Arthur Chu:

So yes, to momentarily borrow Yudkowsky fanboy terminology, I wear black robes. I am a practitioner of the Dark Arts. I rigorously manage my own thinking and purge myself of dangerous “unthinkable” thoughts – “mindkill” myself – on a regular basis.

This is what you have to do to be a feminist anti-racist progressive, i.e. a social justice stormtrooper, You have to recognize that there is no neutral culture, neutrality is impossible, that culture is a cutthroat war of memes and that you have to commit to picking a side and setting yourself up as a neutral arbiter of memes is impossible and is a form of surrender. You have to constantly “check your privilege” and “unpack the knapsack” and all those other buzzwords.

You need to understand that the only way to be “rational” in this world is to be irrational, that the only way to be “fair” is to pick the right side and fight for it.

The people who genuinely win are the people who do this. The people who refuse to do this are the ones who sit on the sidelines and never even lose because they aren’t really playing.

I’ve said before that I’m amazed at Yudkowsky actually coming out and saying this at one point – that his movement is really good at getting people to make propositional statements that he judges to be “rational” but really bad at, like, actually effectively making rational decisions.

He likens this to “a dojo that teaches you how to punch rather than kick”, whereas I think a better analogy would be “a dojo that teaches you how to spectate rather than fight”.