First of all thank you for taking the time to write this long response.
Now let me try to correct some of the errors in how you arrived at your conclusion:
The first is that if you're an immigrant into a country you are roughly in the same position as a smoker who stops smoking. You, more than anybody else know the dangers of smoking first hand and so you will now fall through to an extremist anti-smoking position without realizing that the same people that allowed you to smoke before are part of the group of people who you are now arguing against.
Essentially you have leapfrogged the middle to end up on the other side.
Second, and point by point:
> I'm not a radical myself
You'd be surprised how many people would interpret your position as a pretty radical one. The one mistake I see over and over again in these discussions is that people have no idea in how extremist their positions really are because to them it is all reasonable.
> I am comfortable being a passive observer in a country going to the dogs.
It is going to the dogs, but this is in large part because of the group which you say you are a part of. There is a certain amount of hypocrisy in you moving from one country to another and then joining a group which fairly explicitly states that they are against people being able to do what you just did.
> Mistrusting everything mainstream media tells me
Why would you mistrust them and not mistrust the other sources that you have found?
> and trying to find alternative explanations for the same.
It appears to me that you are consciously selecting for sources that agree with your way of thinking and discarding those sources that disagree with your way of thinking.
> The rationalist bloggers (SSC, LW), Sam Harris, a bit of Moldbug
Those are considered 'fringe' (and worse) by a very large fraction of the population.
> conservative thinkers like Niall Ferguson, Douglas Murray, but mostly my own deductions from facts obtained from unbiased sources
Again, unbiased because they agree with you, not because they are actually unbiased.
> or if not available, reading from ALL the biased sources (instead of just one), and weighting their argument's merit.
That's a better method.
> You should try this.
What makes you think I don't? The fact that we disagree?
> Every time you read an opinion `X`, find someone intelligent who is (for some godforsaken reason) arguing for `not X`, and see who if his explanation makes more sense.
So, how is that working out for you so far :) ?
Note that - wittingly or not - you have aligned yourself with that element of your society that wants to destroy it an that given half a chance would deport you. That makes no sense to me.
> Most of the time the mainstream opinion would be right, but often it won't.
This we can agree on, but for different reasons.
Anyway, regardless of our different position on this subject once again my gratitude for taking the time for a reasoned and measured response.
> First of all thank you for taking the time to write this long response.
Thanks to you too for engaging with me respectfully. It's a shame that this conversation needs to be anonymous on my side. This will be my last response for some hours. Need to get some work done! :D
> Essentially you have leapfrogged the middle to end up on the other side.
I don't consider this the other side. My position is a fairly moderate "diversity is not as good as it's made out to be". Peter Thiel shares my position as well, but I ack that he's considered fringe at the moment.
> You'd be surprised how many people would interpret your position as a pretty radical one
By "not radical" I meant, I'm an armchair philosopher. I don't think my position is strong/confident enough to merit agency. I am happy merely talking about this, and not acting on it. For instance, I won't go and insult someone from an inferior culture (from my perspective) because of this position.
> It is going to the dogs, but this is in large part because of the group which you say you are a part of
Here, I completely and vehemently disagree. You've just stated this without any effort to argue why. And this truly is the core disagreement. As I said, my "group" isn't Trump or Nazis, but conservatives who want to conserve what is good in this society. What is killing this society is a rejection of enlightenment ideals, promulgated by the leftists and tolerated by the liberals, using violence when necessary.
> hypocrisy
I try to see things from an unbiased perspective. Whether I'm an immigrant or not shouldn't change what's good for western society (and therefore the world). So, this should perhaps prove to you that I'm not taking this position out of self-interest (unlike the whites), but could be taking this position out of ignorance, and I'm open to being convinced out of.
> Why would you mistrust them and not mistrust the other sources that you have found?
I mistrust them as well. Obviously. You could have simply steelmanned me here.
> It appears to me that you are consciously selecting for sources that agree with your way of thinking and discarding those sources that disagree with your way of thinking.
Umm no. This is literally the definition of scientific skepticism. That you try to find ALL explanations of a given phenomenon, and then pick the one with most merit, which explains the phenomenon completely using as few assumptions as possible and refutes most or all counterarguments.
As I said later, I often find mainstream media correct. For instance, climate change is a real threat (but MSM has the most shitty way of talking about it). I convinced myself of it not by MSM in this case, but by reading IPCC, watching nicely-done documentaries about it. On this topic, the rightwing media had only trash explanations, which was easy to see. Skepticism works. I'm not fooling myself. At least, not in such an obvious way.
At the very least, picking the best out of multiple sources is better than aligning with only one.
I should also add that I don't want to believe in what I believe. It's such an uncomfortable stance. I want to be proven wrong! If you have something I could follow which would convince me out of this, I would honestly be grateful!
> Those are considered 'fringe' (and worse) by a very large fraction of the population.
I agree. Again, I don't trust them blindly, but they offer good explanations. SSC and SH are not that fringe. I know senators listen to SH, and a lot of tech folks read SSC.
