8 ms·

My favorite thing he’s ever wrote. I think the Moloch metaphor is really powerful for thinking about accelerationism and is in fact the metaphor of our age. Lo

My favorite thing he’s ever wrote. I think the Moloch metaphor is really powerful for thinking about accelerationism and is in fact the metaphor of our age. Look at climate change, student debt, housing, or basically any other issue on which we’re kicking the can down the road and you can see a certain Molochian bargain: we sacrifice our children for sake of the status quo.

simonebrunozzi 4y ago
> My favorite thing he’s ever wrote. Exactly the same for me.
hprotagonist 4y ago
the parable of talents is also way way up there.
cma 4y ago
The stuff that didn't make it to the blog is disturbing too (like the weird conclusion to the Moloch essay): https://nitter.lacontrevoie.fr/ArsonAtDennys/status/1362153191102677001 https://nitter.lacontrevoie.fr/ArsonAtDennys/status/13621531... Apparently lots of the blog and his neoreactionary FAQ was set up to get people into some of the ideas if neoreactionaries like eugenics stuff. There was a whole trove of stuff that released a bit after the NYT article on Slate Star Codex that kind of proved its suspicions right.
- skybrian 4y ago
  Seems like the background behind that is that Scott Alexander has sometimes entertained weird ideas. He's been open about at one time believing a conspiracy theory himself, for a little while. That screenshot doesn't actually say what about neo-reactonary stuff he thought was interesting, just that there is some. The rest is left to your imagination, and Scott Alexander's enemies want you to imagine the worst.
  - JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago
    > He's been open about at one time believing a conspiracy theory himself, for a little while. Absolutely disgusting. How could he?? But which one? MKULTRA*? Operation Northwoods*? Flat earth? Illegal domestic surveillance by the NSA*? Operation Gladio*? Tell us which one, so that we may denounce him! * Oops, this one's real lol
    - austhrow743 4y ago
      Lost underwater city. There are some suspiciously man made looking natural rock formations underwater that look like part of a pyramid. Scott even scuba dived there to check them out. I'm not sure how much conspiracy is involved.
  - kmmlng 4y ago
    I think people underestimate how hard it is to evaluate the validity of ideas. Most people think they are open to new ideas, but actually have a pre-configured bias system that automatically accepts or rejects any incoming ideas. If you are actually willing to entertain new ideas, you have to run with something for a while while you figure out if it makes sense or not. You have to suspend parts of your existing belief system and reexamine assumptions you have made before. You will probably change your conclusion a couple of times in the process. Dismissing conspiracy theories is the safe thing to do. It also does not require any effort, intelligence or insight on your part. I admire people who are willing to actually engage with ideas like that, even though it does not seem feasible everywhere all the time.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      And conspiracy theories is one of those places where bullshit asymmetry is a large problem. The vast majority of actors are arguing in bad faith, and attempting to determine if the individual is arguing in good or bad faith requires an immense amount of energy in itself. Simply put attempting to entertain anyone here will almost always lead to failure. This then leads to people thinking that every conspiracy theory is worth ignoring which leads to another type of failure in the cases they are not.
- woooooo 4y ago
  I'd love some reasoning for why this guy in particular comes in for such an amount of character assassination. Is it the fact that he's academically adjacent yet doesn't toe the line? There are thousands of people with middlebrow blogs out there, why the focus on slatestarcodex?
  - cma 4y ago
    It's mainly the stealth pushing of eugenics.
    - woooooo 4y ago
      That's what I'm talking about, you can accuse anyone of "stealth pushing eugenics" with enough text to comb through and a willingness to quote out of context. Heck, plenty of "woke" authors would qualify. Why him? This went on for years and years before culminating in that NYT article.
      - cma 4y ago
        He was pretty open here that he uses this as plausible deniability. On some other uncovered stuff that came out after the NYT article I believe he was paying homeless in exchange for getting sterilized, or making plans to. I'll have to dig it up. edit: I think it was for homeless with partially heritable mental illness, not all homeless
        woooooo 4y ago
        Now there's a claim I'd love to see some evidence for.
        throwoooo 4y ago
        [dead]
        woooooo 4y ago
- ineptech 4y ago
  His whole schtick is that he engages with ideas, even terrible ones, on their own turf rather than just dismissing them. He was never "for" neoreaction, he started out against it and wrote lengthy essays from that perspective (it's kind of disingenuous to mention the anti-neoreactionary faq without the "anti" part, by the way), and concluded to his own satisfaction that a lot of it was wrong or dumb. The problem is, he seems to believe that if he can't show something to be false then it must be true. That's what those emails are saying, I think: he didn't go in believing the race/iq stuff, but once he researched it and failed to prove it wrong, he had no choice but to accept it. He's too smart/stubborn to consider the obvious third possibility, that he can fail to disprove something despite it being wrong.
