I think the trend you describe is mostly an issue with “progressives”, i.e. “leftists” rather than an issue for all those left of center. And the rationalists don’t actually lean right in my experience. They average more like anti-woke and centrist. The distribution in the 2024 ACX survey below has perhaps a bit more centre-left and a bit less centre and centre-right than the rationalists at large but not by much, in my estimation.
Fair! I think it’s hard to fully slot rationalists politically because, well, the mix of high decoupling and generally esoteric interests make for some unique combinations that don’t fit neatly in the standard spectrum. I’d definitely qualify myself as centre-left, with some more leftist-y views on some aspects of economics, but definitely bothered by the current progressive vibe that I hesitate to define “woke” since that term is abused to hell but am also not sure how to call since they obstinately refuse to give themselves a political label or even recognise that they constitute a noteworthy distinct political phenomenon at all.
How was this survey done, by the way? Self ID or some kind of scored test?
So the thing with self-identification is that I think it might suffer from a certain skew. I think there’s fundamentally a bit of a stigma on identifying as right wing, and especially extreme right wing. Lots of middle class, educated people who perceive themselves as rational, empathetic and science-minded are more likely to want to perceive themselves as left wing, because that’s what left wing identity used to prominently be until a bit over 15 years ago (which is when most of us probably had their formative youth political experiences). So someone might resist the label even if in practice they are on the right half of the Overton window. Must be noted though that in some cases this might just be the result of the Overton window moving around them—and I definitely have the feeling that we now have a more polarized distribution anyway.
I think the trend you describe is mostly an issue with “progressives”, i.e. “leftists” rather than an issue for all those left of center. And the rationalists don’t actually lean right in my experience. They average more like anti-woke and centrist. The distribution in the 2024 ACX survey below has perhaps a bit more centre-left and a bit less centre and centre-right than the rationalists at large but not by much, in my estimation.
Fair! I think it’s hard to fully slot rationalists politically because, well, the mix of high decoupling and generally esoteric interests make for some unique combinations that don’t fit neatly in the standard spectrum. I’d definitely qualify myself as centre-left, with some more leftist-y views on some aspects of economics, but definitely bothered by the current progressive vibe that I hesitate to define “woke” since that term is abused to hell but am also not sure how to call since they obstinately refuse to give themselves a political label or even recognise that they constitute a noteworthy distinct political phenomenon at all.
How was this survey done, by the way? Self ID or some kind of scored test?
This was just a “where do you rate yourself from 1-10” type question, but you can see more of the questions and data here.
So the thing with self-identification is that I think it might suffer from a certain skew. I think there’s fundamentally a bit of a stigma on identifying as right wing, and especially extreme right wing. Lots of middle class, educated people who perceive themselves as rational, empathetic and science-minded are more likely to want to perceive themselves as left wing, because that’s what left wing identity used to prominently be until a bit over 15 years ago (which is when most of us probably had their formative youth political experiences). So someone might resist the label even if in practice they are on the right half of the Overton window. Must be noted though that in some cases this might just be the result of the Overton window moving around them—and I definitely have the feeling that we now have a more polarized distribution anyway.