That Wilkinson piece (his Substack is called Model Citizen, ffs) really is something:
"Well, suppose you’re a journalist in the corporate media and Scott Siskind and his vast network of followers did deal with you in an extremely unfriendly way when you proposed to say something he didn’t want said about him. Are you going to see this as irrelevant to an accurate understanding of the character of Siskind and the SSC community? Of course you won’t.
I want to urge Siskind’s irked supporters to consider that when Metz brings up Charles Murray, Voldemort feminists, unusually collegial engagement with neo-reactionary thought, and speculation about tech being male-heavy because women for some reason just get bored by numbers and gadgets, it’s not because he’s writing a hit job — it’s because these are the sort of thing Siskind was terrified his employer and patients would connect to him. Huh? Why would you aim directly at the realization of Siskind’s fears if not out of spite and malice? Well, the most interesting things about Slate Star Codex, from an outside perspective, are (1) that it’s influential in Silicon Valley, and its enthusiastic fans include incredibly rich and powerful people whose technologies and businesses affect all our lives; (2) one day Siskind burnt it all down and summoned a vengeful horde to attack an innocent reporter and assail America’s best newspaper."
I've read this multiple times in an effort to parse its logic as sympathetically as possible. But all I keep getting are scenes from Salem:
"Why do this mean old woman's family members get so defensive every time we bring up demons? Why are they so insistent she's never in the woods cavorting with them? She *has* been spotted going into the woods, after all.
"We're just doing our job keeping the community safe against curses and blights. I understand their loyalty, but that's no reason to be mean to one of our noble witch investigators!"
Wilkinson on rationalists, inadvertently describing how McNeil and Bari Weiss were run out of town at the NYT:
"Communities like this are almost always inwardly focused and naturally evolve toward serving the social and emotional needs of the types of people who opt in and stick around. It doesn’t matter if a community is explicitly organized around ideals of objectivity, truth-orientation and unbiased rationality if the community in fact functions to serve different needs. The incentives that structure and bind communities push members toward the performance of the community’s values in the conventionally accepted style."
Hard to get closer to "serving the social and emotional needs" of certain people than firing anyone who disagrees with them.
He does a whole bit claiming to say the Times is a better truth seeking institution than rationalists -- interestingly there's no effort to compare the actual predictive record of either group...
Perhaps it's just because I'm autistic and power to me seems like equal parts burden and poison, some noxious toxic substance that will weigh on my back as it corrodes my virtue - but for whatever reason, I really struggle to empathize with addicts like this. Human though they are, they had a choice. They chose power, and power invariably trends toward what most would call objective evil. I'll ignore them, if only for reasons of pragmatism. No point in feeding them or their delusions. But if Justice ever existed anywhere, she'd weep hearing about this garbage state of affairs. The powerful get to abuse people only to get a cushy retirement package. Though I doubt this would be the first time she heard this story, nor would it be the last.
Since this is a mirror, although a gray one, I would like to mirror the situation of being a slave to power by looking through glasses into the the next regime, where the dissident gets the power. Vaclav Havel did it and did it very well, and also Nelson Mandela was far from being bad, despite his own troubled past. But these are of course more exceptions to the rule than anything else.
Beta in Milosz Captive Mind is an example of getting the power in the next regime, while having survived luckily the old one, failed in the end and became an empty vessel for the party. Corruption it seems is the inevitable result of all regimes in power.
So, if the next regime comes, what should the dissident really do? The Machiavellian way of gaining power, using power and maintaining power? Doing all the things that corrupt us?
How to manage the fact that there are addicts to power? The same substance will create Zombi-addicts the same way in every regime. In a monarchy the nobles are trained to live in, for and with power. They are not addicts, more like genetically engineered for it. When others wanted that power too, things got complicated. Can one consume power without becoming an addict? Is that possible? Or has one to be born out of a breeding protocol, to be genetically engineered for power? Is this the only successful way?
