I was perusing the awful places these losers hang out and I couldn’t help but notice they had taken the most awful right wing positions. However, I didn’t realize it was that bad until I hung out with my ex and he basically trotted out trad con talking points minus religion (plus evo psych). How is this even possible? 5 years ago these losers were Dawkins fans, but somehow they believe everything traditionalists say but with weird jargon. How has “Rationalism” lead to the conclusion we all hate? What the fuck happened? I used to be a nerd who liked this stuff. Was I always just naive?
“Rationalists” are first and foremost big on ‘rational self-interest’, emphasis on self-interest. 10 years ago they perceived the larger threat to their wealth and status came from the evangelical Right, today they see it coming from the left. Their beliefs are malleable.
I’m convinced that this is what happens when you take on too many right-wing views. Fundamentally, there are certain worldviews that are self-reinforcing and if you accept most of one you’re probably going to eventually accept all of it. These people might have been fans of Dawkins but they were still sexist and Islamophobic. Ultimately those beliefs are going to manifest themselves in coming to the same conclusions regarding the appropriate social status of women and Arabs as their religious counterparts.
Dawkins was only ever against religious belief in God, not really against a lot of the conclusions of right-wing religion that we consider objectionable. It sounds like your ex demonstrates this perfectly. He’s still an atheist, he just uses evo-psych to justify the trad views instead of Christianity. Of course, Christian doctrine itself is often hostile to some trad ideas (just as contemporary psychology and biology are hostile towards race science) but that does not matter to them. They are only searching for an overarching justification for their particular views and do not care if it is consistent. Conservative Christians will tie themselves into knots trying to explain how Jesus’s teaching to love your neighbor and care for the poor means it’s still okay for them to hate immigrants and black people. And rationalists will scream about SJW conspiracies in academia to explain why race science has no mainstream support. Being reactionary is what these tendencies have in common, not really religion.
Edit: I’ll say I used to like Dawkins too and went through an edgy-teen-atheist phase, but I think I approached him from the opposite direction: I understood that mainstream religion often pushed a regressive social agenda so I was eager to find critiques and debunks of its tenets. But later, Dawkins and his ilk’s tendency to reproduce some of the same regressive attitudes drove me away from them (Learning that Christopher Hitchens supported the Iraq War was a turning point as well). Like your ex, I’m still an atheist. But instead of becoming a reactionary, I became a liberal, and then a Marxist. This process lines up with values I’ve held for a long time, going back to childhood. I’ve always thought racism, sexism, and inequality were wrong and I’ve looked for ever-more effective ways to explain their existence and fight their ascendancy. If you think that racism, sexism and inequality might actually be good (or–let’s be honest–good for you) you might go through a mirror image of my process, where you adopt more and more of a worldview that justifies such attitudes, eventually ending up at a place nearby to other reactionaries whether or not you share every perspective. And indeed, there are communalist strains of Christianity that are similar to my own secular socialist views and that quite oppose firebreathing evangelicalism.
I don’t think many of them became tradcons. That would mean changing there minds, and if there’s one thing rationalists won’t do, it’s that. Some of them started off as tradcons.
There are some terrible posters in the TheMotte/SSC/Scott Alexander sphere of rationalism, but I don’t think any of them have become more terrible. It’s just that there are no rules against being a mask-off fascist, so over time the only people posting there are mask-off fascists*, and for some reason Darwinn2500. TP0 hasn’t gotten any worse over time, he just keeps not being reprimanded for being a racist, sexist, transphobic asshole, and so he keeps doing that.
If you look at rationalism more broadly, I think most of them are still in holding patterns. AFAIK, Elizer Yudkowski is still a techbro with a messiah complex who posts bad, confusing, but ultimately not fascist takes on Twitter. /r/rational still posts about various web serials and likes fanfiction too much.
*: Incidentally, rationalists identified and named this phenomenon, but still failed to prevent it from happening. I think that pretty succinctly demonstrates the failings of the rationalist project and worldview.
I think a lot of them were always social reactionaries but were too bigbrained to believe sincerely in God. So they were always motivated to circle back to “trad” beliefs, as they had never sincerely abandoned them even during their nü atheist phases. Just a guess, and not meant to apply universally.
