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

9 Post author: arborealhominid 16 November 2012 06:37PM

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Comment author: James_Ernest 22 November 2012 03:03:10AM 4 points [-]

Actually, the is/ought distinction is omnipresent in the complete Moldbug thesis, as espoused in his, uh, sequences. Hence the reformulation of politics as an amoral engineering challenge.

There's a lot of deliberately inflammatory language present, as well as a relatively high inferential distance, to which the inflammatory language mostly serves to filter the audience for, or at least a positive affect.

Translated into English, all that statement says is "Here is a presentation of classical or Austrian economics. This is not practised at large anywhere on earth today (for reasons which will be divulged elsewhere)."