First, note the spelling: confusingly, it’s Swartz, not Schwartz.
While it’s as hard as ever to make sense of Moldbug’s stream of consciousness, it seems like he is stuck in a circular redefinition of “underdog”. The regular definition involves comparing priors, while his is comparing posteriors:
In the real world in which we live, the weak had better know their own weakness. If they would gather their strength, do it! But without fighting, even “civil disobedience.” To break a law is to fight. Those who fight had better be strong. Those who are not strong, had better not fight.
How do you actually figure out who is stronger? The only definitive test is to let them fight it out. No one expected a minor act of civil disobedience in Tunisia to topple multiple governments across the globe.
As for the typically sensationalist title “Noam Chomsky Killed Aaron Swartz”, while Chomsky’s writings may have inspired Swartz to act, like they inspired other people to act, the decision to fight and the choice of weapons was Swartz’s alone. How close he was to his next victory (he won against the establishment several times before), we will never know, because the trial will not happen now. He could have been one depression pill away from pulling through. His cause may yet prevail if the paywall customs will change in the wake of his suicide.
What do people see in Moldbug, anyway, beyond his provocative writing style?
What do people see in Moldbug, anyway, beyond his provocative writing style?
For a certain subset of the population that’s quite reactionary/conservative and yet quite intellectual, he provides validation they can’t find easily elsewhere.
Yeah, that’s the role he played for me at least. That said, I’d really like to see some “reactionary” bloggers who hold themselves to a higher intellectual standard than Moldbug. A good example is this post which made the rounds recently. Some of Yvain’s LJ posts fit the bill as well, but I feel that a lot more such material is still waiting to be written.
What do you mean by ‘reactionary’? On my definition of that term—roughly, ‘extreme conservatism or authoritarianism’—Yvain is definitely not a reactionary blogger.
Making an argument critical of democracy or some aspect of personal freedom =/= making a “reactionary” argument. The missing ingridient is, IMO, following up on that criticism with a suggestion that the related policy systems were better in such-and-such authoritarian/feudal society. I can’t recall Yvain ever suggesting that!
(E.g. he appears to think that a too-democratic country would be bad, but that the current Western arrangement of joint rule by corporate oligarchy and Cathedral elite is pretty decent, ceteris paribus. I can’t say I disagree.)
This (ETA: the post you linked to) is an old post from mainstream libertarian Megan McArdle. It is a stretch to call her “reactionary”, even if the trend of her argument in this post goes in the same direction as many reactionaries.
That post reminded me of the answer length heuristic for multiple choice tests—when in doubt, pick the longest sentence. This is because people who write tests are lazy, and will make answers short when they can. Reasonable answers have constraints, and so are on average longer than wrong test answers. This works for “homemade” tests, but of course the SAT people and their ilk have figured this out and put effort into their wrong answers.
While it’s as hard as ever to make sense of Moldbug’s stream of consciousness, it seems like he is stuck in a circular redefinition of “underdog”. The regular definition involves comparing priors, while his is comparing posteriors:
While I disagree with quite strongly with some of his content and think he is over-hyped compared to other Dark Enlightenment authors, this seems an uncharitable reading. I’m somewhat familiar with his style and think you are wrong on your interpretation.
Oh, I think I misunderstood the quote. I took it to mean “underdogs are defined as those who lose”, not “underdogs tend to lose much more often than popularly assumed”. So what he means is that those who believe in underdogs are poorly calibrated and therefore unwise. Is this the intended reading?
So what he means that those who believe in underdogs are poorly calibrated and therefore unwise. Is this the intended reading?
This was my reading and I think GLaDOS and Ahtrelon’s, I’m not completely sure it was the intended reading since several people took it to your way, but I’m quite confident it was considering his other material.
I like HBDish authors a lot so my list will be biased to those blog. Gregory Cochran & Henry Harpending, hbd* chick (~_^) and Derbyshire are cool. Foseti is a must for Reactionaries. Over in the interesting but scary corner we have Federico who seems to have managed among other things to steel man the straw Vulcan (see his now probably deleted Emotion is The Mindkiller post) and Nick Land is the best transhumanist academic continental philosopher I’ve read in years, which is really low praise but his Reactionary writing is very much knurd.
What do people see in Moldbug, anyway, beyond his provocative writing style?
