“LessWrong urged its community members to think like machines rather than humans. Contributors were encouraged to strip away self-censorship, concern for one’s social standing, concern for other people’s feelings, and any other inhibitors to rational thought. It’s not hard to see how a group of heretical, piety-destroying thinkers emerged from this environment — nor how their rational approach might clash with the feelings-first mentality of much contemporary journalism and even academic writing.”
Yeah, that seems backwards to me. Contemporary mainstream politics, influenced by centralized institutional arrangements like journalism or academia (what NRx call ‘The Cathedral’), is much closer to a general idea of “Rationalism in Politics” (to use Michael Oakshott’s term) than anything from the NRx camp. Of course one could argue that these institutions aren’t being very rational after all, but more to the point, their overall stance is one that values the results of formalized, logical (and thus, ‘rational’) deliberation and of ambitious “social engineering” efforts—as opposed to, say, preserving or reviving those enduring traditions that have “stood the test of time” and thus proven some kind of inherent worth or sustainability.
Yeah, that seems backwards to me. Contemporary mainstream politics, influenced by centralized institutional arrangements like journalism or academia (what NRx call ‘The Cathedral’), is much closer to a general idea of “Rationalism in Politics” (to use Michael Oakshott’s term) than anything from the NRx camp. Of course one could argue that these institutions aren’t being very rational after all, but more to the point, their overall stance is one that values the results of formalized, logical (and thus, ‘rational’) deliberation and of ambitious “social engineering” efforts—as opposed to, say, preserving or reviving those enduring traditions that have “stood the test of time” and thus proven some kind of inherent worth or sustainability.