Agreed, but we devote plenty of time to criticizing it, don’t we? (Both reactionary criticism, and the more mainstream criticisms of the media/academia culture)
But the thing about the reactionary lens, especially Moldbug, is at the end of the day they side with the people in power. Moldbug even explicitly states as much. A central theme of his work is that we shouldn’t keep elevating the weaker and criticizing the stronger, thus creating endless revolution. “Formalism” essentially means “maintaining the status quo of the current power heirarchy”. The only exception to this is the Cathedral itself—because it is a power structure which is set up in such a way that it upsets existing heirarchies.
So the moldbug / reactionary ideology , at the core, is fundamentally opposed to carrying out the criticism which I just suggested against anyone who isn’t part of “the cathedral” which keeps shifting the status quo (hence the meta contrarianism). It is an ideology which only criticizes the social critics themselves, and seeks to return to the dominant paradigm as it was before the social critics entered the scene.
I’m saying we need more actual real contrarianism, not more meta contrarianism against the contrarians. It is useful to criticize things other than the Cathedral. I’m being a meta-meta-contrarian.
I’m saying we need actual real contrarianism, not meta contrarianism against the contrarians. I’m being a meta-meta-contrarian.
I think I’m a bit confused now.
Let’s say Cathedral is mainstream. Then Moldbug is a contrarian. Then Yvain’s anti-reactionary FAQ is contrarian against a contrarian. Are you saying we need more stuff like Yvain’s FAQ?
Or do you want some actual direct criticism of an existing power structure, maybe something along these lines?
We start with a base. You are saying this is the mainstream US which you understand to be conservative. So, level 0 -- US conservatives—mainstream.
Level 1 is the Cathedral which is contrarian to level 0 and which is US liberals or progressives.
Level 2 are the neo-reactionaries who are contrarian to level 1 (Cathedral)
Level 3 is Yvain’s FAQ which is contrarian to level 2 (Reactionaries).
So we are basically stacking levels where each level is explicitly opposed to the previous one and, obviously, all even layers are sympathetic to each other, as are all odd layers (I find the “meta-” terminology confusing since this word means other things to me, probably “anti-” would be better).
And what you want more of is level 1 stuff—basically left-liberal critique of whatever stands in the way of progress, preferably on steroids.
Do I understand you right?
EDIT: LOL, you simplified your post right along the lines I was extracting out of it...
I don’t mind hearing from any level, as long as things are well cited.
-I’ve sort of gotten bored with level 0, but that could change if I see a bunch of really well done level 0 content. I just don’t often see very many insightful things coming from this level.
-Level 2 holds my interest because it’s novel. When it’s well cited, it really holds my interest. However, it seldom is well cited. That’s okay though—the ideas are fun to play with.
-Level 1 is the level I agree with. However, because I’m very familiar with it and its supporting data, and I hate agreeing with things, it has to work a lot harder to hold my interest.
My perception is that level 2, for reasons described, gets more attention than it merits. The shock value, twisty narrative, and novelty of it make it more interesting to people like me, who like reading compelling arguments even if they don’t completely agree. However, it drives away people who are emotionally affected and/or perceive that have something to protect from what would happen if those viewpoints were to gain traction.
I was suggesting that maybe increasing good level one posts, which weren’t boring, echo-chamber-ish and obviously true to to most people on Lesswrong, would remedy this. (I’m taking the LW poll as indications that most LWers, like me, agree with Level 1)
Edit: Even layers are not necessarily sympathetic to each other, even if they are ideologically aligned. Mainstream conservatives would likely not be sympathetic to reactionary’s open racism/sexism etc, and the impression I get is that reactionaries think mainstream conservatives are fighting a losing battle and aren’t particularly bright. There’s really only one Odd Layer, practically speaking, since Yvain is the only person on hypothetical layer 3.
Hm. I understand you now. However I carve reality in a somewhat different way—we see joints in the territory in different places.
First I would set up level zero as reality, what actually exists now—all the current socio-econo-politco-etc. structures. And then one dimension by which you divide people/groups/movements would be by whether they are more or less content with the current reality or whether they want to radically change it.
