a theory about why the rationalist community has trended a bit more right wing over time that ive considered for a while now, though i doubt im the first one to have this thought.

a lot of the community in the late 00s/early 2010s were drawn from internet atheist circles, like me. but the thing that was selected for there wasn't nonbelief in god, or even skepticism qua skepticism, but something like, unsual amounts of irritation when one sees the dominant culture endorse a take that is obviously bad. at the time, the obviously bad but endorsed takes were things like "homosexuality is a sin and therefore bad", "intelligent design", and when christians refused to actually follow the teachings of jesus in terms of things like turning the other cheek and loving thy neighbours and not caring about the logs in their own eyes.

there will always be people who experience unusual amounts of irritation when they see the culture endorse (or passively accept) a take that is obviously bad, and this is great, because those people are great. but internet christians don't really exist anymore? instead the obviously wrong things that most internet goers see by default are terrible strawmanny sjw takes: "IQ is a fake white supremacist notion", "there are no biological differences between men and women", "indigenous people get to do the blood and soil thing but no one else gets to do that for unexplained reasons". so the people who show up now tend to be kinda mad about the sjws.

i am not saying that the sjw takes are unusually bad^[1]; lots of other popular communities have even worse takes. but bad social justice takes are unusually endorsed by cultural gatekeepers, the way e.g. k-pop stans aren't, and that's the thing that lots of protorationalists really can't stand.

after coming up with this theory, i became a lot less sad about the community becoming [edit: more] right wing. because it makes it a lot easier to believe that the new people are still my people in the most important ways. and it doesn't seem unlikely to me that the bright eyed youngsters finding the community in 2030 would be irritated by and unusually fixiated on disproving an entirely different set of popular beliefs trendy in the culture by then.

1. ^{^}

   actually, i think that the non-strawman versions of the sjw takes listed are all actually geninely really interesting and merit at least some consideration. ive been reading up on local indigenous history recently and it's the most fascinating topic i've rabbit holed in on in ages.

from Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children (Michel de Montaigne, late 1500s):

The village-women where I live call in the help of goats when they cannot suckle their children themselves; I have now two menservants who never tasted mothers’ milk for more than a week. These nanny-goats are trained from the outset to suckle human children; they recognize their voices when they start crying and come running up. They reject any other child you give them except the one they are feeding; the child does the same to another nanny-goat. The other day I saw an infant who had lost its own nanny-goat as the father had only borrowed it from a neighbour: the child rejected a different one which was provided and died, certainly of hunger.

after reading this, I did a preliminary google search for "nanny goats" and found no productive results on the topic of goat milk being a substitute for breast milk.

Interestingly, the wikipedia article on goat milk had this to say:

Breast milk is the best nutrition for infants. If this is not an option, infant formula is the alternative. EFSA (European Food Safety Association) concluded in 2012 that goat milk protein is suitable as a protein source in infant and follow-on formulas.^[5] Ever since, goat milk-based infant formulas have rapidly gained popularity around the world including: the UK, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, China, Korea, Australia and New Zealand. These formulas are not produced by the infant formula multinationals but by companies that focus on specialty infant formulas. In the U.S. goat milk infant formula is not yet available.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recognizes that goat infant formula has been thoroughly reviewed and supports normal growth and development in infants.^[6]

There is only information on this topic from the 2000s and later. There is no mention of goat milk being historically used as a substitution for breast milk.

occured to me belatedly to consider what tools mainstream philosophy has to deal with the "train to crazy town" problem since i'm running a meetup on it all of my required and supplemental readings come from various rationalists/eas/adjs and this is kinda insular. claude pointed me to the concept of reflective equilibrium.

per its SEP page,

Equilibrium is reached where principles and judgments have been revised such that they agree with each other. In short, the method of reflective equilibrium is the mutual adjustment of principles and judgments in the light of relevant argument and theory.

 it's the "dominant method in moral and political philosophy":

Its advocates suggest that “it is the only rational game in town for the moral theorist” or “the only defensible method” (DePaul 1993: 6; Scanlon 2003: 149; see also Freeman 2007: 35–36; Floyd 2017: 377–378). Though often endorsed, it is far more frequently used. Wherever a philosopher presents principles, motivated by arguments and examples, they are likely to be using the method. They are adjusting their principles—and with luck, their readers’—to the judgments suggested by the arguments and examples. Alternatively they might “bite the bullet” by adjusting initially discordant judgments to accommodate otherwise appealing principles. Either way, they are usually describing a process of reflective equilibrium, with principles adjusted to judgments or vice versa.

its objections section is substantive and points out that this is basically an intellectually empty methodology due to all the shenanigans one can pull when the method is functionally "just think about stuff until the vibes feel right". what's the response to that?

By this point the critic may be exasperated. If you identify a problem with someone’s way of doing philosophy, and they agree that it’s a problem, you might expect them to change how they do it. But the adherent of wide reflective equilibrium accepts the criticism but maintains their method, saying that they have adopted the criticism within the method. To critics this suggests that the method is “close to vacuous” (Singer 2005: 349), absorbing methodological controversies rather than adjudicating them (McPherson 2015: 661; Paulo 2020: 346; de Maagt 2017: 458). It just takes us back to the usual philosophical argument about the merits and demerits of various methods of argument and of various theories. The method of reflective equilibrium is then not a method in moral philosophy at all. (Raz 1982: 309) Defenders of wide reflective equilibrium describe it in similar terms to the critics, while rejecting their negative evaluation. Its ability to absorb apparent rivals is seen as a feature, not a bug. [emphasis mine]

i... hate this? it's like ea judo's evil twin. the article ends by pointing out a bunch of philosophical methods and theories that are incompatible with reflective equilibrium but basically shrugs its shoulders and goes oh well, it's the dominant paradigm and no one serious is particularly interested in tearing it down.

i kinda thought that ey's anti-philosophy stance was a bit extreme but this is blackpilling me pretty hard lmao. semantic stopsign ass framework

this week's meetup is on the train to crazy town. it was fun putting together all the readings and discussion questions, and i'm optimistic about how the meetup's going to turn out! (i mean, in general, i don't run meetups i'm not optimistic about, so i guess that's not saying much.) im slightly worried about some folks coming in and just being like "this metaphor is entirely unproductive and sucks", should consider how to frame the meetup productively to such folks.

i think one of my strengths as an organizer is that ive read sooooo much stuff and so its relatively easy for me to pull together cohesive readings for any meetup. but ultimately im not sure if it's like, the most important work, to e.g. put together a bibliography of the crazy town idea and its various appearances since 2021. still, it's fun to do.

i fear this week's meetup might have an unusually large amount of "guy who is very into theoretical tabletop game design but has never playtested their products which have lovely readable manuals" energy, but i like the topic a lot and am having an unsually hard time killing my darlings :')