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Scott Alexander also recently had a take on Curtis Yarvin’s recent actions: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moldbug-sold-out https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/m
by senkora 1y ago
Scott Alexander also recently had a take on Curtis Yarvin’s recent actions: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moldbug-sold-out https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moldbug-sold-out
The gist of it is that he had interesting ideas on political systems in the past, but that his current ideas are nonsense, and in fact his old work explains exactly why his new work is nonsense.
- wyager 1y agoIronically, the quality of Scott's work has taken a markedly sharper nosedive in the last decade than the quality of Yarvin's work.
- gr__or 1y agoI don't quite see it that way. Imo he's been to involved in anti-woke culture waring, but I still found him to be wonderfully interesting to read.
- kiitos 1y agoIn what universe?
- indoordin0saur 1y agoHe got associated with the "intellectual dark web" for occasionally having opinions outside of the mainstream. The NYTimes was even planning on writing a hit piece on him back in the day that scared him so bad he shut down his original site. I think his writing today lacks the sort of honesty or novelty it once had because he's very sensitive to being called out.
- queenkjuul 1y agoHard to nose dive from rock bottom
- clueless 1y agoPrecisely, I'm not sure why Curtis is kept being discussed when if you listened to him now, it's all nonsense.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoBecause he says rich people should rule the world, ergo rich people like him and attempt to encode his very stupid ideas into our politics, ergo we all have to care what he says It’s really a testament to how astonishingly stupid some of those rich folks are that they find any of Yarvin’s work compelling.
- cogman10 1y agoAnd, to put this in perspective, there's 1 degree of separation between our current Vice president and Yarvin. I can guarantee that the two of them have had conversations about politics as Vance is quite close to Thiel who loves Yarvin. These rich people have very powerful connections.
- Sabinus 1y agoThat's what I've been wondering. How is this much different from Nixon's trickle down economics? An idea the wealthy are happy to promote because it protects their influence.
- const_cast 1y agoMore to the point, how is this any different than serfdom? The inevitable result of "optimize for the wealthy" seems to be that. And, well, we did that. And it sucked. I don't understand why we're reinventing feudalism over and over again and acting like it's novel. Giving all the tools to the wealthy doesn't make society a better place, and we've proved that. It decidedly stagnates everything, which, ironically, leads to very poor living conditions, including for the wealthy. So it's not even good for them, it's just self-destructive.
- goatlover 1y agoWe wouldn't but the broligarchs are influenced by his ideas, and those have common cause with Project 2025 and the current US administration.
- benwerd 1y agoI mean, "interesting" but still autocratic. His old ideas were nonsense too; unworkable teenage thought experiments dressed up as serious proposals. His new work just happens to be internally inconsistent as well as bad in all the other ways it always was.
- blactuary 1y ago[flagged]
- user982 1y agoThe last decade has hammered in that you ignore the cranks at your own peril, because closing your eyes doesn't make them disappear.
- kmoser 1y agoIgnoring them only works when everyone ignores them from the beginning. Once they gain traction, it's no longer an option.
- throwaway29812 1y ago[dead]
- n2d4 1y agoWhat makes Scott a crank?
- timmytokyo 1y agohttps://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/01/scott-alexander-siskind-slate-star-codex.html?m=1 https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/01/scott-alexander-siskind...
- dogleash 1y agoThat person is way too far down the rabbit hole themselves to give a decent criticism of Alexander. When someone's #1, heavy-hitting, come-out-swinging criticism amounts to "his group is not as smart as they think they are" then they're already done. They've cooked themselves. I read that paragraph and heard it in the mean girl voice they thought they were hiding. #2 is that his wrong ideas are immoral. #3 is that #2 draws the wrong crowd. It's not like I don't get the point. It's just written for an audience that already deep in that corner of the blogosphere. I'm sure they pump their fists at such a clean summing-up of why they hate him. But my eyes are glazing over.
- rjbwork 1y agoThe style of this post reminds me a lot of Matt Levine's money stuff.
