For the sake of transparency, while in this post I’m mostly trying to identify a diagnosis, in the longer term I expect to try to do political advocacy as well. And it’s reasonable to expect that people like me who are willing to break the taboo for the purposes of diagnosis will be more sympathetic to ethnonationalism in their advocacy than people who aren’t. For example, I’ve previously argued on twitter that South Africa should have split into two roughly-ethnonationalist states in the 90s, instead of doing what they actually did.
However, I expect that the best ways of fixing western countries won’t involve very much ethnonationalism by historical standards, because it’s a very blunt tool. Also, I suspect that breaking the taboo now will actually lead to less ethnonationalism in the long term. For example, even a little bit more ethnonationalism would plausibly have made European immigration policies much less insane over the last few decades, which would then have prevented a lot of the political polarization we’re seeing today.
in the longer term I expect to try to do political advocacy as well
I find this idea particularly fraught. I already find it somewhat difficult to engage on this site due to the contentious theories some members hold, and I echo testingthewater’s warning against the trap of reopening these old controversies. You’re trying to thread a really fine needle between “meaningfully advocate change” and “open all possible debates” that I don’t think is feasible.
The site is currently watching a major push from Yudkowsky and Soares’ book launch towards a broad coalition for an AI pause. It really only takes a couple major incidents of connecting the idea to ethnonationalism, scientific racism and/or dictatorship for the targets of your advocacy to turn away.
I’m not going to suggest you stay on-message (lw is way too “truth-seeking” for that to reach anyone), but you should carefully consider the ways in which your future goals conflict.
I like this comment.
For the sake of transparency, while in this post I’m mostly trying to identify a diagnosis, in the longer term I expect to try to do political advocacy as well. And it’s reasonable to expect that people like me who are willing to break the taboo for the purposes of diagnosis will be more sympathetic to ethnonationalism in their advocacy than people who aren’t. For example, I’ve previously argued on twitter that South Africa should have split into two roughly-ethnonationalist states in the 90s, instead of doing what they actually did.
However, I expect that the best ways of fixing western countries won’t involve very much ethnonationalism by historical standards, because it’s a very blunt tool. Also, I suspect that breaking the taboo now will actually lead to less ethnonationalism in the long term. For example, even a little bit more ethnonationalism would plausibly have made European immigration policies much less insane over the last few decades, which would then have prevented a lot of the political polarization we’re seeing today.
I find this idea particularly fraught. I already find it somewhat difficult to engage on this site due to the contentious theories some members hold, and I echo testingthewater’s warning against the trap of reopening these old controversies. You’re trying to thread a really fine needle between “meaningfully advocate change” and “open all possible debates” that I don’t think is feasible.
The site is currently watching a major push from Yudkowsky and Soares’ book launch towards a broad coalition for an AI pause. It really only takes a couple major incidents of connecting the idea to ethnonationalism, scientific racism and/or dictatorship for the targets of your advocacy to turn away.
I’m not going to suggest you stay on-message (lw is way too “truth-seeking” for that to reach anyone), but you should carefully consider the ways in which your future goals conflict.