A World That the Children Made

What if that's exactly it? Earth is the toy creation of the Gods' children.

Prometheus as some asshole playing with his dad's tools. 

Jehovah tried to make a garden but his brother stole the lawn ornaments in a classic sibling rivalry episode. "You can come back in my Garden if you promise never to get stolen again! *pout*" Two childish brats.

If the place looks better than juvenelia you see around you, don't be surprised. Peasant << aristocrat << god.

Man copying their divine role models and making toy societies they don't care about. Acting like kids even if they aren't kids anymore.


 I do enjoy that whole [dystopia in G-major] thing the song has going on. "Happy technology~"

Yarvin vs. Orwell

The mark of the epistemically competent is producing things which are true and novel. Unfortunately, everything important in Yarvin can be found here: Revenge is Sour.
"The condition of her being able to get close enough to Mussolini to shoot at him was that he should be a corpse."
"Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also."
"He looked with disgust at the bomb-wrecked town and the humiliation the Germans were undergoing, and even on one occasion intervened to prevent a particularly bad bit of looting."
(In particular, punishing the slave for the orders of the master is simply wanton cruelty.)

In short, once punishing the Transgressives is possible, there is no further need to do so.

Attempting to punish them will only impose costs on everyone; the only reason to depose the Transgressives is because they impose costs on everyone. Founding your rebellion on the idea of punishment will only make them fight harder. Sun Tzu: leave somewhere for your enemies to retreat to.

The fact they are literally devils wearing human flesh makes this somewhat tricky, admittedly.

Note Orwell's humility. Both Orwell and Yarvin would immediately admit they might be wrong. The difference: Orwell would also believe what he's saying. Orwell had a Socialist phenotype, but managed not to be a Socialist. Orwell was introduced to his own fallibility via Reality's usual blunt-object approach, but reacted by admitting to it. You can tell from his style that it really is just his opinion. He's merely telling you what he sees and what he thought about it. He's not trying to oppress your opinion with his own. 

By contrast, Yarvin has a literally-Communist grandfather, and doesn't want to piss him off, whether he's still alive or not. Family is important right? Only a Transgressive would politico-religiously condemn grandad at Thanksgiving.

I would like to read many modern-day Orwells to help break some bad habits I've picked up. I, too, can be a fish trying not to breathe the water.

In certain cases it is important to throw the book at some human refuse. This is not some glorious triumph, however. This is not a song for the bards or a saga for the ages. It is taking out the trash. Victory is guaranteed supposing it occurs to you to fight. Sophists know this and work very hard when ensuring [fighting back] occurs to nobody.

P.S. 1984 is essentially a diagnostic like Eco Pretends to Think About Fascism, but poetic rather than concrete. Longer, also. It should not be surprising that Orwell set out to depict a Fascist country and ended up depicting Current Year America. The trends were obvious to anyone with a functioning brain.

Penumbra of the Intellectual Dim Web

Moldbug shows up a lot. Who should show up instead?

This midwit? Inoffensive, apprentice-level thinker at best. Let's call him racist for shits and giggles: there are no ch***s or g***s on his list. Well over twice as many orientals in the world as anglophones, with higher average IQs, and they don't even crack the top 100? Very ingroup. Much signal. Wow. Stay stuck in your ignorant, parochial bubble; a how-to. VDH, who is going senile, but no BBM, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. No physicists, no chemists, one biologist (and another excluded for mysterious reasons, and probably not the good reasons). Imagine Kling the clinger had instead unapologetically listed his opinion of the best English intellectuals.

I wonder what a true global epistemic competence ranking would look like? Nick Land is probably smarter than Kling's entire list combined. Admittedly this is made easier due to the inclusion of several negatively-competent entries. Lies are bad, mmmkay.

How about these morons, who can't figure out that causation causes correlation, rather than correlation causing causation? Women don't want to work jobs. Women are obedient and are being told to go to university and get a job. What do women want, as opposed to what the social games say we should say they want? To obey, apparently.
Apparently, it takes a transcendental genius to notice that marriage was outlawed. It's a dark truth: it remains a secret even if it's pointed out to you in plain language, for most values of [you]. Nice Straussianism lol.
Outlawing marriage makes births go down. Weird. Also, life satisfaction. Mind=blown.
It's no good being contrarian and/or allowing contrarianism if you only come up with opposite-day takes.

Conquest #3 applies, I guess. Marginally intelligent anti-revolution; Fascists gonna Fasc. Super loyal to American anti-intellectualism.

