Hating BNW is definitely a low-key rationalist pasttime; gwern also
went on a lengthy rant about it once on LessWrong, I’ll try to dig up
the link. He was trying to play it off he like was just annoyed at how
unrealistic it was– “this world could never arise naturally”, that sort
of thing– but in context and especially given the lack of applying this
same complaint to their beloved classics like Snow Crash, it’s pretty
obvious that their real beef is, “how dare you portray the endgame we’re
trying to build as a dystopia”
A lot of what these guys are looking for was documented (and refuted) by Bertrand Russell in the Scientific Outlook in 1931, which Brave New World was written as a satire of. So you're not too far off the mark here.
Honestly I think they just get butthurt because looking Mustapha Mond and what he represents is like looking in a mirror, and the book calls it bullshit.
i also don’t exactly like BNW but for different reasons; Huxley
really moralizes about the noble savage and the superior value of
reactionary traditionalism
The Shocking Truth: "This femoid - promiscuous!"
The Savage: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!"
At least that was my uncharitable impression of the book.
It's a fair point actually. Huxley himself later wrote that he wished he had included a third option in the book aside from the World State and the reservations, one where technology is used to improve people's lives but not to rule over them. His later book The Island is very much along those lines.
“Our society functions better if we can use ID people as slave labor” is pretty fucked.
Hating BNW is definitely a low-key rationalist pasttime; gwern also went on a lengthy rant about it once on LessWrong, I’ll try to dig up the link. He was trying to play it off he like was just annoyed at how unrealistic it was– “this world could never arise naturally”, that sort of thing– but in context and especially given the lack of applying this same complaint to their beloved classics like Snow Crash, it’s pretty obvious that their real beef is, “how dare you portray the endgame we’re trying to build as a dystopia”
i also don’t exactly like BNW but for different reasons; Huxley really moralizes about the noble savage and the superior value of reactionary traditionalism