TimS comments on Politics Discussion Thread January 2013 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: OrphanWilde 02 January 2013 03:31AM

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Comment author: TimS 02 January 2013 02:04:50PM 1 point [-]

I agree that talking about partisan labels is unlikely to lead to useful analysis (although the game-theoretic and principal-agent issues in the recent budget stand-off in the US are interesting).

But I think noting the contours of ideological movements (like socialism, feminism, or Moldbuggery) is valuable. The sentence:

That point by Moldbug is interesting, but it is not unique to his philosophy. Economists, feminists, psychologists, socialists, and dwarves all assert essentially identical points.

Just as useful:

For consistency, socialists must also assert position Y, which most non-socialists reject.

Some of our disagreement might be that in the US, socialist (or green or monarchist) is not a partisan label because there is no serious political party that asserts those views. Europe has more diverse active political movements.