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oligopsony:

this blog is first and foremost a shitpost curation station, BUT if I had to pretend it had some sort of greater mission I think increasing intellectual exchange between rationalists and leftists would be up there

if you are a rationalist, has this blog corrupted you at all with leftism? if there’s something at the level of “getting” ideas that prevents you from being corrupted, can you articulate what it is?

if you are a leftist, has this blog corrupted you at all with rationalism?  if there’s something at the level of “getting” ideas that prevents you from being corrupted, can you articulate what it is?

(where leftism/t arbitrarily and somewhat sloppily means “discourse community descended from marx’s writings” and rationalism/t means “discourse community descended from yudkowsky’s writings” and corruption means “getting more positively disposed to the idea that the associated people (at least here, On Tumblr) and ideas are worth engaging with,” but if you have a more interesting answer for different values of these go ahead - these definitions are sloppy and I really just mean “no, not bernie sanders” and “no, not descartes and spinoza” and “no, not selling all your possessions and joining the other cult”)

((credit for inspiring this come from @sinesalvatorem, who reminds me that i haven’t done that “reducing inferential distance from rationalism to communism” thing I said I would do, and also inadvertently that it would be a good idea to get a lay of what the inferential distances (in either direction) actually are))

Okay, so as someone who not only knows but cares about the Marx/Bakunin distinction (and thus felt really compelled to pick the nits of “descended from Marx’s writings” because as far as taking sides on the topic of two pre-all-the-empiricism-of-the-last-150-years dudes makes sense I’m on side Bakunin; for example when marxists.org tries to argue that Marx was right their arguments simply make Bakunin appear as the more sympathetic one even though they have been able to pick and choose them with the obvious itent of being favorable to Marx) I’m pretty much leftiness georg already by those standards, but then there’s the other distinction that is more political than cultural and which I am confused by.

The “communism as a vague description of the goal of post-scarcity and the end of poverty and material lack and rentseeker bullshit forcing people to toil for the benefit of powerful non-value-creator parasites; 3d-printers for everyone; beeline for future society: eudaimonic” thing makes sense; C4SS and David Friedman alike make sense (and I think the idea of “substantial basic income + actually laissez-faire” is effectively more socialist in the meaning of “alleviates the plight of the working class” than the entire state of Sweden), and “get maximum cash, invest in 3d-printers, share them, prevent the state from taking them away” is an actionable strategy, but what is the actionable strategy of “communism as politics, switch to economy: planned”, and what are its contents actually?

All I’ve managed to pick up from elsewhere is roughly “we have a lot of valid complaints about how a lot of things are really sucky for non-rich people but no proposed solution other than some kind of nebulous ~global revolution~ that is unlikely to ever actually happen and any attempts to do anything else than carry on the decades-old tradition of discussing the imminent revolution is liberal reformist bullshit, and we will control the economy democratically and it will ~automagically~ make it work better than markets despite not containing any actual replacement for the very important mechanisms markets have, and we will not expropriate your toothbrush even though we totally could expropriate your toothbrush and you’re supposed to trust us because this time subjecting everything to democracy would not work as disastrously as your previous experiences with democracy and de facto mob rule have led you to expect because this time democracy will ~automagically~ not vote on your body even though it totally could vote on your body and you would be a class enemy if you object” (this may sound a bit uncharitable but my interactions with statist marxists haven’t exactly been that fruitful because the inferential distance is too large)

So basically I’d like to know what steel marxism is _actually_ about, and especially wtf is up with the labor theory of value and democratic economy/economic democracy.

(via oligopsony-deactivated20160508)

1 month ago · tagged #i am worst capitalist #still bitter for '36 #promethea's empiricism fetish · 46 notes · .permalink

  1. dagny-hashtaggart said: Glad to see I’m not the only one who thought Gotha was…not Marx’s most intriguing piece.
  2. nostalgebraist said: my impression (and i’m curious what this implies about my own limited POV) is that you mostly post what i see as “rationalist” content, with the leftist content limited to mentioning that you have leftist views when it’s relevant without elaborating much on those views. i would love to see more leftist content, since i imagine your presentation of it would be novel+valuable
  3. shieldfoss reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin
  4. multiheaded1793 said: Like you, I started my blogging as both a rationalist/adjacent and a leftist; you have consistently provided good content and made me more inclined to listen to people I’m normally v averse to, ps you should really recover or retread the essays that you hosted on your defunct website, they were excellent.
  5. rocketverliden reblogged this from theaudientvoid and added:
    I think I started out as sort-of leftist or left-of-center and got turned onto Rationalism later on thanks to SSC.
  6. inexacterminology said: I cant remember who but someone said that the way to solve the automation apocalypse is to make the people own the robots and this is the best solution ive heard so far
  7. worldoptimization said: I am a rationalist and have become more positively inclined toward leftism since following you, mostly because I previously associated “leftist” with “annoying” but you seem cool. I still don’t actually Understand the Ideas Behind Leftism, which is probably my fault for getting bored whenever I start reading about it.
  8. eleypah said: I consider myself -adjacent to both communities.