The Source of Our Power

"I really don't think you're rationally considering how to maximize your contribution to rationality pedagogy and deciding it runs through freaking out about transgender and maybe abandoning the movement in disgust."

"Almost no one's optimal contribution to rationality pedagogy runs through freaking out about transgender; I just think it's plausible that mine does. It is written that power comes from having Something to Protect: the Sequences were distilled out of Eliezer Yudkowsky's attempt to think carefully about how to build a superintelligence; the classic Slate Star Codex posts on argumentative charity were born out of Scott Alexander's trauma after accidentally running afoul of social-justice activists.

"If Eliezer had started out trying to write about human rationality, if Scott had started out trying to write about discourse norms, it wouldn't have worked. The Art must have a purpose other than itself, or it collapses into infinite recursion."