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NancyLebovitz comments on On Leverage Research's plan for an optimal world - Less Wrong Discussion

25 Post author: Mitchell_Porter 10 January 2012 09:49AM

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Comment author: moridinamael 10 January 2012 04:23:46PM *  13 points [-]

On a first pass, the Leverage Research website feels like Objectivism. I say this because it is full of dubious claims about morality and psychology but which are presented as basic premises and facts. The explanations of "Connection Theory" are full of the same type of opaque reasoning and fiat statements about human nature which perhaps I am particularly sensitive to as a former Objectivist. Knowing nothing more than this first impression, I am going to make a prediction that there are Objectivist influences present here. That seems at least somewhat testable.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 26 April 2012 10:58:56AM -1 points [-]

I'm not an expert on Objectivism, but one of Rand's principles was to always pass moral judgement.

Connection theory has much less moral judgement to it than most approaches.

It's conceivable that there's a similar intellectual style of trying to understand the world by starting with abstractions, but that's not necessarily a matter of direct influence.