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Vaniver comments on EY "Politics is the Mind Killer" sighting at Washington Examiner and Reason.com - Less Wrong Discussion

19 Post author: buybuydandavis 27 September 2012 07:48PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 28 September 2012 02:24:43AM 9 points [-]

I imagine this is some of the fruit from this tree. I'm curious if there's a story how EY got into the position to write that article.

(Another alternative is that journalists are finding LW through HPMOR, and of course there are others.)

Comment author: JKuznicki 28 September 2012 06:08:43PM 30 points [-]

I'm the editor of Cato Unbound, and I've been a fan of Eliezer Yudkowsky's for several years. I'm fairly sure that I introduced Gene to his work as well.

There is no real story behind the article. There almost never is, with me. It's just my job to identify interesting and talented writers, and to pay them to write for us. He was overwhelmingly qualified. I asked, and he accepted.

Comment author: thomblake 28 September 2012 07:11:24PM 10 points [-]

One thing I love about Less Wrong is these Annie Hall Marshall McLuhan moments.

Comment author: Alejandro1 29 September 2012 02:30:24AM 5 points [-]

Not really related, but your comment reminded me of a hilarious story about David Chalmers (of zombie fame). He tried to correct a mistake in the Wikipedia description of his views of consciousness, registering an account with his name and saying in the discussion section:

Marshall McLuhan here. Philos is right about each of the points above. The philosophy section would be much improved if it reverted to the “philosopher’s” edit of a few days ago.

Alas, the other editor had not watched Annie Hall:

How is he right about the points above? The points are clearly detailed and you could easily explain your criticism. Please could you also explain how cutting the historical, empirical descriptions of conscious experience and supervenience would improve the article. Why do you have the ID “DavidChalmers” yet use the name Marshall McLuhan? The only famous philosopher called Marshall McLuhan died in 1980. Are you taking the piss or are you philos with a duplicate ID?

The user with ID DavidChalmers who claims to be the deceased and famous Canadian philosopher Marshal McLuhan should note that using the name of a living, prominent person as a USERID is against Wikipedia guidelines.

The log is here.

Comment author: thomblake 29 September 2012 09:19:28PM 2 points [-]

Yeah - I had originally typed "'Marshall McLuhan here' moments" and then realized I was making an obscure reference to David Chalmers referencing Annie Hall, and thought a direct Annie Hall reference was better.

Comment author: Vaniver 28 September 2012 08:00:22PM 4 points [-]

Thanks for responding! Do you remember how you found EY in the first place?

Comment author: JKuznicki 01 October 2012 06:26:19PM 7 points [-]

Every semester I teach the Cato Institute's intern class about elementary forms of argument, logical fallacies, and the like. Something must have clicked for one of the interns, because she asked me what I thought of EY. She recommended some of his papers.

Well. He was totally unknown to me then, but I've since added Less Wrong to the sites that I recommend in the talk.

I've lurked extensively around here for quite a while, and what disagreements I have with the community consensus are so minor as not to need bothering about. (I'm a bit more of a fatalist about the matter of my own death, for example, in that I personally doubt that I will live a longer lifespan than a typical human has so far. But anyway.)

Keep up the good work, folks. Both my husband (SRStarin) and I always come away from Less Wrong with a lot of great stuff to think and talk about.

Comment author: Matt_Simpson 28 September 2012 03:04:18AM 4 points [-]

I think libertarians probably found EY through Overcoming Bias, which they read because of Robin's affiliation with GMU.

(Note that Reason is a libertarian magazine)

Comment author: Vaniver 28 September 2012 03:26:51AM 3 points [-]

I am familiar with Cato, Reason, and GMU. Of the GMU econ professors, I don't think Hanson is that famous among libertarians (especially compared to among transhumanists), as he writes about libertarian things far less often than, say, Bryan Caplan. (Try searching both of their names on Reason.) He's also not a guest lecturer at IHS, like Caplan, Cowen, Coyne, Klein, Lavoie, Nye, Smith, or White.

(Amusingly, even though I had known Robin for years as one of Bryan's gaming friends, I didn't find Overcoming Bias until a few months after I found LW, and then connecting that to Robin took a few more months.)

Comment author: Matt_Simpson 28 September 2012 04:28:42AM 4 points [-]

My point isn't that Robin is famous among libertarians, it's that he's associated with famous libertarians. When yet another GMU econ professor starts a blog, especially one Bryan Caplan routinely calls one of the sharpest thinkers he knows, libertarians are likely to at least check it out. Also note that Patri Friedman, another famous name in libertarian circles, was one of the original contributors to Overcoming Bias.

I found OB and thus EY through the mechanism I'm describing, so the availability heuristic might be at work here, but my experience at libertarian organizations suggests that I'm not alone* - I've dropped EY's name or mentioned something from the sequences in conversations with libertarians and they often know what I'm talking about.

* Though admittedly, it's been a couple years since I've been to an event put on by a libertarian organization.

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