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Multiheaded comments on 2012 Survey Results - Less Wrong
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The question is, how much do they contribute to the "value-neutral" goals like epistemic rationality/practical knowledge/whatever, versus the disutility that I suffer by them succeeding at their values - and perhaps getting to influence the future disproportionately, if LW/SIAI achieve a lot and give leverage to all participants? Extreme right-wingers all seem to share the explicit values of institutionalized dominance, rigid hierarchy, rejection of universal ethics and the suppression of any threat to such an order.
For example, you've quoted Roissy around here before as a good instrumental rationalist and worthwhile writer - and, say, Hanson links to him, and Vladimir_M endorsed him - yet I think that he must've already caused enough misery with his blog and his personal actions, never mind whatever political impact his vile thoughts might have. I don't think that our community should be willing to cooperate or communicate with thinkers like him. At all. And he's small fish compared to the intellectual currents that might appear if the "Dark Enlightenment" grows some more. I have pondered where those ideas might lead, and it fills me with equal part horror and rage.
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If this movement indeed has potential for growth, I wish for a broad cordon against it, from academic liberals like Corey Robin to far-left writers like Matthew Lyons to LW-style progressive technocrats.
Many in the rationalist community are also part of the memetic cluster of the "Dark Enlightenment". Moldbuggians, PUAs and HBDers are noticeable and seem to be participating in good faith on this forum, making various contributions while being mostly tolerant and polite to those of differing views. I argue this kind of ideological diversity and cooperation is vital to the goals of this community.
Again your post causes me to pause in concern. We don't see many arguments on LW calling for a wide political coalition to disband and attack The Cathedral, which I think I could make quite convincingly if I wanted to here. The way well meaning people would understand and implement your call would lead to my own exclusion and that of others such as Vladimir_M.
Should those like me be hanging out in Roissy's comment section rather than here?
Konkvistador, you were deep in the Enemy's counsel! Tell us what you know! Do you really believe that they are all like Derbyshire, merely doomsaying and wallowing in bitterness? Their numbers grow by the hour; they will first be encouraged by this, then emboldened, then they will gather every single forbidden idea, every scrap of dark knowledge, and put Universalism to the test.
They profess scorn of all dreams and utopias, yet they have their own desire - Pronomianism, a stable world, safe for domination and slavery, where the strong are free from restraint and convention and the weak are free from choice and autonomy. They know where they want to go, they know their enemy, they do not fear for their feelings, conscience or sanity. Mainstream Universalism has only sheer numbers and inertia against these force multipliers.
I believe that we ought to strike as soon as possible. Few on the Left are alerted and concerned yet - but people like Land probably don't expect a counterattack until much later, and surely don't expect it to come from outside the Cathederal. Isolate them epistemically while they're still few, attack their values as evil and dehumanizing, drive them into a phyg-like structure that would be bad at growth. So, what else can be done?
I see the "dark enlightenment" as a very minor force with little potential for growth, but one that intellectually seems a necessary correction to some of the mistakes of the first "enlightenment" that have metastasised over the past two centuries.
It won't kill Universalism or even dethrone it, it might however create the happy state of affairs where the Cathedral's theocratic nature is recognized as such and considered legitimate but people don't take it too seriously. Like say the Anglican Church a century or two back.
Roissy is not dispensing any advice that goes beyond what is common in sexual cultures created by well meaning universalists in the inner city and lower class. Philosophers such as Nick Land may be scary in their style and thoughts, but their inquiry is following the tradition of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Bloggers like Moldbug are fascinated by the civilized aspects and achievements of Western civilization in the past more than its hierarchy. Their more scientifically minded members as say John Derbyshire (who you consider to have a grim heart) are rather reasonable. And stepping away from their atheist mainstream to their intellectual Christian faction? Do you even have a problem with those?
I grow more and more convinced that the dark enlightenment is a reformation of universalism rather than its abolition. Recall one of their favourite memes is fighting Lies and the search for Truth, a more Christian notion could not be found.
I'm not an expert on this by any means, but I always thought of that as a Christian syncretion of a Greek preoccupation. A lot of the more philosophical side of the historical Christian worldview got its start that way, and Aquinas in particular had a lot of Aristotle in him.
Yes I think this is correct, up voted. What I wanted to emphasize is that the received these particular memes almost certainly via Christianity, even if the religion wasn't their origin. It is evidence in favor of them carrying other universalist assumptions and values from the same source.
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This might fit my definition of "reason"... but what is noble or compassionate about it? How is Derbyshire preaching acceptance of inequality and submission to Nature different from the Catholic Church preaching acceptance of death and submission to God? If you think it reasonable to loathe death, why would you not loathe the genetic lottery?
I support Eliezer completely. Therefore I have to oppose Derbyshire unflinchingly.
This does not seem like submission to nature to me. I do not think he would object at all to say genetic engineering or eugenic programs aimed at reducing such suffering or boosting cognitive performance.
Derbyshire is asking us to please stop trying things that do not work and scapegoating those who aren't responsible for misery inflicted by nature! I find it remarkable that you do not seem to grasp the moral relevance of avoiding scapegoating people at all! It is a terrible thing to look down on people and make them feel guilty and bad for something that is not their fault.
If you want to find nobility and compassion I say look here.
You read the article but did not understand it. Derbyshire stands where he stands intellectually because he can not do otherwise, no more than he can convince himself that there is a God. That is something I understand and sympathize with.
I will go further and say that he fears many of the same societal outcomes that you do.
