I asked him if he was ever going to write his mega-rebuttal, and he said "it's on my list of things to do, but that list also includes 'write a perfect philosophical language' and 'reach enlightenment'." So I think that's a pretty clear "maybe".

He has explicitly said that he's not willing to engage with HBD, in a way that shocked me and broke my model of him as a reasonable rationalist.

To be honest... if I had a blog, especially one linked to my real name and real-life identity, I would probably do the same thing that he seems to be doing and refuse to talk about race. Unfortunately, it seems hard to imagine that with the current evidence we have today, a true rationalist could get farther than the position of "it seems very unlikely that there are significant mental differences between races", and yet that's essentially the right edge of the Overton window. If that's his reason for not discussing the topic, he can't go out and say it, because that's essentially like admitting he's outside of the window.

I doubt this very much. The differences between the far-right faction and the progressives (among whom I count myself) on this website are not primarily of the sort that can be bridged by intelligent argument, for a number of reasons.

Wrong. I used to be a reasonable, well adjusted progressive, even a quite ideologically passionate one (leaning towards anarchism). Moldbug's intelligent analysis (for all its flaws) convinced me that I was wrong. I can't be the only one who is capable of responding to argument.

Why?

Some of those guys certainly seem irrational and stuck in their ways, but... to be honest, if there are any coherent responses to Moldbug & co. I have yet to see them. It's not like there's a whole bunch of literature that they're stubbornly ignoring. If you actually brought them rational arguments that they were forced to confront, I think at least some of them would update their beliefs - this is LessWrong, after all.

EDIT: In response to your edit: (For those reading, it initially just said "I doubt this very much.")

The differences between the far-right faction and the progressives (among whom I count myself) on this website are not primarily of the sort that can be bridged by intelligent argument, for a number of reasons.

This doesn't seem obvious to me. Could you list those reasons?

The problem with the reactionaries getting rebuttals in the form of "that's a socially horrible thing to say and you're a horrible person, fuck you" is that viewpoints that seem supported by science but are socially shunned as unthinkable are catnip here. A rebuttal that shows that actually the argument isn't very solid, or the science isn't being interpreted right, or that there are large chunks of important stuff being left out of the argument would have a lot more staying power, while just bringing on the social shaming sends the signal that the reactionaries might be on to something since it seems to be hard to come up with a rebuttal that works on the same level as their arguments.

I mean a game changer in this community. Obviously Yvain's blog posts will not have far-reaching real-world political implications.

By the way, singularitarianism is also a seriously minor viewpoint held by cranks.

To stand up for my values and denounce all the shit I hate here in an articulate, reasoned manner. But I'm very much not up to the task, and this makes me feel frustrated and miserable. And angry at my own impotence in the matter.

I think it's important to separate out preferences and predictions, and try to limit values to the first. If you want to do something about posts you think should be responded to civilly, send them to me and I'll take a look.

That said...

You gentlemen can probably guess as to which ones of you I mean by this.

I feel like I should point out that I put about 20% probability that I'm included in this. In general, people are not as good at guessing this sort of information as you would expect.

I feel like I have a duty before a community that I see massive potential in. To stand up for my values and denounce all the shit I hate here in an articulate, reasoned manner.

Then collect the worst examples and make an article of them. Preferably the ones that were upvoted (because if they were downvoted it means the community already disagrees with them). If the situation is so horrible, you should have an easy job. Just create a text file on your desktop, and anytimes something pisses you off, put the permalink there. Wait until you have enough material (please, don't make it a series of short articles), then process it.

It'd be a big amount of work to even call out the most egregious shitty shit here on a regular basis, with some citations and explanations for why I did so.

If the things are really so horrible, is the explanation even necessary? Just give a dozen citations, which prove it wasn't a one-time event, and that's it. Preferably they should be citations of different people.

If you want to make a drama, please put some work into it. Or use your rationality and outsource the job -- take 10 of your most ideologically close friends and ask them to spend one afternoon trying to find the most horrible upvoted comments, so that you can write a critical article.

I understand. However, there isn't some binary pass/fail criterion. This community can become incrementally better (obligatory "less wrong") or worse. Your contributions are helping steer it along a good path (ahem, usually).

If you've set extremely ambitious goals for yourself ("I will make this community live up to its full potential"), and those then stop you from pursuing more realistic milestones along that trajectory, then you've shot yourself in the foot:

The perfect is the enemy of the good, and all that. Compare "Can't stop world hunger altogether [assuming that's your ultimate objective], so I should stop donating anything towards that goal."

People care, at least more than we allow ourselves to think from within our protective cynical bubble.

denounce all the shit I hate here in an articulate, reasoned manner. But I'm very much not up to the task, and this makes me feel frustrated and miserable. And angry at my own impotence in the matter.

Can you just write a single big manifesto of why LessWrong is shit, and then link to it all the time?

To stand up for my values and denounce all the shit I hate here in an articulate, reasoned manner.

Calling people "smug, condescending fascist fucks" is not expressing yourself in an articulate, reasoned manner.

A problem is that people uttering political opinions often do not see themselves as doing that. For as has been written, what it feels like to have a belief, while you are having it, is not that you believe something, but that you are looking straight at reality.

Then someone contests the obliviously held belief, and it is they who are accused of bringing in politics.

The pattern is especially clear in spaces where there is a prevailing political consensus. Only people posting against it are accused of politics, everyone else is merely speaking the truth. I have seen this in both left-wing and right-wing spaces. In fact, it is the default behaviour in such spaces. Regardless of the cause, the stronger the consensus, the more invisible it becomes to its members.

I think It's a bad thing to the extent that it could lead to opinions propagating without debate.

In the wider world, even things like atheism are "extremely controversial," but I don't think we need to make dramatic shows of uncertainty and humility every time someone brings it up; most all of us here are atheists and we need to move on and discuss the more difficult questions. What I worry about is that a community norm of being vocal about our opinions but not discussing them rationally or even at all most of the time then we may wind up deciding what to think via memetic exposure and perhaps evaporative cooling instead of rationality. This sort of effect would also be a danger if we had a norm of being verbally abusive to anyone with an unpopular opinion, of course.

Note that I can't offer evidence that this is a real risk or a phenomenon that actually happens in online communities, but it worries me.

The downvote button should be the difference.

If we are not willing to even spend the energy required to push the button to protect the level of discussion we have here, that almost seems like we don't care about it.

This doesn't make the approval by silence a good thing.

Start out on a volunteer basis, use donations to accumulate wealth, and use that, rather than political power, as a lever to keep the Jews/women/poor down and make people have kids and other fascist policies? You can't use violence, but you can get a monopoly on everything and make people obey or starve.

I fail to see how. I had an opinion about the thread, and in addition, an opinion about that opinion: that it was worth expressing. So I did. Others may disagree with either of those opinions (for example you), but they do not choose my actions. I do. What is the score in this hypothetical game? (It isn't the karma rating of Multiheaded's post.)

Given his history, I suspect it's because he doesn't like the positions held by the "fascists" but can't refute their arguments.