  - fwlr 4y ago
    Scott has (naturally) written about this phenomenon, of how he reacts to situations where there’s strong arguments for the position, and only invective against: “When I was a teenager I believed in a conspiracy theory. It was the one Graham Hancock wrote about in Fingerprints Of The Gods, sort of a modern update on the Atlantis story. It went something like this: “Did you know that dozens of civilizations around the world have oddly similar legends about a lost continent that sunk under the waves? The Greeks called it Atlantis; the Aztecs, Atzlan; the Indonesians, Atala. “Various ancient structures and artifacts appear to be older than generally believed. Geologists say that the erosion patterns on the Sphinx prove it must be at least 10,000 years old; some well-known ruins in South America have depictions of animals that have been extinct for at least 10,000 years. “There are vast underwater ruins, pyramids and stuff. We know where they are! You can just learn to scuba dive and go see them! Historians just ignore them, or say they’re probably natural, but if you look at them, they’re obviously not natural. “Teenage me was impressed by these arguments. But he also had some good instincts and wanted to check to see what skeptics had to say in response. Here are what the skeptics had to say: “Haha, can you believe some people still think there was an Atlantis! Imagine how stupid you would have to be to fall for that scam! “There is literally ZERO evidence for Atlantis. The ONLY reason you could ever believe it is because you’re a racist who thinks brown people couldn’t have built civilizations on their own. “No mainstream historians believe in any of that. Do you think you’re smarter than all the world’s historians? “Meanwhile, I learned to scuba dive and checked out a site where Hancock said there were underwater pyramids. They were definitely there!” And then there is a picture of himself in scuba gear, taken by his scuba instructor, and he is floating underwater next to what appears to be an obviously man-made stepped pyramid underwater - exactly like the conspiracy theorist said, and more importantly, exactly like the anti-conspiracy-theorists mocked you for being so stupid as to expect to see. Reflect on why that might be convincing for a moment: the conspiracy-theorist camp said “go to coordinates XYZ and you will find an underwater pyramid”, the anti-conspiracy-theorist camp said “you’re stupid”, and when you go to coordinates XYZ you find an underwater pyramid. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-kavanaugh-on-fideism https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-kavanaugh-on-fi... That dynamic is evinced very clearly by this email (“not provably not-correct” and “the public response has been abysmal”). I feel like that is a better explanation than “if he can’t prove them wrong he has to believe them, he’s weird like that”.
johnfn 4y ago
I would go one step further - Meditations on Moloch is my favorite post on the internet, bar none. I first read it in 2014, and now I go back to it every now and then and I'm still awe-struck. Back when I first read it I felt he was saying something true and new. These days I've read a bit more and I know he's not the first to frame up this exact idea, but I've never read anyone frame it up quite so well.
agentwiggles 4y ago
I have to give it to Unsong, but that's a hell of a long favorite. My favorite bit in Unsong is the chapter where God gives an answer to the problem of evil, but there are so many other good bits in there too. Meditations on Moloch is fantastic for sure. I also really love Universal Love, Said the Cactus Person. Oh, and Idol Words, a more recent one that I really liked. I like Scott best when he's doing that particular weird brand of fiction he does, where he mixes sci-fi and philosophy and religion and kinda mashes them into a cool new thing. Unsong is the longest example of course but he's released lots of cool little one offs in that vein through the years. Some links: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus-person/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-th... https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the-rabbit-hole-goes/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-dee... https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/idol-words https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/idol-words https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/ https://unsongbook.com https://unsongbook.com https://unsongbook.com/chapter-71-but-for-another-gives-its-ease/ https://unsongbook.com/chapter-71-but-for-another-gives-its-... If you can think of any other examples of this kind of thing from Scott that you like, post a link, I'm sure there's some I haven't found yet.
- chimprich 4y ago
  There's this bit of fiction: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ I was blown away at the time, but I seem to remember didn't get much love when discussed on here. I thought about it a lot during the Covid information wars.
  - agentwiggles 4y ago
    Oh yeah, that is a good one for sure! Definitely hits a nerve when I look back at the last few years.
globalreset 4y ago
Moloch is not exactly about kicking the can down the road. It's about competitive forces forcing individual actions (sacrifices) to gain an advantage that seem rational when viewed in separation, but since everyone will be competing the same way, making same sacroficies, gain no one anything in aggregate.

