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]
Inferring causality from a time-series of various economic variables is incoherent. There first needs to be a deductive understanding of what the causal relationships are between economic variables. That is what is meant by "first principles" here - perhaps the disagreement is semantic.
Data about effects of economic policy tells us nothing if one has not already pre-supposed causal relationships between certain variables (ie, which variable is affecting which). If one had not done so, how does one know which variables to link with which other one? The causality which is being claimed to be derived is actually assumed or it is a result of the data-mining effect.
More importantly though, I suggest (for what it is worth) that you ignore my comments which are replies to others' comments and try the original article. It repays inspection.
I have no expertise in cosmology. So I have no opinion on that which is worth stating. The only comment I have is that Physics has causal relationships clearly defined and known. The different theories thus could make different testable predictions about what we should expect to see in the here and now.
In economics, the different schools (more accurate to call them ideologies) do not agree on basic causal relationships between variables. In more than one case, one of the main tenets (of a popular ideology) is plain, flat-out incorrect, and sometimes definitionally misunderstood. I know it may be hard to believe that monetary economics is that shaky a subject, but it is. The last hundred years have been a regression when it comes to monetary economics. Thus, the first principles analysis: What is an economy?
I will read the Moldbug article, although I have to say I'm not optimistic, given my past experience with his writing. But I do want to disagree on this:
I think you are either underestimating the tools at o... (read more)