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Adele_L comments on Open Thread, November 23-30, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Could you explain why (for both comments)?
Maybe I can. It seems Elezier was hurriedly trying to make the point that he's not affiliated with neoreactionaries, out of fear of the name of LessWrong being besmirched.
It's definitely true, I think, that Elezier is not a neoreactionary and that LessWrong is not a neoreactionary place. Perhaps the source of confusion is that the discussions we have on this website are highly unusual compared to the internet at large and would be extremely unfamiliar and confusing to people with a more politically-oriented mind-killed mindset.
For example, I could see how someone could read a comment like "What is the utility of killing ten sad people vs one happy person" (that perhaps has a lot of upvotes) - which is a perfectly valid and serious question when talking about FAI - and erroneously interpret that as this community supporting, say, eugenics. Even though we both know that the person who asked that question on this site probably didn't even have eugenics cross their mind.
(I'm just giving this as an example. You could also point to comments about democracy, intersexual relationships, human psychology, etc.)
The problem is that the inferential distance between these sorts of discussions and political discussions is just too large.
Instead of just being reactionary and saying "LessWrong doesn't support blabla", it would have been better if Elezier just recommended the author of that post to read the rationality materials on this site.
I find it unlikely that the author would do that, or have the right mindset even if he did. So do you mean this would have been more optimal signaling somehow?
Perhaps signaling, and also to get people who are reading the article and comment section to read more about LessWrong instead of coming to possibly the wrong conclusion.
LessWrong is about the only public forum outside their own blog network that gives neoreaction any airtime at all. It's certainly the only place I've tripped over them.
On the other hand, I at least found the conversation about neoreaction on LW to be vague and confusing and had basically no idea of what the movement was about until I read Yvain's pieces.
What little I understood of it was having people on LW say how great Moldbug was and why I should read him.
The best move for Eliezer to disassociate LessWrong from reactionaries would be to not mention them at all. Do you see anyone defending the honor of Hacker News in the comment section? Think about what your first instinct is when you say heard someone from some organization, that you know nothing about, explaining they are not actually right wing or Communist or even better, racist?
I agree and that's why I mentioned he should have just recommended reading the website.