I feel sorry for the feminist women in cryonics who don’t see this as a distinct possibility of the kind of Future World which would revive them. They might find themselves in a conservative, patriarchal society which won’t have much tolerance for their assumptions about women’s freedoms.
I haven’t really seen much discussion on the intersection of neoreaction and transhumanism. Neoreactionary theories of long-range probable societal trends, like dysgenics or a return to generally pre-Enlightenment social order also tend to assume that humans stay mostly as they are and only get selected by natural evolution. Meanwhile, getting to the point of being able to revive cryonically stored people successfully would probably include a bunch of human condition gamechanger technologies, like an ability to make the whole notion of fixed gender optional on any level (genetics, cognitive architecture, body plan) you’d care to name.
Why couldn’t post-democratic outcomes exist even if human nature is deliberately reengineered?
They could, and there’s the are scenarios in the premise where they likely will, but neoreaction isn’t just a program of political philosophy for post-democracy. There seems to be much rhetoric and general memetic clustering in NRX around the idea that progressivism will fail because it has outstretched itself trying to re-engineer human nature with cultural conditioning, and that social orders which comply more with fundamentally unchanging elements of human nature are a good political attack against progressivism. The reactionary commenters at SSC seem to like narratives about long-term human decline which tend to rely on nothing interesting happening with human reproduction in many generations from now on.
With technology that can re-engineer human nature, you could have brand new chances to go at the progressive wouldn’t-it-be-nice-if-people-were-more-like-this stuff. Then you’d have to start thinking which bits of traditional values are actually good for a general population of agents, and which are just time-evolved kludges around previously unfixable human systematic suckiness. I see a divide opening up here between people who value the idea of a reactionary society of baseline humans in itself, and people who just go for whatever gets things done effectively. Though I guess NRX already has formed subcultural divides.
In the case of human enhancement, we depend even more greatly on (some subset of) traditional values to maintain societal stability, since the possible dimensions of failure are so much larger.
There’s no divide, since for the time being, baseline humans is all we have. “Whatever gets things done effectively” is presently defined as “whatever gets things done effectively for baseline humans”.
The first priority is the here and now, but people also like to talk about what they expect to see in the next 30 or 100 years. A part of what makes an ideological movement run is a vision of the future, and people seem quite capable of getting into arguments and schisms about the principles of those.
Why couldn’t post-democratic outcomes exist even if human nature is deliberately reengineered?
Why would they resemble the pre-democratic outcomes that advancedatheist says “wouldn’t surprise me”? What should even draw “premodern, pre-Enlightenment societies” to anyone’s attention, out of the vast and unknown possibilities of a transhuman estate that removes the reasons that those societies evolved in those ways?
Why would they resemble the pre-democratic outcomes that advancedatheist says “wouldn’t surprise me”?
Because some of those, like hierarchy, are game theoretic equilibria that are likely to emerge across a wide range of possible configurations, especially where there are great asymmetries between agents.
What should even draw “premodern, pre-Enlightenment societies” to anyone’s attention, out of the vast and unknown possibilities of a transhuman estate that removes the reasons that those societies evolved in those ways?
Are you saying that you think that a vast majority of the possible transhuman futures rest entirely on Enlightenment principles?
Are you saying that you think that a vast majority of the possible transhuman futures rest entirely on Enlightenment principles?
No. Are you saying that pre-Enlightenment and Enlightenment principles are the only possibilities? Why should either of these be part of a transhuman future?
Exhaustively speaking, societal organizational principles in the abstract tend to be Enlightenment-oriented or not. So, yes, any given transhuman future will have principles of some kind, which will be inspired by the Enlightenment or not. Non-Enlightenment principles (used here to describe every possible set of societal principles besides those based around the Enlightenment) are a rather huge space of possibilities, which cover not only many societies which have already existed, but many millions which may have yet to come to pass. Many “pre-Enlightenment” situations were organic hierarchies, similar to the way nature itself has operated for literally billions of years. “Pre-Enlightenment” does not refer to a specific thing, but a huge space of configurations which do not closely adhere to Enlightenment principles.