I apologize because I know the mods here know way more about philosophy than me, but I’m going to give my opinion. German idealism plus might makes right is what these people believe. We saw before how this ended. How can they honestly and unironically believe this? I recently read Guns of August and the author talked about how German Idealism lead to German aggression and nationalism. I understand that the Germans weren’t entirely at fault, but these white guys are now citing the same sources to justify their views. How am I a crazy person for pointing this out?
I think if you look back you’ll be surprised how conservative a lot of atheist/rationalist talking points were. I remember having arguments with Sam Harris fanboys back in 2012 and they were about the same as now.
I’m sorry for my rant. I just had to hang out in SF with some awful rationalists who said but ackshually about all my points. I’m also pretty pissed at myself for dating a guy that was that big of an asshole. I think I should become a lesbian.
my friend just emailed me a copy of The Elephant in the Brain and told me to read it
Don’t know what to tell him
Anyone who describes themselves as an unapologetic Dawkins fan in 2019 (or even 2014) is probably irredeemable. Regardless of Dawkin’s personal qualities, membership of the “Dawkin’s fandom” is a red flag at this point, a marker for the worst kind of people.
I speculated a while ago on whether it’s something inherent to Rationalism or peculiar to the overwhelmingly white male American techbro in which it took root, and I didn’t reach a firm conclusion. But it seems safe to say at the very least that Rationalism leaves overwhelmingly white male American techbros poorly equipped to think critically about the right-wing slogans that are designed to appeal to their particular set of unconscious biases, and the proclivity to dress up every simple idea with weird shibboleths and spurn the outgroup that talks and thinks like normal humans creates a vicious circle that can lead them off any given deep end. You do see the same “hey this group is finally big enough to have women/POC/LGBT members” to “oh no they have opinions” to “MAN THE BARRICADES” to alt-right to tradcon pipeline in a variety of other overwhelmingly white male American techbro domains.
alternatively: they thought their magic mumbo-jumbo was so powerful they could defeat trolls in Civil Debate, but they lost the arguments and therefore joined the trolls
Just remember how willing Dawkinsites were to hop onto misogyny.
Personally I think it’s because rationalism naturally supports strict hierarchies and exercise of power by them. Tech daddies good. Technocracy good. Obnective rules and structures good. Weird mystery cults centered around idolized leaders are good. The smarties should be at the top telling everyone what to do for their own good. Some people are just better than others due to objective biological reasons and there’s nothing to be done about it other than make them better.
Once you’re primed to think like that it doesn’t matter how small l liberal your ideals are, you’ll ultimately drift right sign because that’s where the support for top down objective hierarchies really lies, and the left is where people want to break down power structures and create a more practically equal society. I mean, outside of tankies. But they like capitalism too much for that.
I mean, shit, why do you think they like fantasy dark lords so much?
fwiw, when i went looking, the first person I could find using “red pill” in its present sense of “right-wing enlightenment” was Moldbug, so
Honestly, I much prefer the tradcons to the rationalists. I think the tradcons are, at best, more honest and self-aware about their beliefs, and more willing to compromise their own beliefs to better serve the society around them. At worst, they are acting out of panic and fear.
Rationalism, with its emphasis on re-examining, re-explaining, and ultimately re-defining the entire universe in its own language is far more about conquest and control, and operates from a sense of entitlement and power. (At least, this has been my experience. YMMV.)
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Honestly I think for 90% of them the main appeal is in the self-importance and edginess kick they get from holding “controversial” beliefs. In the 1970s, when the far left had the countercultural initiative, they probably would have been devout Marxists; now that the far right has the counterculture/edginess factor, that’s what they cheer for.
Also pretty much any community devoted to deep (or deep-sounding) political discussion online tends towards wack ideologies – be they reactionary, libertarian or, in the case of /r/SneerClub, communist. As Scott himself notes:
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It’s been proven in IQ testing that non-whites are smarter than whites. This is why they keep hiding this information. After all PoC are extremely smart, much smarter than whites. Every single IQ metric proves it. The only reason people like whites is because they’re better looking, that’s all, everyone knows PoC are the true leaders and intellectuals. PoC are more artistic, more creative, more spiritual, just all around better human beings. Only thing whites have going for them is that they are so much more attractive.
Always remember that whites are the evolutionary losers, very low IQ, very low energy, low effort humans, not artistic, not creative. Only reason people like whites is because white people are like 100x more attractive and beautiful than PoC, that’s all. It’s completely superficial.