nyan_sandwich comments on 2012 Survey Results - Less Wrong

80 Post author: Yvain 07 December 2012 09:04PM

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Comment author: Multiheaded 06 December 2012 12:25:13PM * 1 point [-]

The thing is right wing thinkers who end up on LessWrong and stay in the community should be comforting to you, these are the people who believe engaging in dialogue and common goals is possible... And I would argue they empower all members of the community by contributing to the explicit goal of refining human rationality

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.

...

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.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 December 2012 08:35:31PM 11 points [-]

their values

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.

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.

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 have pondered where those ideas might lead, and it fills me with equal part horror and rage.

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.

I wish for a broad cordon against it,

Please don't. What if you're wrong? How will you realize your error if you put in hard blocks against certain ideas?

Comment author: Multiheaded comment score below threshold [+] (4 children)

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 10 December 2012 06:30:47AM * 6 points [-]

If it's the latter, then your statement is remarkably unsurprising. So much of this is just the logical development of right-wing libertarianism.

One possible development of right-wing libertarianism. Specifically, what happens if you attempt to coherently extrapolate libertarian maxims, forgetting the original reason for stating them.

This is actually a common general failure mode, one starts with an ethical injunction and notices that it contains a term, X, that is vaguely defined. Rather than thinking about what definition of X would make the injunction make the most sense (which is admittedly dangerous with ethical injunctions) or treating the definition as a Schelling fence, one attempts to formulate a coherent definition of X that turns out to be very different from the one in use when the injunction was being formulated. In the extreme case one might conclude that X includes everything or nothing.

For example, libertarians believe that private parties should be free to do as they wish. Moldburgians extend the definition of private parties to include governments. (Edit: Disclaimer: I have read very little of Moldburg's writings so this might not be an accurate description of his position.)

You're own position, if I understand it correctly, suffers from a similar mistake. Specifically, you take the maxim "It is wrong to hold someone responsible for something that's not his fault", and narrow the definition of "fault" until nothing is ever anyone's fault.

Comment author: Alejandro1 10 December 2012 02:37:58PM 7 points [-]

Very good general point. This post by John Holbo is an examination of this "slippery slope towards absolutism" that libertarianism is in the risk of falling through. Holbo is a liberal and part of his goal is to score points against libertarianism, but I think he is on to something.

I don't think, however, that this is an accurate description of Moldbug's failure mode. The "family resemblance" of his doctrines with libertarianism is not through an ethical injunction of formal liberty to dispose of property, extended to governments. It is rather through a cluster of empirical and empirical-ish right-wing beliefs (government regulation is corrupt and inefficient, Austrian economics is correct and Keynesianism is nonsense, liberal policies on crime are abject failures, etc). His ultimate terminal goals seem to be social order and the minimization of conflict. These lead to the rejection of democracy and its replacement by an all-powerful absolute government as the best way to eliminate both crime and the inefficient jockeying of factions for political power; then the libertarian faith in efficient free markets provides trust that (a) a "patchwork" of such states would be enough to prevent abuses, though competition and right of exit, and (b) within each state, the government will adopt broadly libertarian policies as the way to maximize prosperity to be able to extract the Laffer maximum in taxes.

So instead of starting from libertarian values and developing them in a different direction, his system starts with a very different value and develops it in a direction at ends up close to anarcho-capitalism.

Comment author: Multiheaded 21 December 2012 07:10:36PM * 4 points [-]

Good description, but I think that Moldbug's ideology also has a "hidden" arational/romantic side, although it's simultaneously a technocratic one - a Randian aesthetic of sorts, crossed with a Roman-style cult of mastery and dominance. Consider his hero-worship obituary for Steve Jobs, and compare it with Corey Robin's enlightening examination of Joseph de Maistre. Both of them praise and admire above all competition, victory, fiercely defended supremacy, strength through ruthless adversity, control.

M.M. talks about "social order" and "minimization of conflict" not just because he wants to maximize hedonic utility for humans or something generic like that. Rather, he wants a certain mode of existence, where a technocratic system - a crowdsourced monarchist AGI of sorts - will actively seek out and ruthlessly destroy every disruptive element, every irregularity, every bug - and then continuously apply economic and political coercion to prevent further disturbance. He deeply and sincerely wants the paperclips to run on time. Consider these posts on the link between the engineer/tech-geek mindset and fundamentalism/authoritarianism/far-right radicalism.

Please believe me when I say I know how all this feels from the inside. I fear this mindset in others because my own brain can run it and I find the effects unacceptable. (I wouldn't hesitate to proselytize for e.g. forced total wireheading or a bloody world revolution - if it was the only way to avoid this future.)

Comment author: [deleted] 10 December 2012 05:44:09AM * 2 points [-]

In response to your concerns, I ask one very specific thing of you. Please go and re-read Three Worlds Collide. Right now.

I read it again a few weeks ago, does that count? What are you getting at?

Anarchist more like Bakunin or Durruti, or more like Rand?

More like Bakunin, but I never really followed any school of thought.

WTF are you talking about. Just above, I was complaining how the "Universalist establishment" is silent even on the existence of the alt-right.

I apologize for reading you out of context.

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