I've seen several people on Less Wrong recommend Mencius Moldbug's writings, and I've been curious about how he became so popular here. He's certainly an interesting thinker, but he's rather obscure and doesn't have any obvious connection to Less Wrong, so I'm wondering where this overlap in readership came from.
[EDIT by E.Y.: The answer is that he's not popular here. The 2012 LW annual survey showed 2.5% (30 of 1195 responses) identified as 'reactionary' or 'Moldbuggian'. To the extent this is greater than population average, it seems sufficiently explained by Moldbug having commented on the early Overcoming Bias econblog before LW forked from it, bringing with some of his own pre-existing audience. I cannot remember running across anyone talking about Moldbug on LW, at all, besides this post, in the last year or so. Since this page has now risen to the first page of Google results for Mencius Moldbug due to LW's high pagerank, and on at least one occasion sloppy / agenda-promoting journalists such as Klint Finley have found it convenient to pretend to an alternate reality (where Moldbug is popular on LW and Hacker News due to speaking out for angry entitled Silicon Valley elites, or something), a correction in the post seems deserved. See also the Anti-Reactionary FAQ by Scott Alexander (aka Yvain, LW's second-highest-karma user). --EY]
...it's still a lot more reliable than deduction from first principles...
I know it's been a while since this comment, but I wanted to comment that sound deduction (ie, logical reasoning) on top of correct premises trumps other forms of evidence, even well-controlled, large-sample experiments. Or put another way, the former renders the latter superfluous. We should not simply take anyone's word for the deduction of course - we have to double-check the premises and understand the deduction step by excruciating step. But once one is satisfied that the premises are correct and the deduction is bullet-proof, one can sleep soundly :)
Nothing trumps sound reasoning. The scientific method itself is a result of reasoning, a point well made by Moldbug here: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.sg/2010/06/three-homeworks-for-professor-hanson.html
As an analogy, I find fascinating the MWI vs Collapse debate at LW - Eliezer has concluded MWI wins as an outcome of pure reasoning. No empirical evidence required. It will be (is?) wonderful if (when?) we factorize large numbers quickly and that is evidence of MWI, but as above, it would be (is?) superfluous. If the reasoning offered by Eliezer is coherent (I don't know enough to judge), case closed. Please correct me if I have misunderstood. Thanks
Edit: MWI paragraph added.