So I’ll try to write it throughout an all-nighter I’m pulling tonight, and even then I’m not promising anything. :)
I think that would be a rather cool text, so please do!
BONUS! Something I should’ve linked to a lot earlier. A great article by Linda Gottfriedson, an illustrious old lady who does ev-psych like Razib Khan but gets more status for it. What if the Hereditarian Hypothesis is True? - on how there are better, more fair ways to reduce racial achievement gaps than Affirmative Action in the oft-dreaded case that group genetic differences determine individual IQ a lot. Everybody please read it.
I’ve read some of her work before but not that particular paper, I’ve downloaded it for later reading.
That is, don’t get caught up in the halo effect—most Soviet dissidents were indeed heroic people with uncommon clarity of vision towards their own system of repression in their own time, but that doesn’t mean you would find their “general” judgment of things at all acceptable.
Just out of curiosity which works from Soviet dissidents would you recommend I read?
but his stuff would bounce right off Moldbug’s black-and-white brain!
This is unfair to him no? While Moldbug clearly dislikes universalism, his brain is far less black-and-white than that of the regular modern intellectual. If the past is a foreign country, he is its premier explorer. He may have gone a bit native, but it takes one of those to humble us into occasionally looking past our biases and taking those weird savages seriously.
I would argue the fact that Moldbug can stand reading all these interesting and ideologically widely disparate sources is evidence he is if anything too open to any shiny new idea he encounters.
Just out of curiosity which works from Soviet dissidents would you recommend I read?
Varlam Shalamov. Bleak, great and terrible. Also fairly apolitical, beyond a confirmation that tyranny is tyranny and it fucks people bad. He’s certainly beyond the notions of individualism and collectivism that a “civilized” life allows; it’s all about mere survival in an order of pure hatred and malice.
This is unfair to him no? While Moldbug clearly dislikes universalism, his brain is far less black-and-white than that of the regular modern intellectual.
Yes, but I meant a different thing by “black-and-white”. “Grayscale” would be a better word, and it’s more epistemic rather than directly about sacredness/purity. One might say that he doesn’t quite appreciate in which ways and on how many levels people might value things, although of course he has a better understanding of the simple breadth of possible values than the “regular modern intellectual” (wanted to say how those might not be evidence that society is more conformist, but damn I need a rest).
I think that would be a rather cool text, so please do!
I’ve read some of her work before but not that particular paper, I’ve downloaded it for later reading.
Just out of curiosity which works from Soviet dissidents would you recommend I read?
This is unfair to him no? While Moldbug clearly dislikes universalism, his brain is far less black-and-white than that of the regular modern intellectual. If the past is a foreign country, he is its premier explorer. He may have gone a bit native, but it takes one of those to humble us into occasionally looking past our biases and taking those weird savages seriously.
I would argue the fact that Moldbug can stand reading all these interesting and ideologically widely disparate sources is evidence he is if anything too open to any shiny new idea he encounters.
Varlam Shalamov. Bleak, great and terrible. Also fairly apolitical, beyond a confirmation that tyranny is tyranny and it fucks people bad. He’s certainly beyond the notions of individualism and collectivism that a “civilized” life allows; it’s all about mere survival in an order of pure hatred and malice.
Yes, but I meant a different thing by “black-and-white”. “Grayscale” would be a better word, and it’s more epistemic rather than directly about sacredness/purity. One might say that he doesn’t quite appreciate in which ways and on how many levels people might value things, although of course he has a better understanding of the simple breadth of possible values than the “regular modern intellectual” (wanted to say how those might not be evidence that society is more conformist, but damn I need a rest).