About fifteen years ago, Yarvin (then still pseudonymous) showed up on the comments section of my blog, I engaged in good faith, and only later discovered his very unsavory opinions:
Besed on the content of the exchange (about financial crises) I don't really regret engaging, even with the benefit of hindsight. But there is definitely some unease. It's a difficult choice to make.
anyway, I still stand my initial argument, the only thing I was mistaken about was the extent to which the specific article I was quoting was accusatory of Scott vs merely descriptive
I have followed the rationalist arguments for a long time, even though I am a Christian of the CS Lewis variety, and the HBD arguments for an only slightly shorter period even though I was a social worker surrounded by PC before there was Wokeness and count very liberal mental health professionals among my best friends.
But I am weary of this evasion about "unsavory opinions," plural (as if there were not only 1.5 that are being referred to here), and people looking for the fainting couch over Steve Sailer and others who acknowledge what all research reveals about race and general intelligence. You (you, the group, not you Ruxandra) either want to deal with the data or you don't. You avoid the discussion not because you are more moral, but because you know the answers and you don't like them. The superintelligent are the first to tell you that one needs competency stacks rather than one attribute, even if one possess IQ in spades. WE KNOW THOSE JIBRONEYS BETTER THAN YOU DO! Intelligence is an ability, not a virtue, but it is the 2SD people who get their knickers in a twist that they are not 4SD who scream the loudest that this is all racist. The tests must be bad or the schools must be bad or implicit bias must control everything. They are projecting their own value that intelligence must be king.
Steve Sailer, Greg Cochran, Charles Murray, and the like will tell you that IQ is only one thing and many things go into the good life, success, or human value. It's a useful tool, no more. If one thinks they are saying more you reveal your own prejudices, not theirs. With the exception of the Igbo and otherS on the Bight of Benin, sub-Saharan Africans have less general intelligence. Females have equal - or ever a touch higher - general intelligence but have fewer at the extremes. They succeed better at school and in many fields because of higher conscientiousness.
Deal with it. All this worry about discussing feudalism and hierarchy is just smokescreen. No one would bat an eye if it weren't for the IQ data that won't go away.
Terrific example of epistemic hygiene. Well done. This needs to happen much more….but is never gonna….cuz the people who need to practice such hygiene the most are too much of a moron to realize they need to, or too big of an a#%hat to care.
Would you agree that there seems to be a big difference in how Scott treats neoreactionaries and journalists?
It seems to me that Neoreaction is treated as a serious topic worthy of lengthy essays where point and counterpoint are considered at length. But with journalists, nuance and rationality are basically thrown out the window in favor of insults. As far as I can tell, the closest Scott ever came to defending the media was in his essay "The Media Very Rarely Lies" wherein he put Infowars at the same level as mainstream journalism.
When the "Edgelords" (worst term ever) talk about the mainstream institutions, I don't feel I often see a careful analysis of strengths and weaknesses of those institutions. They find the worst sins, and then paint in broad strokes that every liberal institution has been captured by such ideologues.
And to be fair, maybe they have been. The sins of these institutions are well published within this community. Very well published. Overwhelmingly published. Ok, to be honest, it seems to be the only thing that is published. You're just not going to find that many "edgelords" offering any kind of defense of these institutions until after the populists started destroying them. For the last decade they have talked about liberal institutions a bit like how early 2000's internet atheists talked about religions.
So when I go to ACX meet-ups, I'm not at all surprised when someone uses one of Scott's talking points to criticize main stream media, and then follows-up with approval of Trumps treatment of the media. The "edgelords" are the closest the populists have to an elite. They provide legitimacy the actual populists leaders cannot, and so can push the populists more than they realize.
I don't blame the "edgelords." Moral culpability is different than the mere claim that someone had causal influence on the world. But if criticisms of neoreaction created antibodies among the readers, I don't think it is unreasonable to say that Scott's contempt may have had causal impact on the world too.
I'm glad people are debating Yarvin and taking his ideas seriously.
A huge part of his schtick appears to be delighting in how terrifically edgy he is. Like, if you took a typical post and highlighted all the paragraphs that are basically saying "yep, I'm *so* edgy", I think in many cases it would be the majority of the verbiage?
I think the correct method is just to treat him very autistically, completely fail to clutch pearls at the edginess aspect, and pretend you're in debate club -- point-by-point, in-depth, do your research, etc. His entire strategy is to bait you into clutching your pearls. So fight autism with autism instead. Unfortunately that takes diligence most people lack.
There are subjects of discussion most of us would find unsavory, unseemly, and deserving of deplatforming. But there are limits. When it goes overboard such as in the linked article in The Nation, we see an authoritarian tendency to intervene on conversations and squash reputations in the public square. I can see an issue with someone going off on a touchy subject at a picnic with mixed company. But to go after good-faith in the weeds conversations on something that makes you uncomfortable, the onus is on you to tune out.
Thanks for correcting that. I like Scott and some of the other rationalist-adjacent writers, but I remember reading that New Yorker piece when it came out and thinking, “what’s the big deal, this seems fine?” Scott himself is very charitable but if you go a step to the right it quickly descends into paranoia and conspiracy, at least among the commenters. The Free Press is the biggest current example.
