Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Alt-Right?

[gabrielle]

Quote:LessWrong urged its community members to think like machines rather than humans. Contributors were encouraged to strip away self-censorship, concern for one’s social standing, concern for other people’s feelings, and any other inhibitors to rational thought. It’s not hard to see how a group of heretical, piety-destroying thinkers emerged from this environment — nor how their rational approach might clash with the feelings-first mentality of much contemporary journalism and even academic writing.

Wow that sounds really healthy.  Yeah, get rid of that little inner voice telling you that maybe you might be behaving like an asshole.  

And interesting that these supposed champions of "rational thought" are appealing to their readers' "natural instincts" instead of reason:

Quote:Natural conservatives can broadly be described as the group that the intellectuals above were writing for. They are mostly white, mostly male middle-American radicals, who are unapologetically embracing a new identity politics that prioritises the interests of their own demographic.

In their politics, these new conservatives are only following their natural instincts...[which] includes a preference for homogeneity over diversity, for stability over change, and for hierarchy and order over radical egalitarianism. Their instinctive wariness of the foreign and the unfamiliar is an instinct that we all share – an evolutionary safeguard against excessive, potentially perilous curiosity – but natural conservatives feel it with more intensity. They instinctively prefer familiar societies, familiar norms, and familiar institutions.

Those of you who yearn for a "homogenenous" society in the 21st century can forget about it, it ain't happening.  The world is getting smaller all the time.  You might as well get used to your neighbors and learn to like them.  At least tolerate them.