Conquest #3 applies again, probably via Fascism diagnostic point #3, regarding projection. Under Fascism, anti-intellectuals are lionized, using the term [intellectual]. Further, due to diagnostic #4, intellectuals, of both polarities though particularly the straight kind, are blamed for the failures of anti-intellectualism.

burgers lol

The average American is a devout Fascist, and deserves the punishment represented by their Transgressive masters.

Here, Moldbug nearly figures this out:
"We ate a dish that we served ourselves; we are still eating, and still serving. What did we do wrong? What did we think wrong?"
But, of course, doesn't quite figure it out, for the exact same crimestop reasons that belabour the minds of any Transgressive. You can't believe blacks have lower biological IQs because that justifies slavery or whatever, and you can't believe Americans are Fascists because that's a black pill.
The first step of solving a problem is admitting you have a problem, and the first step of perpetuating a problem is denying you have a problem.

Isn't it amazing? The author of AIACC, America is a Communist Country, has faith in government reports of infected and fatalities. (If you're ready for this faith to die in a fire, google worldometer and browse for a few minutes.) This is Dissidence in America. Goodness. No wonder the Regime pretends to uphold free speech. The CCP fervently wishes Chinese dissidents were this domesticated.

He also believes official Chinese reports. I assume this is due to a serious head injury in an unreported car accident. The one thing we know for certain about ncov in China is that we don't know anything about ncov in China. I figure they have internal numbers but they have certainly never exposed those numbers.

For maximum comedy value, he attributes the "sharp suppression" of ncov in part of Australia to government - in September. The start of Australian spring. Planet uses Summer! It is super effective!
Haha yeah you're a fox, not a hedgehog. Sure. Whatever you say. 

Reminder that in fact nobody died of ncov. Numbers are the same across every country. Canada, Switzerland, France, Germany, America; crude death rate is not up. Normal variation only. You can of course fudge the numbers many ways, and in the post-2020-election world the fudge is very real indeed. They're totally brazen, because they finally noticed they can get away with it. However, the non-fudged numbers show you don't die of ncov. You die of being weak, e.g. old, and it happens to be ncov-shaped instead of flu-shaped this year, because ncov is more infectious so you get that first.

"By not being nihilists, we have made a choice; we have chosen the present over the future; we have chosen the real over the ideal."

Satan is proud of this one.

Nihilism is, in reality, about accepting what's actually there. It is about not letting your ideals get in the way of clearly understanding what's going on. Only once you've seen what's really there do you stand any chance of reacting logically to these events.

On another hand, many of Moldbug's points would be correct and applicable should a Spanish Flu 2.0 appear. Indeed I suspect this is what's really going on - he wants to talk about how America would be WTFPwned by a Black Death, which is absolutely true, so he's pretending kung flu isn't just a little cough. The Official numbers serve just fine for this narrative, so he runs with them. It's Trad and Lindy for Americans to lie all the time, after all.

On the third hand, the four horsemen go together. No war, no famine. No Famine, and illnesses can't become plagues. No Plague, no Death. Historical monarchies, which we all agree were superior to democracies, were also WTFPwned by the Black Death. China's response didn't work because China is Authoritarian, (if it really worked at all, which we can't say) it worked because the virus is weak and doesn't demand a response.
Lions don't try to chase down the largest buck antelope and microscopic animals can't kill a healthy human being. After all, we have our own microscopic killers.

Btw 'face diaper' lol. You let your government kidnap your children and indoctrinate them with slave mindsets using slave treatments, and you're getting activated about a bit of fashion? When they grow up they won't be able to get a job, a house, or a wife, but you're whining about a scrap of inconvenient cloth? Hey did you know 10,000+ blacks have been killed by BLM? Yeah but the ear loopies chafe my ears, bro. Americans lol

Restoration of Science

 Have a non-scientific scientist problem? Need to fix it?

Step 1: "stop digging."

Congratulations, that is all the steps.

Peasants Create Wealth and Problems: Plague Edition

That focus problem is real bad. On the plus side, it's not riddled with serious errors this time. That's nice.

 

For reference: 

The ncov problem is that China has a fraud problem.

The science problem is that it's nationalized. Every nationalized business produces crud and only crud, because crud is easier to produce and they get paid whether it's good or not. 

Don't forget ncov is not a genuinely dangerous disease. I don't know anyone who died of it and neither do you. There was no plague, luckily or unluckily.

The real problem is therefore the lord shortage. Peons find the opposite of nationalization to be inconceivable because they fundamentally model countries as 150-man bands run by an elder, chief, and shaman. (Merchant, warrior, priest.) 

