5 ms·

This is by Mencius Moldbug, a coder who made off with enough options money just prior to the dot-com crash to basically be retired in the Bay Area, reading and

by fatbird 14y ago

This is by Mencius Moldbug, a coder who made off with enough options money just prior to the dot-com crash to basically be retired in the Bay Area, reading and writing. He's been bringing the wordy essays for almost a decade now on a wide variety of topics, but I'll save you some time: He's crazy. He's the very definition of Umberto Eco's lunatic, who says things with a certain superficial plausibility, but you know something is wrong with it, but it takes so much work to dig through the mess and find it out that you'll find you feel it was a waste of time to do so. His prolixity is a direct attempt to enhance this quality of this prose. He's got some weird definition of an ideal state based on corporate governance, he thinks black people are a social class defined by welfare queens and petty criminals, he thinks he eviscerated Dawkins by somehow agreeing with him. The length of his work is actually a subtle trap: If you read enough to understand what he's going on about, you're subtly invested in not rejecting it because then you'll have wasted all that time understanding him.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- elux 14y ago
  See for yourself: "To me, and I hope to other UR readers, the logical leap from step 1 (BTC exchangers are indicted) to step 2 (BTC price goes to 0) is obvious. But here at UR, we are operating under our own special theory of money, which I have modestly dubbed MoMT (Moldbug Monetary Theory). If you know and believe MoMT, the leap is obvious. In the conventional wisdom, it's not obvious at all." "Imagine that the BTC/USD market is perfectly liquid with no exchange overhead. Imagine also that there are two types of BTC users: Jews, who speculate (holding BTC long-term with the expectation that it will appreciate against USD); and Aryans, who only trade (and sweep all BTC balances into USD at the end of every day). These are simplifications, of course - but edifying ones." "If I have one lesson to impart (...) it is this: [The US Government] is what it is. It is not what you want it to be. It is not what you hope it will become. It is certainly not what it claims to be. No - it is what it is. Respect that reality, and you will neither run afoul of Leviathan, nor live "free" as his spiritual servant. In short: think for yourself and obey the strong."
- fatbird 14y ago
  There's nothing 'ad hominem' about my attack. An ad hominem fallacy is an appeal to an irrelevant negative quality of the speaker; it's fallacious just because the negative is unrelated. My attack is directly relevant: MM's larger body of work is a huge, dense construct of lunacy with low probability for any reader of being worthwhile; any portion of it is therefore suspect. If you want to buy a car, and I tell you that the company that makes that car has an absurdly high defect rate across all lines, I've given you some helpful information, haven't I?
- rhizome 14y ago
  Ad hominem doesn't invalidate a critique, and it speaks specifically to credibility.
- Cyranix 14y ago
  Not the GP commenter, but I invite you to read some of the other blog posts. In my brief skim through previous posts, I didn't see anything that immediately struck me as beyond the pale, but the whole "saying a lot to trick you into believing there's a profound argument" idea stood out. An overabundance of historical tie-ins, unnecessarily flowery language... although it's possible that the author is a great writer or I'm a poor reader, I strongly suspect that the simpler explanation -- the absence of a credible argument -- is correct.
  - mturmon 14y ago
    I have read MM at length, and I urge you to follow your instinct to walk away. The internet has more rewarding corners.
jhart3333 14y ago
Upvoted for explaining what is really going on here.
spindritf 14y ago
That is a very superficial critique, lacking in actual arguments and references. While I generally don't agree with the guy, he makes sense. His articles are coherent and insightful, if sometimes unpleasant and generally long-winded. If anyone's interested, here's a summary of his writing[1] with links to most important articles. His posts are also a goldmine of one-liners[2]. BTW He used to have an account here[3] but was banned, unfortunately. [1] http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/ http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/ [2] https://twitter.com/moldbuggery https://twitter.com/moldbuggery [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=moldbug https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=moldbug
- fatbird 14y ago
  Interestingly, this is another way in which MM's verbosity is a defense mechanism: It's virtually impossible to make a detailed critique without engaging him at equal length. I'll mention one specific critique, which is what originally twigged me that something was off: MM constantly introduces special definitions that are close, but not quite, what's commonly meant, and then proceeds to use those definitions for 5 or 10,000 words. This is a form of rhetorical sleight of hand that's suspicious in an of itself, and MM demonstrates this in the linked essay: "But here at UR, we are operating under our own special theory of money, which I have modestly dubbed MoMT (Moldbug Monetary Theory). If you know and believe MoMT, the leap is obvious. In the conventional wisdom, it's not obvious at all." He does this sort of thing constantly. Besides investing a lot of time in reading even one of his essays, you must spend a lot of mental energy tracking all his off-by-one definitions of slightly uncommon terms. Again, you have to buy into Moldbugism to even start judging it, which is part of the trap. Edit 1: I've upvoted you because I think yours is a fair response to my attack, while Tav's cry of "ad hominem" below is mistaken. Edit 2: Moldbug's comment history here is interesting, in part because it demonstrates that he's very capable of making a concise point. Why was he banned? His karma looked okay.
  - dmm 14y ago
    At least he defines his terms. Words like "government" can mean a multitude of things and these meaning change over time. In general I have found that arguments are often not really about the points of an essay but about the definitions used, ie one person uses definition 1 and the other uses definition 2 and they just argue past each other. For example if I say "Bitcoin is money", I don't think that statement is meaningful without defining what I mean by "money" and perhaps "bitcoin". I don't think understanding the linked essay really depends on knowing what he means by "MoMT", he defines it just fine for us. "Basically, MoMT tells us that money has anomalous value only because economic agents rationally speculate in it, whereas conventional thought (whether Austrian or orthodox) holds that money's price is explained primarily by its use in trade." To me that's an interesting idea. Why not debate that? Instead all of the comments here are about a bunch of superficial bullshit (yours excluded).
lisper 14y ago
I have met MM. We had an extensive discussion, first in person and then via email, about a programming language he was (maybe still is) designing called Watt. He seemed to me to be reinventing many wheels, and doing it badly. But what struck me most was that he actually seemed to take pride in his ignorance. Here's a relevant excerpt from our correspondence: "Therefore, the M-FCCN [metacircular functional content-centric network - Ed] problem is if nothing else an interesting excuse to revisit the foundations of programming languages with an extreme emphasis on precision and simplicity. I felt it would be a big mistake to start this effort by learning either a Lisp or one of the "PL theory" languages, like Haskell, as it would sacrifice the enormous advantage of not knowing either. I found it much more interesting to recreate functional programming from scratch in more or less a clean room." I think he approaches economics and politics with the same philosophy. It kinda drives me nuts that he attracts so many followers.
- fatbird 14y ago
  Yeah. Recreating from first principles can be a fantastic exercise, but it's not the sort of thing that's supposed to pick up a lot of followers, because it's a thing that's usually more personally edifying for the experience than likely to result in something new and interesting.
- lectrick 14y ago
  This is what happens when you do not converse with enough people who are peers. He'd do much better if he had to actually work instead of pontificate nonsense that has no basis in what anyone else is thinking or doing.
lectrick 14y ago
It smelled incorrect from the get-go. 1) The DOJ cannot shut down a global internet currency. 2) If they DO try to, it will push its value UP, NOT down. The black market effect at work. 3) He seems to not realize that cash itself can be used as an argument against "everyone who uses bitcoin is a knowing co-conspirator in money laundering". Every dollar bill has a trace of cocaine on it, does that mean we are all guilty of money laundering?