The other way is something that sounds meaningless and self-defeating and that is to maintain the position of dissidence in every regime. To live that way contains the tragedy of a ridiculous man, who barks against the moon, but nevertheless preserves his soul. That's not nothing.
Is that possible or even desirable? There seems to be a magical edge of ethics in that idea, a kind of non genetically engineered nobility. Although it is meaningless, it produces meaning for one self. That's not nothing. But maybe that's also a mirror back to the current regime. The Cathedral produces meaningless personalities who find meaning in their own virtuousness, finding purpose and order where none of it exists. The dissident does not find meaning in himself. The dissident find meaning in his hope for the next regime. Can one maintain this through all kinds of regimes? Or is it just self deception and naive posturing? Is moral high ground nothing else than a trigger for the massacre of quokkas by heavily armed foxes?
The cold Machiavellians will know what to choose, but I am not sure about this.
“ The slave of power is an addict. Something has happened in his brain that fused the chain of neurons between “the good” and “the Party,” which should have been long and webby and full of delicate moral logic, trolley problems and so on, and turned it into a big copper busbar that can shunt enough dopamine to blow a man to Neptune. There is probably some kind of emergency remote signal that can make him orgasm.”
Speaking of Thiel, I started watching Eric Weinstein's video on Unified Geometry yesterday, and while I don't understand anything of the middle part that actually has something to do with the subject matter, I thought his introduction was really illuminating.
I thought again of the Short Intro to the Cathedral, where you say that math does well even in Soviet Russia, and then I thought of how emotional Eric was when talking about how afraid he was to investigate an unpopular mathematical direction.
I think we're at the point where even our math is corrupted by dominant ideas and has been, for close to 50 years.
Eric thinks the solution is to give scientists more money. It's the most blue-pilled take ever. Even I of 15 years ago wouldn't have said this.
Watching Scott Alexander get fisked by a nobody who writes exactly like him—using the same affectations and rhetorical strategies—is pretty funny. I hope Scott responds.
"He gets it. He learned something from it. He updated his priors, overcame some biases and made himself less wrong."
Overcoming and biases, opening up, making ourselves less wrong is the job of everyone, except for the New York Times, its reporters and ideological syncophants.
The article was so dumb, the lies so ostentatious, and the title so inflammatory I am convinced that our friend wilkinson is just being abrasive to generate clicks, and he hopes, subscribers or notoriety.
Stirring the pot for views is essentially trolling.
If you those numbers of subscribers start getting power. Real power.
You could you know read the Dominion user manual, the good stuff’s in chapter 3; adjudication, rank choice voting, etc. That’s the closest thing on earth to your crypto locks and Ring of Fnargl.
Really it speaks to their base stupidity and laziness that the Dems had to scan one voting card, the software had all they needed.
“The wise speak only of what they know, Gríma son of Gálmód. A witless worm have you become. Therefore be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy words with a serving-man till the lightning falls.”
Re: the “on the Internets” link – I listened to the headline podcast by The Right Stuff for years. Very gradually these people memed themselves from edgy humor based on hoppean libertarianism into unironic nazism.
These were reasonably intelligent chaps, and their faults were indeed not in reasoning, but in first-it’s-a-joke-then-a-lifestyle-ing themselves into repellent axioms. That’s not a warning against reason, to me, but a warning against pursuing any idea without sanity checks or bounds.
What MattY noted about his discussion with them seems to be a general problem with pursuing moral monomanias – impoverished value systems lead into having to mindkill yourself lest you follow your dumb values to their logical conclusion.
MattY would probably not disclaim utilitarianism without qualification, and that falls into the same trap. People will invent all sorts of epicycles to their “what if morality, but a single number” rather than accepting that they cannot outsource their agency to a formula.
What the fuck, Curtis; this isn't even 100,000 words. I barely started lubing up. Are you ok? Are those polyps serious?
Best regards
That Wilkinson piece (his Substack is called Model Citizen, ffs) really is something:
"Well, suppose you’re a journalist in the corporate media and Scott Siskind and his vast network of followers did deal with you in an extremely unfriendly way when you proposed to say something he didn’t want said about him. Are you going to see this as irrelevant to an accurate understanding of the character of Siskind and the SSC community? Of course you won’t.
