In Paul Fussell’s book on class (I think), he says that people are really worried about differentiating themselves from the class immediately below them, but largely ignorant of the customs and sometimes even existence of the classes above them. When I found SSC, and then The Motte, and stuff like TLP, I was astonished to find a tier of the internet I had had no idea even existed. The quality of discourse here is . . . usually . . . of the kind that “high brow” (by internet standards) websites THINK they are having, but when you see the best stuff here you realize that those clowns are just flattering themselves. My question is, who is rightly saying the same thing about us? Of what intellectual internet class am I ignorant now? Or does onlineness impose some kind of ceiling on things, and the real galaxy brains are at the equivalent of Davos somewhere?
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Re: all the "The Motte is not that smart" comments.
As an Australian, I semi-frequently see people say some variation of "Australia is a horribly racist country" in the MSM, social media, in person or elsewhere. While this is often just a leftwing shibboleth, it's said frequently enough even among moderate voices that it has become part of the cultural conciousness.
When I hear this, I often think to myself, "what the hell are you talking about? Australia is an incredibly unracist country by any comparison. It would be hard to find any country less racist than Australia - maybe a couple in Europe or something (although even that's changing very fast) or maybe New Zealand, but that's about it. China? Japan? Brazil? Saudi Arabia? Nigeria? Italy? All more horribly racist than Australia by any meaningful standard.
The real issue is that Australia is not horribly racist (by any relative standard) but that Australia, being a Western liberal democracy among other reasons, is hypersensitive to racism. Whenever any racist incident does occur (and they will always occur to some degree), it blasted accross the media as an example of how bad we all and how much we still have to improve, even if such incidents are relatively rare and unrepresentitive (I'm sure American and Canadian readers can relate). Ironically, it is precisely because Australia is so unracist that we percieve ourselves as racist.
I feel the same way about this bashful comments about the Motte being really not all that smart. Are you crazy? By any reasonable, necessarily relative standard, the Motte is full of very smart people writing interesting posts and comments on a wide range of topics from a very varied perspectives. This is matched by few other places on the internet. Even if people are wrong (and people are often wrong), they're still wrong in the right kind of way, the way that's illuminating like when you argue an absurd postition to its fullest extent just for the hell of it.
And yes, as per the original topic of this thread, the Motte could be more intelligent. Yes, there are hyper-geniuses doing their third PhD in astro-quantum-biomechanical-neuroscience engineering, or whatever else who are not on the Motte and probably don't use the internet all the much. But by any reasonable standard, the Motte is pretty smart. We just are hypersensitive to our own intellectual inferiority specifically because this is a community build around casual intellectualism and full of people smart enough to realise there are people smarter than them who are not the Motte.
I'd wager Australia as a whole is more racist (or at least less anti-racist) than... Portland, probably? Seattle? Failing that, Vermont? Uh, Martha’s Vineyard?
We aren't denying that this place runs circles around any regular forum; this is why we waste time here. It's expected that even higher-tier forums will be oddly specific, small-scale and hard to find or get into. What is interesting is exactly the link after which it'll be possible to say «...But that's about it» – and preferably that it be accessible to outsiders. I know a few, but they're of a type that I'm not at liberty to make publicly known.
Moreover I maintain that TheMotte isn't exceptional due to being very smart. IMO it's more that we frown down on intransigence, irrational refusal to respect valid counterarguments. Smartypants on Reddit or HN can be very smart, but they tend to be obstinate and irrational like a combative teenager; and many rationalists on ACX/LW are quokkas who have given up on generality to maintain civility.
They aren't impressed with us either.
More options
Context Copy link
Yep. I find this weird double standard applied to TheMotte and other rationalist adjacent spaces when they go off on a particular chain of reasoning and reach a 'wrong' (or, at least, flawed) conclusion about some facet of the world that they're not an 'expert' in. Maybe there's an expert consensus that contradicts their conclusion or maybe the person in question didn't do quite enough research on the question and missed some obvious step.
And this gets jumped on by the critics as proof that the entire space is filled with deluded halfwits who have too high an opinion of their own intellect and should really just stay in their lane.
As always, i ask "compared to what?" Let's even leave aside the dregs of the internet where flame wars are all that exist, you can't find other places where someone would even follow a given chain of reasoning to a logical conclusion, explaining their steps in such a way that they're open to critique!
Making these sorts of mistakes is generally considered how one learns and improves their understanding of the world. If you are open to, and indeed, asking for critique and correction then you're already better off than 90% of the people contributing their opinions to the internet.
So critics who jump on errors in reasoning or faulty understanding of the world as displayed on TheMotte should really show me where I can go to find people reaching 100% factually correct and logical conclusions on their first try and with fully open descriptions of their reasoning process.
Before, I'd have believed "Academia" but, uh, the replication crisis and similar factors have shown that this doesn't really apply there, except in maybe the most rigorous fields and we have reason to be concerned about them too.
Absent that, I must conclude that being overly critical of these spaces whilst ignoring how high the standards are compared to the internet at large is just an attempt at social policing, and thus worth ignoring.
It really is a shame how far academia has fallen. Hopefully it hasn't always been this way. In my opinion one of the largest things that separates the rationalist sphere from everyday intellectuals is willingness to question academia and a rejection of Scientism.
Unfortunately most of the intelligenstia seems to have been captured by the idea that Science is the end all be all, and if something is in a scientific publication it is correct, full stop. Many people abuse this rhetorical tactic assuming nobody will read the sources, which in most spheres is largely true.
Our #1 competitive advantage in my mind is the ability to seriously question the academic class.
Bingo. For better or worse (probs worse) mainstream culture treats universities and academic researchers as brilliant, untouchable geniuses spitting out revolutionary research on a regular basis, such that one should just accept their vision without question.
Meanwhile some rat-adjacent groups are like "I dunno man, this low powered study with n=250 composed mostly of affluent college students might not be completely representative of the real world, and we've seen this idea implemented in practice and it doesn't seem to work very well.
And academia is so ossified it takes years for it to respond to critiques. Communities that have healthy norms for updating beliefs as new information come in are going to be ahead of the curve in general.
I think the bigger difference is willing to engage with what makes good or bad science. Scientism, as you call it, just get religious again "believe the Science" (with a capital 'S') but only if it's things I agree with and a study I support, not if it's, e.g. personality differences between men and women, or ... just about anything to do with Covid...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link