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.
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.