Another dimension would be the individual vs. group/community/state spectrum, anarchists being on one end and fans of a totalitarian state on the other.
You can add more—say, egalitarianism vs.some sort of a caste system—as needed.
Getting back to your wishes, I think we have a bunch of socialists here who on a regular basis post critiques of the status quo from the left side (e.g. didn’t we have a debate about guaranteed basic income recently?). On the other hand they do lack in sexiness and edginess :-)
Getting back to your wishes, I think we have a bunch of socialists here who on a regular basis post critiques of the status quo from the left side (e.g. didn’t we have a debate about guaranteed basic income recently?).
I didn’t witness this debate, so maybe you’re right that the advocates for the guaranteed minimum income were in fact socialists. I’d like to note, though, that the idea of a guaranteed basic income has had some currency in libertarian circles as well, advocated by (among others) Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. So I wouldn’t take support for this policy as very strong evidence of a socialist political orientation.
Well, I mentioned socialists because a significant part of LW self-identifies as socialist (see Yvain’s surveys). That, of course, is a fuzzy term with many possible meanings.
But the survey didn’t just say “Socialist”, it said “Socialist, for example Scandinavian countries: socially permissive, high taxes, major redistribution of wealth”.
Hehe I’ll give you that coherently expressing edgy views is part of what keeps me reading despite fairly strong disagreement...outside view, that’s not actually a point in its favor, of course—as a general heuristic, the boring and conventional people are right and the edgy internet subculture is wrong, even if wrong in novel ways!
as a general heuristic, the boring and conventional people are right and the edgy internet subculture is wrong
I don’t think that’s a particularly useful heuristic. I’d like to offer a replacement: people who actually did something in reality or who point to something existing and working are right more often than people whose arguments are based on imagination and counterfactuals.
The Cathedral, to use Moldbug’s terminology, is certainly a non-marginalized group and LW is full of its adherents.
Agreed, but we devote plenty of time to criticizing it, don’t we? (Both reactionary criticism, and the more mainstream criticisms of the media/academia culture)
But the thing about the reactionary lens, especially Moldbug, is at the end of the day they side with the people in power. Moldbug even explicitly states as much. A central theme of his work is that we shouldn’t keep elevating the weaker and criticizing the stronger, thus creating endless revolution. “Formalism” essentially means “maintaining the status quo of the current power heirarchy”. The only exception to this is the Cathedral itself—because it is a power structure which is set up in such a way that it upsets existing heirarchies.
So the moldbug / reactionary ideology , at the core, is fundamentally opposed to carrying out the criticism which I just suggested against anyone who isn’t part of “the cathedral” which keeps shifting the status quo (hence the meta contrarianism). It is an ideology which only criticizes the social critics themselves, and seeks to return to the dominant paradigm as it was before the social critics entered the scene.
I’m saying we need more actual real contrarianism, not more meta contrarianism against the contrarians. It is useful to criticize things other than the Cathedral. I’m being a meta-meta-contrarian.
I think I’m a bit confused now.
Let’s say Cathedral is mainstream. Then Moldbug is a contrarian. Then Yvain’s anti-reactionary FAQ is contrarian against a contrarian. Are you saying we need more stuff like Yvain’s FAQ?
Or do you want some actual direct criticism of an existing power structure, maybe something along these lines?
So the contrarian food chain goes
Mainstream America (bulk of the American population)
-> radical egalitarian critique of mainstream america (feminists, anti-racists, the Left, moldbug’s “Cathedral”)
→ Reactionary critique of egalitarian movements (Moldbug, Manosphere, human biodiversity, Dark enlightenment)
→ Critique of Reactionary anti-egalitarian stances (Yvain, this post).
I’m advocating good old-fashioned contrarianism—stuff like radical egalitarianism, sex positivism, etc.
(No, obviously, not along those lines—but yes, that link is at the correct level of contrarianism.)
OK. Let me try to sort this out.
We start with a base. You are saying this is the mainstream US which you understand to be conservative. So, level 0 -- US conservatives—mainstream.