I want to urge Siskind’s irked supporters to consider that when Metz brings up Charles Murray, Voldemort feminists, unusually collegial engagement with neo-reactionary thought, and speculation about tech being male-heavy because women for some reason just get bored by numbers and gadgets, it’s not because he’s writing a hit job — it’s because these are the sort of thing Siskind was terrified his employer and patients would connect to him. Huh? Why would you aim directly at the realization of Siskind’s fears if not out of spite and malice? Well, the most interesting things about Slate Star Codex, from an outside perspective, are (1) that it’s influential in Silicon Valley, and its enthusiastic fans include incredibly rich and powerful people whose technologies and businesses affect all our lives; (2) one day Siskind burnt it all down and summoned a vengeful horde to attack an innocent reporter and assail America’s best newspaper."
I've read this multiple times in an effort to parse its logic as sympathetically as possible. But all I keep getting are scenes from Salem:
"Why do this mean old woman's family members get so defensive every time we bring up demons? Why are they so insistent she's never in the woods cavorting with them? She *has* been spotted going into the woods, after all.
"We're just doing our job keeping the community safe against curses and blights. I understand their loyalty, but that's no reason to be mean to one of our noble witch investigators!"
Wilkinson on rationalists, inadvertently describing how McNeil and Bari Weiss were run out of town at the NYT:
"Communities like this are almost always inwardly focused and naturally evolve toward serving the social and emotional needs of the types of people who opt in and stick around. It doesn’t matter if a community is explicitly organized around ideals of objectivity, truth-orientation and unbiased rationality if the community in fact functions to serve different needs. The incentives that structure and bind communities push members toward the performance of the community’s values in the conventionally accepted style."
Hard to get closer to "serving the social and emotional needs" of certain people than firing anyone who disagrees with them.
He does a whole bit claiming to say the Times is a better truth seeking institution than rationalists -- interestingly there's no effort to compare the actual predictive record of either group...
Perhaps it's just because I'm autistic and power to me seems like equal parts burden and poison, some noxious toxic substance that will weigh on my back as it corrodes my virtue - but for whatever reason, I really struggle to empathize with addicts like this. Human though they are, they had a choice. They chose power, and power invariably trends toward what most would call objective evil. I'll ignore them, if only for reasons of pragmatism. No point in feeding them or their delusions. But if Justice ever existed anywhere, she'd weep hearing about this garbage state of affairs. The powerful get to abuse people only to get a cushy retirement package. Though I doubt this would be the first time she heard this story, nor would it be the last.
Since this is a mirror, although a gray one, I would like to mirror the situation of being a slave to power by looking through glasses into the the next regime, where the dissident gets the power. Vaclav Havel did it and did it very well, and also Nelson Mandela was far from being bad, despite his own troubled past. But these are of course more exceptions to the rule than anything else.
Beta in Milosz Captive Mind is an example of getting the power in the next regime, while having survived luckily the old one, failed in the end and became an empty vessel for the party. Corruption it seems is the inevitable result of all regimes in power.
So, if the next regime comes, what should the dissident really do? The Machiavellian way of gaining power, using power and maintaining power? Doing all the things that corrupt us?
How to manage the fact that there are addicts to power? The same substance will create Zombi-addicts the same way in every regime. In a monarchy the nobles are trained to live in, for and with power. They are not addicts, more like genetically engineered for it. When others wanted that power too, things got complicated. Can one consume power without becoming an addict? Is that possible? Or has one to be born out of a breeding protocol, to be genetically engineered for power? Is this the only successful way?
The other way is something that sounds meaningless and self-defeating and that is to maintain the position of dissidence in every regime. To live that way contains the tragedy of a ridiculous man, who barks against the moon, but nevertheless preserves his soul. That's not nothing.
