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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Write like a high-schooler who just discovered the wonders of a thesaurus. IQ is life. Everyone knows that vocabulary size is correlated to IQ, which is correlated to g, which determines your worth as a human being and position in the hierarchy. What better way to give your stock a little bump than to sprinkle in a few five syllable words that fell out of common use somewhere in the 19th century?

Maybe this would have been true pre-2017 or so, but there is inconsiderable disagreement about supposed intellectual-supremacy in rationalist communities. I think what unites these communities is a general skepticism of mainstream narratives by the media, credentialed experts, or mainstream science. And also, considerable self-critique and introspection. Posts which express skepticism of rationalist beliefs, like EA, are as up-voted as posts which endorse them, maybe even more so, which you typically don't see in other communities. This clearly goes against the stereotype of singlemindedness you describe.