LessWrong House Style (2023)
https://nonesense.substack.com/p/lesswrong-house-style
Given that they are imbeciles given, occasionally, to dangerous ideas, I think it’s worth taking a moment now and then to beat them up. This is another such moment.
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Such a good post. LWers are either incapable of critical thought or self scrutiny, or are unwilling and think verbal diarrhea is a better choice.
It's an ironic tragedy that the average LWer claims to value critical thought far more than most people do, and this causes them to do themselves a disservice by sheltering in an echo chamber. Thinking of themselves as both smart and special helps them to make sense of the world and their relative powerlessness as an individual ("no, it's the children who are wrong" meme.jpeg). Their bloviating is how they main the illusion.
I feel comfortable speculating because in another world, I'd be one of them. I was a smart kid, and building my entire identity around that meant I grew into a cripplingly insecure adult. When I wrote, I would meander and over-hedge my position because I didn't feel confident in what I had to say; Post-graduate study was especially hard for me because it required finding what I had to say on a matter and backing myself on it. I'm still prone to waffling, but I'm working on it.
The LW excerpts that are critiqued in the OP are so sad to me because I can feel the potential of some interesting ideas beneath all the unnecessary technobabble. Unfortunately, we don't get to see that potential, because dressing up crude ideas for a performance isn't conducive to the kinds of discussions that help ideas grow.
In the Going Clear documentary an author says that because Scientology was built by and for L. Ron Hubbard, people who follow Scientology are gradually moulded in his image and pick up his worst traits and neuroses. LessWrong was founded by a former child prodigy.....
...with a huge chip on his shoulder about how the system caters primarily to normies instead of specifically to him, thinks he has fat-no-matter-what genes and is really into rape play.