Your last paragraph is good snark

Good, I was aiming for snark.

But yes I'm fully aware people really do think like that. Check out the link I put in "evil knows no bounds". I've seen hysterical diatribes elsewhere online of how utterly vile and wicked it is of Thiel to pay exceptional young people not to go to college since it RUINS THEIR FUTURE FOREVER. Contrary to all the data we have on what education actually does, which shows they will likely be fine since college is probably mostly signaling.

What I think you will have to admit, is that people like Thiel are also the kind of people who are more likely than average to take things like encouraging social or technological innovation, curing ageing, cryonic and existential risk seriously. Just inspecting the sources of funding of such efforts should give you overwhelming of evidence of this.

If you take away Robin Hanson and other people from that cluster away, cease to tolerate them, preciously little original synthesis and though beyond what academia already did would remain. I would go as far as to say that applied rationality and self-improvement that actually works is indeed a strong attractor in the context of their memeplex. One could argue that they where and still are the intellectually and socially invested backbone of the community that formed around Overcoming Bias and LessWrong!

Anyone who identifies as liberal is likely to see Peter Thiel and Robin Hanson as far-right nutcases (assuming they've heard of them).

They will just have to get over that though.

And those that can't... "And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet."

I'm sure many conservatives can't get over what kind of people the atheism filter tends to select either and don't join us because of it. And unlike conservatives, "liberals" and "socialists" hold a supermajority here, is it really so terrible they make up just 60%+ of the site rather than 95%+?

Looking at the history of the important issues and positions I mentioned hold in society it seems pretty clear that It isn't that this particular cluster of "far right" people is wickedly hogging them, clutching them with their slimy low status tentacles from the reach of what would otherwise be an enthusiastic mainstream.

It is precisely the traits that attracted them to their cluster that make them more likely to endorse and build upon LW-style rationality.

I have the impression that (1) when people post things in LW that are politically leftish, it's quite common for them to get a response along these lines -- complaining about leftward bias and suggesting that it should be addressed by a deliberate injection of rightward bias to compensate -- whereas (2) when people post things in LW that are politically rightish, they basically never receive such responses.

My explanation of this perception is that posters, in general, know better than to post rightish things at LW unless they are correct. Every now and then you get a new Objectivist who gets downvoted because they aren't discussing things at a high enough level.

Lots of beliefs that are common on LW are uncomfortable for the stereotypical leftist- like human biodiversity in general. To see someone brazenly state that, yes, there is a difference in measured IQ between the races and that reflects reality rather than our inability to design tests properly, or that men and women are actually neurologically distinct, will seem like a "not my tribe" signal to the stereotypical leftist- but people here don't hold that opinion (as far as I can tell) because of racial or sexual enmity, but because they put evidence above wishful thinking and correct beliefs above politeness.

But now imagine that for the stereotypical rightist. How big of a "not my tribe" signal is atheist materialism and evolution?

I think the overlap between "weird right" and "far right" (and "weird left" and "far left") is extensive, to the point that it's rare to have one without the other. Political intellectuals almost always espouse eclectic and eccentric views, and are almost always on the fringes compared to the political rank-and-file. A politically centrist intellectual is a politically apathetic intellectual. My point here, assuming I have one, is that "he's weird-whatever" isn't a rebuttal to "he's far-whatever."

I kind of have to concede this point. I do still think the connotations of the kind of far and weird positions you are likely to see on LW are better matched by the weird left/right rather than the far right/left.

"Even if utterly disagree with them they practically define themselves into demographic irrelevancy and are very unlikely to cause any damage. "

vs.

"Aggh this is memeticall virulent! Must stomp on their face with my boot for forever!"

Maybe this is because I'm European. In Slovenia calling someone far right is usually always calling that person a dangerous nationalist or even a crypto-fascist. The implied context is that they should be suppressed or arrested since we don't have free speech. A dope smoking libertarian isn't called Far Right but a capitalist lap dog. ;)

I agree with your general point. The difference in my take is that I think LW, especially in earlier times, has tended to express meta-contrarian views that align with the general politics of the techie-right. A rough description of what I'd consider the techie-right cluster: pro-libertarian, anti-gun-control, anti-religion, anti-environmentalist, pro-hard-sciences, pro-evopsych, pro-mainstream-economics, anti-the-rest-of-academia.

This seems like a good description and I agree LW is friendly to such stances. I think the main reason for this is that this cluster is disproportionately present among programmers and transhumanists. Many prominent early posters (I can't help but think of Michael Vassar) obviously fir into that frame as does Eliezer himself to a moderate extent.

Funny thing that we agree on this, because when I was writing it, "not being socialist" was the only thing that came to my mind -- but I didn't write it in hope that you will tell me something else that I missed. So perhaps there is nothing else.

But in the light of this explanation, your complaint seems to translate as "LW has traditionally been very sympathetic to some non-socialists". Do you think that is a wrong thing? I feel like I'm making a strawman version of your arguments here.

And oh yeah, Mencius Moldbug. Is there a left-wing writer of similar obscurity and extremism so widely and approvingly quoted on LessWrong?

Well there are left-writers of similar extremism quoted approvingly on LessWrong. They just happen not to be as obscure as their right wing counterparts. Basically any far left position you can think of (say Stalinism ) has some unobscure figure arguing for it. But I can see why you'd mind Moldbug, he's just some dude with a blog, which he himself emphasises.

What I don't see is Heartiste/Roissy. He's one of several pick up artists that's name dropped and discussed when the subject of romance or sex comes up and while the online scene itself is somewhat obscure anyone who is at all familiar with it also knows about him. If PUA in general is your complaint why didn't you just say so? Our sister site Overcoming Bias does directly link to Heartiste's blog (under its old name of Roissy in DC) so maybe he is overrepresented in PUA discussions, but I'd argue a larger part of why he is overrepresented is that he makes a good target to straw man PUA.

