While I'm here, let me plug two novels I think LW readers might appreciate: Watt by Samuel Beckett (an obsessively logical, hilarious book) and The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil, whose hero is a rationalist in abeyance (Musil was a former engineer, philosopher, and psychologist himself).
Hi everyone. Author here. I'll maybe reply in a more granular way later, but to quickly clear up a few things:
-I didn't write the headlines. But of course they're the first thing readers encounter, so I won't expect you to assess my intentions without reference to them. That said, I especially wanted to get readers up to half-speed on a lot of complicated issues, so that we can have a more sophisticated discussion going forward.
-A lot fell out during editing. An outtake that will be posted online Monday concerns "normal startup culture"--in which I went to TechCrunch Disrupt. I don't take LW/MIRI/CFAR to be typical of Silicon Valley culture; rather, a part of Bay Area memespace that is poorly understood or ignored but still important. Of course some readers will be put off. Others will explore more deeply, and things that seemed weird at first will come to seem more normal. That's what happened with me, but it took months of exposure. And I still struggle with the coexistence of universalism and elitism in the community, but it's not like I have a wholly satisfying solution; maybe by this time next year I'll be a neoreactionary, who knows!!
-Regarding the statistics and summary of the LW survey. That section was much longer initially, and we kept cutting. I think the last thing to go was a sentence about the liberal/libertarian/socialist/conservative breakdown. We figured that that various "suggestive statistical irrelevancies" would imply the diversity of political opinion. Maybe we were overconfident. Anyway, after the few paragraphs about Thiel, I tried not to treat libertarianism until the final sections, and even there with some sympathy.
-"Overhygienic," I can see how that might be confusing. I meant epistemic hygiene.
-letters@harpers.org for clarifying letters, please! And I'm sam@canopycanopycanopy.com.
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I was joking.