By “pre-Enlightenment” I understand the social arrangements in Europe of the centuries immediately preceding the Enlightenment, which neo-reactionaries see the Enlightenment as a catastrophic falling away from, and which they desire to return to. This is unambiguously what advancedatheist is talking about upthread, and what, for example, Moldbug unfavourably contrasts our present arrangements with. This is a very specific thing, not the huge space that you interchangeably referred to as “non-Enlightenment”.
“Pre-Enlightenment” bears the same relationship to “non-Enlightenment” as kangaroos do to non-elephants.
Viewing reactionaries as wishing to return to a time in the linear past, which evolved organically based on local conditions, and which may not be appropriate to present technological conditions, is mistaken. The goal is not to simply revive a past arrangement but to apply certain traditional principles and spirit to a newer expression of organic principles that is suited to its context. So, when you say “go back to”, it’s not that simple. Which is why “pre-Enlightenment” seems like an oversimplifying label, to me.
In fact, you could call it post-Enlightenment, since it would be the emergence of structure from an Enlightenment society that may retain some Enlightenment principles while discarding others. Calling any system based on principles aside from Enlightenment ones “pre-Enlightenment” seems like assuming a kind of a priori obsolescence, in effect dismissing it before it’s even considered.
In any case, “pre-Enlightenment” does not refer to any specific structure (like kangaroos), but a wide variety of arrangements. Therefore, I see it as more similar to “non-elephant” than “kangaroo”.
The goal is not to simply revive a past arrangement but to apply certain traditional principles and spirit to a newer expression of organic principles that is suited to its context.
...
In any case, “pre-Enlightenment” does not refer to any specific structure (like kangaroos), but a wide variety of arrangements. Therefore, I see it as more similar to “non-elephant” than “kangaroo”.
The first quote makes it clear that you do mean something specific by “pre-Enlightenment”. Not as specific as, say, “ancien régime France”, but nevertheless defined as the positive possession of “certain traditional principles”.
Calling any system based on principles aside from Enlightenment ones “pre-Enlightenment”
I am doing the opposite of that, as indeed your first paragraph interpreted me as doing. It appeared to me that you were using “pre-Enlightenment” and “non-Enlightenment” interchangeably, both referring to whatever is not the Enlightenment. And at the end you do claim that “pre-Enlightenment” is a non-elephant, not a kangaroo. If you like, I can analogize it to the class of marsupials, but it still isn’t a non-elephant.
You, and Moldbug, and advancedatheist, and every other neoreactionary are putting forward specific views of how society should be structured, specific views which is not merely “something other than the present arrangements”. There may be a range of views in the nrsphere, but their doctrines are characterised by what they want, not by what they hate. They do a lot of the hating, to be sure, but they have a positive base of reasons for that.
For example, monarchy and libertarian anarchy are incompatible with each other, and neither of them are Enlightenment structures (as “Enlightenment” is used by neoreactionaries). Are either or both of them compatible with or implied by neoreactionary principles? My reading of neoreactionaries suggests to me that monarchy is, and libertarian anarchy is not.
You, and Moldbug, and advancedatheist, and every other neoreactionary are putting forward specific views of how society should be structured, specific views which is not merely “something other than the present arrangements”. There may be a range of views in the nrsphere, but their doctrines are characterised by what they want, not by what they hate. They do a lot of the hating, to be sure, but they have a positive base of reasons for that.
Their doctrines are actually more characterized by what they dislike. As I said, NRx is a criticism first and foremost.
For example, monarchy and libertarian anarchy are incompatible with each other, and neither of them are Enlightenment structures (as “Enlightenment” is used by neoreactionaries). Are either or both of them compatible with or implied by neoreactionary principles? My reading of neoreactionaries suggests to me that monarchy is, and libertarian anarchy is not.
