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Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

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Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#221

Post by the_af »

maxerickson wrote: post #199
rjbwork wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The style of this post reminds me a lot of Matt Levine's money stuff.

Matt Levine is coherent though. I would think someone intent on calling Moldbug's ideas interesting would at least try to patch up the big holes. Like the city-states that have free flowing capital and populations, but somehow avoid an analogue to international law. Or the dictator that isn't subject to approval, except by the required committee that can fire him. There's 4 points and 2 of them are contradictory!

> Like the city-states that have free flowing capital and populations, but somehow avoid an analogue to international law.

This is what kills me about attempts like this (e.g. like Scott Alexander's) to make Yarvin's ideas seem "interesting" or "thought-provoking".

Well-read as Yarvin might be, only someone who is mentally a teenager can have his kind of beliefs. "Society would be great if it weren't for all these monstruous things I don't like, artificially imposed on us by... aliens?"

It reminds me of teenagers who go online and make arguments like "well, ackshually, the US is not a democracy but a republic...". Yeah, yeah, you're very smart for pointing this out, now go sit in a corner and let the grownups talk.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#222

Post by ceejayoz »

kragen wrote: post #200
ceejayoz wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

In this context, three years ago, Vance was describing Yarvin as his "good friend" (when he was campaigning for a seat in the US Senate, which he won), while four months ago, Yarvin is saying he barely knows Vance. If you're suggesting that the apparent discrepancy is a result of strategic dishonesty for reputation preservation, that would mean that either: 1. Yarvin wants to distance himself from Vance because he fe…

You've left out the fairly obvious possibility #3, which is "Yarvin fears reputational damage to Vance that might prevent Vance from helping him advance his ideology". This, after all, was Thiel's concern in the quoted exchange.

#2 gets a lot more plausible when you remember these folks often care more about the backing (especially $$$) of someone like Thiel than the regular public, too.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#223

Post by roughly »

ceejayoz wrote: post #30
roughly wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest mistake the Cyberpunk authors made was making their dystopia look so cool and then assuming we’d actually read the book.

https://twitter.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538 > Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale > Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

I wish this weren't so evergreen. Truly this is the Era of the Torment Nexus.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#224

Post by roughly »

7373737373 wrote: post #35
roughly wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest mistake the Cyberpunk authors made was making their dystopia look so cool and then assuming we’d actually read the book.

The world needs more https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberprep

I'm personally a fan of https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Solarpunk

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#225

Post by mmustapic »

rendang wrote: post #172
mmustapic wrote: post #112

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?

Couldn't you say the same thing about parents?

No. In most countries there are laws restricting what parents can do.

On the other hand, nobody is proposing a father figure running a country, so I don't see the connection here.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#226

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#227

Post by scoofy »

skrebbel wrote: post #59

I'll never understand why this man gets so much attention.

We are in the midst of a major political party realignment. When that happens, both parties are split and elections basically create a broken legislature. When that happens, people start daydreaming: "what if my political group didn't have do deal with other people having influence on the way government should be."

Even trifecta states are dealing with this, as is obvious from the turmoil and wild animosity that exists in one-party California. The constitution gets changed willy-nilly to create effectively unchangeable advantages for certain groups at the expense of others.

The US is moving from a situation in which they had enough money (well, deficit spending) to solve most of our problems without upsetting too many constituencies. Those days are over and we're now trying to do something, anything, to avoid having to make tough decisions that might mean losing an election. Our electorate wanting something, anything, to prevent them from losing whatever preferential political goals they have are entertaining the same naive ideas.

Win once, and let the next generation deal with the fallout. Basic human selfishness par excellence.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#230

Post by hollerith »

runako wrote: post #178
hollerith wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 improvin…

>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.

Americans have always had a (healthy IMHO) distrust of radical changes in our system of government while being unusually open to economic changes and technological changes that transform our society. I judge that the average American remains significantly more open to the latter than the average person in the world; do you disagree?

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