TimS comments on Why is Mencius Moldbug so popular on Less Wrong? [Answer: He's not.] - Less Wrong
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No, it really isn't. Our confidence in empirical propositions from the history / social sciences disciplines is structurally lower than our confidence in empirical propositions from hard science. But that doesn't mean that we can't point to some empirical propositions and say "Not likely enough for further consideration."
We were having a discussion elsewhere about whether "moral progress" and "moral regress" were meaningful labels. Establishing our disagreement on those points seems to be a prerequisite for figuring out what we can and can't learn from history. At the very least, agreement on terminology is necessary to shorten inferential distance enough for us to even have a conversation.