181–190 of 453 posts
The 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?
I'll never understand why this man gets so much attention.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
I have noticed this too. I've only ever read him off and on, and I get the feeling that he must have written something during one of the periods I wasn't reading his still at all that got him "canceled", but I have no idea what it was.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A fascist technocracy is not interesting in the slightest. It’s what basement dwelling teens who idolize John Galt dream about before they are exposed to the complexity of the real world.
Fascism and Ayn Rand's political philosophy are pretty different from each other, however you may feel about either one. Not everything you dislike is the same bad thing.
It's pretty sad that loonies like this get a platform at all. The ultimate irony is that New Yorker in this case is writing an article about him, mocking his views...yet legitimizing them at the same time by associating their name with this kind of person at all. How is this guy different from any other of the thousands moderately-successful tech people with an obscure hobby project (Urbit). Just because of his far-o…
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…
Is exactly the philosophical dead end that Nick Land and Curtis and maybe Mark Fisher arrived at. Accelerationism is like the FedEx arrow in that it’s both an unforgettable idea and easy enough that anyone can grasp it, some of the dumbest politicians of our time are ardent believers.
It’s fun to think about the possibility that belief in this conclusion was premature two decades ago when CCRU and NRx people were banging on about it but now maybe it actually isn’t premature. Which would annoyingly be a pretty compelling instance of hyperstitional time war
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have invested a lot into their energy sources whether it's nuclear or renewables + batteries or hydro. They also have industrial capacity. I feel like we tend to forget that the brunt of the economic output is made by machines which feed on energy. When you have virtually free energy and sufficient level of machinery, you can do anything.
Personally, I directly use energy, both current and future (access to resources) as the main currency of my economic model of the world, not money. So I do understand that China is well-equipped to weather the storm on multiple fronts. But that's orthogonal to the fact that they will experience major population shock that radically and painfully transforms their economy, and also to the fact that China is a totalitar…
I've been hearing this is eminent for my entire life....
> major population shock that radically and painfully transforms their economy
Ah Peter Zeihan's evergreen bugaboo. Chinese old people != American old people, the cost of old people is completely different. While China does have a Ponzi economy, much like the US, and thus is susceptible to reverse wealth effects their corporations are run by politicians instead of the other way around. As much as I would like to be able to assume that repressive autocracies lead to political instability the empirical evidence does not seem to bear that out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you post direct links to actual references, rather than Wikipedia talk pages?
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…
How can someone be such a diehard Tolkien nerd and endorse government by corporation? Does he think the hero was Saruman?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
In any case, this one fails both ways. A benevolent dictatorship might be the best form of government in the short term, but the fact that people are mortal means that it's still a bad form of government in the long term.
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…
And for a bit of fun, I even posted an Urbit parody in those days, in which I inadvertently invented a feature of the Unison programming language: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10409837