The real implication of ncov appears to be that America, like any good woman, is prone to hysteria. Further, that no one is apt to let a "crisis" go to waste. America's ruling class has wanted to shut down the economy for decades, and now...

Since science is nationalized, there could be no scientific response to a plague. Since there are no lords, there could be no response at all aside from the knee-jerk reaction. 

I guess roads and electricity apply some basic discipline, because it's embarrassing when your roads are impassable. You can't hide it when the electricity has to shut off. No amount of propaganda can disguise these failures as success. Also, chemtrails principle: the rich get what they want. The rich also breathe air, which mean "chem" trails are just trails. The rich drives on roads too, which means they have to be usable. (It's more precise to say power brings money rather than money brings power. The wealth is an indicator, not a cause.)

Science in particular has to be nationalized, because proper scientists are always a threat to the Regime. You can't control what you learn, which means it will regularly be Offensive. You can, however, shut down the learning apparatus, via e.g. nationalization.
If you learn something and don't change your behaviour, you didn't learn anything. If you have to change your behaviour, it means your defence against change has failed. Cope breach.

Chinese cheat rules. Indeed they applaud the cheater and insults the victim. They only follow rules if there's immediate social pressure to do so; if someone who will call them on it is currently watching.
Hence the whole [social credit] system. Without threat of violent punishment they simply won't be pro-social. The average Ch*** can't cooperate; they can only be whipped into pretending. Of course, the credit system is nationalized, so...

(I still say the correct racial slur for Europeans is bigot. Baizuo sounds too elegant to be a proper slur.)

In other words, they cheat lab security rules. Unfortunately, these rules are not social rules. Nature? She is always watching. 

Man can play with fire. Fire is one of Man's defining features. Monkeys, however, should not play with fire. They will get burned with 100% probability. A Man giving Fire to Monkey constitutes arson.

Moldbug has to pretend that nationalized science can't be bad, because Cope. 

"The end result of the universal focus on relevance is… pervasive, systemic irrelevance."

If nationalization was inherently bad, it would strongly suggest coercive government is inherently deviant, and that conclusion is forbidden. Thus, crimestop.

"One of the foundational principles of 20th-century science is the idea that the British call the Haldane principle—that scientific funding should be directed by scientists. This seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, the 20th century was the golden age of the self-watching watchman."

Science is not directed by scientists. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and the scientists are not the ones paying for science. (Irresponsibility.) The Haldane principle is in fact the idea the overseer should never see anything. The purse-string holder should never trigger a string-closing. As per the usual sloppiness, Moldbug himself says it further up:

"When you take a project off the relevance list, you are wrecking the careers of a whole cohort of scientists. Q: Who has the power to do this? A: pretty much, no one."

Naturally a real Lord has no problems reassigning scientists without wrecking their careers, because he acknowledges the boss-peon relationship. America instead pretends the scientists are free agents, and when a field is closed it must have somehow been the peon's fault. Blame is conserved and has nowhere else to go. 

"The fourth meaning of Covid-19 is that no one is in charge."

Moldbug almost discovers the lord shortage.
There simply aren't enough of the in-charge kind of person to be in charge of everything being done. The only way to address this is to slaughter literally billions of peasants. This effort, too, would have to be overseen by peons. In the end, it will be overseen by Gnon.

"Any power that is not bureaucratic (ie, oligarchical) will be political (ie, democratic) or authoritarian (ie, monarchical)."

Fun fact: only monarchy exists, because someone must win conflicts.
When there is a decision to be made, someone succeeds in getting their preferred decision made. (Caveat: sometimes humans think it's their decision when it isn't.) This person controls the decision, thus owns the decision, and is thus the monarch.
A bureaucracy is crypto-monarchy. The monarch can retain control if and only if they are not seen as the monarch. Anyone claiming responsibility is openly declaring themselves a monarch, and immediately provokes a coalition to oust/usurp them. This does not mean ownership or responsibility vanishes. It only vanishes socially, becoming invisible to the social-epistemic. (E.g. Moldbug, Jim.) 

There is in fact someone who can close scientific purse-strings. Perhaps they would have to start small, but they definitely exist. However, they were specifically chosen, by their predecessor, as someone who loathes being prudent with the purse. Similarly, guess who they will choose as their own successor.

A monarch always exists; the monarch is not always seen as or held responsible for the decisions they make. That's the difference between left and right. Irresponsibility vs. responsibility. Lies vs. truth.

This is why it's so important to tell the truth. America is proper fucked because under no circumstances will Americans tell enough of the truth until Gnon starts killing them en masse. 

Again, don't forget ncov is not genuinely a dangerous disease. We can't call it just the sniffles because it doesn't normally make your nose run, but it is just a cough. It can only kill those who already have one foot in the grave. Basically America noticed, all of a sudden, that influenza kills a lot. Except, this influenza was a coronavirus instead, which defends against having to meta-notice that they didn't notice earlier.

Are they faking the numbers upward as a post-hoc justification for their hysteria? Fun fact: ncov 'cases' recently stopped tracking deaths in Canada; deaths are still going down. It would be awfully embarrassing to freak out this much about a little cough, wouldn't it? Did ncov cure the flu by killing them all first or was every American flu death attributed to ncov for that sweet sweet federal bounty cash?

A Series of Fascist Brain Worms That Are None of Your Business

Lies don't work, which means any individual lie is perishable. However, there's a clever strategy for replacing the lies, which involves using an isomorph that is isomorphic at one step beyond the average inferential horizon. Feels all different, but has nearly identical results. [Four stroke narrative] is an excellent analogy, much better than [capturing the frame] or whatever. The lie pushes itself forward, but has to retreat and re-push itself.

Humans always prefer cope to truth. The dissident allows themselves to be captured by an isomorph, because it defends against having to change too much. Naturally this never works, but [oh well, at least I tried]. Success is considered too expensive. Failure is affordable.

The very term [dissident] is itself cope. It says the Regime could have been legitimate; that it is illegitimate due to a misstep rather than because of its inherent nature. A proper dissident probably calls me a quitter. Likewise, a rebel is someone who thinks the Regime would be perfectly fine as long as they were in charge of it. A serious internal exile does not write long screeds about how the Regime ought to Transition itself, because it's none of their business. 

Energy is a fundamentally renewable resource, but lies are not. A Regime will always use the best lies first. They're not idiots, contrary to appearances. It runs out of energy because its own operation discredits its own lies. The experiment is carried out, and it turns out science works. The Regime is forced to turn to increasingly cruddy lies.

"From the standpoint of the mental health of the public, it would be a great victory to reach the point where Hitler is as irrelevant (in the public mind) as Stalin and Mao. It would be such a great victory that, like most victories, it is probably regime-complete."
In general ancillary lies are used to defend some core lie. When the core lie is depleted, the engine can no longer turn over, and the Regime seizes up. It is seized by the final discipline of Gnon.

"Or less poetically: how, in the 2020s and beyond, can we render Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and friends irrelevant?"
By not being Fascist.
Transmutation: "How can we render Jesus irrelevant?" If you insist on being Christian or Satanist, you can't. If you insist on specifically being neither of those, it happens automatically. There's no middle ground where it takes effort but is possible. See: irrelevancy of Odin, Mithra, Brahma, etc. 

Aside: it would be nice to have someone worth criticizing who stayed on topic. I'll go with 'what is focus,' Alex. I'm already bad at it myself, and don't need more negative examples.

 

"As a Soviet Jew (hardly an unusual reader profile)"
Should perhaps be more concerned about this. You attract the readership you deserve.
Dear reader, are you surprised that a Fascist Gyew attracts Fascist Gyews?

On the other hand, perhaps it's genetic and immutable, in which case being concerned is a waste of time. George Orwell suggests otherwise, though. More on this later.

"I certainly cannot blame anyone for being on any side—which is exactly how I feel about the Wars of the Roses, the Peloponnesian War, etc, etc."
Not even difficult to blame both sides. Both deserved to lose.
"a world full of men ready, willing and able to do enormous violence to other men"
How about a world of men ready, willing, and able to mind their own business. It's even harder than being violent. Think of the virtue signalling!

"Their minds fell into the hands of theories that told them they had to do this violence to save their country or the world"
Nonsense. They wanted violence, and needed an excuse.

"There will never again be a century even remotely like the 20th."
Reminder: this a "normal period of history."

"And indeed the weird and crazy things whole populations believed, even on our side, are indescribably weird by 2021 standards; and they would act on these beliefs, too—even act violently."
They would indeed so act. Left-wing. Irresponsible. Feeling entitled to the property of others. Fundamentally criminal. Defective. Deviant.

By excusing past criminals, Moldbug will excuse future criminals, which he allegedly does not want to do. (See also: China does this with Mao.)

I don't really think being anti-crime is inherently difficult. I think being anti-crime is a rare character disposition.
If you aren't anti-crime it's all kto kogo. World is made of victims and victors. (Note: Russians pronounce g as v.) Either you get to victimize someone or an oppressive tyrant is oppressing your freedom to mug and rape.