Level 1 is the Cathedral which is contrarian to level 0 and which is US liberals or progressives.
Level 2 are the neo-reactionaries who are contrarian to level 1 (Cathedral)
Level 3 is Yvain’s FAQ which is contrarian to level 2 (Reactionaries).
So we are basically stacking levels where each level is explicitly opposed to the previous one and, obviously, all even layers are sympathetic to each other, as are all odd layers (I find the “meta-” terminology confusing since this word means other things to me, probably “anti-” would be better).
And what you want more of is level 1 stuff—basically left-liberal critique of whatever stands in the way of progress, preferably on steroids.
Do I understand you right?
EDIT: LOL, you simplified your post right along the lines I was extracting out of it...
I don’t mind hearing from any level, as long as things are well cited.
-I’ve sort of gotten bored with level 0, but that could change if I see a bunch of really well done level 0 content. I just don’t often see very many insightful things coming from this level.
-Level 2 holds my interest because it’s novel. When it’s well cited, it really holds my interest. However, it seldom is well cited. That’s okay though—the ideas are fun to play with.
-Level 1 is the level I agree with. However, because I’m very familiar with it and its supporting data, and I hate agreeing with things, it has to work a lot harder to hold my interest.
My perception is that level 2, for reasons described, gets more attention than it merits. The shock value, twisty narrative, and novelty of it make it more interesting to people like me, who like reading compelling arguments even if they don’t completely agree. However, it drives away people who are emotionally affected and/or perceive that have something to protect from what would happen if those viewpoints were to gain traction.
I was suggesting that maybe increasing good level one posts, which weren’t boring, echo-chamber-ish and obviously true to to most people on Lesswrong, would remedy this. (I’m taking the LW poll as indications that most LWers, like me, agree with Level 1)
Edit: Even layers are not necessarily sympathetic to each other, even if they are ideologically aligned. Mainstream conservatives would likely not be sympathetic to reactionary’s open racism/sexism etc, and the impression I get is that reactionaries think mainstream conservatives are fighting a losing battle and aren’t particularly bright. There’s really only one Odd Layer, practically speaking, since Yvain is the only person on hypothetical layer 3.
Hm. I understand you now. However I carve reality in a somewhat different way—we see joints in the territory in different places.
First I would set up level zero as reality, what actually exists now—all the current socio-econo-politco-etc. structures. And then one dimension by which you divide people/groups/movements would be by whether they are more or less content with the current reality or whether they want to radically change it.
Another dimension would be the individual vs. group/community/state spectrum, anarchists being on one end and fans of a totalitarian state on the other.
You can add more—say, egalitarianism vs.some sort of a caste system—as needed.
Getting back to your wishes, I think we have a bunch of socialists here who on a regular basis post critiques of the status quo from the left side (e.g. didn’t we have a debate about guaranteed basic income recently?). On the other hand they do lack in sexiness and edginess :-)
I didn’t witness this debate, so maybe you’re right that the advocates for the guaranteed minimum income were in fact socialists. I’d like to note, though, that the idea of a guaranteed basic income has had some currency in libertarian circles as well, advocated by (among others) Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. So I wouldn’t take support for this policy as very strong evidence of a socialist political orientation.
Well, I mentioned socialists because a significant part of LW self-identifies as socialist (see Yvain’s surveys). That, of course, is a fuzzy term with many possible meanings.
But the survey didn’t just say “Socialist”, it said “Socialist, for example Scandinavian countries: socially permissive, high taxes, major redistribution of wealth”.
Hehe I’ll give you that coherently expressing edgy views is part of what keeps me reading despite fairly strong disagreement...outside view, that’s not actually a point in its favor, of course—as a general heuristic, the boring and conventional people are right and the edgy internet subculture is wrong, even if wrong in novel ways!
I don’t think that’s a particularly useful heuristic. I’d like to offer a replacement: people who actually did something in reality or who point to something existing and working are right more often than people whose arguments are based on imagination and counterfactuals.
Ah, sorry for the real time simplification! I realized I was writing spaghetti as soon as I looked it over.
Not a problem, untangling spaghetti (in limited amounts) is fun.