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JoshuaMyer comments on "NRx" vs. "Prog" Assumptions: Locating the Sources of Disagreement Between Neoreactionaries and Progressives (Part 1) - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Matthew_Opitz 04 September 2014 04:58PM

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Comment author: JoshuaMyer 08 September 2014 09:40:53PM 3 points [-]

I think the central question here is, simply put, to what extent should we allow ourselves to participate in politics. Seeing as we are already participating in group discussion, let's assume a political dimension to our dialogue exists with or without our explicit agreement on the subject.

That having been said, I applaud the author for summarizing so many topics of political debate associated with the neoreactionary school. I feel like this conversation has been derailed to some extent by questions of whether the author has represented his sources accurately (it seems that it is very important to him that he does represent his sources accurately even though he includes the occasional generalization unsupported by analysis -- this doesn't interest me); by participating in these kind of debates we willfully cross into the gray area between science and politics.

I do not say this to discourage -- I'm just seeing a lot of opinions and very little analysis in the comments, and would prefer the opposite. I personally am not convinced that political theory yields anything other than more political theory ... I'd much rather read proposals for well controlled social experiments than any more history lectures.