Well, this is definitely the first time I’ve ever heard Lesswrongers described as conservative.
the liberals among them or capitalist libertarians don't round out the spectrum of political views when it comes to ideas that community popularly advocates.
advocates for strong gatekeeping and violence against any public subversion of it, within a centralized power whether capital or state, is getting at different flavors of the same kind of tyranny that you'll end up with whether liberal, conservative, capitalist libertarian.
Anyway, the rationalist community was never about people who were particularly rational, it was all about people recognizing their own irrationality and biases that inescapably comes with being equipped with a human mind. Of course, that does not mean it didn't attract people who thought it was about being a tribe of us, the rational and enlightened people vs them, the irrational plebs. Which is rather ironic, of course.
Although, with a few conversations that I have had with the "alignment" enthusiasts gave me the impression that in their opinion, many of the hot button issues like climate change/social inequality/global poverty etc. are irrelevant and not worth spending time over, because AI alignment is a much more serious threat. In that view, 90% or more of their political position overlaps with the conservative crowd ("issue X/Y/Z is not worth our time, and we should just let it happen as it does now"). So I am not surprised an outsider may label them as conservative.
Not following the logic at all here.
They are describing their own view _and_ attributing their reasoning to others.
But the argument isn't valid.
So if you have liberal values and consider a hard takeoff a likely near-to-medium-term scenario, then it's perfectly reasonable to argue that you should prioritize alignment research over almost anything else, because it's a critical instrumental goal for achieving all your other goals. This by no means makes you any less of a liberal, or more of a conservative.
But people who are more interested in virtue signalling than results, and/or don't know about or believe in a hard takeoff scenario, may interpret this train of thought as "conservative" because it appears to not match the standard thought patterns that a good, card-carrying liberal is supposed to have.
Capital-unism sounds awful enough
In all LW surveys to date, people who have identified as "conservative" or "reactionary" have been a tiny minority. There are many libertarians (whether "l" or "L" or whatever libertarianism means to different people), but the "liberal/social democrat" block is the largest. With regard to American party affiliation, the large majority lean Democrat. Most are atheist and lean consequentialist ethics, neither being a sign of conservative or reactionist values.