You're right, not all cognitivists are anti-realists. But some are, including Eliezer.
...
If you ask him whether he's a moral realist, he'll say yes, but if you ask him for a self-description, he'll say cognitivist w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶t̶e̶n̶ ̶g̶r̶o̶u̶p̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶g̶a̶i̶n̶s̶t̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶l̶i̶s̶m̶. Moreover, if asked for detail, he'll say that he's an anti-realist.
These quotes did not exactly express to me that you don't know to what extent his views or realist or anti-realist. I'm sorry if I was targeting you instead of Eliezer... but you were agreeing with his confusing equivocation.
Similarly, he avoids "moral subjectivism" and uses terms like "subjectively objective."
Ah yes, the old eschewing the well-recognized, well-explored terminology for an oxymoronic neologism. How could anyone get confused?
You sure you're not trying to force me to use jargon I don't like? I don't know what else to call responding to new jargon with sarcasm.
At the very least, you seem to be demanding that we confuse laymen so that philosophers can understand. I happen to believe that philosophers won't understand, either.
No, the right answer isn't to say "I don't know if he is a realist." Actually, I do think it would be better to reject the question of realism than to equivocate, but I suspect Eliezer has tried this and found that people don't accept it.
There seems to be a widespread impression that the metaethics sequence was not very successful as an explanation of Eliezer Yudkowsky's views. It even says so on the wiki. And frankly, I'm puzzled by this... hence the "apparently" in this post's title. When I read the metaethics sequence, it seemed to make perfect sense to me. I can think of a couple things that may have made me different from the average OB/LW reader in this regard: