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Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

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Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#161

Post by goatlover »

clueless wrote: post #21
senkora wrote: post #5

Scott Alexander also recently had a take on Curtis Yarvin’s recent actions: 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.

Precisely, I'm not sure why Curtis is kept being discussed when if you listened to him now, it's all nonsense.

We wouldn't but the broligarchs are influenced by his ideas, and those have common cause with Project 2025 and the current US administration.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#162

Post by Apocryphon »

How far we've come since a dozen years ago, when TechCrunch was the first mainstream outlet to observe Moldbug and his ideological currents:

Geeks for Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries (techcrunch.com) 54 points by davidgerard on Nov 23, 2013 | 109 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6785801

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#163

Post by emporas »

ivraatiems wrote: post #80

The key driver behind Yarvin's ideology seems to be arrogance, covering perceived self-weakness. I think that's what makes it appealing to so many Silicon Valley "nerd king" type figures, and also why it has the form it does. Yarvin comes off - not just here, but through his writing and his work - as absolutely obsessed with proving himself and being smarter than everyone. He admits he has the gifted child need to pr…

Urbit is also written in PHP. A clone of Urbit is written in Rust, i was reading it's source some years back, i don't even remember it's name, but i had this feeling of "Ok, what is that thing doing".

But one thing is clear to me. Blockchain technology + IPv6 opens a lot of possibilities to re-imagine networking, and that's what Urbit is mainly focused on: networking.

A good blockchain technology also has possibilities to re-imagine parts of OS.

For example we will not need to have local users if all identities can be verified using credentials stored online, immutable forever. Also we won't need to have local networks, DNS, Time servers etc. Everything will be global.

Many ideas there, but each one of those problems is unbelievably hard by itself, all of them together is half of the internet and computing infrastructure.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#164

Post by WalterSear »

eikenberry wrote: post #110

Didn't have time to make it through the entire (long winded) article, but is it wrong to boil down his thinking to the simple idea that a benevolent, competent dictator is the best form of government? I ask as this seems like a very simplistic and obvious idea. The problem isn't that this is necessarily incorrect, it is how do you find this mythical figurehead? History has shown that we have never discovered a system…

Yarvin's idea of benevolence involves rendering down poor people into biodiesel.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#165

Post by basch »

senkora wrote: post #5

Scott Alexander also recently had a take on Curtis Yarvin’s recent actions: 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.

Does 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.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#166

Post by soulofmischief »

colechristensen wrote: post #52
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is on the outs. And what if there is no grand conspiracy? We're extremely far from any of Yarvin's "plans" at any rate. Yarvin's most cherished plan was to create a shadow university called the "Antiversity" -- a sort of repository of all truths unbeholden to politics and fads. Is this a bad idea? Which other Yarvin ideas scare you so?

>"Antiversity" -- a sort of repository of all truths unbeholden to politics and fads. Is this a bad idea? It's not an idea in good faith. The people talking the loudest about political bias and trends being "wrong" are very much more likely to be extremely biased and following fads themselves. If you actually cared about unbaised truths you'd be having good faith debates and be open to critical interpretation. But th…

Yes, I'm disinclined to believe that these extremely biased folk are largely incapable of recognizing bias on the opposite side of the isle. It seems like bad faith all the way down to a core of deep insecurity, fear, vindictiveness and lack of basic respect for others' boundaries.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#167

Post by ceejayoz »

animal_spirits wrote: post #146
kragen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a perfectly reasonable request, but I didn't have them. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/15/jd-vance-5... is one, I guess. Aha, https://unherd.com/2024/11/j-d-vance-de-facto-prince-of-the-... says, > Vance has described himself as a “reactionary” at war with the “regime”. He drops casual references to his personal friend Curtis Yarvin, and he’s fond of delivering thunderous pronouncements like “t…

Yarvin stated in an interview that he barely knows Vance - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcSil8NeQq8&ab_channel=TheIn...

To contextualize that claim, I'd quote the article:

> "'How dangerous is it that we are being linked?' Thiel wrote to Yarvin in 2014. “One reassuring thought: one of our hidden advantages is that these people”—social-justice warriors—'wouldn’t believe in a conspiracy if it hit them over the head (this is perhaps the best measure of the decline of the Left). Linkages make them sound really crazy, and they kinda know it.'"

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#169

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

youngtaff wrote: post #94
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #18

I mentioned this previously, but I frequently think back to Gibson's "Jackpot" -- a cross-lashed, polycausal catastrophe: Lots of bad little things accumulating, building up a certain momentum. I think that even as far back as 2009, an astute observer would have noticed that society is beginning to burn through its seed corn. In some places, things are now getting extremely acute: https://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-c…

> In some places, things are now getting extremely acute: https://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-confluence?r=h8x Neil O’Brien is a right wing anti-immigrant Member of Parliament… as with all politicians what he says should be taken with a pinch of salt

Rather the opposite, I think. To me it seems that the fact that he's an MP makes it all the more interesting. In the UK, as in the US and elsewhere, people across the political spectrum -- and at all levels, from MPs to "Gary the regional sales manager" -- are losing faith in democratic processes. (At least as they're currently implemented.)

As an aside, this is exactly what happens in Gibson's Jackpot.

> “Who runs it, then?”

> “Oligarchs, corporations, neomonarchists. Hereditary monarchies provided conveniently familiar armatures. Essentially feudal, according to its critics. Such as they are.”

That there's no way to vote your way out of this mess is most readily apparent in the UK, but it's true practically everywhere except Switzerland.

Switzerland, to some extent, shows that sometimes problems with democracy can be solved with. . . more democracy.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#170

Post by giantrobot »

ben_w wrote: post #120
soulofmischief wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's population is purportedly set to halve by 2100. They're well on their way to a massive population shock if they don't thread the needle carefully. There's also been lots of stories about bank closures and Chinese citizens losing their money. Additionally, China, like the US and many other world powers, is a totalitarian authoritarian government which is hostile towards its people. Whether China has high-speed…

> China's population is purportedly set to halve by 2100. 75 years is a long time. At lot can change. 75 years ago, China was just finishing its civil war, with the losers retreating to Taiwan. Land reform had an "estimated death toll ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Reform_Movement The infamous famine was only about 65 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_…

> Either the police does this, or criminals do it for blackmail.

Lucky us, we get both. Not only both spying but both blackmailing us. No good for the common person can come from a panopticon.

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