In that sense, there is still a bit of elitism in the sense that some of the ideas of the sorta co-founders of the movements, like Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nick Bostrom, Will MacAskill and such, are likely to be treated with notably more deference.
I think I disagree with this.
It has been joked that disagreeing with Eliezer is the favorite activity of LessWrongers.
Will MacAskill has written some very well-reasoned and well-received EAF posts that nonetheless were met with strong disagreement, for example Are we living at the most influential time in history? I think this is a sign of good epistemics: people recognized that post as good and interesting, but they didn’t defer much—they mostly disagreed with its conclusion.
I think the main reason people are more likely to talk about those people’s ideas is because their ideas are genuinely really good.
There will inevitably be some people who have good ideas, and lots of people are persuaded, and from the outside this looks like deference.
I mean, from the inside it would look like what you said, good ideas that are persuasive. And I’m not saying they aren’t good ideas that are persuasive (I agree they are). I’m more just pointing out some examples of ideas that form core elements of our belief ecosystem, that have their source in the works of particular elites, in this case, being named and popularized by Bostrom’s book Superintelligence, and then further popularized by Yudkowsky in the Sequences. In the sense that this is elitism, it’s very mild, and I don’t mean to imply it’s a problem or anything. It’s natural for the more elite among us to be in a better position to come up with the good ideas. I think also that to the extent there is deference here, it is usually well deserved, and also very tame compared to other intellectual communities.
I think I disagree with this.
It has been joked that disagreeing with Eliezer is the favorite activity of LessWrongers.
Will MacAskill has written some very well-reasoned and well-received EAF posts that nonetheless were met with strong disagreement, for example Are we living at the most influential time in history? I think this is a sign of good epistemics: people recognized that post as good and interesting, but they didn’t defer much—they mostly disagreed with its conclusion.
I think the main reason people are more likely to talk about those people’s ideas is because their ideas are genuinely really good.
There will inevitably be some people who have good ideas, and lots of people are persuaded, and from the outside this looks like deference.
I mean, from the inside it would look like what you said, good ideas that are persuasive. And I’m not saying they aren’t good ideas that are persuasive (I agree they are). I’m more just pointing out some examples of ideas that form core elements of our belief ecosystem, that have their source in the works of particular elites, in this case, being named and popularized by Bostrom’s book Superintelligence, and then further popularized by Yudkowsky in the Sequences. In the sense that this is elitism, it’s very mild, and I don’t mean to imply it’s a problem or anything. It’s natural for the more elite among us to be in a better position to come up with the good ideas. I think also that to the extent there is deference here, it is usually well deserved, and also very tame compared to other intellectual communities.