by fatbird 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

elux 14y ago
See for yourself: "To me, and I hope to other UR readers, the logical leap from step 1 (BTC exchangers are indicted) to step 2 (BTC price goes to 0) is obvious. But here at UR, we are operating under our own special theory of money, which I have modestly dubbed MoMT (Moldbug Monetary Theory). If you know and believe MoMT, the leap is obvious. In the conventional wisdom, it's not obvious at all." "Imagine that the BTC/USD market is perfectly liquid with no exchange overhead. Imagine also that there are two types of BTC users: Jews, who speculate (holding BTC long-term with the expectation that it will appreciate against USD); and Aryans, who only trade (and sweep all BTC balances into USD at the end of every day). These are simplifications, of course - but edifying ones." "If I have one lesson to impart (...) it is this: [The US Government] is what it is. It is not what you want it to be. It is not what you hope it will become. It is certainly not what it claims to be. No - it is what it is. Respect that reality, and you will neither run afoul of Leviathan, nor live "free" as his spiritual servant. In short: think for yourself and obey the strong."
fatbird 14y ago
There's nothing 'ad hominem' about my attack. An ad hominem fallacy is an appeal to an irrelevant negative quality of the speaker; it's fallacious just because the negative is unrelated. My attack is directly relevant: MM's larger body of work is a huge, dense construct of lunacy with low probability for any reader of being worthwhile; any portion of it is therefore suspect. If you want to buy a car, and I tell you that the company that makes that car has an absurdly high defect rate across all lines, I've given you some helpful information, haven't I?
rhizome 14y ago
Ad hominem doesn't invalidate a critique, and it speaks specifically to credibility.
Cyranix 14y ago
Not the GP commenter, but I invite you to read some of the other blog posts. In my brief skim through previous posts, I didn't see anything that immediately struck me as beyond the pale, but the whole "saying a lot to trick you into believing there's a profound argument" idea stood out. An overabundance of historical tie-ins, unnecessarily flowery language... although it's possible that the author is a great writer or I'm a poor reader, I strongly suspect that the simpler explanation -- the absence of a credible argument -- is correct.
- mturmon 14y ago
  I have read MM at length, and I urge you to follow your instinct to walk away. The internet has more rewarding corners.