But look, he demands that we accept it as a tolerable state of affairs! Eliezer says the opposite - yes, no particular person is to blame, but things are still horrible; we're still living in a nightmare. To borrow from left-wing jargon again, I want a right to negativity here, a forceful statement that the default/normal/natural condition is awful, even with no-one to blame, and that there is an ethical imperative to ameliorate it.
Derbyshire's article should have begun with "oughts", his "is" statements might be true but they're insufficient for humans. The fact that you being born e.g. black and in the slums and now you're likely fucked and maladapted is no-one else's fault does not mean that you are not entitled to scream, to express anguish. And dude, there's a lot of anguish!
Taboo "tolerable".
What ethical system are you using to make that assertion?
Eliezer is a utilitarian. Yes, it would improve overall utility to ameliorate this particular problem, there are also hundreds of other problems whose solution would also improve utility, and frankly by any measure of urgency or returns to effort, this one really isn't even in the top 100.
Do you also believe that it's a crime against humanity for God not to have given all humans (or even any humans) AGI-level intelligence?
Clearly, he means we should kill anyone who deviates from the average because they devalue the rest.
You underestimate universalism. It has adapted before. Recall that the Cathedral is a warm body machine, a belief pump. The victory of Democracy in the age of conscription and the printing press was no fluke. So as long as human minds by the billions can be thrown into the gears of war its complete defeat is unimaginable. What you must defend is not the ideology but the strategy. So clearly in order for this strategy to be viable you have to burn the mutant, kill the xeno and purge the heretics.
For the Emperor!
As an intellectual exercise, what would the Catholic Special Containment Procedure for ultra hazardous memetic materials look like applied to reaction.
Actually why wouldn't ultra-traditional Catholicism work in such a role?
Or maybe the hour is later than you think Multiheaded.
Oh wow. It's on! It's officially on like Donkey Kong.
Wonder when they'll put up something quotable, from Land or otherwise - maybe some "watchdog" far-left blog would be interested. (BTW some New-Left-y blog that looks at the aesthetics of materialist philosophy has been covering Land; unfortunately, the university jargon there is near-impenetrable.)
Well, that's an expected precaution.
You are too quick in ascribing incompatible values to people you disagree with. That's the cheap way out; it allows you to write off their opinion without considering the fact that they might have the same terminal values as you, and arrived at their instrumental position for rational, empirical reasons. Then you'd have to actually consider whether their position is correct, instead of just writing them off.
This is the straw-man version you get taught about by the Universalist establishment. Don't take it seriously as what these folks are actually thinking. Some people are just dumb and evil, and most confuse "this is instrumentally a good idea" with "this is terminally a good idea" but there's less of them than you are taught, and there actually are good reasons for the apparent craziness.
It is perfectly possible for someone to have the same values as you and consider (the non-straw) version of those things to be instrumentally a good idea.
I don't know what you are thinking but I know that feel. I had that same feel just a few months ago. I used to look at authoritarians, racists, PUAs, and such and think. "what the fuck is wrong with these people? How could they be so wrong? Are they evil?" mostly I just felt that horror and rage though.
The truth has a certain ring to it. I first noticed that truthiness with LW; "wow, these guys get thinking right", then a while later, with MMSL (married PUA) "Wow, this stuff is totally different from what we're taught, but it works (on my wife)". Then with do-ocracy, and authoritarianism "wow this just works so much better for meetup organizing". Then with HBD, when I realized that I could build an acceptable line of retreat in the case that the racists were right on the factual questions.
And then, to quote moldbug: "for a wide variety of controversial issues, it would be very, very easy for any smart young person with a few hours to spare to see what the pattern of truth and error, and its inevitable political associations, started to look like." That is, the "Dark Enlightenment" convinced me, a former hardcore anarchist.
So please, please consider that your enemies are not evil mutants. That people might reject democracy, and accept dark enlightenment ideas for actual good reasons, not just because they have magical "incompatible values". Please, please consider that you may not have all the facts, and that you may end up changing your mind on some of these issues.
Please don't. What if you're wrong? How will you realize your error if you put in hard blocks against certain ideas?
As someone who finds alt-right ideas interesting to read about and discuss, but is at the end of the day a conventional mainstream liberal, the advice I'd give you is: you should chill out.
Discussion of political topics at this site, as at Moldbug's and other related ones, and also the vast majority of blogs and sites all over the political spectrum (with the possible but tiny exception of a handful of blogs connected to the D or R party apparatus or to insiders affecting government policy decisions) is essentially mental masturbation, something that will not affect in any way the future of humanity. It is just a way to pass the time some find interesting, as others prefer solving Sudoku puzzles or pondering Newcomblike problems.
Your feeling that a group of ideological "outsiders" who don't share your values is growing in influence, and might take over if they are not "cordoned" and lead to some horrible catastrophe, sounds like the kind of feeling appropriate for a small hunter-gatherer tribe where if a dozen or two enemies of you join forces and take over you will have a very bad time. It is not appropriate for the objective situation of a forum with several thousand people, and much less for a country of 300 million people or a humanity of 7 billion people. The future of the world, even the future of LW, is not going to be shaped by the occasional crypto-racist (/sexist/fascist/etc) posts of a handful of people.
Sufficiently bad government can make a large difference, so it's not irrational to oppose bad ideas. On the other hand, most bad ideas don't get a chance to take hold. And on yet another hand, if you don't like something, it's very tempting to evoke the worst possible consequences and make them seem as vivid as possible.
Sure, it is reasonable to oppose bad ideas and to worry about worst-case scenarios. But when these are objectively low-probability, the reactions of "horror and rage" seem disproportionate.
Konkvistador, maybe you would mention your recent... little incident? (If no, then sorry, never mind.)