Some of the most prominent neoreactionaries are libertarian anarchists.
Their doctrines are actually more characterized by what they dislike. As I said, NRx is a criticism first and foremost.
Certainly there are far more neoreactionaries than those I have read, but those I have read, including the ones I just mentioned, are arguing for certain arrangements. Their animus towards the present is explicitly based on that. NRx, as I have seen it, is a criticism that explicitly bases itself, as you have done in this thread, on “certain traditional principles” which, to quote your Evola quote, “enjoy a perennial actuality”. That is the core of neoreaction. As for the specifics of which cultures are held up as examples to emulate and which as examples to avoid, Moldbug primarily goes to recent centuries to show how things were done better in those days.
Some of the most prominent neoreactionaries are libertarian anarchists.
Perhaps they are, but they have so far not come to my attention.
Yes, but being a wholly negative doctrine is still the “Dissent” in Dissenter. I think it is a mistake to be wholly negative, but that is a community discussion I suppose.
As long as it’s clear that the term isn’t doing any semantic heavy-lifting here, it’s safe in this context. No flattering claims are being made about non-Enlightenment principles in general, just that they correspond to a vast space.
That makes sense, but now that I think about it I don’t find this claim particularly neoreactionary: Enlightenment memes induce a sort of agnosia that prevents the rational design of non-enlightenment social structures. Treating this agnosia will increase the amount of possible social structures we are able to consider and the chances that we will be able to design something better.
What I see proposed are specific forms of monarchy or corporate-like governmental structures. More exotic proposals like futarchy and liquid democracy are dismissed, at least by Moldbug. So pre-enlightenment (or maybe anti-enlightenment) does feel like a better label to my non-expert ears.
First and foremost, neoreaction is about a critique. Positive proposals are less frequently discussed and there is great disagreement about them within neoreaction. So, many people involved in neoreaction are involved primarily for the negative critique, and make no commitment to any specific positive proposals.
So the claim isn’t so much traditionalism is great, only enlightenment is worse than traditionalism after controlling for technology? I was thinking of neoreactionaries as deformed utopians, but the tone is more like, “let’s reset social ‘progress’ and then very carefully consider positive proposals.’
Sort of. Traditionalism is great, though. You have the tone right.
When people see the headline “monarchy!” they’re missing the 2-3 years of thinking and 2,000+ pages of reading that go between step 1 (let’s reset social progress and then very carefully consider positive proposals) and step 2 (maybe, in some specific contexts, something like a certain class of monarchies would be useful for certain small-to-medium states).
Monarchy is just a tentative positive proposal (with limited potential application) I came to after several years of searching after the Cathedral mind virus had been dispelled. Moldbug seems to have come to something closer to anarchocapitalist seasteading-type city state proposals. Land leans even more anarchocapitalist than Moldbug. So, the positive recommendations vary widely. We are definitely not utopians, and admit our proposals are flawed just like any other.
I haven’t really seen much discussion on the intersection of neoreaction and transhumanism. Neoreactionary theories of long-range probable societal trends, like dysgenics or a return to generally pre-Enlightenment social order also tend to assume that humans stay mostly as they are and only get selected by natural evolution. Meanwhile, getting to the point of being able to revive cryonically stored people successfully would probably include a bunch of human condition gamechanger technologies, like an ability to make the whole notion of fixed gender optional on any level (genetics, cognitive architecture, body plan) you’d care to name.
Is there much other than Michael Anissimov’s essay?
Why couldn’t post-democratic outcomes exist even if human nature is deliberately reengineered?
They could, and there’s the are scenarios in the premise where they likely will, but neoreaction isn’t just a program of political philosophy for post-democracy. There seems to be much rhetoric and general memetic clustering in NRX around the idea that progressivism will fail because it has outstretched itself trying to re-engineer human nature with cultural conditioning, and that social orders which comply more with fundamentally unchanging elements of human nature are a good political attack against progressivism. The reactionary commenters at SSC seem to like narratives about long-term human decline which tend to rely on nothing interesting happening with human reproduction in many generations from now on.