"We can pseudo-quantify this by defining the concept of political potential"
Whitewashing. Non-shaman dabbling in anima.
Like all the best lies there's some truth in there, but this is far more misleading than leading.
Following my corrections above, [political potential] is in fact criminal potential. How much does your population lust to break the law? What is their level of injustice demand?

Oh, duh, I say to me. Politics is an inherently criminal endeavour; if it's not, you call it property. When the CEO fires a bad hire it's not called a political victory. Rectifying the name, political potential is a dishonourable euphemism for criminal potential.

America's criminal potential hasn't gone down. Nu-America is merely exhausted and timid. They want to mug you but they're afraid you might raise your voice if they do.

"the German consensus that Jews were a problem was as democratic as our consensus that climate change is a problem. Which does not tell us anything about Jews or climate change—just democracy."
Weaksauce.
The root of both is the worship of those who feel Envy. Nietzsche never gets less relevant. Slave morality. Or just Fascism, the fundamentalists of the religion of egalitarianism.

Aside: ever find yourself doubting whether Fascism really is a terrible idea? Remember: they see a world made of purely perpetrators and objects; want to break the law and inflict unlimited injustice; but feel that only victims of injustice are worthy of human dignity. 

"And even these individuals acquired their views in the postmodern way, individually, not the premodern way, from their parents."
Binary monkey-think. Irrational eccentric vs. irrational groupthinker.
Do try not to characterize Aristotle or Aquinas as postmodern.* Can't you tell the difference between an eccentric and someone who submits to the discipline of epistemology? Do I need to explain this?
Having claimed the idiosyncratically rational is a possible character, I have to mention I don't exclude the rational groupthinker. Division is labour is good actually. Where did the parents get it from? If it was fundamentally from the grandparents, they're weak, they'll lose, and they deserve to lose. (This is why Perry can simply order Japan to open her ports.) If it can be traced to someone thinking for themselves, (so-called "critically"), a Lord or Saint, then they'll be fine. 

Isn't it amusing to watch the alleged arch-dissident spread propaganda opposing lords and saints?

*(At best it renders the term meaningless. We would be able to find mesolithic postmodernists. Perhaps Moldbug isn't being as stupid as he seems here, but at some point we have to hold him responsible for the actual words he actually put on the page. If what you wrote isn't what you meant, u dun fukt up.)

Recently I was reminded of the social consequences of breeding many degenerates. The based can mimic the debased, but the reverse is not true. Socially, the debased act like confident, staunch supporters of their vandalized ideologies, because they are incapable of changing their minds. (Do they meaningfully have minds at all? Debatable.) Beyond a certain small concentration, 10-20%, degenerate ideas will dominate the socially flexible, often called moderates. Rather than moderates, it is more accurate to call them the insecure, as they have no confidence in their own ideas.

Moldbug is attempting to play ball with this excessively degenerate gene pool. Or more precisely, the degenerate speech pool.

A lot of outer rightists are freaking out about foreigners having many babies. Dawg, you're 200 years too late to the party at the earliest.

The left wing isn't entropy, but it is true that entropy reinforces the left wing.
Precision of thought is necessary to understand the world. 

Speaking of propaganda for the wrong side,
"While history’s plates will hopefully never fuse, the next tectonic crash is not between modernity and premodernity, but modernity and postmodernity."
Fundamentally the philosophical postmodernist is characterized by a stone-age or monkey idea: there is no real world, only the social world.
Here Moldbug repeats that idea uncritically. Postmodern secular-humanist Fascist. This is it? This is the most dissident an American can be? Pathetic. 

"Furthermore, support for the hypothesis that there is a low-energy existential politics comes from the Soviet bloc in the late 20th century—which experienced full regime change with little or no violence, except in Romania."
Changing from masculine Fascism to feminine Fascism isn't a big deal. It is not surprising there was no big violence. This demonstrates nothing about the transition from lies to not-lies. (See also: narcissism of small differences. Differences in distance are larger than they appear.)

Considering how painful it is to give up lies, it is extraordinarily likely that this pain will manifest itself as violent opposition to the treatment. "I feel pain => I'm hurt => I'm being attacked." Try it: go to into a news office and mention that racism == anti-communism. There's plenty of remaining potential for violence as long as you can make them feel threatened. See also: 2020 Summer of Undocumented Urban Renewal. Americans have not entirely given up yet, more's the pity. (I've mentioned before that doomcore is a viable solution, aside from the sanctimonious hear-no-evil factor.)

