Talk:The Pragmatosphere

Hello. I could not help but notice that this draft page had been left unattended. Even though I understand that it is quite unusual for one of the people featured on RationalWiki to assist in the writing, I would like to contribute a few things. I will not remove things I would object to because they are misrepresenting the ideas or insulting towards the people who promote them, in order to respect the adversarial, uncharitable tone of Liam's writing - sadly, that is par for the course. I will provide accurate information when I can. I will also document every change or addition here so that it is easy to change things back if need be.

- "alt-right" replaced by "far right". The alt-right is (was?) a mostly American far-right, 4chan-influenced political movement from the 2010s. Not all the people described here are American or interested in American politics, but they certainly all are interested in some conventionally far-right topics.

- added a couple of sentences on where the word "pragmatosphere" came from.

- "Most of these bloggers are atheists, and much of their worldview is..." there is no cause/effect relationship, so I replaced "so" by "and".

- "Blithering Genius is the most prominent member of the Pragmatosphere." removed "probably".

- removed "as well as different essays aimed towards popular culture" because the essays of "Expanding rationality" are a subset of those of "TheWaywardAxolotl".

- "in which he argues that mainstream science is plagued by ideological bias and perverse incentives" replaced "mainstream science" by "mainstream academia", as it is the only thing mentioned in that essay. Added an s to incentives. - removed the incomplete sentence "Many of his other articles are social commentary, often..."

I'll leave it as a draft for now and try to polish it a bit more later. Let me know if what I'm doing is acceptable (or even allowed on this website).

--Felix John (talk) 23:12, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

- Added "Besides the blogs described below, they and others have been publishing content on other platforms and channels for years. The amount of content creators involved could be in the dozens." (I do not know how many people write or publish about these ideas, but I know others who are much more active than myself if we count social media participation)

- Removed "He is also a bigger crank magnet than Blithering Genius." because you said he was a crank magnet in the previous sentence.

- Added ", as well as a blog post about where different countries should source their immigrants based on their purported IQs.", to harp on your point.

- Added "Other major influences are the HBD movement, malthusianism and Dawkins."

@LiamM32 let me know what you think. I tried to respect your work.

--Felix John (talk) 21:10, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Seems alright, good job --Goatspeed. _{Watch me}CircularRasoning^{My experiments} 21:19, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback. Since Liam isn't responding, I think I'll put it up, and add links to it in a few existing pages. --Felix John (talk) 19:50, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

It appears I am too new an editor to be able to relocate the draft to mainspace. @CircularReasoning@LiamM32 do you reckon you could give me a hand? --Felix John (talk) 20:03, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Hello, Felix. Sorry about the late reply. Too be honest with you I abandoned this article because I decided that the Pragmatosphere isn't significant enough to be worthy of a RationalWiki article. I was just leaving it there in case the Pragmatosphere ever started getting more attention.

I don't think subjects of articles are forbidden from editing them, but edits to take down bad publicity of oneself isn't accepted here. When Zero Contradictions was here, he made minor corrections without changing the narrative on this article and the one on BG, so his edits were left up, and a moderator told him he's welcome here.

However, I'm surprised that your edit to this page was accepted. The opening paragraph certainly pretties-up the image presented of the pragmatosphere compared to how it was written before, and how one would expect it to be covered on RationalWiki. Even Wikipedia would probably be harsher-sounding (if the Pragmatosphere ever got notable enough for them). However, I suppose it's good to have the added information that I had no way of knowing. One the part where it says "describing a more stable form of modernity" I take issue that the wording implies that his proposal (whatever it may be) really would indeed lead to more stability; not just that it's intended to. I haven't read it so I don't know if I agree. In any case, the part about why the Pragmatosphere has it's name should probably be moved away from the first paragraph.

If you think anything written here is misrepresenting the ideas promoted by these blogs, it's alright for you to say what your objections are here on the talk page.

I understand the term "Pragmatosphere" to refer to a specific community of blogs, not just any blog that covers these topics. Do you have a problem with this? Given the arbitrariness of the combination of topics, I think it makes sense for it to refer to the community and not all blogs on these topics.

I somewhat disagree with the change from "alt-right" to "far-right", though I understand your reasoning. While the term "alt right" was willingly adopted by a movement in the 2010's, it's become used to refer to a grouping of people based on their views who don't necessarily self-identify as "alt-right", including on RationalWiki itself. I think "alt-right" is more precise here, as it's often associated with racial and genetic views that aren't prominent in mainstream politics. Personally, I like to use the term for right-of-centre (anti-egalitarian) movements that are not primarily motivated by economics or traditional philosophy, or alternatively for right-wing ideas far outside the mainstream. This is often far-right, but I think some pragmatosphere bloggers would fit this definition without exactly being far-right overall. Aren't some of you only centre-right on economic policy? In any case, the article doesn't explicitly label the Pragmatosphere as alt-right or far-right, but I think that "alt-right" better hints at the kinds of topics promoted on the Pragmatosphere.

Regarding the "influences", isn't it strange to put Dawkins there? BG has a whole book supposedly debunking Dawkins' book. I haven't seen many references to him other than BG's dismissal of his gene-centric view of evolution. I suppose that a book that rejects Dawkins is technically influenced by him, as it couldn't have existed otherwise, but it's still a misleading statement (as far as I can tell). May you please explain to me how the Pragmatosphere has been influenced by Dawkins? --LiamM32 (talk) 06:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

After thinking about it, I'm guessing the thing about Dawkins has something to do with the concept of the meme. But is that really so important to the Pragmatosphere as a whole? Even if it really is significant, I don't think just mentioning Dawkins himself as the article currently does is really useful. --LiamM32 (talk) 19:44, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Regarding the tone, I'll copy what I said in the saloon bar - "I tried to keep my edits as matter-of-fact as possible, but I won't engage in self-flagellation so it certainly dilutes the vitriol. You can add some more if you want, of course". That applies to the wording as well, or to the reordering of some paragraphs (like the name thing). On that point, I understood "alt-right" to be a more specific thing but if you favor a broader usage of the term, why not. BTW, I appreciate the fact that you said "interest in some alt-right topics" instead of simply calling us a part of the alt-right or far-right, since pragmatospherians consistently take position against its defining, albeit senseless, tenet: ethno-nationalism.