With technology that can re-engineer human nature, you could have brand new chances to go at the progressive wouldn’t-it-be-nice-if-people-were-more-like-this stuff. Then you’d have to start thinking which bits of traditional values are actually good for a general population of agents, and which are just time-evolved kludges around previously unfixable human systematic suckiness. I see a divide opening up here between people who value the idea of a reactionary society of baseline humans in itself, and people who just go for whatever gets things done effectively. Though I guess NRX already has formed subcultural divides.
In the case of human enhancement, we depend even more greatly on (some subset of) traditional values to maintain societal stability, since the possible dimensions of failure are so much larger.
There’s no divide, since for the time being, baseline humans is all we have. “Whatever gets things done effectively” is presently defined as “whatever gets things done effectively for baseline humans”.
The first priority is the here and now, but people also like to talk about what they expect to see in the next 30 or 100 years. A part of what makes an ideological movement run is a vision of the future, and people seem quite capable of getting into arguments and schisms about the principles of those.
Why would they resemble the pre-democratic outcomes that advancedatheist says “wouldn’t surprise me”? What should even draw “premodern, pre-Enlightenment societies” to anyone’s attention, out of the vast and unknown possibilities of a transhuman estate that removes the reasons that those societies evolved in those ways?
Because some of those, like hierarchy, are game theoretic equilibria that are likely to emerge across a wide range of possible configurations, especially where there are great asymmetries between agents.
Are you saying that you think that a vast majority of the possible transhuman futures rest entirely on Enlightenment principles?
No. Are you saying that pre-Enlightenment and Enlightenment principles are the only possibilities? Why should either of these be part of a transhuman future?
Exhaustively speaking, societal organizational principles in the abstract tend to be Enlightenment-oriented or not. So, yes, any given transhuman future will have principles of some kind, which will be inspired by the Enlightenment or not. Non-Enlightenment principles (used here to describe every possible set of societal principles besides those based around the Enlightenment) are a rather huge space of possibilities, which cover not only many societies which have already existed, but many millions which may have yet to come to pass. Many “pre-Enlightenment” situations were organic hierarchies, similar to the way nature itself has operated for literally billions of years. “Pre-Enlightenment” does not refer to a specific thing, but a huge space of configurations which do not closely adhere to Enlightenment principles.
By “pre-Enlightenment” I understand the social arrangements in Europe of the centuries immediately preceding the Enlightenment, which neo-reactionaries see the Enlightenment as a catastrophic falling away from, and which they desire to return to. This is unambiguously what advancedatheist is talking about upthread, and what, for example, Moldbug unfavourably contrasts our present arrangements with. This is a very specific thing, not the huge space that you interchangeably referred to as “non-Enlightenment”.
“Pre-Enlightenment” bears the same relationship to “non-Enlightenment” as kangaroos do to non-elephants.
Viewing reactionaries as wishing to return to a time in the linear past, which evolved organically based on local conditions, and which may not be appropriate to present technological conditions, is mistaken. The goal is not to simply revive a past arrangement but to apply certain traditional principles and spirit to a newer expression of organic principles that is suited to its context. So, when you say “go back to”, it’s not that simple. Which is why “pre-Enlightenment” seems like an oversimplifying label, to me.
In fact, you could call it post-Enlightenment, since it would be the emergence of structure from an Enlightenment society that may retain some Enlightenment principles while discarding others. Calling any system based on principles aside from Enlightenment ones “pre-Enlightenment” seems like assuming a kind of a priori obsolescence, in effect dismissing it before it’s even considered.
In any case, “pre-Enlightenment” does not refer to any specific structure (like kangaroos), but a wide variety of arrangements. Therefore, I see it as more similar to “non-elephant” than “kangaroo”.
...
The first quote makes it clear that you do mean something specific by “pre-Enlightenment”. Not as specific as, say, “ancien régime France”, but nevertheless defined as the positive possession of “certain traditional principles”.
