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Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

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Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#71

Post by drewbeck »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #44
sitkack wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's foppish and playful more than he is scary. This is a very unwise stance to take. Peter Thiel has teamed up with the Heritage Foundation to implement this plan. This is why A16Z and Musk put Trump in power, it is precisely to implement this plan.

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?

Some of the wealthiest people in the world follow his ideas, including people who have been in government or deeply involved in government, and people who want to use their wealth to increase their own power.

Why are you not concerned?

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#72

Post by runako »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #51
runako wrote: post #25

Earlier 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.

> in the US, where a defining characteristic of the population is a belief... that everyone is out to take advantage of you all the time. I mean, living in 2025 America that's not a bad default assumption to make, is it? By default when the solar salesman (or pest control salesman) comes to the door I consider it a scam because it generally is (same for phone sales, and most internet ads). Is everything a scam? No. B…

One doesn't even have to look to salespeople knocking to find scams. It's widely accepted that key pillars of the way we choose to organize our society have scam-like elements.

Healthcare. Zero job security. Virtually nonexistent support for parents. Retirement. Education.

Switching to the American form of any single one of these would cause mass civil unrest in most rich countries, but Americans don't believe things can or should be better. Many believe the lie that we (poorest state has a higher GDP per capita than France) cannot afford the things other rich countries have. The pessimism is pervasive.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#73

Post by cassepipe »

ceejayoz wrote: post #54
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?

> And what if there is no grand conspiracy? You did the thing! "'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 kin…

Source ?

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#74

Post by defen »

Question for 'dang - is it possible to dig up the oldest post on this website that links to somewhere on "unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com" and has some amount of comments? It would be interesting to see how people were reacting to his ideas when he first posted them.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#75

Post by bdangubic »

cempaka wrote: post #70
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…

A good measure of where China really stands is the fact that it continues to do business with Israel, even though it would be quite trivial to cut ties.

countries have no friends or enemies, only national interests

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#76

Post by krapp »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #60
nehal3m wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this even is their final form...

I think it is. This stood out to me: > As his ideas have been surrealized in DOGE and Trump has taken to self-identifying as a king, one might expect to find Yarvin in an exultant mood. In fact, he has spent the past few months fretting that the moment will go to waste. “If you have a Trump boner right now, enjoy it,” he wrote two days after the election. “It’s as hard as you’ll ever get.” What many see as the most d…

I think it will happen, but not under Trump. We've normalized certain aspects of authoritarianism now: the unitary executive, the enforcement of political ideology and removal of political dissidents, and once the US gets rid of birthright citizenship Constitutional rights become entirely arbitrary, and anyone can be sent to the camps. We've normalized political violence after Jan. 20th. Palantir will have an extensive database created from all of DOGE's data. A third of the country wants it, and they live where the votes matter most. All of the pieces will be in place.

It just requires a competent leader and a movement based on ideology, not grift. Once Trump is out of the way the true believers will take over. Thanks to the weakening of the Federal government it will happen at the grassroots level with state governments in partnership with tech companies consolidating a power base, then "retaking" Washington. If there happens to be a Democratic administration to pin some anti-leftist moral panic or two on, so much the better.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#77

Post by ceejayoz »

cassepipe wrote: post #73
ceejayoz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And what if there is no grand conspiracy? You did the thing! "'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 kin…

Source ?

The article we're discussing. It's a direct quote from it.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#79

Post by cogman10 »

ryeats wrote: post #57
runako wrote: post #25

Earlier 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 not true. Your rose colored glasses of Chinese culture, and the current state of Chinese economy and society need a reality check.

It isn't perfect, but it's also undeniable that China is dumping a ton of money into infrastructure. It also has and has been executing multiple long-term initiatives (for example, high speed rail, renewable build out).

Chinese culture isn't perfect by a long shot, in particular it's both pretty isolationist with a strong slash and burn mentality for resource acquisition.

We can see both the positives and negatives of a country. I think it is a positive that china isn't as focused on short term results as the US political ecosystem is.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#80

Post by ivraatiems »

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 prove yourself drive, but he doesn't seem to have invested time in figuring out how to move past it or use it productively.

You can completely discard Yarvin's ideology - or even agree with it - and still see this in the way he works. His company, Urbit (not the name of the company but the name of its "product") is a ham-handed, hyper-complex "re-imagining" of pretty much every wheel in computing, from the OS to networking to programming languages. It has effectively no useful user-facing features, but a whole lot of design philosophy and programming language design. It creates lots of problems while solving almost none, but it looks impressive.

...which is to say it maybe actually isn't all that far off from his ideological and political writing, in the end.

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