Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013

David_Gerard

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Of course, for "every Monday", the last one should have been dated July 22-28. *cough*

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Of course, for "every Monday", the last one should have been dated July 22-28. *cough*

Why?

Some of those guys certainly seem irrational and stuck in their ways, but... to be honest, if there are any coherent responses to Moldbug & co. I have yet to see them. It's not like there's a whole bunch of literature that they're stubbornly ignoring. If you actually brought them rational arguments that they were forced to confront, I think at least some of them would update their beliefs - this is LessWrong, after all.

EDIT: In response to your edit: (For those reading, it initially just said "I doubt this very much.")

The differences between the far-right faction and the progressives (among whom I count myself) on this website are not primarily of the sort that can be bridged by intelligent argument, for a number of reasons.

This doesn't seem obvious to me. Could you list those reasons?

It's not like there's a whole bunch of literature that they're stubbornly ignoring.

The mainstream of political philosophy and political science is pretty much opposed to their positions. While none of it specifically addresses the topics covered by Molbuggians and neo-reactionaries in the terms they use, the burden of proof seems to be on them to prove there is something massively wrong with the mainstream before the mainstream has to specifically craft responses to their arguments.

(For reference here's an example of what I mean by mainstream 'progres... (read more)

6pragmatist13y

I think a lot of the disagreement between the left and the right boils down to disagreement about the appropriate form of the social welfare function. I think this applies not just to economic issues but also issues of gender and race. While there quite likely is some degree of resolvable factual disagreement about the extent of certain inequities, and maybe-somewhat-resolvable disagreement about how those inequities might be lessened, there is also disagreement about how much those inequities should matter to us and affect our behavior, both political and personal. This is not the sort of disagreement I expect to see someone resolve in a blog post. Now for a more blatantly left-wing argument: It is hard to get people to realize the extent and import of their privilege, to acknowledge that certain social inequities that are of minor significance when viewed from a privileged position are in fact deeply oppressive from the perspective of the marginalized. This is not the sort of thing that can be communicated by presenting scientific studies, because such studies may establish the existence of an inequity, but they do not fully convey the impact of that inequity on the lives and psyches of the population affected. The best way to acquire that sort of information is to listen to anecdotes from a number of marginalized people, a difficult thing to do on a website with demographics like LW has.

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Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013

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