I am doing the opposite of that, as indeed your first paragraph interpreted me as doing. It appeared to me that you were using “pre-Enlightenment” and “non-Enlightenment” interchangeably, both referring to whatever is not the Enlightenment. And at the end you do claim that “pre-Enlightenment” is a non-elephant, not a kangaroo. If you like, I can analogize it to the class of marsupials, but it still isn’t a non-elephant.
You, and Moldbug, and advancedatheist, and every other neoreactionary are putting forward specific views of how society should be structured, specific views which is not merely “something other than the present arrangements”. There may be a range of views in the nrsphere, but their doctrines are characterised by what they want, not by what they hate. They do a lot of the hating, to be sure, but they have a positive base of reasons for that.
For example, monarchy and libertarian anarchy are incompatible with each other, and neither of them are Enlightenment structures (as “Enlightenment” is used by neoreactionaries). Are either or both of them compatible with or implied by neoreactionary principles? My reading of neoreactionaries suggests to me that monarchy is, and libertarian anarchy is not.
Read this.
Their doctrines are actually more characterized by what they dislike. As I said, NRx is a criticism first and foremost.
Some of the most prominent neoreactionaries are libertarian anarchists.
Certainly there are far more neoreactionaries than those I have read, but those I have read, including the ones I just mentioned, are arguing for certain arrangements. Their animus towards the present is explicitly based on that. NRx, as I have seen it, is a criticism that explicitly bases itself, as you have done in this thread, on “certain traditional principles” which, to quote your Evola quote, “enjoy a perennial actuality”. That is the core of neoreaction. As for the specifics of which cultures are held up as examples to emulate and which as examples to avoid, Moldbug primarily goes to recent centuries to show how things were done better in those days.
Perhaps they are, but they have so far not come to my attention.
Yes, but being a wholly negative doctrine is still the “Dissent” in Dissenter. I think it is a mistake to be wholly negative, but that is a community discussion I suppose.
Beware of non-apples
As long as it’s clear that the term isn’t doing any semantic heavy-lifting here, it’s safe in this context. No flattering claims are being made about non-Enlightenment principles in general, just that they correspond to a vast space.
That makes sense, but now that I think about it I don’t find this claim particularly neoreactionary: Enlightenment memes induce a sort of agnosia that prevents the rational design of non-enlightenment social structures. Treating this agnosia will increase the amount of possible social structures we are able to consider and the chances that we will be able to design something better.
What I see proposed are specific forms of monarchy or corporate-like governmental structures. More exotic proposals like futarchy and liquid democracy are dismissed, at least by Moldbug. So pre-enlightenment (or maybe anti-enlightenment) does feel like a better label to my non-expert ears.
First and foremost, neoreaction is about a critique. Positive proposals are less frequently discussed and there is great disagreement about them within neoreaction. So, many people involved in neoreaction are involved primarily for the negative critique, and make no commitment to any specific positive proposals.
So the claim isn’t so much traditionalism is great, only enlightenment is worse than traditionalism after controlling for technology? I was thinking of neoreactionaries as deformed utopians, but the tone is more like, “let’s reset social ‘progress’ and then very carefully consider positive proposals.’
Sort of. Traditionalism is great, though. You have the tone right.
When people see the headline “monarchy!” they’re missing the 2-3 years of thinking and 2,000+ pages of reading that go between step 1 (let’s reset social progress and then very carefully consider positive proposals) and step 2 (maybe, in some specific contexts, something like a certain class of monarchies would be useful for certain small-to-medium states).
Monarchy is just a tentative positive proposal (with limited potential application) I came to after several years of searching after the Cathedral mind virus had been dispelled. Moldbug seems to have come to something closer to anarchocapitalist seasteading-type city state proposals. Land leans even more anarchocapitalist than Moldbug. So, the positive recommendations vary widely. We are definitely not utopians, and admit our proposals are flawed just like any other.