jhart3333 14y ago

Upvoted for explaining what is really going on here.

spindritf 14y ago

That is a very superficial critique, lacking in actual arguments and references. While I generally don't agree with the guy, he makes sense. His articles are coherent and insightful, if sometimes unpleasant and generally long-winded. If anyone's interested, here's a summary of his writing[1] with links to most important articles. His posts are also a goldmine of one-liners[2]. BTW He used to have an account here[3] but was banned, unfortunately. [1] http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/ http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/ [2] https://twitter.com/moldbuggery https://twitter.com/moldbuggery [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=moldbug https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=moldbug

fatbird 14y ago
Interestingly, this is another way in which MM's verbosity is a defense mechanism: It's virtually impossible to make a detailed critique without engaging him at equal length. I'll mention one specific critique, which is what originally twigged me that something was off: MM constantly introduces special definitions that are close, but not quite, what's commonly meant, and then proceeds to use those definitions for 5 or 10,000 words. This is a form of rhetorical sleight of hand that's suspicious in an of itself, and MM demonstrates this in the linked essay: "But here at UR, we are operating under our own special theory of money, which I have modestly dubbed MoMT (Moldbug Monetary Theory). If you know and believe MoMT, the leap is obvious. In the conventional wisdom, it's not obvious at all." He does this sort of thing constantly. Besides investing a lot of time in reading even one of his essays, you must spend a lot of mental energy tracking all his off-by-one definitions of slightly uncommon terms. Again, you have to buy into Moldbugism to even start judging it, which is part of the trap. Edit 1: I've upvoted you because I think yours is a fair response to my attack, while Tav's cry of "ad hominem" below is mistaken. Edit 2: Moldbug's comment history here is interesting, in part because it demonstrates that he's very capable of making a concise point. Why was he banned? His karma looked okay.
- dmm 14y ago
  At least he defines his terms. Words like "government" can mean a multitude of things and these meaning change over time. In general I have found that arguments are often not really about the points of an essay but about the definitions used, ie one person uses definition 1 and the other uses definition 2 and they just argue past each other. For example if I say "Bitcoin is money", I don't think that statement is meaningful without defining what I mean by "money" and perhaps "bitcoin". I don't think understanding the linked essay really depends on knowing what he means by "MoMT", he defines it just fine for us. "Basically, MoMT tells us that money has anomalous value only because economic agents rationally speculate in it, whereas conventional thought (whether Austrian or orthodox) holds that money's price is explained primarily by its use in trade." To me that's an interesting idea. Why not debate that? Instead all of the comments here are about a bunch of superficial bullshit (yours excluded).

lisper 14y ago

I have met MM. We had an extensive discussion, first in person and then via email, about a programming language he was (maybe still is) designing called Watt. He seemed to me to be reinventing many wheels, and doing it badly. But what struck me most was that he actually seemed to take pride in his ignorance. Here's a relevant excerpt from our correspondence: "Therefore, the M-FCCN [metacircular functional content-centric network - Ed] problem is if nothing else an interesting excuse to revisit the foundations of programming languages with an extreme emphasis on precision and simplicity. I felt it would be a big mistake to start this effort by learning either a Lisp or one of the "PL theory" languages, like Haskell, as it would sacrifice the enormous advantage of not knowing either. I found it much more interesting to recreate functional programming from scratch in more or less a clean room." I think he approaches economics and politics with the same philosophy. It kinda drives me nuts that he attracts so many followers.

fatbird 14y ago
Yeah. Recreating from first principles can be a fantastic exercise, but it's not the sort of thing that's supposed to pick up a lot of followers, because it's a thing that's usually more personally edifying for the experience than likely to result in something new and interesting.
lectrick 14y ago
This is what happens when you do not converse with enough people who are peers. He'd do much better if he had to actually work instead of pontificate nonsense that has no basis in what anyone else is thinking or doing.

lectrick 14y ago

It smelled incorrect from the get-go. 1) The DOJ cannot shut down a global internet currency. 2) If they DO try to, it will push its value UP, NOT down. The black market effect at work. 3) He seems to not realize that cash itself can be used as an argument against "everyone who uses bitcoin is a knowing co-conspirator in money laundering". Every dollar bill has a trace of cocaine on it, does that mean we are all guilty of money laundering?