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Neo comments on Stranger Than History - Less Wrong
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If you were actually living in 1901 and got a bunch of future predictions made by people of the time, and chose the ones with similar absurdity to the ones described above, chances are very unlikely that you'd end up with an accurate prediction. Pointing out that an accurate description of today would have sounded silly in 1901 is hindsight bias; most things that would have sounded silly in 1901 really were silly.
Also, although it doesn't show up too much in the predictions you chose, people in 1901 had much lower levels of rationality than people from the 20th century. For instance, I'd expect someone from 1901 to think gay marriage is absurd, because beliefs about that have a heavy religious component and religion ruled people's lives in 1901 in a way that it does not now.
(And some of the items are described in a way that seem stranger to people from 1901 than necessary. What if you described the Internet as a network which controls fax machines that displays pictures so fast that they looked like flipbooks?)
Do you have any examples of this which do not rely on measuring peoples' rationality by the extent they agree with modern progressive political views?
Flynn effect, economic prosperity, increase in rate of innovation, and better educational systems and other tools are around nowadays.
I cannot provide you a video tape, but this seems to be at least some evidence for that statement in my opinion.
The significance of the Flynn effect is disputed, and some claim that the course of the 20th century saw a decline in innovation. Unfortunately, the divide on these matters, at least in the lay blogosphere, aligns with a political division. Those who want to say that the world is going to hell in a handbasket point to a decline in reaction times (which are correlated with intelligence) and claim scientific stagnation, those who believe that we've never had it so good and will have it better in the future point to Flynn and the modern cornucopia. Is evidence producing worldviews or are worldviews selecting evidence?
Those who advocate that the world is going to hell, do they point to a certain era as the most rational time, and what would have caused the downturn?
EDIT: Mainly asking this question in order to find out how they measure rationality, as right now I find the point of view rather surprising.
I don't think the world is going to hell, but I do think that wealth and power can give you more luxury to hold irrational beliefs. So perhaps people were more rational back in the days of our noble savage ancestors and it's been downhill ever since. :)
Since holding irrational beliefs tends to result in eventually loosing one's wealth and power, this tends to work as a negative feedback effect.
I'm not sure this is true because of standby-rationality mode. Also known as hypocrisy.
Agreed. Powerful people (especially politicians) seem to hold plenty of irrational beliefs. Of course we can't really tell the difference between lying about irrational beliefs and hypocrisy, if there's a meaningful difference for the outside observer at all.
The problem is that the politician who honestly holds a popular irrational belief (assuming said belief isn't directly related to the mechanisms of election campaigns) is better able to signal it and thus more likely to get elected than the politician who merely false claims to hold it.
Standby-rationality mode isn't nearly as good as actual rational reasoning. Also hypocrisy creates cognitive dissonance (both in individuals and institutions) that tends to be resolved by actually adopting the (false) beliefs one is claiming to believe.
Can you give me a couple concrete examples of this?
Same question. TIA
I'm referring to the reactosphere, of course, which I don't actually follow, but am aware of. Some trace the fall to the Enlightenment, some to the Reformation. Moldbug, on the other hand, has a lot of time for writers up to the 19th century, as people who knew what was what and from whose state of grace we have fallen. He has mentioned many times the persistent leftwards trend since then but the last I saw, still considered it a mystery. Others look to prehistory when men were men and women were chattels, and think that things started going downhill with the invention of agriculture, with the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the 20th century being but further headlong descent down the rings of hell.
Leftists, in contrast, read the persistent leftwards trend as the inevitable march towards truth. At least, when they aren't crying "help, help, I'm being oppressed!", which requires portraying their opposition as the ones with power.
You accept the leftard trend as fact, but the economics of the left have been abandoned, while their social policies have been accepted.
"Leftard" :)
What do you mean by economics of the left? Do you mean state capitalism like in China, or a generous welfare state like in Sweden? Arguably both are quite successful.
I think I stopped paying attention to Moldbug somewhere around the time he said he was too cool to respond to Scott's demolishing of neoreaction.
I mean state communism, nationalization, the govt co strolling the means of production.
How has nationalization and the government controlling the means of production been abandoned? Have you seen what Russia and China are up to?
The history of the 19th and 20th century has seen a continuous movement towards welfare and labor reforms, which are broadly "leftist" (or at least a part of the liberal project -- the neoreaction types will agree). In other words, what the heck are you talking about?
Just stating Moldbug's view, but I do think he has a point here. Compare current policies everywhere with those of 100 to 150 years ago (which is the timescale he is viewing things on).
Social or economic policies?
Either. Consider government budget as a percentage of GDP today versus 100 years ago. No, left-wing economic policies haven't been abandoned.
To an extent I agree with you, but based on my personal observations I would say that most people are pretty much irrational now and probably were also back in 1901. Gay marriage is actually a good example. Whether it's a rational belief or not, it's pretty clear to me that most people believe in it or not based on what they think a good liberal (or conservative) is supposed to believe. As opposed to any logical reasoning.
I doubt people were any better back in 1901 -- it's just human nature to believe stuff based on what serves your interests; what group you belong to; what signals you want to send; etc.
So I would say that people were pretty much irrational back in 1901 just like today. (At least in "far mode.")
I chalk it up to sleep deprivation, which was much less prevalent before the Internet/television/the light bulb became available.