You're right, the word "ridiculous" may not be correct. Maybe elitist, insular and postpolitical (which the author clearly finds negative), but the article speaks better for itself than I can.
Still, there's plenty of negative impressions (LW is a "site written for aliens") that could be dispelled.
For what it's worth, I perceived the article as more affectionate than offensive when I initially read it. This may have something to do with full piece vs. excerpts, so I'd recommend reading the full piece (which isn't that much longer) first if you care.
I am somewhat amused that the author seems to me to emphasize the peculiarities of their communication styles when the author has such downright awkward, disjointed and mashed-together style. Eliezer's faults do not include lack of facility with paragraph structure.
In addition to what gwern said, it's worth bearing in mind that Harper's is a very literary sort of magazine, and its typical style is thus somewhat less straightforward than most news.
Interesting excerpt.
First I'd say, to anyone who would call it unfair (I think it's far more nuanced and interesting than say the Slate article), that the author is pretty clear about what is alienating or confounding him. If many people dismiss LW and MIRI and CFAR for similar reasons, then the only rational response is to identify how that "this is ridiculous" response can be prevented.
Second, best HPMOR summary ever (I say this as a fan):
It’s not what I would call a novel, exactly, rather an unending, self-satisfied parable about rationality and trans-humanism, with jokes.
If many people dismiss LW and MIRI and CFAR for similar reasons, then the only rational response is to identify how that "this is ridiculous" response can be prevented.
I agree with your overall point, but I think that "this is ridiculous" is not really the author's main objection to the LW-sphere; it's clearer in the context of the whole piece, but they're essentially setting up LW/MIRI/CFAR as typical of Silicon Valley culture(!), a collection of mad visionaries (in a good way) whose main problem is elitism; ethereum is then presented as a solution to this problem, or at least indicative of better attitude. I don't necessarily agree with any of this, but that's what the thesis of the article seems to be.
First quote about Lesswrong:
I browsed venal tech-trade publications, and tried and failed to read Less Wrong, which was written as if for aliens.
I have to say I appreciated the first description of LessWrong as "confoundingly scholastic".
Harper's Magazine seems to be featuring LW, among others, in its January 2015 issue in the article "Come With Us if You Want to Live: Among the apocalyptic libertarians of Silicon Valley" (apparently features Vassar, MIRI, and LW survey stats).
It's paywalled, there don't yet seem to be any copies floating around, and I can't get it through my university proxy or Libgen. Can anyone get a copy?
And here it is, as a pdf! (I finally thought of trying to log in as a subscriber)
Harper's Magazine seems to be featuring LW, among others, in its January 2015 issue in the article "Come With Us if You Want to Live: Among the apocalyptic libertarians of Silicon Valley" (apparently features Vassar, MIRI, and LW survey stats).
It's paywalled, there don't yet seem to be any copies floating around, and I can't get it through my university proxy or Libgen. Can anyone get a copy?
I have it in hard copy, but all attempts so far to scan or photograph it have been foiled. I'm working on it, though; by far the best media piece on Less Wrong I've seen so far.
ETA - To give you an idea: the author personally attended a CFAR workshop and visited MIRI, and upon closer inspection one can make out part of the Map of Bay Area Memespace in one of the otherwise-trite collage illustrations.
Show me that movement in actual politics. Is any NRx-er running for office? Do they have an influential PAC? A think tank in Washington, some lobbyists, maybe?
Oh, I think we're using the phrase "political movement" in different senses. I meant something more like "group of people who define themselves as a group in terms of a relatively stable platform of shared political beliefs, which are sufficiently different from the political beliefs of any other group or movement". Other examples might be libertarianism, anarcho-primitivism, internet social justice, etc.
I guess this is a non-standard usage, so I'm open to recommendations for a better term.
Nope, political movements and political philosophy belong to different categories.
Some political movements evolve out of political philosophy texts, but not all political philosophy texts evolve into political movements.
I think that at this point it would be fair to say that a movement has developed out of NRx political philosophy.
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Nope, just saving my first choice of quote for the beginning of the next thread. I figure if I post a good quote now, people will mostly only see it from the recent comment and recent quote feeds, and after a few others get posted, people will mostly forget about it and not, if they were to like it, upvote it. Whereas if it were one of the first posts in a thread, and people liked it and started upvoting it, it would stay high on the page and gather even more attention and upvotes, creating a positive feedback loop which would give me karma.
Machiavellian, isn't it? I doubt it'll work out that well, but I figure it's worth a shot.
I think that we use "Best" (which is a complicated thing other than "absolute points") rather than "Top" (absolute points) precisely to reduce the effectiveness of that strategy.