3 ms·

I laughed because that “wide range of views” is actually quite narrow in the grand scheme of things. Wide by the standards of the intelligentsia perhaps.

pas 6y ago
Could you detail this a bit for those who are not in the know? Maybe could you give examples of a few missing views/viewpoints? Thanks!
- spamizbad 6y ago
  One thing left out of these discussions tends to be the views of just about every non-college Republican or independent. It’s just mainstream liberalism against elite Republican views, thirdway-ism, or some niche contrarian take from the right or the left. If you’re going to bring in contrarian views on things like race, that some view as racist - okay. But I would recommend expanding that to bring in views that are also contrarian but perhaps not so controversial but nevertheless worth discussing. My impression is SSC readers get caught up in a sort of intellectual exoticism rather than any rigorous analysis of what the landscape actually looks like; the non-conventional but ultimately boring takes are left unexamined.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    > One thing left out of these discussions tends to be the views of just about every non-college Republican or independent. It’s just mainstream liberalism against elite Republican views, thirdway-ism, or some niche contrarian take from the right or the left. Not just non-college Republicans, huge swaths of non-liberal Democrats (mostly people of color). Are the majority of Black Democrats, who believe you can’t be a moral person without believing in God, represented? Are there any Muslims who hold social positions their religion tells them to be true? When it comes to immigrants, anyone who actually believes what your typical Indian or Bangladeshi believes? (Or is it just the elite who deliberately left those countries and assimilated into white American culture? And even among the latter, is it the first generation parents hoping their kids will integrate to a degree, but hold on to traditional social morals, or is it the second generation ones who picked up western social morals despite their parents’ efforts?)
    - spamizbad 6y ago
      Correct. It’s weird how goofy race science stuff gets a platform and taken serious because it’s secular but tons of stuff from religious societies is beneath discussion
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  Yeah, as the original commenter mentioned, all these commenters take various assumptions as facts (it's okay, all political views do this, they must or they would be too vague to be useful): that politics functions best as the executed will of the majority, that democracy and voting is the best way to gauge public support for proposals they arguably don't understand the impact of, that authoritarianism is prone to abuse and thus inevitably abused, a skeptical / secular default way of looking at things and discussing them even among the religious. Again, none of these assumptions are wrong or bad or right or good. My point is just these are the assumptions you'll see across nearly every commenter on the blog because of its narrow, Western-educated audience. There are many popular, interesting, and dynamic political discussions happening elsewhere in the world (I think the most interesting is Islamism, discussions within the CCP might also count), but those discussions and the elites who have them don't start from these principles.
  - pas 6y ago
    It sounds strange, because there were/are a lot of posts/comments exactly about those problems. (Eg. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-communitarianism/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic... and https://slatestarcodex.com/tag/conworlding/page/10/ https://slatestarcodex.com/tag/conworlding/page/10/ ) And I can't find the anti-neoreactionary & in-defense-of-democracy post that goes through these problems, and tries to justify the assumptions. > (I think the most interesting is Islamism, discussions within the CCP might also count), but those discussions and the elites who have them don't start from these principles. If you could point these out I think SSC/LessWrong folks would love to ponder over them!

pas 6y ago

Could you detail this a bit for those who are not in the know? Maybe could you give examples of a few missing views/viewpoints? Thanks!

spamizbad 6y ago
One thing left out of these discussions tends to be the views of just about every non-college Republican or independent. It’s just mainstream liberalism against elite Republican views, thirdway-ism, or some niche contrarian take from the right or the left. If you’re going to bring in contrarian views on things like race, that some view as racist - okay. But I would recommend expanding that to bring in views that are also contrarian but perhaps not so controversial but nevertheless worth discussing. My impression is SSC readers get caught up in a sort of intellectual exoticism rather than any rigorous analysis of what the landscape actually looks like; the non-conventional but ultimately boring takes are left unexamined.
- rayiner 6y ago
  > One thing left out of these discussions tends to be the views of just about every non-college Republican or independent. It’s just mainstream liberalism against elite Republican views, thirdway-ism, or some niche contrarian take from the right or the left. Not just non-college Republicans, huge swaths of non-liberal Democrats (mostly people of color). Are the majority of Black Democrats, who believe you can’t be a moral person without believing in God, represented? Are there any Muslims who hold social positions their religion tells them to be true? When it comes to immigrants, anyone who actually believes what your typical Indian or Bangladeshi believes? (Or is it just the elite who deliberately left those countries and assimilated into white American culture? And even among the latter, is it the first generation parents hoping their kids will integrate to a degree, but hold on to traditional social morals, or is it the second generation ones who picked up western social morals despite their parents’ efforts?)
  - spamizbad 6y ago
    Correct. It’s weird how goofy race science stuff gets a platform and taken serious because it’s secular but tons of stuff from religious societies is beneath discussion
notsureaboutpg 6y ago
Yeah, as the original commenter mentioned, all these commenters take various assumptions as facts (it's okay, all political views do this, they must or they would be too vague to be useful): that politics functions best as the executed will of the majority, that democracy and voting is the best way to gauge public support for proposals they arguably don't understand the impact of, that authoritarianism is prone to abuse and thus inevitably abused, a skeptical / secular default way of looking at things and discussing them even among the religious. Again, none of these assumptions are wrong or bad or right or good. My point is just these are the assumptions you'll see across nearly every commenter on the blog because of its narrow, Western-educated audience. There are many popular, interesting, and dynamic political discussions happening elsewhere in the world (I think the most interesting is Islamism, discussions within the CCP might also count), but those discussions and the elites who have them don't start from these principles.
- pas 6y ago
  It sounds strange, because there were/are a lot of posts/comments exactly about those problems. (Eg. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-communitarianism/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic... and https://slatestarcodex.com/tag/conworlding/page/10/ https://slatestarcodex.com/tag/conworlding/page/10/ ) And I can't find the anti-neoreactionary & in-defense-of-democracy post that goes through these problems, and tries to justify the assumptions. > (I think the most interesting is Islamism, discussions within the CCP might also count), but those discussions and the elites who have them don't start from these principles. If you could point these out I think SSC/LessWrong folks would love to ponder over them!