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Gabriel comments on Utopian hope versus reality - Less Wrong Discussion

23 Post author: Mitchell_Porter 11 January 2012 12:55PM

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Comment author: Gabriel 12 January 2012 07:50:45PM 4 points [-]

This is vague. While reading, it wasn't clear to me what point you were making. Up until about halfway through the article I wasn't sure whether you were going to simply analyze general cultural attitudes towards utopianism or make a judgement about it yourself. I guess you ended up doing the latter but still, at points I wasn't sure if you were talking in your own voice or in the voice of a hypothetical person possessed of non-utopian psychology (or maybe a cynical student of history).

As I'm criticizing the form I should probably admit that I disagree with the content. In the end what I got from your article is a, once again, vague and overly general condemnation of utopian hope. There are possible specific problems and failure modes associated with hope about the future but you're spreading the criticism too wide. Like when you label some belief about the future as a disorder or say things like "utopian hope is almost always an indicator of something wrong" it seems as if you're accusing all people with hope for the future of constant, useless escapism.