simonebrunozzi 4y ago

> My favorite thing he’s ever wrote. Exactly the same for me.

hprotagonist 4y ago

the parable of talents is also way way up there.

cma 4y ago

The stuff that didn't make it to the blog is disturbing too (like the weird conclusion to the Moloch essay): https://nitter.lacontrevoie.fr/ArsonAtDennys/status/1362153191102677001 https://nitter.lacontrevoie.fr/ArsonAtDennys/status/13621531... Apparently lots of the blog and his neoreactionary FAQ was set up to get people into some of the ideas if neoreactionaries like eugenics stuff. There was a whole trove of stuff that released a bit after the NYT article on Slate Star Codex that kind of proved its suspicions right.

skybrian 4y ago
Seems like the background behind that is that Scott Alexander has sometimes entertained weird ideas. He's been open about at one time believing a conspiracy theory himself, for a little while. That screenshot doesn't actually say what about neo-reactonary stuff he thought was interesting, just that there is some. The rest is left to your imagination, and Scott Alexander's enemies want you to imagine the worst.
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago
  > He's been open about at one time believing a conspiracy theory himself, for a little while. Absolutely disgusting. How could he?? But which one? MKULTRA*? Operation Northwoods*? Flat earth? Illegal domestic surveillance by the NSA*? Operation Gladio*? Tell us which one, so that we may denounce him! * Oops, this one's real lol
  - austhrow743 4y ago
    Lost underwater city. There are some suspiciously man made looking natural rock formations underwater that look like part of a pyramid. Scott even scuba dived there to check them out. I'm not sure how much conspiracy is involved.
- kmmlng 4y ago
  I think people underestimate how hard it is to evaluate the validity of ideas. Most people think they are open to new ideas, but actually have a pre-configured bias system that automatically accepts or rejects any incoming ideas. If you are actually willing to entertain new ideas, you have to run with something for a while while you figure out if it makes sense or not. You have to suspend parts of your existing belief system and reexamine assumptions you have made before. You will probably change your conclusion a couple of times in the process. Dismissing conspiracy theories is the safe thing to do. It also does not require any effort, intelligence or insight on your part. I admire people who are willing to actually engage with ideas like that, even though it does not seem feasible everywhere all the time.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    And conspiracy theories is one of those places where bullshit asymmetry is a large problem. The vast majority of actors are arguing in bad faith, and attempting to determine if the individual is arguing in good or bad faith requires an immense amount of energy in itself. Simply put attempting to entertain anyone here will almost always lead to failure. This then leads to people thinking that every conspiracy theory is worth ignoring which leads to another type of failure in the cases they are not.
woooooo 4y ago
I'd love some reasoning for why this guy in particular comes in for such an amount of character assassination. Is it the fact that he's academically adjacent yet doesn't toe the line? There are thousands of people with middlebrow blogs out there, why the focus on slatestarcodex?
- cma 4y ago
  It's mainly the stealth pushing of eugenics.
  - woooooo 4y ago
    That's what I'm talking about, you can accuse anyone of "stealth pushing eugenics" with enough text to comb through and a willingness to quote out of context. Heck, plenty of "woke" authors would qualify. Why him? This went on for years and years before culminating in that NYT article.
    - cma 4y ago
      He was pretty open here that he uses this as plausible deniability. On some other uncovered stuff that came out after the NYT article I believe he was paying homeless in exchange for getting sterilized, or making plans to. I'll have to dig it up. edit: I think it was for homeless with partially heritable mental illness, not all homeless
      - woooooo 4y ago
        Now there's a claim I'd love to see some evidence for.
        throwoooo 4y ago
        [dead]
        woooooo 4y ago
ineptech 4y ago
His whole schtick is that he engages with ideas, even terrible ones, on their own turf rather than just dismissing them. He was never "for" neoreaction, he started out against it and wrote lengthy essays from that perspective (it's kind of disingenuous to mention the anti-neoreactionary faq without the "anti" part, by the way), and concluded to his own satisfaction that a lot of it was wrong or dumb. The problem is, he seems to believe that if he can't show something to be false then it must be true. That's what those emails are saying, I think: he didn't go in believing the race/iq stuff, but once he researched it and failed to prove it wrong, he had no choice but to accept it. He's too smart/stubborn to consider the obvious third possibility, that he can fail to disprove something despite it being wrong.
- fwlr 4y ago
  Scott has (naturally) written about this phenomenon, of how he reacts to situations where there’s strong arguments for the position, and only invective against: “When I was a teenager I believed in a conspiracy theory. It was the one Graham Hancock wrote about in Fingerprints Of The Gods, sort of a modern update on the Atlantis story. It went something like this: “Did you know that dozens of civilizations around the world have oddly similar legends about a lost continent that sunk under the waves? The Greeks called it Atlantis; the Aztecs, Atzlan; the Indonesians, Atala. “Various ancient structures and artifacts appear to be older than generally believed. Geologists say that the erosion patterns on the Sphinx prove it must be at least 10,000 years old; some well-known ruins in South America have depictions of animals that have been extinct for at least 10,000 years. “There are vast underwater ruins, pyramids and stuff. We know where they are! You can just learn to scuba dive and go see them! Historians just ignore them, or say they’re probably natural, but if you look at them, they’re obviously not natural. “Teenage me was impressed by these arguments. But he also had some good instincts and wanted to check to see what skeptics had to say in response. Here are what the skeptics had to say: “Haha, can you believe some people still think there was an Atlantis! Imagine how stupid you would have to be to fall for that scam! “There is literally ZERO evidence for Atlantis. The ONLY reason you could ever believe it is because you’re a racist who thinks brown people couldn’t have built civilizations on their own. “No mainstream historians believe in any of that. Do you think you’re smarter than all the world’s historians? “Meanwhile, I learned to scuba dive and checked out a site where Hancock said there were underwater pyramids. They were definitely there!” And then there is a picture of himself in scuba gear, taken by his scuba instructor, and he is floating underwater next to what appears to be an obviously man-made stepped pyramid underwater - exactly like the conspiracy theorist said, and more importantly, exactly like the anti-conspiracy-theorists mocked you for being so stupid as to expect to see. Reflect on why that might be convincing for a moment: the conspiracy-theorist camp said “go to coordinates XYZ and you will find an underwater pyramid”, the anti-conspiracy-theorist camp said “you’re stupid”, and when you go to coordinates XYZ you find an underwater pyramid. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-kavanaugh-on-fideism https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-kavanaugh-on-fi... That dynamic is evinced very clearly by this email (“not provably not-correct” and “the public response has been abysmal”). I feel like that is a better explanation than “if he can’t prove them wrong he has to believe them, he’s weird like that”.