Fascism incurs a divine debt. It's been running up since 1100, though at that stage it's more properly named after its progenitor, Sophism.
The question: can a country pay the debt before the debt gets fatally called? The answer: the last time to start gradual payments was around 200-300 years ago. The transition from lies to truth will instead be sudden. Either sudden and controlled, or sudden and uncontrolled. There is no reason to think it can be controlled; on the contrary there are psychological and genetic-load reasons to think it cannot be. Further, the fundamental theorem of history is that history repeats. America tried to be Rome and got what it wanted. It will be a [one funeral at a time] sort of conversion.

In short America as a whole will attempt the modified limited hangout that Moldbug is attempting. "I've totally stopped being Fascist, guys." Only it's not 'the guys' opinion that you need to worry about, but Gnon's. Again, they'll get what they want, and successfully convince the guys of their repentance.

All forms of intellectual conversion are left wing. Attempting intellectual dominance through intellectual violence. Fundamentally irresponsible. At best it can make this sudden, uncontrolled transition even worse by pushing it further left.

The actual solution is Exit. Demonstrate superior life-ways. Do instead of say. Build instead of gossip. Put initiative for joining on the side of the convert. Greed for joy instead of terror of pain.
Even if someone's lifestyle is broken, you're not entitled to fix it. Anyone acting so entitled really genuinely is attacking them. It is impossible to attack someone for their own good.
If there is any peaceful resolution, it is in figuring out how to hack the Regime such that it fails to try to suppress competitors and foreigners. Can you trick it into allowing a zero-tax city? Good luck with that.

Moldbug thinks a different form of parasitism isn't defection. Cope. The problem is parasitism per se. "The host will die if you keep sucking its blood. Try sucking the marrow instead." Not a solution.

Agape isn't about calling a parasite a not-parasite, and it certainly isn't about making no allowances for the diseased host. 

 

"God doesn’t like it when you play pretend."
Self-own.
Example:
"There was no word more loathed by Romans—but a king in fact was what Rome needed. Or at least what she got. Few of us realize that “emperor” was born as a euphemism for “king.”"

"Most but not all 20th-century dictators came into power by promising a temporary regime: an emergency reconstruction of the regime, not a regime change at all. Never say never, but this is almost always a mistake."
Of course this is exactly what Moldbug offers, modulo the inferential horizon. Rather than a regime change that pretends to be a not-regime change, Moldbug wants a not-regime change that pretends to be a regime change. Change Fascists out for a Fascist larping as a monarch. Salus populi, equality before the law, no slaves (which means everyone is a slave), and apparently no nobles but we make an unprincipled exception for the king. Further, God forbid the king have legal privilege.

I believe more than enough Americans would also call this farce a [monarchy]. The rest would call it [racist] because it ever so vaguely smells of anti-communism.

"Sovereignty with an expiration date is weak and unstable sovereignty"
Um...Sulla...
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you American historians.
Reminder that this boy sent his offspring to public school. I give you: dissidence.
I'm not arguing for temporary regimes here. Just, maybe, have some idea what you're talking about before you open your mouth. Don't be a pundit. Speech (publishing) might be free, but that doesn't mean it should be, and if it shouldn't be, you should act like it isn't.

The Romans also had this problem, which is why you were required to sacrifice a goat if you wanted your speech to be taken seriously.

Subsidized speech is bad speech; Gresham's law.

"The ruling class has also been selected by its attraction to power—and its willingness to humiliate itself by always agreeing with power."
A proof that the ruling class shouldn't rule. Why follow a self-humiliating class? Are you a devotee of self-humiliation? To get off do you need to be cucked by someone who is, themselves, a cuck?

"In all our hard, painful wanderings in the political wilderness, in our two-and-a-half-century revolution, are we stumbling in circles in the snow, a half-mile from the Ritz? How would that look in retrospect? Pretty funny, in fact—from inside that huge marble tub, with the jets turned up high."
Can confirm.
It's a great spectacle: slaves attempting to be their own masters, peasants pretending to lord over other peasants. 'We can totally self-govern, guys!' Yeah. Great job everyone. Keep it up, lol

"So a well-designed monarchy tends to include one or more backup layers which can replace the monarch in case of death or incompetence."
...which then render the monarch not-the-monarch. If you can be fired, you have a boss. If you have a boss, you are not king. Apparently this two line proof is rocket surgery.

"The only way to keep the backup layer from being corrupted by its own power is to make it taste as little power as possible. Once the board is micromanaging the CEO, it might as well be the CEO."
Thus the magical self-enforcing Constitution reappears, just barely hidden behind the inferential horizon. Defence against change. You're no red-blooded American if you expect God to leave you to your own devices.

