Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America • Hacker News Board

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#441

Post by xp84 » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 6:19 AM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #242

xp84 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 75 years is a long time. At lot can change. True, but population collapse specifically is a tough headwind. You can't make more 2055 30-year-olds unless they've already been conceived today, and those will be the parents of the 2100 45-year-olds. While a lot can change, it's unrealistic to assume a birth rate will skyrocket all of a sudden (China's at 1.18 per woman and US is only at 1.6). The painful part, the bad…

> it's unrealistic to assume a birth rate will skyrocket all of a sudden (China's at 1.18 per woman and US is only at 1.6) Much less of a problem if the government mandates gender selection for the unborn resulting in 1/1.18 etc. of live births being women. Already technologically possible. I don't know if they could make that culturally, even dictatorships have limits, but the technology is there.

If I understand correctly, you're proposing sex-selection (terminating males?) as a hack to theoretically produce more child-bearing women in the next generation, who would, I assume, just reproduce promiscuously or form polygamous relationships?

I have to admit, it's an outside-the-box idea, but it would still take 25 years to start bearing fruit (no pun intended).

> culturally

Yeah, honestly, especially in Asia where they de facto did the opposite for so long, all those "extra" males seem to mostly just be alone. I'd worry that the generation with way too many women would reproduce at a disappointing per-woman rate, with the women choosing to roll the dice and either land a monogamous husband to maybe have kids with, or to just pursue their career, rather than be a 'side-piece mom.'

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#442

Post by xp84 » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 6:36 AM UTC

philistine wrote: post #279

xp84 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 75 years is a long time. At lot can change. True, but population collapse specifically is a tough headwind. You can't make more 2055 30-year-olds unless they've already been conceived today, and those will be the parents of the 2100 45-year-olds. While a lot can change, it's unrealistic to assume a birth rate will skyrocket all of a sudden (China's at 1.18 per woman and US is only at 1.6). The painful part, the bad…

Why do you have the maximalist outlook that population must grow. All developed nations are looking at population crunches. All of them, and China and Russia as well. Reducing it to a Chinese problem is reductive. It’s a collective choice, and how is China doing better or worse than its peers?

> maximalist outlook that population must grow

I don't, I'd be perfectly happy with a stable population too. Infinite growth is a dumb goal and I don't support it as a goal (at least until someone demonstrates space colonization).

But a society where generations get dramatically smaller is screwed. You need a balanced (or better) ratio of workers to retirees, mainly. If you took the US and teleported a representative (by age) sample of 80 million people by age to another planet, our society here wouldn't collapse, everything would be pretty ok, we would still have the same basic economy, and the fewer kids and elders to take care of, the reduced consumption, would balance out the loss of the workers. But if they took 80 million people between 30 and 65 instead (that's probably most of that age group), things would go really badly for us, because there aren't enough 20-somethings and 65+ workers to do all the things that keep the kids and retirees fed. If we simply wait 30 or 40 years, China (among others) will be in a situation like that. US is not much better and I can certainly imagine it getting much worse in the US. And I can confidently predict a maximum number of 30 year olds we'll have in 30 years because every one of them has already been born. Even extreme measures can at best only make more 2055 29-year-olds.

> how is China doing better or worse than its peers?

As I stated, China has one of the worst birth rates -- numerically it's doing worse. I don't have a beef with China. I hope they and the rest of the West can figure out how to improve the birth rates soon.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#443

Post by youngtaff » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 7:30 AM UTC

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #405

youngtaff wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are losing faith in the democratic process but that’s largely because they’ve been fed lies by people like Farage and Johnson who’ve promised them things that cannot be delivered

People these days tend to simply vote against the status quo. Remember "zero seats"? And that's exactly how Trump got elected in the first place -- and then re-elected after a four-year interregnum. But scratch the surface and all mainstream political parties only offer a continuation or intensification of the status quo.

What are ‘zero seats’?

I’m in the UK so don’t understand the context

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#444

Post by cowboylowrez » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 1:20 PM UTC

skrtskrt wrote: post #175

colechristensen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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.

but many folks are rejecting serious academics! I have been defeated in tech debates by my opponent dropping the nuke "thats just ivory tower thinking" and man my boss ate that shit up haha

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#445

Post by cowboylowrez » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #231

1. Yarvin's system may work well if you put perfect people in place, and keep perfect people in place. Well, that's true of a lot of systems. Yarvin finds flaws in democracy with imperfect people, but his system needs perfect people in order to work. That's... not an improvement. 2. Even if you have these perfect people, they're going to be rare. Who's going to put them in power? The mass of non-perfect people? Why a…

the courts, legislature and executive could be a nice check on the imperfections of our elected officials, but unfortunately, they don't provide any check on the voters which is obviously unavoidable in any sort of elected democracy. In the US for instance, a full one third of the population are on board with crime sprees, and one third is enough when voter participation gets low.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#446

Post by cowboylowrez » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 1:29 PM UTC

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?