I don't think it's going to be very productive for me to engage in a debate about what is being misrepresented or not. It's very much a matter of perspective. For instance, I think race is both a social concept and a biological reality (a bit like gender and sex) and although I understand where they are coming from, people who deny the latter deserve (if anything) to be called cranks, not us. That would apply to a lot of topics. Another thing is that this gives off the impression that the pragmatophere is a racialist, anti-academia community at its core. Although these topics create a lot of discussion because they are controversial, the core ideas are philosophical positions (truth, value, morality, the self etc.), psychological/societal theories (ZSE theory, game theory, malthusianism, tax schemes, governance) and biology applied to the human condition, at the individual and collective level. Imagine if someone wrote an article about Isaac Newton only saying he was a crank, a virgin and a loser with no job or family. RationalWiki articles about Blithering Genius and the Pragmatosphere, from my perspective, seem similarly detached from reality. I am not comparing us to Newton, of course, just saying that a very partial picture can be an extremely misleading picture.

On some level, I know this is what RationalWiki is for (shaming, finger-pointing, moral signaling), so I'm not holding it against you.

Regarding Dawkins, yes, he has been a major influence on at least Blithering Genius and myself, and possibly ZC and EA. I own all of his books except "The ancestor's tale", and reading his stuff in my early 20s (I started with "The God delusion", funnily enough) led me towards a darwinian, bio-centric view of human nature. His contributions to my worldview are too many to count, but I wrote <ref=https://brittonicmemetics.wordpress.com/2022/11/14/a-change-in-perspective/>this off-the-cuff article</ref> about some of it more than a year ago. Blithering Genius makes frequent references to Dawkins, and recommends reading his books as an introduction to evolution. His debunking of kin selection theory and the gene-centric view of human nature relies on the notion of the Expanded Phenotype (another one of Dawkins' contributions) to explain instances of kin altruism. He agrees with Dawkins on group selection, gradualism, local optimas, the brutality of nature etc. Not to mention other influential ideas such as his generally anti-religion stance and yes, memetics. The very name of my blog is a reference to Dawkins.

Sorry about not answering earlier - this was a busy week. Felix John (talk) 11:32, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, I suppose that tells me most of what I was looking for. It's interesting to read that you have read most of Dawkins' books. I haven't read them, but I figure they would be much better reading material than what BG has written. It's particularly surprising that BG recommends Dawkins as an introduction to evolution, as the title of his book implies that it's about debunking Dawkins' book.

I found it difficult to depict the essence of what Blithering Genius's writing is about when writing the article on him, especially in just a few words, given the number of things he comments on. I know that the Pragmatosphere has covered many topics, and I don't consider all of them to be crankery. For instance, I actually quite like the game theory stuff that Zero Contradictions has linked on his website. But there is typically a nonlinear relationship between the share of one's public communication which is crankery and the extent to which one's RationalWiki article focuses on crankery, as promotion of crankery is usually the motivation for one being added to RationalWiki, as was the case here. There are many things that have brought up on Pragmatosphere blogs that I don't know how I would comment on in a RationalWiki article. The mission-appropriate stuff is mostly just the various counterscientific or pseudoscientific claims that appear on the Pragmatosphere. The Pragmatosphere is very little-known at this point, so I don't think it's worth making this article too detailed. While I have wrote these articles after reading through lots and lots of content on these blogs, mostly from BG and ZC, I'm certainly not the only one that views the bad stuff as very prominent. I remember sharing ZC's website on a Discord server, and the first response was "Oh no! That site is loaded with white nationalist talking points". I gave ZC lots of patience in my long discussion with him, and I read through lots of it, and I unfortunately found my initial suspicions to be confirmed as I looked through his website in more detail.

Of course, it's never too late to remove and walk back on the more dubious claims you and the others have on their respective websites. Well, maybe it is for some people, but not for me (possibly the world's leading Pragmatosphere expert among those opposed to it). It takes self-discipline to be truth-oriented, but I think it's ultimately a good thing. I know that I used to have some beliefs that didn't sit well with the evidence, so I no longer allow myself to believe them. I started these RationalWiki articles after trying to persuade ZC against some of the nuttier claims on his website, but he stubbornly stuck to them even after I thoroughly argued against them and he had no ground to stand on. Since he so stubbornly motivated to promote things which were clearly non-factual (which would be clear to him by that point), I figured that the least I can do is dissuade others from believing what they see from him and BG. You yourself don't have the big pool of nonsense that ZC has, though turning against the nonsense from Emil Kirkegaard would certainly be a good thing.

I don't think that moral signalling is part of what RationalWiki is about. Writers are anonymous to most readers (who don't bother looking for authors), so there's little social benefit to it. Of course, it's written by humans, and humans tend to make moral judgements, so some moral judgements naturally may show up.

Regarding the thing about supposed sex-denialism; If you know of someone scamming biological men with a claim that they can get pregnant, than that would be mission-appropriate. RationalWiki will gladly cover it, especially if people are being harmed by it. :-) LiamM32 (talk) 09:46, 24 January 2024 (UTC)