pan comments on Open thread, August 12-18, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I searched and it doesn't look like anyone has discussed this criticism of LW yet. It's rather condescending but might still be of interest to some: http://plover.net/~bonds/cultofbayes.html
I don't think "condescending" touches accurately upon what is going on here. This seems to be politics being the mindkiller pretty heavily (ironically one of the things they apparently think is stupid or hypocritical). They've apparently taken some of the lack of a better term "right-wing" posts and used that as a general portrayal of LW. Heck, I'm in many ways on the same political/tribal group as this author and think most of what they said is junk.. Examples include:
A variety of interesting links are included in that paragraph. Most noteworthy, every word in `extended empty "rationalist" bloviating' links to a different essay, with "rationalist" linking to this, which criticizes rhetorical arguments made throughout the standard political spectrum.
A number of essays are quoted in ways that look like they are either being quoted in an out of context fashion or in a way that is consistent with maximally uncharitable interpretations. The section about race and LW easily falls into this category (and is as far as I can tell, particularly ironic given that as far as I can tell, there has been more explicit racism on LW before).
Similarly, while I stand fairly strongly as one of the people here who really don't like PUA, it is clear that calling it a "de facto rape methodology" is simply inaccurate.
At least a few points bordered on almost satire of a certain sort of argument. One obvious paragraph in that regard is:
I'll let others who want to spend the time analyze everything that's off about that paragraph.
Another fun bit:
Apparently Thiel is to certain groups the same sort of boogeyman that the Koch brothers are to much of the left and George Soros is to some on the right. I find it interesting to see one of the rare examples of someone actually using "PC" as a positive term, and actually made me briefly wonder if this was satire.
There are handful of marginally valid points here but they get completely lost in the noise, and they aren't by and large original points. I do think however, that some aspects of the essay might raise interesting thought exercises, such as explaining everything that's wrong with footnote 2.
Someone using 'Political Correctness' as a positive term?
(Warning: Political comedy)
Perhaps by "which became notorious for its anti-PC stance and its defences of hate speech" he means "notorious for being so anti-PC that it defended hate speech"? I think that's pretty accurate. (Bond's weak tea 2011 link doesn't defend hate speech, but argues that it is often a false label.)
I'd take the author's "anti-PC" to mean something like "seeing 'political correctness' everywhere, and hating it."
For instance, there are folks who respond to requests for civil and respectful behavior on certain subjects — delivered with no force but the force of persuasion — as if those requests were threats of violence, and as if resistance to those requests were the act of a bold fighter for freedom of speech.
My English teacher used "Political Correctness" as a positive term, which surprised me too, though I guess in the context of a teacher who's supposed to avoid discussing politics in class it does make sense to use it as an explicit norm.
Worthless ranting.
His footnote 3 is particularly telling:
In other words, this is soup of the soup.
Looking at the other articles on his site, they're all like that. I would say that this is someone who does not know how to learn.
I once read a chunk of Bond's site after running into that page; after noting its many flaws (including a number of errors of fact, like claiming Bayes tried to prove God using his theorem when IIRC, that was Richard Price and he didn't use a version of Bayes theorem), I was curious what the rest was like.
I have to say, I have never read video game reviews which were quite so... politicized.
I'd more go with "incoherent ranting" than "condescending".
It's written by a mindkilled idiot whose only purpose in life seems to be finding the least charitable interpretation of people he hates, which probably means everyone except his friends, assuming he has any. There are millions of such idiots out there, and the only difference is that this one mentioned LW in one of his articles. We shouldn't feed the trolls just because they decided to pay attention to us.
Starting with the very first paragraph... uhm, strawmanning mixed with plain lies... why exactly should anyone spend their limited time reading this?