I always understood yarvin to view democracy in an unfavorable light.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#447

Post by soulofmischief » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 4:49 PM UTC

queenkjuul wrote: post #423

soulofmischief wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're incapable of recognizing the signs of an empire's collapse, slow as it may be initially, then you're trading a feeling of superiority in the present for being totally blindsided in the future when suddenly things accelerate and the world's governments begin to struggle under increasingly untenable energy and resource demands in the name of meeting quarterly growth quotas. The fact is that the signs are ther…

I do feel the need to point out that there is in fact a reason that the US media has boldly proclaimed the impending financial collapse of China every month for the last ten years, and it's precisely to give you a feeling of superiority

You don't know what my sources are, or my motivations. I don't have this opinion because of US media, and I always try to get to direct sources and not trust publications blindly. Who gives a fuck about feeling superior, I just want to understand what is happening around me.

So now that we've dispensed with that, we can return to discussing a very real phenomenon and not dismiss it by insinuating it's all propaganda.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#448

Post by soulofmischief » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 5:03 PM UTC

cassepipe wrote: post #427

soulofmischief wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is not a functioning democracy and therefore effectively not a democracy at all, either. It's hard to pinpoint exactly when an empire will fall, but the signs seem to be around for a long time prior to that moment, and you basically have the people who recognize those signs, the people who don't, and the people who profit from confusion and disorder that pay a lot of money to both overtly and subtlety convince…

> The US is not a functioning democracy and therefore effectively not a democracy at all, either. It's a weird statement because you are jumping from a descriptive statement ("not a functioning democracy") to a normative one (if it's not at least 80% democratic then I have decided that it's not a democracy) I am getting too old not to notice such rhetorical tricks. Do better.

It's not a rhetorical trick, and I would appreciate the benefit of the doubt. I just didn't feel like writing a larger comment.

The US is 100% not a functioning democracy, and whether something is a thing if it does not function as a thing is actually a deep philosophical argument that goes back thousands of years. Is a chair a chair if it functions as a chair, or simply if I call it a chair? Can a chair which one cannot use as a chair still be a chair? As you can see, I have an opinion on this, at least in this context, but I am not trying to convince anyone else to share this view. However, it is my view and I used it to advance my argument.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#449

Post by ben_w » Sun, Jun 08, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #441

ben_w wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's unrealistic to assume a birth rate will skyrocket all of a sudden (China's at 1.18 per woman and US is only at 1.6) Much less of a problem if the government mandates gender selection for the unborn resulting in 1/1.18 etc. of live births being women. Already technologically possible. I don't know if they could make that culturally, even dictatorships have limits, but the technology is there.

If I understand correctly, you're proposing sex-selection (terminating males?) as a hack to theoretically produce more child-bearing women in the next generation, who would, I assume, just reproduce promiscuously or form polygamous relationships? I have to admit, it's an outside-the-box idea, but it would still take 25 years to start bearing fruit (no pun intended). > culturally Yeah, honestly, especially in Asia whe…

> If I understand correctly, you're proposing sex-selection (terminating males?) as a hack to theoretically produce more child-bearing women in the next generation,

Yes. Both my belief in the the technical possibility and my reason to doubt the cultural acceptability are on the grounds that it looks like the people were already doing so in the opposite (more male births) direction due to the one-child policy.

> who would, I assume, just reproduce promiscuously or form polygamous relationships?

I was assuming IVF, but whatever works really.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#450

Post by pas » Sun, Jun 08, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

disambiguation wrote: post #396

pas wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ideologies usually perform better if they are inconsistent (or "not even wrong" and vague), so they can serve the emotional/rhetorical needs of the group promulgating them, no?

Yeah rhetorical flexibility is probably an important ingredient for an effective social order (not necessarily a moral one) but you have to consider what it takes to embrace an idea. My sense is that ideologies usually emerge bottom up from individual values - anything top down runs the risk of being misaligned, and therefore incompatible and won't be accepted. Further, if its too inconsistent or incorrect then its v…

It seems that these populist ideologies are built on the shared values of chauvinism, revanchism, and various maladaptive psychological copings to the usual problems and hardships of (modern) life.

And it seems that the ends of the spectrum exhibit different manifestations, as in the current "left" uses ideology for purity testing and the "right" uses it for loyalty testing. (I wanted to link to some details on this, but I can't find it now. :/)