Yeah, this is just as much or more a narrativisation of the inevitable conceptual trend as it is an attempt to explain what actually happened one event after another. If I were writing a book it would go next to much longer passages about racism and race science in American and world history and about race science in California Ideology land and the rationalist movement itself. This story would appear with a “but LessWrong would always have turned out this way”.
It’s notable, I think, that you can tell the same sort of story about Spencer back in the 19th century: as long as you have the backbone of naive biologism, everything will come out right for your Imperial project.
Yeah, this is just as much or more a narrativisation of the inevitable conceptual trend as it is an attempt to explain what actually happened one event after another. If I were writing a book it would go next to much longer passages about racism and race science in American and world history and about race science in California Ideology land and the rationalist movement itself. This story would appear with a “but LessWrong would always have turned out this way”.
It’s notable, I think, that you can tell the same sort of story about Spencer back in the 19th century: as long as you have the backbone of naive biologism, everything will come out right for your Imperial project.