Is that possible or even desirable? There seems to be a magical edge of ethics in that idea, a kind of non genetically engineered nobility. Although it is meaningless, it produces meaning for one self. That's not nothing. But maybe that's also a mirror back to the current regime. The Cathedral produces meaningless personalities who find meaning in their own virtuousness, finding purpose and order where none of it exists. The dissident does not find meaning in himself. The dissident find meaning in his hope for the next regime. Can one maintain this through all kinds of regimes? Or is it just self deception and naive posturing? Is moral high ground nothing else than a trigger for the massacre of quokkas by heavily armed foxes?
The cold Machiavellians will know what to choose, but I am not sure about this.
“ The slave of power is an addict. Something has happened in his brain that fused the chain of neurons between “the good” and “the Party,” which should have been long and webby and full of delicate moral logic, trolley problems and so on, and turned it into a big copper busbar that can shunt enough dopamine to blow a man to Neptune. There is probably some kind of emergency remote signal that can make him orgasm.”
Another classic Yarvin Zinger
Speaking of Thiel, I started watching Eric Weinstein's video on Unified Geometry yesterday, and while I don't understand anything of the middle part that actually has something to do with the subject matter, I thought his introduction was really illuminating.
I thought again of the Short Intro to the Cathedral, where you say that math does well even in Soviet Russia, and then I thought of how emotional Eric was when talking about how afraid he was to investigate an unpopular mathematical direction.
I think we're at the point where even our math is corrupted by dominant ideas and has been, for close to 50 years.
Eric thinks the solution is to give scientists more money. It's the most blue-pilled take ever. Even I of 15 years ago wouldn't have said this.
Watching Scott Alexander get fisked by a nobody who writes exactly like him—using the same affectations and rhetorical strategies—is pretty funny. I hope Scott responds.
michael-jackson-popcorn.gif
"He gets it. He learned something from it. He updated his priors, overcame some biases and made himself less wrong."
Overcoming and biases, opening up, making ourselves less wrong is the job of everyone, except for the New York Times, its reporters and ideological syncophants.
The article was so dumb, the lies so ostentatious, and the title so inflammatory I am convinced that our friend wilkinson is just being abrasive to generate clicks, and he hopes, subscribers or notoriety.
Stirring the pot for views is essentially trolling.
Here's the Dominion user manual, good stuff in Chapter 3.
Really if they weren't so lazy the Dems wouldn't have had to scan one fake ballot.
https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/VotingSystems/DVS-DemocracySuite511/documentation/2-03-EMS-FunctionalityDescription-5-11-CO.pdf
If you those numbers of subscribers start getting power. Real power.
You could you know read the Dominion user manual, the good stuff’s in chapter 3; adjudication, rank choice voting, etc. That’s the closest thing on earth to your crypto locks and Ring of Fnargl.
Really it speaks to their base stupidity and laziness that the Dems had to scan one voting card, the software had all they needed.
I’ll send along a copy.
“The wise speak only of what they know, Gríma son of Gálmód. A witless worm have you become. Therefore be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy words with a serving-man till the lightning falls.”
"persistent social loyalty"... sounds like something you might be able to cure with an over-the-counter topical cream of something?
Certainly not a boring battle. It's an adventure in learning from the mistakes of others.
Re: the “on the Internets” link – I listened to the headline podcast by The Right Stuff for years. Very gradually these people memed themselves from edgy humor based on hoppean libertarianism into unironic nazism.
These were reasonably intelligent chaps, and their faults were indeed not in reasoning, but in first-it’s-a-joke-then-a-lifestyle-ing themselves into repellent axioms. That’s not a warning against reason, to me, but a warning against pursuing any idea without sanity checks or bounds.
What MattY noted about his discussion with them seems to be a general problem with pursuing moral monomanias – impoverished value systems lead into having to mindkill yourself lest you follow your dumb values to their logical conclusion.
MattY would probably not disclaim utilitarianism without qualification, and that falls into the same trap. People will invent all sorts of epicycles to their “what if morality, but a single number” rather than accepting that they cannot outsource their agency to a formula.