I was a minor contributor to RationalWiki before I’d ever heard of LessWrong, many years ago. At the time I was a typical atheist scientismist leftist. (I can still recall the flush of indignation I felt whenever anyone dared offer opinions that differed from those of leftist orthodoxy. Mindkiller indeed.) In fact, I found RationalWiki by Googling for clever and contemptuous retorts to the ridiculous arguments made by my quick-thinking Christian creationist conservative friend. Which is what RationalWiki’s original purpose was: a reaction to Conservapedian shenanigans and to the sociopolitical currents that allowed Conservapedia to exist in the first place.
(Vladimir_Nesov, I think this 5 karma hit thing shouldn’t apply to all comments in a thread stemming from a highly downvoted comment; it discourages resolution of confusions and breeds resentment toward LW as a community, which occasionally leads to publicity problems in other fora. Which I don’t really care about but I bet you do.)
This updates my estimate of your political position closer to the middle.
I am probably somewhere in the middle. I don’t have very developed views about politics; my take on political discourse is more sociological than anything. I don’t think that I have enough information or wisdom to have justified political opinions. Mostly my feelings are, people suck at reasoning about politics, right-leaning people suck in a quaint mostly ineffective way, left-leaning people suck in a really dangerous way, Marxists are really smart and I don’t understand them yet but I get the feeling they’re engaged in some fucked up casuistry, reactionaries should stick to deconstruction of leftism (which is great! they should team up with Marxists!) and stop making fools of themselves with impossible policy recommendations and myopic political theory, libertarians are largely philosophically misguided which is a problem since they reason from ethics so much, I have to have contempt for liberaltarians because otherwise people might mistake me for a stereotype of that group to which I am most related, et cetera.
To me having confident political opinions is like going into some rainforest ecosystem where everything is strangling everything else and being like, ya know what, I’m definitely going to take sides with the lizards in this scenario, they seem most righteous, fuck the snakes and the birds and the trees and the bugs. I mean, liking lizards is cool, go ahead, but when it comes to ‘alright let’s cull the snake population, they’re keeping down the lizards’, at that point it’s like people are almost trying to shoot themselves in the feet.
On a side note, do your Christian friends know of your notion of superhuman gods? What do they think about it?
I had two close seriously Christian friends in high school, one a conservative and ideological Christian, the other more of a nuanced philosopher. I barely ever talk to the former, and the latter may have changed his views since high school and is reticent to talk about them. So, no, they’re not familiar with my notions. I befriended a Mormon girl within the last year and she and I mostly talk about the problem of discernment. Her perspective is more ‘you can go with your instinct about whether an experience confirms the interpretational framework in which you experience it’, whereas mine is more ‘basically everyone is heavy-handed in their interpretation of these things, the phenomena seem to be purposefully baffling in a way that makes correct interpretation nearly impossible’ (which is sort of my perspective on everything, but it applies triply to topics as tricky as the supernatural). So, she thinks I should have more faith or something. Other than that, I haven’t talked much with Christian people about the supernatural (and I’d argue Mormonism barely counts as Christianity from a theological perspective and perhaps also an anthropological one). Mostly I stick to theology, where in some ways I feel more confident I know what I’m talking about.
Wow. I shudder to think how far to the right you must be to believe RationalWiki is leftist.
I was a minor contributor to RationalWiki before I’d ever heard of LessWrong, many years ago. At the time I was a typical atheist scientismist leftist. (I can still recall the flush of indignation I felt whenever anyone dared offer opinions that differed from those of leftist orthodoxy. Mindkiller indeed.) In fact, I found RationalWiki by Googling for clever and contemptuous retorts to the ridiculous arguments made by my quick-thinking Christian creationist conservative friend. Which is what RationalWiki’s original purpose was: a reaction to Conservapedian shenanigans and to the sociopolitical currents that allowed Conservapedia to exist in the first place.
P.S. Heil Hitler
Thanks for sharing the back story. This updates my estimate of your political position closer to the middle.
On a side note, do your Christian friends know of your notion of superhuman gods? What do they think about it?
(Vladimir_Nesov, I think this 5 karma hit thing shouldn’t apply to all comments in a thread stemming from a highly downvoted comment; it discourages resolution of confusions and breeds resentment toward LW as a community, which occasionally leads to publicity problems in other fora. Which I don’t really care about but I bet you do.)
I am probably somewhere in the middle. I don’t have very developed views about politics; my take on political discourse is more sociological than anything. I don’t think that I have enough information or wisdom to have justified political opinions. Mostly my feelings are, people suck at reasoning about politics, right-leaning people suck in a quaint mostly ineffective way, left-leaning people suck in a really dangerous way, Marxists are really smart and I don’t understand them yet but I get the feeling they’re engaged in some fucked up casuistry, reactionaries should stick to deconstruction of leftism (which is great! they should team up with Marxists!) and stop making fools of themselves with impossible policy recommendations and myopic political theory, libertarians are largely philosophically misguided which is a problem since they reason from ethics so much, I have to have contempt for liberaltarians because otherwise people might mistake me for a stereotype of that group to which I am most related, et cetera.
To me having confident political opinions is like going into some rainforest ecosystem where everything is strangling everything else and being like, ya know what, I’m definitely going to take sides with the lizards in this scenario, they seem most righteous, fuck the snakes and the birds and the trees and the bugs. I mean, liking lizards is cool, go ahead, but when it comes to ‘alright let’s cull the snake population, they’re keeping down the lizards’, at that point it’s like people are almost trying to shoot themselves in the feet.
I had two close seriously Christian friends in high school, one a conservative and ideological Christian, the other more of a nuanced philosopher. I barely ever talk to the former, and the latter may have changed his views since high school and is reticent to talk about them. So, no, they’re not familiar with my notions. I befriended a Mormon girl within the last year and she and I mostly talk about the problem of discernment. Her perspective is more ‘you can go with your instinct about whether an experience confirms the interpretational framework in which you experience it’, whereas mine is more ‘basically everyone is heavy-handed in their interpretation of these things, the phenomena seem to be purposefully baffling in a way that makes correct interpretation nearly impossible’ (which is sort of my perspective on everything, but it applies triply to topics as tricky as the supernatural). So, she thinks I should have more faith or something. Other than that, I haven’t talked much with Christian people about the supernatural (and I’d argue Mormonism barely counts as Christianity from a theological perspective and perhaps also an anthropological one). Mostly I stick to theology, where in some ways I feel more confident I know what I’m talking about.