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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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Inferential Distance: a Prologue

Over the few weeks I've come a across multiple posts here that have left me wondering "are we looking at the same event?" or less charitably "WTF has this commentor been smoking?", and this has gotten me thinking about something that I've been meaning to do since we made the transition to the new site, and that is to start consolidating the the things I've written under this pseudonym and that are currently spread out over a decade of time, and half a dozen different websites/forums, into something more manageable. This is not that post, but it is something of a prelude.

I see a lot of posts here from ostensible right wingers lamenting the progressives' omnipresence and inevitable victory, and I'm not sure what to make of them because that is not what I see, or what I hear, when I talk to the actual human beings in my life. If anything it's the opposite. The progressives are running scared. For every year since 1972, that's for half a century now, Gallup has run a poll on institutional trust that asks people to what degree they expect the media, the government, academia, etc... to report facts "fully, accurately, and fairly". The available answers are; a Great deal, a Fair amount, Not very much, and Not at all. Well the results for 2022 have just been released and people who answered "not at all" for trust in mass media is at 38%. This has been characterized by the talking heads, and many rationalists as "a crisis of sense making" but I don't really see it that way. Sounds more like healthy skepticism if you ask me.

Those that are familiar with me from my time on LessWrong and /r/SSC may recall that the concept of "inferential distance" has always been something of a hobby horse of mine, and I think this issue in particular illustrates why. You see. there is a lot talk here on theMotte about progressives "controlling the narrative", "twitter being the wellspring of culture", "normies doing whatever the tv tells them", that to me seems absurd, but in light of Gallup's results makes a certain amount of sense. I don't think it's any secret that this forum, as a splinter faction of the rationalist movement skews wealthy, secular, cosmopolitan, college-educated, and frankly Democrat. While I could be wrong, I would be willing to bet that there are way more fans of Cumtown here than there are fans of Rush Limbaugh or Tucker Carlson. And with that in mind I think the fact that trust in the media seems to break pretty cleanly along class and partisan lines (70% of Democrats having a fair amount of trust or greater in the media vs less than 14% of Republicans) explains a lot.

You expect people to believe what you see on the news because that's normal where you're from.

I expect everyone to roll their eyes at the news because that's normal where I'm from.

...and this points to the first of many fundamental disconnects.

You say 'this forum, as a splinter faction of the rationalist movement skews wealthy, secular, cosmopolitan, college-educated, and frankly Democrat' but also 'there is a lot of talk here on the motte about progressives controlling the narrative' and 'ostensible right wingers lamenting the progressives' omnipresence and inevitable victory'.

What if this forum just isn't terribly Democratic, even though it might be wealthy, secular, cosmopolitan and well-educated? That's why people complain so much about progressives. They're not just ostensible rightists, they're rightists. Just look at this week - we have:

  1. Criticism of male circumcision

  2. Criticism of Fetterman, a dem candidate as well as Biden somewhat

  3. Criticism of reducing meritocracy in special forces

  4. Fairly anodyne Canadian demographic predictions

  5. Mild criticism of some drama in minecraft modding where leftists are turfing out a vaguely rightist/anti-left modder

  6. Mild comparison between Griner and Jan 6 as political prisoners

  7. Mild suggestion that some/many gays would be happier in a heterosexual lifestyle

  8. Anodyne post about AI

  9. FcFromSSC suplexing rationalism and Scott's mistake theory, to great applause

  10. Discussion of weaponization of the FBI against the left in the past and the right today

  11. Discussion of Kanye's cancellation, with the comments going into what probably would be called anti-semitism by the people who are calling Kanye anti-semitic.

Now I'm distilling long posts into short summaries, so a great deal of nuance is lost. But I think we can conclude that this forum is not Democratic. There's nothing clearly pro-Democratic that I can see at the top level.

This forum is an offshoot of rationalism but it's a pretty distant offshoot. Yud-Scott-motte and now motte.org... And let's not forget there were a fair few rightists back at the start on lesswrong, the whole hbd and neoreaction crowd had some presence there.

In the spirit of Tulsi Gabbard leaving the Democratic Party because her pro-meritocracy, anti-war, vaguely anti-PC views weren't really tolerated there, I think we should admit that this isn't an anti-PC Democratic forum, a forum for observing the culture war from an ivory tower, or a 'gray tribe' forum (how could it be given the level of anti-crypto sentiment, given gray tribe per Scott is supposed to be nerdy, tech-savvy libertarians). I think this is a rightist forum. Maybe that's too close to consensus building, I don't know. Is it wrong to observe a tendency?

As one of the few dyed-in-the-wool, practicing rightists on here (in that I have multiple kids and had my first in my mid 20s, come from a red tribe family, have been a practicing orthodox Catholic since a young age, never considered myself a leftist or "liberal" even in high school or college, etc) I don't think this place is "right-wing" in the way that normies would usually use the word. I know this because in the past I've gotten into tedious arguments with people about whether god exists, or why the family is important, the intrinsic value of human life, the existence of only two sexes/genders etc, all issues that most normal right-wing folks (i.e. not Twitter monarchists or whatever) would just consider self evident or settled. That would happen if everyone here were run of the mill right wingers.

There's a large majority of anti-progressives here that includes libertarians/Grey tribe people, transhumanists, and disillusioned leftists who just want to go back to "tits and beer" leftism. They all have way more in common with each other than they do with me in that they think that a lot of recent "progress" is good but there are just some problematic bits that have recently popped up, and they especially dislike the rise of the evangical Woke religion since it is an exclusive faith that refuses to make common cause with heretics. That's why there's so much bitching about woke stuff.

I can accept just about any progressive result, so long as I'm still allowed to speak freely saying why I disagree with it (if I even do). I am okay with higher taxes. I am okay with gay marriage. I am okay with trans people using the bathrooms that they want to. I am okay with... a lot of things! But when there does happen to be something I'm not okay with, it is a requirement that I be able to say so clearly.

The modern left has lost this, and so they've lost me. I don't know what I "should" call myself, given that I align with lots of progressive goals and am not bothered by many others, but the talk about speech creating unsafety or harm and therefore needing to be blocked HAS to go. An inability to talk about something is an inability to take a step back if you're wrong, and that can't be allowed to stand. We must be able to realize when we are wrong and correct course, or else we can become permanently wrong and never fix our problems.

Letting people say stupid and wrong and even hateful things is the price we pay for the ability to change ourselves for the better, because obviously the powerful will immediately abuse any system that silences people (even if ostensibly for good reason) to silence those who challenge them - and they can do that even if no real harm or hate was there, because they are the powerful and can bend the rules to their whims.

This is so completely blindingly obvious to me that I am baffled every time a progressive friend of mine says we need to deplatform so-and-so. And every time I try to explain, they refuse to entertain the possibility of abuse. "No, no, we will only censor the bad people, don't you get it?" No, I think you are the one who doesn't get it.

So I get off the train. I'll vote for measures and policies that do progressive things, but I won't vote for leaders who don't understand the value of free speech - lately, that means I don't vote for very many on the left. Maybe that means I can't count myself as a leftist anymore, but I certainly don't think it makes me a rightist.

The best way I've heard to frame it is Pluralist vs. Authoritarian. South of Center vs. North of Center is the other way I'd put the same thing...it's entirely different than left vs. right. Generally speaking, this place is mostly South of Center, with a few North of Center people around.

But yeah, I largely agree with you, and I'm against the anti-Pluralism that's floating around, left center and right. That's largely because I'm a policy wonk, and I think the details matter and I think because of that it's essential that we can actually discuss and disagree about the issues, and not break everything down into a power-based binary.