pragmatist comments on The best 15 words - Less Wrong

12 Post author: apophenia 03 October 2013 09:08AM

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Comment author: pragmatist 08 October 2013 05:49:38AM *  10 points [-]

I think the issue here is that to you progressivism is a set of very specific ideals whereas to me it is a set of general-purpose political tactics.

Judging by the examples you give, the tactic you're attributing to progressivism is basically harsh condemnation (and often forceful suppression) of purported "human rights abuse" when the perpetrators are ideological enemies, but quiet tolerance (and sometimes even approval) of the same actions when they are perpetrated by allies or by people/groups who do not fit the "bad guy" role in the standard progressive narrative. Is this pretty much what you intended to convey, or am I missing something important?

If I'm not, then I don't see why you tie this behavior to progressivism in particular. It seems like a pretty universal human failure mode when it comes to politics. Of course, the specifics of the rhetoric employed will differ, but I'm sure I can come up with examples similar to yours that apply to conservatives, or indeed to pretty much any faction influential enough to command widespread popular allegiance and non-negligible political clout. Do you think progressives are disproportionately guilty of this kind of hypocrisy, or that this hypocrisy is more central to the success of progressivism than that of other ideologies? Or are you just using the term "progressive" in a much more encompassing sense than its usual meaning in American political discourse?

I've also got to say that I don't find your three examples of progressive hypocrisy all that compelling (even though I don't deny the existence of this sort of hypocrisy among progressives -- I just think you're wrong about degree).

On situation A: The claim that progressives completely ignored Vietnamese ethnic cleansing is false. The push for a more inclusive refugee policy in America in the wake of mass Vietnamese displacement (culminating in the Refugee Act of 1980) was spearheaded by progressives in the Congress (like Ted Kennedy) and backed by labor unions. The UNHCR (which I'm assuming Moldbug regards as a tentacle of the progressive kraken) played a major role in drawing attention to the plight of the boat people. It's true that the Viet Minh's oppression of ethnic Chinese doesn't get condemned as vociferously or routinely as the Nazi oppression of Jews, but I don't buy that this is solely or even primarily attributable to the preservation of the progressive Grand Narrative. One relevant observation is that as bad as the Viet Minh's treatment of the Ethnic Chinese was, the Nazi treatment of Jews was considerably worse.

As for the Rwandan genocide, once again your characterization of the progressive response doesn't seem apt. While it is true that America did basically nothing to stem the genocide while it was in progress, some of the harshest criticism of this American inactivity has come from progressive academics (Samantha Power is a prominent example). Also, I don't think condemnation of the Akazu has been lacking at all. In fact, the impression I get is that Rwanda is the go-to example for modern (post WWII) genocide.

On situation B: I concede that a lot of contemporary discussion of John Brown is unjustifiably reverential, and I don't consider him particularly heroic. But I do think the difference in motivation between McVeigh and him is very relevant to our evaluation of their respective actions. Also, you seem to take for granted that the Haitian revolution was, on the whole, a bad thing. If not, your claim that Brown should have been dissuaded from starting a slave rebellion by the example of Haiti would make no sense. And I disagree that the Haitian revolution was on the whole a bad thing, despite the considerable loss of life involved. Perhaps this is another instance of progressive double standards, but you'll have to make that case for me. As it stands, the argument "Haiti's slave rebellion had horrible results, so John Brown should have expected his rebellion to have horrible results, so he should be treated as someone trying to bring about horrible results" is not very convincing to me, for a number of reasons.

On situation C: I just straight-up reject your characterization of the LCP as "mass murder". While there have been reports of some patients on the LCP being dehydrated and neglected by hospital staff, the numbers do not remotely approach 10,000. That's about the total number of people on the pathway, and there is no evidence I'm aware of that more than a small fraction faced systematic mistreatment (in contravention of the actual guidelines for the LCP, I should note). There is also evidence that a number of people on the pathway received exemplary end-of-life care.

