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.
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.