Use Exit, morons. Quit trying to meddle. Who is my King? None of your business. Who is your King? None of mine. Even if I'm the King. 

"whole populations are quite easily seduced by objectively terrible ideas"
Autism.
Populations are never seduced by ideas, because they only see and use plumage. They are seduced by people and adopt whatever plumage is required to get into bed with them. The idea can be as terrible as it wants because nobody takes it seriously.
Go ahead. Find a peasant. Ask him about his ideas. Ask him what the ideas mean...as long as you're in the mood for a good chuckle.
Though it is true that populations are easily seduced by terrible people, who then do terrible things. This is because populations are terrible and hunger for cope to excuse the awfulness they prefer to commit anyway.

 

"So elections tend to focus on resolving conflicts of interest between competing groups. This is how your backup layer starts to catch fire and turn into a civil war"
Lie.
Elections focus on making one interest group dominate another. Weirdly, defection leads to defection. Nothing catches fire. It was a fire to begin with.
Exit. Eeeeexit. Exiiiiiiit. Tixe. Iext.
To "resolve a conflict" or rather to cooperate, it must be possible not to deal. Not everyone is reasonable, and if a deal can't be reached, a deal must be cancelled. "Conflict resolution" in practice refers to incentives to be unreasonable created by making separation impossible. Turns into a game a of Chicken. In the end, nobody wins Chicken. You both drive off the cliff.
Any form of making separation impossible (Lincoln) should be considered an act of war and a war crime. You should immediately declare total war on anyone who commits such a thing, because they just declared total war on you.
Fun fact: honourable total war beats sneaky dishonourable total war. Proof: if they thought they could win straight up they would have tried that in the first place. And they should know, shouldn't they? Know better than you, at any rate.

 

"A blindingly perfect equation—in theory."
Only blinding.

Reminder that if I were handed custodianship of America tomorrow morning, all I would do is formalize the existing relationships. All the below-board stuff would come above-board. After that, how Americans decide to rearrange their contracts is none of my business.

Exception: I would seize a plot of uninhabited land and found a zero-tax city, which I would rule absolutely. By which I mean I would largely leave my inhabitants alone as long as they paid their service fees. I would not have an emigration problem.

Of course American would rearrange the contracts, because quite a few of them are absolutely revolting. No one even pretending to have self-respect would find them tolerable. But, the question of how to rearrange them is best left to the contract parties and very much the opposite of left to meddling strangers.

Even if your contracts are well busted (because they're hiding, or hiding because they're busted) it's best to start with the existing contracts. Each serves some purpose. You can't simply break the contracts, because that purpose will no longer be served. E.g. police in fact raise crime rates, but suddenly breaking the police contract causes crime to temporarily skyrocket. Old busted contracts must be replaced with something that works for both parties instead of only working for one side, rather than thrown out like a child rebelling against bed time.

"best of all to separate them from their biological mothers, who caused much trouble in Ottoman politics. Egg donation, surrogate gestation, childcare and education are four very different specialties"
Apparently Moldbug is knockoff Plato. Communists gonna commie.
To make defection and parasitism appear to work, you have to go far out of your way. Incidentally the problem with Ottoman queens was down to the character of the queens, not their incentives. They tried to hook up with the king precisely so they could get opportunities to cause flagrant harm. Someone was using anti-judgment, and didn't reject them.

If a regime is cooperative, if the subjects agree to be ruled by it, then it does not matter at all how the actual rulership is achieved. It is not up to me and even six months of experience will transcend anything I might say about it. It is, and should be, none of my business.

If, later, they screw it up, simply decline to be ruled further by them. Not screwing up isn't something you need to work out a priori. That's their business.

Unless the whole point of the exercise is to carry water for parasites. 

On Comment Captchas

I use a hack that lets me avoid doing Google's insufferable captchas when I comment on my own blog.

If you can't find your own hack, I would happily agree to a workaround, such as telling me you're posting your comments elsewhere, and I'll go read and/or respond to them there.

Moldbug vs. Monarchism

"I’m a monarchist because we don’t have to live like this."
Dawg, I already don't live like this. I had to take a less than ideal exit route, but it is nevertheless the case that I'm already out. Get out, don't let leftists force their company on you, and you're set.

There's nothing stopping you from taking a king yourself. Get a mannerbund, hold the last election, bam, you're done. Nothing illegal about this in the slightest. Indeed the Transgressives are likely to be confused, more than anything.

