Imagine a society with 10 neoreactionaries and 10000 liberals (or any other mainstream political group). Let’s suppose that 5 of the neoreactionaries and 500 of the liberals read LessWrong.
In this society, neoreactionaries would consider LessWrong one of “their” websites, because half of them are reading it. Yet the LessWrong survey would show that neoreactionaries are just a tiny minority of its readers.
That’s a heck of a coincidence, but it would explain a perception among neoreactionaries. It wouldn’t, however, explain perceptions among (to use your example) liberals; unless the latter spend a lot of time reading blogs from the former, they’re probably going to be using an outside view, which would give them the same ratios we see in the survey. Out in the wild, I’ve seen the characterization coming from both sides.
Although the graph in the ancestor is from a neoreactionary blog.
While I’m not sure what “neoreactionary” refers to specifically there are lots of reasons that certain types of liberals see LessWrong as reactionary:
A somewhat strong libertarian component
Belief in evolutionary psychology
Anti-religous (or generally the belief that beliefs can be right or wrong)
LessWrong’s more technical understanding of evidence is incompatible with standpoint theory and similar epistemic frameworks favored by some groups of liberals.
Those older discussions around PUA where it’s presented in a pretty positive light
Could this be explained by the base rates?
Imagine a society with 10 neoreactionaries and 10000 liberals (or any other mainstream political group). Let’s suppose that 5 of the neoreactionaries and 500 of the liberals read LessWrong.
In this society, neoreactionaries would consider LessWrong one of “their” websites, because half of them are reading it. Yet the LessWrong survey would show that neoreactionaries are just a tiny minority of its readers.
That’s a heck of a coincidence, but it would explain a perception among neoreactionaries. It wouldn’t, however, explain perceptions among (to use your example) liberals; unless the latter spend a lot of time reading blogs from the former, they’re probably going to be using an outside view, which would give them the same ratios we see in the survey. Out in the wild, I’ve seen the characterization coming from both sides.
Although the graph in the ancestor is from a neoreactionary blog.
While I’m not sure what “neoreactionary” refers to specifically there are lots of reasons that certain types of liberals see LessWrong as reactionary:
A somewhat strong libertarian component
Belief in evolutionary psychology
Anti-religous (or generally the belief that beliefs can be right or wrong)
LessWrong’s more technical understanding of evidence is incompatible with standpoint theory and similar epistemic frameworks favored by some groups of liberals.
Those older discussions around PUA where it’s presented in a pretty positive light
Glorification of the enlightenment.