johnfn 4y ago

I would go one step further - Meditations on Moloch is my favorite post on the internet, bar none. I first read it in 2014, and now I go back to it every now and then and I'm still awe-struck. Back when I first read it I felt he was saying something true and new. These days I've read a bit more and I know he's not the first to frame up this exact idea, but I've never read anyone frame it up quite so well.

agentwiggles 4y ago

I have to give it to Unsong, but that's a hell of a long favorite. My favorite bit in Unsong is the chapter where God gives an answer to the problem of evil, but there are so many other good bits in there too. Meditations on Moloch is fantastic for sure. I also really love Universal Love, Said the Cactus Person. Oh, and Idol Words, a more recent one that I really liked. I like Scott best when he's doing that particular weird brand of fiction he does, where he mixes sci-fi and philosophy and religion and kinda mashes them into a cool new thing. Unsong is the longest example of course but he's released lots of cool little one offs in that vein through the years. Some links: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus-person/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-th... https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the-rabbit-hole-goes/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-dee... https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/idol-words https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/idol-words https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/ https://unsongbook.com https://unsongbook.com https://unsongbook.com/chapter-71-but-for-another-gives-its-ease/ https://unsongbook.com/chapter-71-but-for-another-gives-its-... If you can think of any other examples of this kind of thing from Scott that you like, post a link, I'm sure there's some I haven't found yet.

chimprich 4y ago
There's this bit of fiction: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ I was blown away at the time, but I seem to remember didn't get much love when discussed on here. I thought about it a lot during the Covid information wars.
- agentwiggles 4y ago
  Oh yeah, that is a good one for sure! Definitely hits a nerve when I look back at the last few years.

globalreset 4y ago

Moloch is not exactly about kicking the can down the road. It's about competitive forces forcing individual actions (sacrifices) to gain an advantage that seem rational when viewed in separation, but since everyone will be competing the same way, making same sacroficies, gain no one anything in aggregate.