A lot has to do with how what it means to be left/right has changed.
Rationalists usually don’t like following authorities. That was left-wing coded in late 00s/early 2010s and is more right-wing coded today.
I valued Glenn Greenwald political views two decades ago and I value them today. One all the issues that are most important to him, Glenn still holds the same views today as two decades ago. However, while Glenn was seen as clearly left-wing back then, he’s frequently seen as right-wing today.
Yeah, we need to distinguish between “someone had an opinion X, but changed to Y” from “someone’s opinion X was perceived as left-wing a decade ago, but is perceived as right-wing now”. And maybe also from “someone has always believed X, but expressing such belief could previously get them fired, so they kept quiet about it”.
To me it seems that my beliefs do not chance much recently (of course that may be a trick my brain plays on itself, when after updating it creates a false memory that I have always believed the new thing), it’s just then when I am surrounded by people who yell at me “IQ is a myth” and I disagree, they call me a right-winger, and when I am surrounded by people who yell at me “charity is stupid, let the poor people die” and I disagree, they call me a left-winger. So whatever people call me seems to me more of a fact about them then about me. (More precisely, all the things they call me, taken together, with the specific reasons why they called me that, that is about me. But which group happened to yell at me today, that is about the group.)
So when we say that “the rationalist community is recently a bit more right wing”, what specifically does it mean?
Also, we were already called right-wing in the past, are we really more right-wing today compared to back then when we had debates about neoreaction, or is this just an overreaction to some minor change that happened in the recent months?
tl;dr: step one is providing evidence that we are now more right-wing than e.g 10 years ago
step one is providing evidence that we are now more right-wing than e.g 10 years ago
honestly this is a pretty reasonable take.
my own experience is that it has, but this could have been for pretty idiosyncratic reasons. scott in his description of the grey tribe characterizes members as like, feeling vaguely annoyance that the issue of gay marriage even comes up, right? but because of the pronatalism it feels like fundamental rights to things like abortion and gay acceptance are being re-litigated in the community now (more specifically, the re-litigation has entered the overton window, not that it’s an active and ongoing debate), meanwhile technological solutions seem to be sidelined, and this has been quite dismaying for me.
A lot has to do with how what it means to be left/right has changed.
Rationalists usually don’t like following authorities. That was left-wing coded in late 00s/early 2010s and is more right-wing coded today.
I valued Glenn Greenwald political views two decades ago and I value them today. One all the issues that are most important to him, Glenn still holds the same views today as two decades ago. However, while Glenn was seen as clearly left-wing back then, he’s frequently seen as right-wing today.
Yeah, we need to distinguish between “someone had an opinion X, but changed to Y” from “someone’s opinion X was perceived as left-wing a decade ago, but is perceived as right-wing now”. And maybe also from “someone has always believed X, but expressing such belief could previously get them fired, so they kept quiet about it”.
To me it seems that my beliefs do not chance much recently (of course that may be a trick my brain plays on itself, when after updating it creates a false memory that I have always believed the new thing), it’s just then when I am surrounded by people who yell at me “IQ is a myth” and I disagree, they call me a right-winger, and when I am surrounded by people who yell at me “charity is stupid, let the poor people die” and I disagree, they call me a left-winger. So whatever people call me seems to me more of a fact about them then about me. (More precisely, all the things they call me, taken together, with the specific reasons why they called me that, that is about me. But which group happened to yell at me today, that is about the group.)
So when we say that “the rationalist community is recently a bit more right wing”, what specifically does it mean?
Also, we were already called right-wing in the past, are we really more right-wing today compared to back then when we had debates about neoreaction, or is this just an overreaction to some minor change that happened in the recent months?
tl;dr: step one is providing evidence that we are now more right-wing than e.g 10 years ago
honestly this is a pretty reasonable take.
my own experience is that it has, but this could have been for pretty idiosyncratic reasons. scott in his description of the grey tribe characterizes members as like, feeling vaguely annoyance that the issue of gay marriage even comes up, right? but because of the pronatalism it feels like fundamental rights to things like abortion and gay acceptance are being re-litigated in the community now (more specifically, the re-litigation has entered the overton window, not that it’s an active and ongoing debate), meanwhile technological solutions seem to be sidelined, and this has been quite dismaying for me.