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Notes -
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:
Criticism of male circumcision
Criticism of Fetterman, a dem candidate as well as Biden somewhat
Criticism of reducing meritocracy in special forces
Fairly anodyne Canadian demographic predictions
Mild criticism of some drama in minecraft modding where leftists are turfing out a vaguely rightist/anti-left modder
Mild comparison between Griner and Jan 6 as political prisoners
Mild suggestion that some/many gays would be happier in a heterosexual lifestyle
Anodyne post about AI
FcFromSSC suplexing rationalism and Scott's mistake theory, to great applause
Discussion of weaponization of the FBI against the left in the past and the right today
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?
I think spending time in a legitimately republican space, like, oh I don't know, Gab for an online example, will cure you of the notion that The Motte is regular conservatives. I don't know whether this is a libertarian space anymore, either. Personally I have my heart reflexively beating libertarian but the blood runs slow, so to speak. Everyone everywhere is more of a conflict theorist since 2020, and I have been awed and dismayed by the power of collective action.
Yeah. I will grant there aren't many progressives in there, and there were already precious few on the subreddit.
Uncharitably, I'd ascribe that to most progressive beliefs and arguments simply not holding up to basic scrutiny outside of a forum where they can generate the appearance of consensus through sheer numbers. The bog-standard "crime and poverty are due to oppression/discrimination/environmental factors alone" progressive position collapses into an absolute shambles when it runs into the hard data around genetic effects et. al., EVEN if we decide to leave race out of it entirely. Once that crashes down, they have very little else to hide behind when challenged on a particular progressive policy's failure.
More charitably, it would be extremely frustrating to have to define your exact position and how it differs from the normies and weirdos and extremists that most people hear your belief system from over and over again when you interact with a crowd of people who don't share your priors. There's enough 'flavors' of lefties that one lefty could come in with a particular take and get rejected because they read like a standard progressive when they in fact have more nuance or have a different basis for said belief.
I hope that this forum isn't now the one with the implicit consensus due to overwhelming numbers.
But I've gotten sufficient pushback on some of my zanier takes that I don't think we're an echo chamber just yet.
At least you realize you're being uncharitable. I like reading this forum in part to try to understand how the right thinks about their ideas/policies; I'm pretty sure "The Cruelty Was Never the Point" despite how often the left is unable to come up with a reason for a policy they oppose and conclude their outgroup must be evil science-deniers, there's just no other explanation. Pretty sure "evil science-denier" is unlikely to ever be a useful way to model a person/group.
I do want to drop in with what I understand of the left's point of view on things sometimes, but often there's just such a large inferential gap that I don't think I'm up to the task. And the inferential gap goes the other way, too, of course: sometimes when having in-person political discussions I try to steelman the right's POV based on arguments I read here and often have trouble not having it reduced by my conversation partner to "but the right is wrong about $FACT" (similar to your comment about how the left is obviously wrong about racism if you look at the facts).
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