There are some interesting ideas in what you wrote, but unfortunately, the whole comment is written in a mindkilling way. Yeah, that's probably your point, so... uhm...

he clearly understands the dynamics of racial privilege, the concept of minstrelsy, and how those relate to contemporary social justice struggles in macro and micro (American belly dancers), but seemingly none of the people he is communicating with do.

Well, one way to deal with people who don't understand what you are trying to tell them, is to explain. It's not the only way -- for example, you could also also bully them into submission -- but it is the way that most LW readers probably prefer. So, if this cause is so important to you, what don't you write an article here, explaining what Arthur Chu gets and we don't? And by explaining, I mean... explaining.

If Less Wrong had been around in the 1820's it would have supported slavery.

More likely, it would discourage object-level debates about slavery (both for and against), so that Americans from both North and South could debate about something else: rationality, etc.

By the way, libertarians are not exactly supporters of the status quo. (By which I am not suggesting that libertarians are most frequent here; but this is what LW is frequently accused of.)

When discussing existing oppressive social structures such as patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism, attempting to dispassionately argue causes this phenomenon at best, and at worst actively silences the people victimized by such structures.

How about other oppressive social structures?

Let me give you an example. Every time I go to a LW meetup to nearby Vienna, I cross a line that 25 years ago would get me killed. And I usually remind myself about the fact, and how happy I am to be able to go to Vienna like no big deal, when so many people got killed for trying.

There is a memorial to all those killed people, on a border between Slovakia and Austria. I happen to visit it about once in a month; not for political reasons, it just happens to be on my favorite walking path in nature. You know, countries usually protect their borders to prevent other people from getting in. But socialist countries protected their borders to prevent people from running away. In socialism, people were considered property of their country. When they tried to escape their masters, that was a similar kind of crime as when a black person tried to run away from their master. And if they succeeded to run away, their families were punished instead. To legally leave the socialist country, e.g. on a vacation, you had to leave hostages at home. It happened when I was a child; in happened in a place I still live. The second most frequent cause of death on borders of socialist countries were allegedly the suicides of soldiers who couldn't bear anymore the moral burden of having to kill all those innocent people.

So, according to your arguments, what exactly it is that I am supposed to do about it? How exactly am I supposed to react to you? From my point of view, you are a blind and evil person. Should I scream "Freedom!", try to accuse you of random bad things, say you should be banned from LW, say that LW is a horrible website if it does not ban you immediately? Should I even use lies to support my case, because the most important thing is to win, and to destroy all those murderous socialism-sympathisers? Because otherwise I am dishonoring the memory of the millions who were tortured and murdered in the name of... things you defend, kind of. Is that the right thing to do?

The thing is, I understand this is not how it "feels from inside" to you. Which makes things a lot more complicated. Welcome in the real world, where the good things are not achieved by sorting people into the "good" ones and the "evil" ones, and then attacking the "evil" ones by whetever means available.

There is a saying in the anarchist community, dating back to the Spanish Civil War: No Parasan. It means "No platform" and maps to "no platform for fascists."

/facepalm

The saying that goes to the Spanish Civil War is No Pasaran which means "They shall not pass". It was used by Dolores Ibarruri in her famous speech and it it still popular in some anti-fascist circles. See e.g. here,

Holy shit yes! If you have anything to protect use all of your available strength to protect it! Shut up and multiply, think for at least five minutes about the problem, apply every ounce of your technique and then win. I truly and sincerely hope that every last person working for MIRI would kill and die to bring about friendly AI.

So, did you get your gun and bullets yet? How goes your list of people who will be the first against the wall?

If everyone lies for their preferred cause, those who see through the lies trust no one, and those who don't see through them act on false information.

If everyone believes enemies of their preferred cause should be driven out of society, as many societies as causes arise, and none can so much as trade with another.

If everyone believes their opponents must be purged, everyone purges everyone else.

If everyone decides they must win by the sword, the Hobbesian state of nature results.

(Oh, hell, first I realize Kant was not an idiot, and now I realize Hobbes was not an idiot. Of course the state of nature is ahistorical -- that's part of the point!)

Breaking down the Schelling fence around the social norms built up over the state of nature is an effective way to gain power, but once you gain power, you have to make sure that the fence is restored -- and that's hard to do. It's easier to destroy than to build. You can't weigh winning by the sword against the status quo; you have to weigh one action with p probability of winning hard enough to restore the fence (and q probability of having your burning of the accumulated arrangements / store of knowledge be net-beneficial for whatever definition of 'net-beneficial' you're using, vs. 1-q probability of having them not be) and 1-p probability of just breaking the fence.

In reality, of course, fence-wreckers understand that the opposite side wants to preserve the fence, and use that to their advantage. (The rain it raineth on the just / And also on the unjust fella / But chiefly on the just, because / The unjust hath the just's umbrella.) Alinsky understood this: you appeal to moral principles when you're out of power, but if you get power, you crush the people who appeal to moral principles -- even the ones you espoused before you go power. If you have enough power to crush your opponents, you have enough power to crush your opponents -- but this represents... not quite a burning of capital, but a sick sort of investment which may or may not pay off. You may be able to crush your opponents, but it doesn't necessarily follow that your opponents aren't able to crush you. And if you crush your opponents, you can't use them, their skills, knowledge, etc.

This is the part where I attempt to avoid performing an amygdala hijack by using the phrase 'amygdala hijack', and reference Atlas Shrugged: the moochers crush the capitalists, so the capitalists leave, and the moochers don't have access to the benefits of their talents anymore so their society falls apart. It's not a perfect analogy -- it's been a while since I read it, but I don't think the moochers saw themselves as aligned against the capitalists. But it's close enough; if it helps, imagine they were Communists.

There ought to be a term for the difference between considering an action in and of itself and considering an action along with its game-theoretic effects, potential slippery slopes, and so on. Perhaps there already is. There also ought to be a term for the seemingly-irrational-and-actually-irrational-in-the-context-of-considering-an-action-in-and-of-itself cooperation-norms that you're so strongly arguing for defecting from.

I think it's more that the things Arthur is responding to are, in fact, very racist.

Care to taboo what you mean by "racist". In particular is it "racist" to believe that traits like intelligence correlate with where someone's ancestors came from? Does it matter if there is evidence for the belief in question? Does it matter if the belief is true?

Also why is "racism" so uniquely awful. If you look at the history of the 20th century far more people have been killed in the name of egalitarian ideologies (specifically communism) then in the name of ideologies generally considered "racist".

When discussing existing oppressive social structures such as patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism,

Taboo "opressive". Judging by how your calling capitalism oppressive it appears that improving the living standard of most of the world is "oppression". If so we could probably use more of it.

In other words, if a fight is important to you, fight nasty. If that means lying, lie.

If you find yourself needing to lie for your cause, what your effectively admitting is that the truth doesn't support it. You may want to consider updating on that fact when deciding whether you should really be supporting said cause.

Also as I explain here Yvain's reason for not lying for your cause is not the best one he could give. The biggest problem is that it will fill your cause with people who believe said lies.

In other words, if a fight is important to you, fight nasty. If that means lying, lie. If that means insults, insult. If that means silencing people, silence.

Holy shit yes! If you have anything to protect use all of your available strength to protect it! Shut up and multiply, think for at least five minutes about the problem, apply every ounce of your technique and then win.

Whatever you happened to believe, the winningest answer would be "No, never lie". Because now that you've claimed your political position is likely to be based on lies, I've updated to consider arguments from that position as having zero evidential weight.

I would have thought that The Boy Who Cried Wolf was an adequate explanation in childhood of the selfish reasons to be honest.