About fifteen years ago, Yarvin (then still pseudonymous) showed up on the comments section of my blog, I engaged in good faith, and only later discovered his very unsavory opinions:
https://rajivsethi.blogspot.com/2009/11/william-dudley-and-hyman-minsky-on.html
Besed on the content of the exchange (about financial crises) I don't really regret engaging, even with the benefit of hindsight. But there is definitely some unease. It's a difficult choice to make.
yeah there is a debate here to be had, but I think the success of Andrew Tate shows these views would have surfaced anyway
anyway, I still stand my initial argument, the only thing I was mistaken about was the extent to which the specific article I was quoting was accusatory of Scott vs merely descriptive
You can consider this strikes 1 AND 2! Don’t ever let it happen again or you’re fired!
haha it's only strike 1!
Ross if the glass century involved bowling rather than tennis I would be all in. I’m already reading a tennis obsessed book: infinite jest! 😎
I have followed the rationalist arguments for a long time, even though I am a Christian of the CS Lewis variety, and the HBD arguments for an only slightly shorter period even though I was a social worker surrounded by PC before there was Wokeness and count very liberal mental health professionals among my best friends.
But I am weary of this evasion about "unsavory opinions," plural (as if there were not only 1.5 that are being referred to here), and people looking for the fainting couch over Steve Sailer and others who acknowledge what all research reveals about race and general intelligence. You (you, the group, not you Ruxandra) either want to deal with the data or you don't. You avoid the discussion not because you are more moral, but because you know the answers and you don't like them. The superintelligent are the first to tell you that one needs competency stacks rather than one attribute, even if one possess IQ in spades. WE KNOW THOSE JIBRONEYS BETTER THAN YOU DO! Intelligence is an ability, not a virtue, but it is the 2SD people who get their knickers in a twist that they are not 4SD who scream the loudest that this is all racist. The tests must be bad or the schools must be bad or implicit bias must control everything. They are projecting their own value that intelligence must be king.
Steve Sailer, Greg Cochran, Charles Murray, and the like will tell you that IQ is only one thing and many things go into the good life, success, or human value. It's a useful tool, no more. If one thinks they are saying more you reveal your own prejudices, not theirs. With the exception of the Igbo and otherS on the Bight of Benin, sub-Saharan Africans have less general intelligence. Females have equal - or ever a touch higher - general intelligence but have fewer at the extremes. They succeed better at school and in many fields because of higher conscientiousness.
Deal with it. All this worry about discussing feudalism and hierarchy is just smokescreen. No one would bat an eye if it weren't for the IQ data that won't go away.
Terrific example of epistemic hygiene. Well done. This needs to happen much more….but is never gonna….cuz the people who need to practice such hygiene the most are too much of a moron to realize they need to, or too big of an a#%hat to care.
Nonetheless, bravo for walking the walk.
Would you agree that there seems to be a big difference in how Scott treats neoreactionaries and journalists?
It seems to me that Neoreaction is treated as a serious topic worthy of lengthy essays where point and counterpoint are considered at length. But with journalists, nuance and rationality are basically thrown out the window in favor of insults. As far as I can tell, the closest Scott ever came to defending the media was in his essay "The Media Very Rarely Lies" wherein he put Infowars at the same level as mainstream journalism.
When the "Edgelords" (worst term ever) talk about the mainstream institutions, I don't feel I often see a careful analysis of strengths and weaknesses of those institutions. They find the worst sins, and then paint in broad strokes that every liberal institution has been captured by such ideologues.
And to be fair, maybe they have been. The sins of these institutions are well published within this community. Very well published. Overwhelmingly published. Ok, to be honest, it seems to be the only thing that is published. You're just not going to find that many "edgelords" offering any kind of defense of these institutions until after the populists started destroying them. For the last decade they have talked about liberal institutions a bit like how early 2000's internet atheists talked about religions.
So when I go to ACX meet-ups, I'm not at all surprised when someone uses one of Scott's talking points to criticize main stream media, and then follows-up with approval of Trumps treatment of the media. The "edgelords" are the closest the populists have to an elite. They provide legitimacy the actual populists leaders cannot, and so can push the populists more than they realize.
I don't blame the "edgelords." Moral culpability is different than the mere claim that someone had causal influence on the world. But if criticisms of neoreaction created antibodies among the readers, I don't think it is unreasonable to say that Scott's contempt may have had causal impact on the world too.
I'm glad people are debating Yarvin and taking his ideas seriously.
A huge part of his schtick appears to be delighting in how terrifically edgy he is. Like, if you took a typical post and highlighted all the paragraphs that are basically saying "yep, I'm *so* edgy", I think in many cases it would be the majority of the verbiage?
I think the correct method is just to treat him very autistically, completely fail to clutch pearls at the edginess aspect, and pretend you're in debate club -- point-by-point, in-depth, do your research, etc. His entire strategy is to bait you into clutching your pearls. So fight autism with autism instead. Unfortunately that takes diligence most people lack.
There are subjects of discussion most of us would find unsavory, unseemly, and deserving of deplatforming. But there are limits. When it goes overboard such as in the linked article in The Nation, we see an authoritarian tendency to intervene on conversations and squash reputations in the public square. I can see an issue with someone going off on a touchy subject at a picnic with mixed company. But to go after good-faith in the weeds conversations on something that makes you uncomfortable, the onus is on you to tune out.
Thanks for correcting that. I like Scott and some of the other rationalist-adjacent writers, but I remember reading that New Yorker piece when it came out and thinking, “what’s the big deal, this seems fine?” Scott himself is very charitable but if you go a step to the right it quickly descends into paranoia and conspiracy, at least among the commenters. The Free Press is the biggest current example.