> conservative thinkers like Niall Ferguson, Douglas Murray,
I never said they are unbiased. I literally called them "conservative". They can't be conservative and unbiased at the same time. Cmon, give your opponent more credit.
> my own deductions from facts obtained from unbiased sources
By unbiased sources, I mean sources like the IPCC report, surveys by trusted names, etc.
> What makes you think I don't? The fact that we disagree?
You seem to not like anything your friends would disagree with, and therefore it seems you're in a filter bubble. Also, your previous comment to the tune of "I've never met someone who openly takes this stance" is another clue.
> So, how is that working out for you so far :) ?
I don't understand the rhetoric. Good?
> destroy it an that given half a chance would deport you
Core disagreement. I don't think they plan to destroy it. Further, I'd rather have a functioning Enlightened society where I'm not living, than a dysfunctional society where I am.
Ok, so my reading on this so far is this: you've decided to move to another place and now you would like that place to remain the way it was when you chose to move there.
Please realize that culture is fluid and that culture has always been changing due to influences from other cultures and that you will never be able to find a place that is static to the degree that you seem to desire.
Once you acknowledge that you can start to think about how to constructively guide a culture's change while under the influence of more and less desirable influences from outside.
> Core disagreement. I don't think they plan to destroy it.
You must have entirely missed the hostile take-over of the conservative party by the fringe, this is no longer a thing that is up for debate, the GOP is no longer able to control the fringe to the point where it is forced to dance along to the tune of the minority radical element. It's a real problem. Once the conservative movement manages to distance itself from the fringe - assuming they can do it - you will again have representation in politics but right now it appears that you do not.
edit:
Thinking about this a bit more, you should have moved to Switzerland, it is far more in line with your way of thinking than the USA is.
> you would like that place to remain the way it was when you chose to move there
This isn't a good characterization at all.
> that culture is fluid
I do want it to evolve but not in the wrong direction. I want MORE western values and scientific and enlightenment ideals, not less. I don't want identity politics and post-modernism and moral relativism and political correctness and feelings over facts/science. In short I want what Steven Pinker (http://a.co/7ctFP0t) wants. And sometimes, being smarter about immigration is the only way to move towards a better society, instead of axiomatically believing in "diversity and immigration is an intrinsic good", which is an extremely unscientific position to take.
> You must have entirely missed the hostile take-over of the conservative party by the fringe
This is actually a common myth. If you have the patience, Ben Shapiro (Conservative NeverTrumper) explains it in this video (https://youtu.be/67zCG-KPWfQ). He essentially says that the actual number of people who hate other races and want to kill non-whites, i.e. neonazis, are very few, and most altrighters are just people who want to protect western values, are against the "whites are oppressors" narrative, etc.
> you should have moved to Switzerland
This is not so important to me that I sacrifice my tech career. Also, there is pretty much only 2-3 places in the world to do AI, and bay area is one of them.
Now let me try to correct some of the errors in how you arrived at your conclusion:
The first is that if you're an immigrant into a country you are roughly in the same position as a smoker who stops smoking. You, more than anybody else know the dangers of smoking first hand and so you will now fall through to an extremist anti-smoking position without realizing that the same people that allowed you to smoke before are part of the group of people who you are now arguing against.
Essentially you have leapfrogged the middle to end up on the other side.
Second, and point by point:
> I'm not a radical myself
You'd be surprised how many people would interpret your position as a pretty radical one. The one mistake I see over and over again in these discussions is that people have no idea in how extremist their positions really are because to them it is all reasonable.
> I am comfortable being a passive observer in a country going to the dogs.
It is going to the dogs, but this is in large part because of the group which you say you are a part of. There is a certain amount of hypocrisy in you moving from one country to another and then joining a group which fairly explicitly states that they are against people being able to do what you just did.
> Mistrusting everything mainstream media tells me
Why would you mistrust them and not mistrust the other sources that you have found?
> and trying to find alternative explanations for the same.
It appears to me that you are consciously selecting for sources that agree with your way of thinking and discarding those sources that disagree with your way of thinking.
> The rationalist bloggers (SSC, LW), Sam Harris, a bit of Moldbug
Those are considered 'fringe' (and worse) by a very large fraction of the population.
> conservative thinkers like Niall Ferguson, Douglas Murray, but mostly my own deductions from facts obtained from unbiased sources
Again, unbiased because they agree with you, not because they are actually unbiased.
> or if not available, reading from ALL the biased sources (instead of just one), and weighting their argument's merit.
That's a better method.
> You should try this.
What makes you think I don't? The fact that we disagree?
> Every time you read an opinion `X`, find someone intelligent who is (for some godforsaken reason) arguing for `not X`, and see who if his explanation makes more sense.
So, how is that working out for you so far :) ?
Note that - wittingly or not - you have aligned yourself with that element of your society that wants to destroy it an that given half a chance would deport you. That makes no sense to me.
> Most of the time the mainstream opinion would be right, but often it won't.
This we can agree on, but for different reasons.
Anyway, regardless of our different position on this subject once again my gratitude for taking the time for a reasoned and measured response.