Mostly I felt like the vibe was a sort of generic lefty anti-big-tech thing [...] How did it turn into this?
It was always going to be that because protests are a leftist medium: people who know how to protest don’t think like us, and vice versa. (That’s why this was “[your] first ever protest”.)
At the March 2024 PauseAI protest outside OpenAI’s offices, the most talented speaker by far was a woman who condemned the violence AI companies were doing to Palestine. Did her speech make sense? Maybe not. But it was spoken with an authentic passion that no one else there could muster or fake. She knew the medium; we didn’t.
There are very few “right-wing” LessWrongers. The above is referring to far-left activism, which I do think is a minority, but obviously the remaining distribution is not “libertarians or right-wingers”, it’s mostly politically moderates.
This is important to get right because people routinely try to describe the LessWrong community as some weird crazy place full of MAGA and neo-monarchist enthusiasts, when really if you look at any of the actual demographic data we have this doesn’t match reality at all. E.g. vast vast majority of people on LessWrong have been voting democratic in US elections.
This is important to get right because people routinely try to describe the LessWrong community as some weird crazy place full of MAGA and neo-monarchist enthusiasts,
This is called “playing the ref”. If someone is neutral, and they make an effort to be neutral, then bad faith actors will accuse them of being in league with their political enemies. The moderates, taking these accusations in good faith, are meant to move towards the accusers’ position instead. The NYT campaign that doxed Scott Alexander is a good example—he was almost religiously neutral on all issues, taking every effort to steelman anything he argued against, and the NYT attacked him for allegedly being a right wing extremist.
Notably, around 2016, this methodology was used to break a lot of the old traditions of the internet, particularly in regard to free speech. Reddit and Twitter, while far from perfect, used to have an understanding that all legal speech was permitted, and were host to both plenty of moderates and to fringe subreddits on the left and right. When a coordinated campaign took place to accuse the websites of “catering to the far right” and the websites responded accordingly, the sites’ cultures were shifted from mostly-leftish mostly-libertarians to almost uniformly illiberal and uniformly left, with the righties building their own websites and the liberals and libertarians often becoming radicalized in one direction or the other as neutral spaces disappeared. IMO it was one of the main contributors to the catastrophic collapse in the quality of online discourse—people don’t talk to those they disagree with anymore.
I didn’t read that as referring to the left wing but referring to usual activism epistemics in general; and that being left wing was the main filter there as opposed to rationalist-types.
As an example: I’m a vegetarian. Suppose that there was a rationalist movement to stop mink fur farms on grounds that they increase H1N1 risk for little gain. If a protest ended up with a general anti-factory-farming vibe, I expect similar sorts of problems despite agreeing that factory farming is bad.
I think different political factions are inclined to protest differently.
For lefties, it’s generally an organized affair involving one or more pre-existing organizations providing logistical support and planning out slogans. I think anyone living in a major city has seen protests of this kind, so I can be relatively succinct.
For righties, it’s a “civic duty” sort of thing, where people who are passionate and have the means just sort of show up and sort of figure things out on their own once they’re there—they’re much less enthusiastic about shouting rhyming slogans and handing out signs. The early Tea Party protests fit this theme, as do other rightie protest movements before some kind of official organization steps in.
For populists, the idea of people showing up in force and showing the government who’s in charge is the point, and the aim is to establish an organic kind of chaos that precludes efforts to disperse them while demonstrating to interested parties that there is a ‘crown in the gutter’ that can be picked up by backing them. The yellow vests are a good example.
While there’s some overlap, I would expect that the sort of person who feels at home in one genre of protest would be uncomfortable in at least one of the others, to the point where it’s arguable that they aren’t the same medium.
It was always going to be that because protests are a leftist medium: people who know how to protest don’t think like us, and vice versa. (That’s why this was “[your] first ever protest”.)
At the March 2024 PauseAI protest outside OpenAI’s offices, the most talented speaker by far was a woman who condemned the violence AI companies were doing to Palestine. Did her speech make sense? Maybe not. But it was spoken with an authentic passion that no one else there could muster or fake. She knew the medium; we didn’t.
Just want to flag that not everyone on lesswrong is libertarian or right-wing. Left xriskers are a minority but we exist.
There are very few “right-wing” LessWrongers. The above is referring to far-left activism, which I do think is a minority, but obviously the remaining distribution is not “libertarians or right-wingers”, it’s mostly politically moderates.
This is important to get right because people routinely try to describe the LessWrong community as some weird crazy place full of MAGA and neo-monarchist enthusiasts, when really if you look at any of the actual demographic data we have this doesn’t match reality at all. E.g. vast vast majority of people on LessWrong have been voting democratic in US elections.
This is called “playing the ref”. If someone is neutral, and they make an effort to be neutral, then bad faith actors will accuse them of being in league with their political enemies. The moderates, taking these accusations in good faith, are meant to move towards the accusers’ position instead. The NYT campaign that doxed Scott Alexander is a good example—he was almost religiously neutral on all issues, taking every effort to steelman anything he argued against, and the NYT attacked him for allegedly being a right wing extremist.
Notably, around 2016, this methodology was used to break a lot of the old traditions of the internet, particularly in regard to free speech. Reddit and Twitter, while far from perfect, used to have an understanding that all legal speech was permitted, and were host to both plenty of moderates and to fringe subreddits on the left and right. When a coordinated campaign took place to accuse the websites of “catering to the far right” and the websites responded accordingly, the sites’ cultures were shifted from mostly-leftish mostly-libertarians to almost uniformly illiberal and uniformly left, with the righties building their own websites and the liberals and libertarians often becoming radicalized in one direction or the other as neutral spaces disappeared. IMO it was one of the main contributors to the catastrophic collapse in the quality of online discourse—people don’t talk to those they disagree with anymore.
I didn’t read that as referring to the left wing but referring to usual activism epistemics in general; and that being left wing was the main filter there as opposed to rationalist-types.
As an example: I’m a vegetarian. Suppose that there was a rationalist movement to stop mink fur farms on grounds that they increase H1N1 risk for little gain. If a protest ended up with a general anti-factory-farming vibe, I expect similar sorts of problems despite agreeing that factory farming is bad.
Well, but right wing protests also take place sometimes, right?
Maybe it’s a populist medium, more than a leftist medium?
I think different political factions are inclined to protest differently.
For lefties, it’s generally an organized affair involving one or more pre-existing organizations providing logistical support and planning out slogans. I think anyone living in a major city has seen protests of this kind, so I can be relatively succinct.
For righties, it’s a “civic duty” sort of thing, where people who are passionate and have the means just sort of show up and sort of figure things out on their own once they’re there—they’re much less enthusiastic about shouting rhyming slogans and handing out signs. The early Tea Party protests fit this theme, as do other rightie protest movements before some kind of official organization steps in.
For populists, the idea of people showing up in force and showing the government who’s in charge is the point, and the aim is to establish an organic kind of chaos that precludes efforts to disperse them while demonstrating to interested parties that there is a ‘crown in the gutter’ that can be picked up by backing them. The yellow vests are a good example.
While there’s some overlap, I would expect that the sort of person who feels at home in one genre of protest would be uncomfortable in at least one of the others, to the point where it’s arguable that they aren’t the same medium.