Libertarianism.

Wait libertarianism is scary far right now?

Well ok I guess a third of LessWrong is now far right. I'm not even going to mentioning Robin Hanson's writings. Also LWs founder is a shady figure who occasionally writes on dangerous far right sites, wants to live forever and his day job is mostly founded by a another rich far right figure who's evil knows no bounds. Thiel pays kids not to go to college, doesn't like democracy and wants to settle the seas to escape bad government! Where have he heard that before!

There has been little or no Stalinism or Maoism advocated here

Yeah you might want to reconsider that:

Stalin saved far more lives than he took. In fact, Czarism was three times more deadly on a per capita basis than the average for the Stalin years. Plus, Stalin set a world record for the fastest doubling of life expectancy in any land. This amazing feat was only broken by Mao in 1976. Therefore, based on those records, I hold that Stalin and Mao were two of the greatest humanitarians that the world has ever known.

When I stumbled upon this it was at 3 karma, though I'm not sure where it will be now. I would argue what LessWrong traditionally likes is metacontrarianism of any kind. As more evidence of this I'd like to point out that metacontrarian left wing arguments by users like Multiheaded are well liked too.

I think you are wrong on this. The argument in this thread was about making mainstream conservatives unwelcome not the cobbled together right-y ideologies people here come up with. To quote GLaDOS on why I think the distinction matters:

Even many of our libertarians are probably left libertarians and nearly all of our high quality right wing thinkers are somewhat eclectic, eccentric and often aren't really conservative in the small c sense of the word. Examples include machinations like Anarcho-Capitalism, Moldbuggian Progressivism-curing Rationalist Uberfact, Eugenic Aristocratic Monarchies or Multi-universe spanning TDT zombie computational theocracies (something like that! ^_~ ).

She's not making any of that up I swear. That isn't far right, that's weird right.

Intellectual hipsters indeed. I'm not sure such fun ideas cooked up by a handful of enthusiastic rationalists really help us offset the bias, rather than just adding their own dose of political craziness to the mix.

Standing where we do as a community, means that our bias against ideas and arguments because of their tribal affiliation will not feel like being unfair or irrational from the inside. I have little idea how to fix this or even if it is wise to fix it considering how the mysterious but probably real w-force continues to do its magic over time. It may hurt our status bad enough to stop us from "Refining the art of human rationality" (yay! ^_^) in other ways.

It is interesting to see Ayn Rand, Heartiste, and Chesterton as examples of "the right". Makes me thinking what exactly does this concept mean; what exactly do these three have in common... which they don't share with George Orwell.

Your description of political correctness makes it sound a lot like the "Politics is the Mindkiller" gag-rule.

To me it seems more like a "Blue Politics is the Mindkiller" rule.

I strongly disagree connotationally, but thank you for the explanation.

I think that you are selecting only a part of the story. For example, the official boogeyman here is the religion. (By the way, it happens to be associated with political right, at least today in USA.) Yet somehow, quotes from Chesterton often get many upvotes in "Rationality Quotes". Does it mean that LW is secretly very sympathetic to religion? Or just that we are able to appreciate a decent quote even from people with whom we disagree on other topics? Could the second explanation possibly apply also to Heartiste or Moldbug? If you found a good rationality quote from Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Che Guevara, or Fidel Castro, would it also get upvotes? You can try, if you want.

With regard to political correctness, to me it seems that the current situation is unsatisfactory to both sides. Forbidden topics get mentioned, then they are verbally opposed and the discussion is stopped; later they are mentioned again, and then the discussion is stopped again; ad infinitum. This is what neither side wants. Some people would prefer to never see those topics reopened again. Other people would prefer to have an open discussion now and then, without being told to stop by people who don't want to participate. Both sides take this as a proof that the other side is winning.

this site has traditionally been very sympathetic to the far right

Could you please taboo "far right", and give specific details of what is LW sympathetic to? E.g. quotations from high-karma articles and comments (bonus points for being written by Eliezer or Luke or some other local celebrity).

I am aware that this site is more sympathetic to ideas like "markets are good heuristic for maximizing utility" than to ideas like "we could make the world a better place by killing all people we consider evil, and brainwashing the rest". But I don't think this is because the typical correlations with 'left' and 'right', but because of the ideas themselves.

So exactly what was the point of this article? Boo conservative values, yay liberal values? I am sure we need more like this on LessConservative!

Sure, a conservative mindkilled person may fail to notice that women in conservative societies can be opressed and battered by their husbands, in the name of sacred family. Just like a liberal mindkilled person may fail to notice that some women don't mind their daughters raped by their sexy alpha boyfriends, in the name of sacred sexual freedom. What a coincidence -- biased people not noticing their biases!

However, liberal biases are OK, because liberal people say so; both here and in academy. On the other hand we should remove all topics that could offend... ahem... people other than conservatives. For example, discussions about "pick-up arts" -- their strawman versions could make women feel unwelcome. A "pick-up artist" would probably not make the same mistake as author of this article; but for our rationality, it is better if they take their evidence elsewhere. If my opinions are right, I want to believe my opinions are right; and if my opinions are wrong, I want to believe your opinions are harmful.

Seriously -- we all have many different values and opinions; but saying that some of some kinds of biases are not so harmful, and then writing and upvoting an article that more or less celebrates this attitude... that's not the LessWrong I imagine. Liberal biases are harmful for the same reasons like any other biases; they prevent us from seeing the territory correctly.

In other words -- trying to use a language a liberal might understand better -- articles like this make me feel unwelcome.