I actually strongly disliked his verbose and provocative writing style at first but was drawn in by the content. I don’t agree with on everything but steel manning his missteps as much as I steel man the missteps of authors in Academia or pundits of the New York Times have found his models much better and superior at giving good predictions about political outcomes (for example the Arab Spring).
So yeah he is quite clever and relatively good at modelling the world.
Lots of people who disagree with Moldbug’s politics were capable of making useful predictions about the Arab Spring (or other political movements). Comparing any smart person’s predictions to “pundit” predictions is useful only for teaching you that pundits aren’t trying to be smart.
The Arab Spring was not a particularly grand or impressive prediction that I made with his models, it was just one of many, but it was one of the few that I could simply invoke and be confident will be properly understood, without having to digress into a long explanation of who got it wrong and that they indeed did get it wrong.
Note that I did compare reading Moldbug as a superior alternative to reading the pundits at the New York Times. A prediction market or a particularly sane domain expert would obviously outperform on most predictions.
The predictions I remember Moldbug making regarding the Arab Spring were that:
There’d be no civil war in Syria
The Westerners would let the Libyans die and perform no airstrikes
Both are failed ones. Mind you, they aren’t explicitly stated in the link above, but I think they’re correct interpretation of his statements there. Certainly they’d be seen as good predictions if they’d been successful ones.
So may I ask what part of his model allowed you to make what predictions regarding the Arab Spring?
actually strongly disliked his verbose and provocative writing style at first but was drawn in by the content. I don’t agree with on everything but steel manning his missteps as much as I steel man the missteps of authors in Academia or pundits of the New York Times have found his models much better and superior at giving good predictions about political outcomes (for example the Arab Spring).
I was talking about using Moldbug’s model to make predictions, not using his predictions! Though the latter will often correlate with the former.
So may I ask what part of his model allowed you to make what predictions regarding the Arab Spring?
The hopes of the chattering classes for Democracy in the Middle East bringing secularism and Western Liberal values to Middle Eastern countries as mostly empty self-delusion. Obviously other people got this right with different models, see Steve Sailer.
How the Western powers would disturb the process heading towards a stable order (Gaddafi and Syria crushing the rebels) create an unstable one that will be a headache (and thus jobs for the metaphorical Foggy Bottom) for years to come because they are unwilling to do what would be needed to clean it up (having a viable coalition of rebels crush all opposition) because that would violate progressive beliefs about how the world works.
First, note the spelling: confusingly, it’s Swartz, not Schwartz.
While it’s as hard as ever to make sense of Moldbug’s stream of consciousness, it seems like he is stuck in a circular redefinition of “underdog”. The regular definition involves comparing priors, while his is comparing posteriors:
How do you actually figure out who is stronger? The only definitive test is to let them fight it out. No one expected a minor act of civil disobedience in Tunisia to topple multiple governments across the globe.
As for the typically sensationalist title “Noam Chomsky Killed Aaron Swartz”, while Chomsky’s writings may have inspired Swartz to act, like they inspired other people to act, the decision to fight and the choice of weapons was Swartz’s alone. How close he was to his next victory (he won against the establishment several times before), we will never know, because the trial will not happen now. He could have been one depression pill away from pulling through. His cause may yet prevail if the paywall customs will change in the wake of his suicide.
What do people see in Moldbug, anyway, beyond his provocative writing style?
For a certain subset of the population that’s quite reactionary/conservative and yet quite intellectual, he provides validation they can’t find easily elsewhere.
Yeah, that’s the role he played for me at least. That said, I’d really like to see some “reactionary” bloggers who hold themselves to a higher intellectual standard than Moldbug. A good example is this post which made the rounds recently. Some of Yvain’s LJ posts fit the bill as well, but I feel that a lot more such material is still waiting to be written.
What do you mean by ‘reactionary’? On my definition of that term—roughly, ‘extreme conservatism or authoritarianism’—Yvain is definitely not a reactionary blogger.
Being a reactionary blogger =/= making reactionary argument occasionally
Making an argument critical of democracy or some aspect of personal freedom =/= making a “reactionary” argument. The missing ingridient is, IMO, following up on that criticism with a suggestion that the related policy systems were better in such-and-such authoritarian/feudal society. I can’t recall Yvain ever suggesting that!
