalism a lot, especially its monotheist or pseudo-theist implementations. I agree we should discuss this further in the future. I enjoy our discussions and find them intellectually productive so I'm looking forward to that (its why I don't mind paying the 5 karma penalty to respond).
As we have de...
I've seen several people on Less Wrong recommend Mencius Moldbug's writings, and I've been curious about how he became so popular here. He's certainly an interesting thinker, but he's rather obscure and doesn't have any obvious connection to Less Wrong, so I'm wondering where this overlap in readership came from.
[EDIT by E.Y.: The answer is that he's not popular here. The 2012 LW annual survey showed 2.5% (30 of 1195 responses) identified as 'reactionary' or 'Moldbuggian'. To the extent this is greater than population average, it seems sufficiently explained by Moldbug having commented on the early Overcoming Bias econblog before LW forked from it, bringing with some of his own pre-existing audience. I cannot remember running across anyone talking about Moldbug on LW, at all, besides this post, in the last year or so. Since this page has now risen to the first page of Google results for Mencius Moldbug due to LW's high pagerank, and on at least one occasion sloppy / agenda-promoting journalists such as Klint Finley have found it convenient to pretend to an alternate reality (where Moldbug is popular on LW and Hacker News due to speaking out for angry entitled Silicon Valley elites, or something), a correction in the post seems deserved. See also the Anti-Reactionary FAQ by Scott Alexander (aka Yvain, LW's second-highest-karma user). --EY]