Ask HN: Thoughts on Curtis Yarvin? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on Curtis Yarvin?

#21

Post by gsf_emergency_2 » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:51 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #20

gsf_emergency_2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the main points of this. Just some addenda (while my main loop has neither verbal nor quantitative juice to spare): 1. 1777 & 1852 were peak for iron tech. Black smithery decentralized in both solar econs. (+nitrate prod. How could those revolutions succeed otherwise?) did not read GG+S to know if he had the same or counter argument (eg incompetent monarchs.) (Role of aluminum tech is a fun rabbit hole)…

Ashby's law is the law. If the control system inevitably becomes too complex to control than that's another law and degrowth is inevitable. I kept that answer as short as I could and left out many threads, such as this one: Circa 2000 I had a theory of "the Syndrome" which was that the business cycle is a battle of problems and solutions and that in the 1970s solutions were becoming part of the problem and the soluti…

By the ballot box, the less complex system of values that is the right did not lose out to the more complex system of values one may call the left. But that's not within the realm of cybernetics.

The business cycle model of yours might have be fully understandable within cybernetics, especially in the time series respect. But are we not also interested in competing/interacting "peer" systems "beyond mean field"? How Apple and Desktop Linux gained ground against MSoft by reducing fragmentation, how MSoft responded by diversifying. You might have other examples for and against?

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on Curtis Yarvin?

#22

Post by PaulHoule » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 10:51 PM UTC

gsf_emergency_2 wrote: post #21

PaulHoule wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ashby's law is the law. If the control system inevitably becomes too complex to control than that's another law and degrowth is inevitable. I kept that answer as short as I could and left out many threads, such as this one: Circa 2000 I had a theory of "the Syndrome" which was that the business cycle is a battle of problems and solutions and that in the 1970s solutions were becoming part of the problem and the soluti…

By the ballot box, the less complex system of values that is the right did not lose out to the more complex system of values one may call the left. But that's not within the realm of cybernetics. The business cycle model of yours might have be fully understandable within cybernetics, especially in the time series respect. But are we not also interested in competing/interacting "peer" systems "beyond mean field"? How…

I'd hesitate to say the left or right has a more or less complex system. Certainly now the college educated are more attracted to the Democrats than the Republicans but that was not the case in the 1960s and as late as the 1990s some right-wing Republicans of time had a lot of influence at my Uni, they are building this structure in the name of a very right-wing head of the board of trustees in the 1990s

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114860542662347802

Marxism is a complex system that appeals to systematizers, "anti-racism" is a little less smart and more pessimistic and has about as much appeal to noneducated minorities as Marxism has to the working class -- the rank and file's ideology is more like

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/112503020931163144

A lot of it is path dependent. I mean, Trump greased the skids for those mRNA vaccines and I remember my leftist friends saying in December 2020 that there must be something wrong about them being developed at "warp speed". Had he won it would have been leftists shunning vaccines and rightists shunning them for being stupid.

Every good paranoid believes the "pincer theory" that every social movement needs a wing that appeals to the elite (lacks manpower) and mass (lacks resources, vision, ...) to the smart and the stupid, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on Curtis Yarvin?

#23

Post by gsf_emergency_2 » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:38 AM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #22

gsf_emergency_2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the ballot box, the less complex system of values that is the right did not lose out to the more complex system of values one may call the left. But that's not within the realm of cybernetics. The business cycle model of yours might have be fully understandable within cybernetics, especially in the time series respect. But are we not also interested in competing/interacting "peer" systems "beyond mean field"? How…

I'd hesitate to say the left or right has a more or less complex system. Certainly now the college educated are more attracted to the Democrats than the Republicans but that was not the case in the 1960s and as late as the 1990s some right-wing Republicans of time had a lot of influence at my Uni, they are building this structure in the name of a very right-wing head of the board of trustees in the 1990s https://mast…

Are Cornell still using fancy European "eco" glass? I wonder if "out-of-town glazers" mean that the glass supplier/architect was OCD about their glass getting manhandled by "outsiders". Tariffs were supposed to be the "simple" solution to fix this.

My erstwhile understanding of the earlier appeal of Marxism was that it was fully compatible with the Weberian work ethic-- right until someone found a way to work the famous laziness of the Russians into propaganda.

Now that you mention it. Simplicity can appeal to the elites as a standin for "marketability to the masses". Helps the Kessel Run. (Pincer)

(That Mormons are a significant deal in the USG hiring pipeline is not a symptom of right wing sophistication-- unless one is a conspiracy theorist)