And again, your characterization of the progressive response is pretty tendentious. I guess it's technically true that there are "calls for increased funding to the very organization which enacted" the LCP, but progressives also support increased funding for the Department of Health and Human Services, the very organization which enacted the Tuskegee experiment (gasp!). So no hypocrisy there, then. I find neither demand particularly scandalous, since both organizations do a lot of other good stuff that warrants increased funding. As for the specific abuses of the LCP -- while they are much less common than you claim, they are troubling, and as far as I can tell, there has been no significant progressive opposition to the Neuberger review's recommendation that the LCP be phased out and replaced with something that can be more effectively enforced. I'm not British though, so I may be wrong about this.

Now, it is quite possible that I have to some extent been duped by progressive myth-making in my conception of these situations. If so, I'd appreciate evidence indicating where my beliefs are false.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 October 2013 06:35:19PM 5 points [-]

I concede that a lot of contemporary discussion of John Brown is unjustifiably reverential, and I don't consider him particularly heroic.

I consider him extremely heroic. Not ultrarational, but there were people suffering in the darkness and crying out for help, a lot of people saying "Later", and John Brown saying "Fuck this, let's just do it." If there's a historical consensus that the Civil War could have been avoided, I have not encountered it; and that being so, might as well have the Civil War sooner rather than later.

Comment author: Vaniver 08 October 2013 07:16:03PM 2 points [-]

If there's a historical consensus that the Civil War could have been avoided, I have not encountered it

Here's an argument. Basically, Lincoln could have acted early to keep half of the South, and a confederacy of just seven coastal states primarily dependent on the global cotton market could have been waited out, or brought to heel quickly.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 09 October 2013 05:29:46AM *  2 points [-]

Not ultrarational, but there were people suffering in the darkness and crying out for help, a lot of people saying "Later",

To bring this to contemporary examples, do you support Operation Iraqi Freedom?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 October 2013 12:26:33AM 8 points [-]

If I recall my past opinions correctly, I said at the time that while such wars were the only way to free certain countries, I did not trust the competence of the current administration to prosecute it and was strongly against the way in which it was carried out in defiance of international law.

I would say in retrospect that the resulting disaster would have been 2/3 of the way to my reasonable upper bound for disastrousness, but the full degree to which e.g. the Bush Defense department was ignoring the Bush State department was surprising and would not become known until years later. I have since adjusted my political cynicism upward, and continue to argue with various community-members about whether the US government can be expected to execute elaborate correct actions based on amazingly accurate theories about AI which they got from university professors (answer: no).

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 10 October 2013 01:23:19AM 2 points [-]

Why doesn't the same logic apply to the Civil War?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 October 2013 01:59:42AM 4 points [-]

For one thing, it worked. But I wasn't there at the time, not to mention not being born at the time, so it's hard to argue about what I would have said about the Civil War.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 12 October 2013 06:14:27AM 4 points [-]

For one thing, it worked.

For certain values of "worked". Slavery was abolished, similarly Saddam is no longer in power and Iraq is certainly much closer to democracy (at least by Arab standards). Also in both cases the occupation (called "reconstruction" after the civil war) met with heavy resistance and was ultimately discontinued for political reasons. Ultimately Jim Crow was instituted. It is notable that for roughly a century afterwards the civil war was regarded as a tragic mistake.

Comment author: Moss_Piglet 08 October 2013 02:15:07PM *  -2 points [-]

Judging by the examples you give, the tactic you're attributing to progressivism is basically harsh condemnation (and often forceful suppression) of purported "human rights abuse" when the perpetrators are ideological enemies, but quiet tolerance (and sometimes even approval) of the same actions when they are perpetrated by allies or by people/groups who do not fit the "bad guy" role in the standard progressive narrative. Is this pretty much what you intended to convey, or am I missing something important?

More or less; it's all about framing the debate in terms which push popular sentiment leftward. Whoever controls the null hypothesis gets to decide what the data means, and conservatives suck at statistics.

Now each of my examples is debatable; there are official Progressive answers to each dichotomy and they're all designed to make sense to well educated intelligent people (no-one with any sense would call the Cathedral dim). But if you look at the pattern, not just here but anywhere you look, you see double-standards which invariably favor the political Left and Demotism in general. I can't force you to see it, and I don't begrudge it if you don't, but it is there to see.