JoshuaZ comments on Why is Mencius Moldbug so popular on Less Wrong? [Answer: He's not.] - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (259)
By the way, you can quote on less wrong by putting a ">" at the beginning of a paragraph. So if I write "> this" I get:
Moving on:
No. That's not the argument being made here. The argument being made is twofold: 1) Exceptions exist (which doesn't contradict the statistical claim) and 2) The statistics are actually weak effects. But if you prefer, consider the following situation: In many parliamentary systems one has a wide variety of different political parties. Israel for example has 14 parties with representation in the Knesset. Almost any two parties agree on at least one issue, and disagree on a variety of issues. That means that if a party is correct about all issues, then there have to be a large number (or even a majority) of people who are correct about that issue but wrong on many other issues. Even in a system like the US, people have a variety of different views and don't fall into two strict camps in many ways (here again is somewhere where the GSS data is worth looking at), so the claim that people are across the board irrational or rational just doesn't make sense.
Sure, this is likely the cause of some of what is going on here, especially in regards to global warming. Moreover, more educated people are more likely to know what their own tribe is generally expected to believe and adjust their views accordingly.
I'm citing GSS data which happens to be discussed in more detail at a certain set of blogs. Note that the GSS data is freely availalble so you can easily verify the claims yourself. Note also that phrasing this question as "authoritarian" v. "liberal" is even more misleading than your earlier statement about authoritaianism. The data in question is explicitly about self-identification as liberal or conservative, not about any metric of authoritarianism. Indeed, many viewpoints that are classically seen as "conservative" or "right-wing" are anti-authoritarian. For example, free market economics is a right-wing viewpoint.
Yes, and there are actually fascinating things that occur when you try to. If you control in the GSS for income and education for example then self-identified liberals outperform self-identified conservatives. But that's not terribly relevant: the question here is given someone's political orientation, what should you expect about their knowledge level and accuracy of world view across politics and other issues? The underlying causal issues are an interesting side-issue but don't touch on the basic question.
That doesn't make any sense. You are essentially claiming that someone who says "That guy over there may be wrong about a lot of things but he may have a handful of valid points" is more wrong than the person believes all the wrong points. Essentially, this claim amounts to saying that being open to a possibility of a diamond in the coal is more irrational than thinking the coals are all diamonds. Do you see the problem?
Sure, I think reading Moldbug is generally a waste of time and wouldn't recommend people to read him. But that's not the issue that we're discussing. Scroll back up a bit. The issue that started this subthread was the claim that some people on LW thinking that Moldbug might be worth paying attention to meant that there was something deeply wrong with Less Wrong as a whole. That's the context that's relevant here (and in that context most of the rest of your comment isn't germane).