But it’s difficult to choose whether the correct reversed stupidity in politics should actually be libertarianism or monarchy. The former seems more popular among LW crowd, but that also makes it kinda boring; the latter seems more original, but is usually defended by worse arguments. So you invent a libertarian-ish monarchy world, where the freely competing subjects are not the puny average humans, but the Gods-Emperors of different states. (You call all other regimes “demotist” to show that they are actually all the same.)
Of course, putting it this way is not attractive, so you have to hide it in hundreds of pages written in obscurantist language, so that no outsider is really sure what you are actually talking about. Then you insert some interesting historical facts, and a lot of criticism of political left, some of which is insightful.
And then you keep promoting the new teaching in LessWrong debates, because clever contrarianism is your selling point, and LessWrong has a weakness for clever contrarians. And then you use your presence at LessWrong as a proof that rational people support you, despite the fact that your fans are actually a tiny minority here (probably even smaller than religious people; and LW is explicitly atheistic).
But it’s difficult to choose whether the correct reversed stupidity in politics should actually be libertarianism or monarchy.
It’s worth pointing out that modern politics (especially American politics) is so jammed packed with opinion and false equivalencies (gay marriage != immigration amnesty) that it has many more than just two reversals. But I see your point, which is about LW politics and socialization specifically. Given that weakness for clever contrariness, perhaps we should focus on the wide expanse of ideas is a good way to confound tempted readers?
Neoreaction is an intellectual tradition of right-wing political philosophy composed of bloggers who are ideologically descended from the ideas of Curtis Yarvin, better known as Mencius Moldbug. If you want the five-minute version, read Konkvistador’ssummaries. If you are willing to read a much longer introduction, try one of these. Or just read the Neoreactionary Canon, which includes all three.
Anyway, the relevance to the grandparent is that LessWrong has a non-trivial neoreactionary minority (3% as of the last survey), and that former SIAI employee Michael Anissimov and his friends went and made a neoreactionary website called MoreRight (an obvious pun on LessWrong). Eliezer Yudkowsky was notamused.
Neoreactionary thinking goes back to the foundations of Western philosophy.. Plato and Aristotle saw democracies in action, and they both argued that human nature finds its fulfillment in small, organic communities of related people where the natural aristocracy that emerges gets to run things, instead of the vulgarians who lacked the personal excellence for the task. This makes Neoreaction a revival of a formerly mainstream view which has fallen out of fashion since the 18th Century because of contingent historical setbacks, not because it got the worse in a fair debate.
So what do intellectual advocates of democracy, egalitarianism, cosmopolitanism, etc. want to do? Throw Plato’s and Aristotle’s writings out of the Western Canon?
So what do intellectual advocates of democracy, egalitarianism, cosmopolitanism, etc. want to do? Throw Plato’s and Aristotle’s writings out of the Western Canon?
That looks like a strawman to me. Could you link to anyone who wants to throw Plato out of the Western canon because he didn’t favor democracy?
(There are other valid arguments against the Western canon)
Could you elaborate on this? I’ve heard the term Neoreactionary thrown around, but I’m not exactly sure what it means.
It’s what happens when you look at the lessons of “Politics is the Mind-Killer” and “Reversed stupidity is not intelligence”, and decide to ignore them because affective spirals are too much fun to give up.
But it’s difficult to choose whether the correct reversed stupidity in politics should actually be libertarianism or monarchy. The former seems more popular among LW crowd, but that also makes it kinda boring; the latter seems more original, but is usually defended by worse arguments. So you invent a libertarian-ish monarchy world, where the freely competing subjects are not the puny average humans, but the Gods-Emperors of different states. (You call all other regimes “demotist” to show that they are actually all the same.)
Of course, putting it this way is not attractive, so you have to hide it in hundreds of pages written in obscurantist language, so that no outsider is really sure what you are actually talking about. Then you insert some interesting historical facts, and a lot of criticism of political left, some of which is insightful.
And then you keep promoting the new teaching in LessWrong debates, because clever contrarianism is your selling point, and LessWrong has a weakness for clever contrarians. And then you use your presence at LessWrong as a proof that rational people support you, despite the fact that your fans are actually a tiny minority here (probably even smaller than religious people; and LW is explicitly atheistic).
Better analysis can be found here: “Reactionary Philosophy In An Enormous, Planet-Sized Nutshell”, “The Anti-Reactionary FAQ”. The first article explains the ideas better than the original sources, and the second article shows that this map doesn’t fit the territory.
EDIT: Ignoring the beliefs and focusing only on behavior, Neoreaction is LessWrong’s creepy stalker.
It’s worth pointing out that modern politics (especially American politics) is so jammed packed with opinion and false equivalencies (gay marriage != immigration amnesty) that it has many more than just two reversals. But I see your point, which is about LW politics and socialization specifically. Given that weakness for clever contrariness, perhaps we should focus on the wide expanse of ideas is a good way to confound tempted readers?
Neoreaction is an intellectual tradition of right-wing political philosophy composed of bloggers who are ideologically descended from the ideas of Curtis Yarvin, better known as Mencius Moldbug. If you want the five-minute version, read Konkvistador’s summaries. If you are willing to read a much longer introduction, try one of these. Or just read the Neoreactionary Canon, which includes all three.
Anyway, the relevance to the grandparent is that LessWrong has a non-trivial neoreactionary minority (3% as of the last survey), and that former SIAI employee Michael Anissimov and his friends went and made a neoreactionary website called MoreRight (an obvious pun on LessWrong). Eliezer Yudkowsky was not amused.
BTW, Yudkowsky and Moldbug have been enemies basically ever since Overcoming Bias and Unqualified Reservations have existed, give or take a year.
Neoreactionary thinking goes back to the foundations of Western philosophy.. Plato and Aristotle saw democracies in action, and they both argued that human nature finds its fulfillment in small, organic communities of related people where the natural aristocracy that emerges gets to run things, instead of the vulgarians who lacked the personal excellence for the task. This makes Neoreaction a revival of a formerly mainstream view which has fallen out of fashion since the 18th Century because of contingent historical setbacks, not because it got the worse in a fair debate.
So what do intellectual advocates of democracy, egalitarianism, cosmopolitanism, etc. want to do? Throw Plato’s and Aristotle’s writings out of the Western Canon?
That looks like a strawman to me. Could you link to anyone who wants to throw Plato out of the Western canon because he didn’t favor democracy? (There are other valid arguments against the Western canon)
And better reasons than anti-democracy to throw Plato out.