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IlyaShpitser comments on Open Thread, Jun. 15 - Jun. 21, 2015 - Less Wrong
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My point was, it's not a steelman response to pick a deliberately weak foil (and Rand is a quite weak foil as far as movement leaders are concerned). It's not enough to be ?better? than Rand. There isn't even a total ordering on awfulness. That's what the Anna Karenina quote was about.
No?
But I am not talking about everybody, I am talking about EY. And the relevant feature of EY's is not that he tried (and succeeded) to build a community, it's that he writes epistles, officiates weddings, has something called the Sequences (with a capital S!), etc. etc. etc.
He is not trying to build a community of colleagues/equals, as far as I can tell. If he did, he would act a lot more like Feynman.
Do you use "movement leader" synonymous with "guru"? Feymann isn't a movement leader. Do you object to EY wanting to be a movement leader?
I don't think Ayn Rand is a deliberately weak foil. Jim Jones is a deliberately weak foil. I use Ayn Rand because it's the nearest "rational cult" I can think of.
If I would seek for "rational movement" I could also go for New Atheists. Richard Dawkins is a movement leader. On the other hand I wouldn't call him a guru. Would you?
Why are you comparing against a negative example, rather than an example to emulate?
I already described what sorts of features of EY's make him a "guru."
Because you criticise him for being a "guru" and not for not being "XY" (word that describe a positive thing).
That makes it important to understand what you mean with guru and whether you consider someone like Dawkins to be a guru and who you consider to be guru's that aren't "deliberately weak foil".