Why I don't read Less Wrong

I've never been part of the "rationalist" community (that is, the one orbiting the website Less Wrong), but I have some pretty obvious rationalist leanings.  My primary and longest-lasting interest in modern skepticism has mainly to do with the general method of thinking about things.  Understanding fallacies and biases, emphasizing empirical knowledge, all that stuff.  As such, I appreciate Less Wrong, and enjoy the times where I occasionally come across one of their articles.

But whenever I look at their blogs all I can think is that that's way too much to read about things that are too far away from application.  I think this is a mark of true excess, because as a long-time reader of blogs, I'm already an outlier in how willing I am to read walls of text on the internet.  What makes Less Wrong especially inaccessible is that they have a dense slang language.  It's comparable to TVTropes in that they have a bunch of cute names and phrases for various patterns that were defined at one point in the community.  Slang is a cool thing to have but it does not enhance accessibility.

I liked Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, written by Eliezer Yudkowsky of Less Wrong.  That was entertaining, and therefore more readable.  Although it also suffered from sections that were way too long and overwrought--the wizarding battles in that fanfic are way worse than Quidditch ever was.

If you're asking "so what?" there is no "what".  There isn't any reason that people on Less Wrong should care.  I'm sure plenty of people think I'm too verbose or otherwise don't like my writing style, and I don't care about them.

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Chris Hallquist recently covered some criticism of Less Wrong by Arthur Chu (who is a recent Jeopardy celebrity and also two degrees away from me on Facebook).  Scott Alexander responded to the same criticism, but with a completely different interpretation of what Arthur said.  I wouldn't know exactly what Arthur was trying to say, but some of that criticism resonated with me:

"I don’t want to win if I’m wrong.”

Well congratulations, you won’t ever have to worry about that, because endless self-criticism about whether your values are in fact right or wrong guarantees that you will lose and someone else’s values will win anyway. You’ll be spared the anguish of knowing whether you made the right decision because that power will be taken away from you.

Surely some time should be spent on self-criticism about whether our values are right or wrong.  But at some point it costs you more than it benefits you.  If there is any human community that goes beyond that point, it is the rationalist community, which invests more time in self-criticism than any other group.  Their over-investment in precision and accuracy makes them inaccessible to most people, and thus greatly reduces any social impact they have.

I run the risk of severe hypocrisy here because I have a marginal blog with too many words on it.  But the reason I blog is for myself.  If someone criticized me for not having any social impact and instead "pussyfooting around with debate-team nonsense" (Arthur's words), I would accept that as a valid complaint.  After all, this blog does not have much social impact and is mostly filled with nonsense.  I don't know if people on Less Wrong feel the same way.

Dear Allies

On this blog I write about queer stuff, as well as non-queer stuff.  So some of my readers are queer, and others are not.  But you might consider yourself an "ally" or supporter of some sort.  I have a question for you all, which you can answer in the comments.  How appreciated to you feel as an ally to LGBTQ people?

There's no wrong answer.  But I'll have you know that in the LGBT community, there is a lot of debate as to how much allies should be appreciated.

There's a comic that I've seen circulating around (origin unknown), which I like a lot because it expresses some of the problems people have with allies.

In short, allies are often overbearing, and not as helpful as they think they are.

You may think this is just a problem with people being "bad" allies, but that's not the entirety of it.  Last weekend I was at a conference, and we had an asexuality caucus.  One thing people complained about was the LGBTQIA acronym, because the conference materials said the A stood for Ally rather than Asexual.  More than annoyed that allies were taking precedence over us, people were annoyed that "ally" is ever part of the acronym.  Another example, sometimes people on Tumblr complain that the asexuality flag contains the color white to symbolize non-asexual people.  (And if you really want to piss people off, tell them that there is a flag for allies.)

Some people just don't like that allies are ever included symbolically.

I was thinking about this, because I recently read a (very long) essay by Julia Serano about the concept of appropriation.  Whenever allies enter queer spaces or imitate queer culture, they are seen as "appropriating" queer struggles for their personal gain.

Julia makes the apt observation that early in a minority social movement, allies are often welcomed, because the movement wants all the help it can get.  Later on in the movement, it becomes more socially acceptable to be an "ally", so allies are less valued.  Additionally, you can imagine that when it's socially preferable to be an ally, you get people who pose as allies but don't actually help much.

And it's not just a difference across time, it's a difference across space as well.  On the internet, allies are regarded with suspicion (supportive words are cheap), but of course allies are still valued by national LGBT organizations (allies are potential donors).  And I've never heard people complain about allies in high school queer straight alliance groups, because that's one place allies are needed.

So far I've taken a neutral stance on how much allies should be appreciated, and that's because I don't think there's any one-size-fits-all approach.  It makes sense to hold allies to a higher standard as time passes, as the social cost of being an ally decreases.  But if you insist that nobody ever give an inch to allies, then we cripple the most desperate groups, the ones who need allies.

Julia Serano points out that we don't just need allies for allies.  Some minimum level of acceptance of outsiders is also important for people who are queer.

The first time we enter a particular LGBTQIA+ space (whether it be a gay bar, a trans support group, or an asexual online discussion group) we often feel like outsiders, and we experience a steep learning curve in trying to understand the language and customs associated with the group.

In other words, we discover LGBTQIA+ identities and cultures. And one could say that all gender and sexual minorities are appropriators, as virtually all of us have adopted identities and participate in cultures that others created before us, and which we were not initially socialized into.

So to any allies out there, I hope this explains why queer people are so ambivalent towards you.