- ivraatiems 1y agoAgreed, or patio11's financial writing. The style is a big part of why people like Alexander so much.
- maxerickson 1y agoMatt Levine is coherent though. I would think someone intent on calling Moldbug's ideas interesting would at least try to patch up the big holes. Like the city-states that have free flowing capital and populations, but somehow avoid an analogue to international law. Or the dictator that isn't subject to approval, except by the required committee that can fire him. There's 4 points and 2 of them are contradictory!
- the_af 1y ago> Like the city-states that have free flowing capital and populations, but somehow avoid an analogue to international law. This is what kills me about attempts like this (e.g. like Scott Alexander's) to make Yarvin's ideas seem "interesting" or "thought-provoking". Well-read as Yarvin might be, only someone who is mentally a teenager can have his kind of beliefs. "Society would be great if it weren't for all these monstruous things I don't like, artificially imposed on us by... aliens?" It reminds me of teenagers who go online and make arguments like "well, ackshually, the US is not a democracy but a republic...". Yeah, yeah, you're very smart for pointing this out, now go sit in a corner and let the grownups talk.
- quickthrowman 1y agoA fascist technocracy is not interesting in the slightest. It’s what basement dwelling teens who idolize John Galt dream about before they are exposed to the complexity of the real world.
- ToValueFunfetti 1y agoUnderstatement of the millenium, but Yarvin has written a lot more than "let's do fascist technocracy!" I find his writing style wastes a lot of one's time and I disagree with him on nearly everything, but there's no denying that there are many interesting ideas in there.
- atemerev 1y agoI never found any of his ideas interesting. Unusual, maybe, but unusual does not mean interesting. I come from a country with a history of autocracy, and it has been an absolute dogma for me to not touch anything autocratic with a six-mile pole. Well, I hope the rest of the world now will get the memo too, before we'll need a world war to crystallize the lesson.
- kiitos 1y agoI absolutely deny that there are any interesting ideas in there. We've done this, it was called the dark ages and it sucked and we moved past it. Engaging with this pablum in any way is granting it attention and vigor it obviously doesn't deserve.
- coldtea 1y ago>We've done this, it was called the dark ages and it sucked and we moved past it. Well, the "dark ages" is now widely considered a misnomer, and that time is seen as an important era development-wise.
- const_cast 1y agoBut the development was very slow, and it was held back by policy and a stronghold by leaders onto the status-quo.
- biophysboy 1y agoA sci-fi variant of autocracy is not an interesting idea though. Why is a CEO king and a royal board of directors interesting? Its not even novel: his proposal is identical to that laid out by the "technocracy" movement a century ago.
- underlipton 1y agoTangential: I'm reminded of the sadly stillborn Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and its apparent ambition to present a "modern" monarchy, styled visually with elements of both contemporary business and the mafia. You're right, there's nothing inherently noble or benevolent in autocracy; the king brought forward to the present isn't a statesman or innovator, he's a robber baron or a crime boss. I kind of lament that that sort of explicit idea didn't enter the cultural discourse.
- biophysboy 1y agoThat is a shame - sounds like a fun idea for a JRPG. Bioshock sort of touches on technocracy, but its more post-apocalyptic. A game that spans the rise and fall of a "board of great geniuses" would be great.
- underlipton 1y agoMinor spoilers, but: DEATHLOOP. Which, as luck would have it, is currently free on Epic Games Store.
- p3rls 1y agotechnocracy, aka the progressive movement, aka the acknowledged antecedents of most this thread's political views -- funny how things change
- Hikikomori 1y agoMusks grandfather was part of Technocracy Incorporated in Canada before it was banned, then moved to south Africa as Canada wasn't racist enough.
- kiitos 1y agoHe never had interesting ideas, even in the past. It was always just neo-reactionary feudalist garbage from day 1.
- basch 1y agoDoes anyone have a link to the tool some hn person made of a tool that catalogs all Yavin's old writing? It was a really slick project and I misplaced it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- p3rls 1y ago[flagged]