4 ms·
I would recommend to others to sample the Moldbuggery list, and not to start with Scott Alexander's writings. The point of Moldbug's writings is not to be 100%
by devalier 11y ago
I would recommend to others to sample the Moldbuggery list, and not to start with Scott Alexander's writings. The point of Moldbug's writings is not to be 100% accurate. The point is to expose you to new ideas and old forgotten books, so that you yourself can create a more accurate version of reality. You won't get this by reading Scott Alexander. To really get the value of the writings, you need to actually read the old books that Moldbug recommends reading. It is very, very interesting to read an account of the Revolutionary War from a Tory or Loyalist who was actually there.
"I do not at all get neoreactionaries"
The first thing to understand is that many neoreactionaries live in once great American cities where the schools look like this: ( http://www.philly.com/philly/news/special_packages/inquirer/school-violence/20110328_SV2011_Part3.html http://www.philly.com/philly/news/special_packages/inquirer/... ), many of the neighborhoods look like this: https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1_____enUS368US369&q=urban+decay+philadelphia&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=76UkT_mrA8-30AGKlrD_CA&biw=1739&bih=1115&sei=-KUkT-76DeOW0QH_xrTuCA https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1_____enUS368US369&q=urb... and if you move to the wrong neighborhood this will happen: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Father-Memorial-Day-Philadelphia-Attack-Group-Juniata-305061081.html http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Father-Memorial-Da...
When that is your daily lived experience, you start asking questions about when it all went wrong.
- googleknol 11y agofor an engineer, Moldbug is remarkably bad at using accurate language. for example, http://unreserved-qualifications.blogspot.jp/2015/05/mencius-moldbugs-little-army-of.html http://unreserved-qualifications.blogspot.jp/2015/05/mencius...
- devalier 11y agoYeah a lot of people who like his writings have criticized that term. I don't really like it myself, but it kind of stuck. The word does refer to a real phenomena that currently doesn't have a mainstream name. So Moldbug gets credit for identifying the phenomena and picking some name for it. I'm not sure what a better name would be - the Clerisy? the Mandarinate? the Congregation? But, it is a lot more accurate to see ideology and religion has basically the same phenomena, with belief in a deity being pretty much spurious, than it is to see ideology and religion as two entirely different things. So I give Moldbug credit for pointing out that progressivism is basically the same thing as a religion.