(E.g. he appears to think that a too-democratic country would be bad, but that the current Western arrangement of joint rule by corporate oligarchy and Cathedral elite is pretty decent, ceteris paribus. I can’t say I disagree.)
This (ETA: the post you linked to) is an old post from mainstream libertarian Megan McArdle. It is a stretch to call her “reactionary”, even if the trend of her argument in this post goes in the same direction as many reactionaries.
That post reminded me of the answer length heuristic for multiple choice tests—when in doubt, pick the longest sentence. This is because people who write tests are lazy, and will make answers short when they can. Reasonable answers have constraints, and so are on average longer than wrong test answers. This works for “homemade” tests, but of course the SAT people and their ilk have figured this out and put effort into their wrong answers.
This.
While I disagree with quite strongly with some of his content and think he is over-hyped compared to other Dark Enlightenment authors, this seems an uncharitable reading. I’m somewhat familiar with his style and think you are wrong on your interpretation.
How do you charitably interpret the quote
Seems like a redefinition of standard terms, pure and simple.
Ehm… No. Its a statement of a general rule.
“A pretty good test” =/= “New Definition”
Edit: Just wondering why people down voted this comment?
Oh, I think I misunderstood the quote. I took it to mean “underdogs are defined as those who lose”, not “underdogs tend to lose much more often than popularly assumed”. So what he means is that those who believe in underdogs are poorly calibrated and therefore unwise. Is this the intended reading?
This was my reading and I think GLaDOS and Ahtrelon’s, I’m not completely sure it was the intended reading since several people took it to your way, but I’m quite confident it was considering his other material.
Who would you say is ‘better’?
I like HBDish authors a lot so my list will be biased to those blog. Gregory Cochran & Henry Harpending, hbd* chick (~_^) and Derbyshire are cool. Foseti is a must for Reactionaries. Over in the interesting but scary corner we have Federico who seems to have managed among other things to steel man the straw Vulcan (see his now probably deleted Emotion is The Mindkiller post) and Nick Land is the best transhumanist academic continental philosopher I’ve read in years, which is really low praise but his Reactionary writing is very much knurd.
Enjoy your corruption to the Dark Side! (^_^)
I actually strongly disliked his verbose and provocative writing style at first but was drawn in by the content. I don’t agree with on everything but steel manning his missteps as much as I steel man the missteps of authors in Academia or pundits of the New York Times have found his models much better and superior at giving good predictions about political outcomes (for example the Arab Spring).
So yeah he is quite clever and relatively good at modelling the world.
Lots of people who disagree with Moldbug’s politics were capable of making useful predictions about the Arab Spring (or other political movements). Comparing any smart person’s predictions to “pundit” predictions is useful only for teaching you that pundits aren’t trying to be smart.
The Arab Spring was not a particularly grand or impressive prediction that I made with his models, it was just one of many, but it was one of the few that I could simply invoke and be confident will be properly understood, without having to digress into a long explanation of who got it wrong and that they indeed did get it wrong.
Note that I did compare reading Moldbug as a superior alternative to reading the pundits at the New York Times. A prediction market or a particularly sane domain expert would obviously outperform on most predictions.
The predictions I remember Moldbug making regarding the Arab Spring were that:
There’d be no civil war in Syria
The Westerners would let the Libyans die and perform no airstrikes
Both are failed ones. Mind you, they aren’t explicitly stated in the link above, but I think they’re correct interpretation of his statements there. Certainly they’d be seen as good predictions if they’d been successful ones.
So may I ask what part of his model allowed you to make what predictions regarding the Arab Spring?
Sigh, another misreading of my post:
I was talking about using Moldbug’s model to make predictions, not using his predictions! Though the latter will often correlate with the former.
The hopes of the chattering classes for Democracy in the Middle East bringing secularism and Western Liberal values to Middle Eastern countries as mostly empty self-delusion. Obviously other people got this right with different models, see Steve Sailer.
How the Western powers would disturb the process heading towards a stable order (Gaddafi and Syria crushing the rebels) create an unstable one that will be a headache (and thus jobs for the metaphorical Foggy Bottom) for years to come because they are unwilling to do what would be needed to clean it up (having a viable coalition of rebels crush all opposition) because that would violate progressive beliefs about how the world works.