His actual answer to preventing a Hitler or Stalin arising from autocracy is that he would hopes it doesn’t happen. What an absolute joke
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Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America
171–180 of 453 posts
Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America
#172The most amazing thing about Yarvis ideas, and the article itself, is that they clearly say that CEOs are antidemocratic autocrats. Why should this be accepted in a democratic society?
Couldn't you say the same thing about parents?
Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America
#173Didn'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…
> The problem isn't that this is necessarily incorrect, it is how do you find this mythical figurehead? That's exactly why the idea is incorrect. People wise enough and unbiased enough to be entrusted with unchecked power are few; ones that are incorruptible enough to be trusted with it for long are even fewer. And those who want such power are almost always the people who are least to be trusted with it. So, yeah. T…
Yeah but you've said that the conclusion is correct by rejecting the premise of the question.
The conclusion could be correct given the premise, and also it could be moot because the premise is impossible, but those are two different claims.
Obviously I agree with you that the proposed system is unworkable because the premise is impossible. (This is a "duh" thing that really isn't worth debating, anyone who fails to see this is a fool.)
But I actually also think the conclusion is wrong even given the premise. I think it is wrong to deny people representative input into their government, even under the assumption of a perfect benevolent monarch. This is not for utilitarian reasons, but moral reasons.
Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes Scott a crank?
https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/01/scott-alexander-siskind...
That 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.
Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America
#175Earlier 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 and by and large things that "they won't teach you in college" are because they have been already looked into and rejected by any serious academic.
These institutions are not above criticism (particularly in regards to economic theory IMO) but universities not teaching like, race science and holocaust denialism is not because they are scared of some "alternate truth" out there.
Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes Scott a crank?
https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/01/scott-alexander-siskind...
This seems to boil down to that Elizabeth Sandifer, a self described "middle-aged trans anarchist", believes https://www.astralcodexten.com is "fertile grounds for white nationalist recruitment".
This is just wrong and anyone can visit the blog to see for themselves.
Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America
#177[flagged]
You are welcome to defend rising fascism if you want. People will justly criticize you, of course. What happened to intellectual seriousness? Why should you be so frightened of people criticizing you? This is consistent with my expectation of the future of fascism. The appearance of seriousness but once you have a gun pointed in my face the presence of discussion will be dropped in favor of a bullet in my skull.
I don't like Yarvin's ideas that I've heard, but GP has a point. There's almost no point to posting something that will just get downvoted quickly (which any defense of Yarvin certainly would), regardless of whether it makes any interesting points. Once it's dead it won't get much if any interaction. It's not about being afraid of people criticizing, it's about expending the effort to write a quality comment that won't be viewed or engaged by anyone.
I do think we on HN have gotten way too reflexively downvoting of opinions we disagree with. IMHO downvoting should be used like a moderation tool to downrank low effort/spammy or factually/objectively incorrect posts that don't contribute anything interesting to the discussion, not as a lazy way of expressing our disagreement.
> This is consistent with my expectation of the future of fascism. The appearance of seriousness but once you have a gun pointed in my face the presence of discussion will be dropped in favor of a bullet in my skull.
You could dismiss almost any political ideology with this. Certainly there's a lot of people who experienced this in the USSR, North Korea, China, and more, and those are/were hardly fascist governments.
Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
> society is beginning to burn through its seed corn This is mostly true in the US, where a defining characteristic of the population is a belief that we cannot do better or have more, that things will always continue to get worse, and that everyone is out to take advantage of you all the time. Other countries continue to invest in the future. China, among others, do not suffer the current American fatalism.
>This is mostly true in the US, where a defining characteristic of the population is a belief that we cannot do better or have more, that things will always continue to get worse My view is basically the complete opposite: IMHO Americans have experienced things getting gradually better for essentially the entire duration of the American nation, with the result that we don't have the institutional capability to respon…
> Americans have experienced things getting gradually better for essentially the entire duration of the American nation
More or less, I agree with this part of the thesis.
> Western Europe has proven much better at responding intelligently to the limits of growth than the US has
This is kind of my point -- we don't do the things other countries do to respond because those things would broadly be perceived as improving the lot of most citizens, and Americans do not generally believe that is possible anymore. (Also: "socialism is bad!")
But there is no reason for a country where economic measures of growth of wealth and income are so consistently strong should be so hesitant to invest in the future, and should be actively disinvesting in long-term initiatives.
What's especially painful is that some of the same policy choices we make that result in more distress for citizens are also likely to reduce the long-run growth of the economy. We make choices that hurt us now and also make things worse in the future.
(Generally not going to respond to the political dig because this really isn't a direct outgrowth of the typical left/right political divide in the US or its projections on other countries. For example, right-leaning Hungary has universal healthcare and free college tuition, but nobody is accusing Hungary of being Leftist.)
Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> society is beginning to burn through its seed corn This is mostly true in the US, where a defining characteristic of the population is a belief that we cannot do better or have more, that things will always continue to get worse, and that everyone is out to take advantage of you all the time. Other countries continue to invest in the future. China, among others, do not suffer the current American fatalism.
> This is mostly true in the US, where a defining characteristic of the population is a belief that we cannot do better or have more, that things will always continue to get worse, and that everyone is out to take advantage of you all the time. As an American immigrant, this does not seem at all true to me, from either angle - I don't think that this is a defining characteristic of Americans, nor do I think that othe…
The place where this perspective is most prevalent is socialized healthcare. It's either slippery slope evil socialism, or it's too impractical to ever be implemented here because America is too big and complicated, or it's never gonna happen due to regulatory capture.
Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I’ve read LessWrong on and off since 2014. Read SSC and ACX semi-regularly. Scott’s a crank. He writes convincingly, he understands charisma and style, but he just can’t hold his own in an intellectual exchange. Just last week he and Tyler Cowen of Marginial Revolution got into a dispute over USAID and DOGE and the degree to which Scott fails over and over again to read otherwise simple sentences is staggering.
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