Nothing legally stopping you. If you weren't a slave you would have already taken a king. Instead you plead for the Regime force you to take a king.
In Greece, slaves had free speech because their words were considered so worthless that the most abominable curses from their mouths barely rose to the level of a joke. Master knows best. 

 

"No one today—certainly not me—can even imagine how different a life that would be."
I am referred to as [no one] regularly enough that I sometimes use it as my nickname. Alrenous "No One" Ruat Caelum.

"It is hard to think of, or even imagine, one which is spiritually healthy, but physically incompetent."
As No One, I am tasked with difficult imaginings. That's a joke: this isn't difficult if you aren't a slave.

So, you've selected your king. Necessarily it will be a king in exile. He ought to have the power to revoke certain laws, but doesn't. Spiritually healthy, physically less so.

When training to run the stock market, you use something called paper stocks. You allocate yourself fake money, buy fake stock by writing down which ones you bought and how much they cost, and then see if you manage to make fake money. You own stocks, but only on paper. You can make all your real mistakes without having to lose any real money.

Likewise, it is hardly unhealthy to have a paper king who passes paper laws.

Further: the Amish. They functionally pass laws on themselves. You can already do it. They already have enough physical competence. Think maybe you can outfight someone whose pitchfork was made by an honest-to-god blacksmith?
The slave would never dream of selecting their own master, though. As it should be.

"This is because you have not thought seriously about the matter. Nor has anyone else."
Clearly, I do not exist. And yet, here I am writing. That's kind of impressive, isn't it?
Am I dead? Am I a lich? I might be a lich. Or at least, a possessed pseudonymous avatar.

Fascism is fundamentalist Egalitarianism. The diagnostic criteria all flow inevitably from the demands of egalitarianism.

Egalitarianism is stone-age social technology. It's monkey-think. The monkey in your brain wants to rebel against your leadership and return to monkey times, for what I hope are obvious reasons.* When a country gets rich enough, it appears they can afford to stop oppressing their monkeys and return to monkey times. The country's masters realize monkey-think is stupid, and compromise with reality, though only to the extent they're forced to. Thus, Fascism

*(Though I convinced mine to stop, via my behaviour and its consequences. Caveat, autism is often an advantage here. The things the monkey wants aren't wrong per se, only how it natively wants to achieve them.)

"Lies can win no permanent victory over the truth."
Well, yes. Quite the self-own here.

"But if by some amazing chance hell is ready to negotiate: here are ten principles I want."
As I mentioned earlier, the Regime is already too weak to stop you from starting the next country early. Maybe quit petitioning Satan to run Hell differently? I'm fairly confident he knows how to cause suffering better than you do, and neither requires nor desires your advice.

"Equal protection under the law must be restored."
Ah yes, your standard egalitarian monarchist. Totally historically normal.

"Collective grievances are socially unacceptable"
I would certainly like to know more about collective grievances. However, I'm not apt to learn anything reading Moldbug.

Collective grievances are probably fine, except that in the present case they apparently have no statute of limitations. At some point a grievance has to be resolved. If justice was not done, then so be it.

They have no statue of limitations because they are lies. The grievances were never real. Nobody gives the tiniest shit what happened to their great-grandparents. It was always a fake justification for tyranny they wanted to commit anyway. Unfortunately tyranny is inherently tyrannous and no justification has any effect on its consequences. Fortunately, tyranny is inherently tyrannous so you can simply call it out for being tyranny, rather than having to debate the tyrant into admitting they're a fuckin' liar.

Anyway this is all a way of making the prisoner's dilemma seem complicated. Cooperate with cooperators. Defect on defectors. It really is that simple. However, monarchists have a problem, since historically kings are 100% defectors. Crimestop appears.

Oblivion is not peace, by the way.
"it does not matter that the Turk had no right to take Constantinople"
Right, so likewise it does not matter that I have no right to take Constantinople. If I mange to hold it, then oblivion goes in my favour. But wait, then the Turks...
Aposiopesis is a sin.

As expected, Moldbug knows little to nothing about collective grievances. At best, he is unwilling to say.

"and through it, over the public mind."
Of course, any good monarchist cares deeply about public opinion.

Or was it? Perhaps they worry deeply about the care and maintenance of the grapeshot throwers. I get those two confused all the time.

The Regime is driving over a cliff. They will take public opinion with it.
Are you going to have a country all ready and waiting for the cleared space? Or are you going to try to argue them into maybe driving off the cliff differently?

Spiritually Break with Fascism

Given that Transgressives are firmly entrenched, what is the wise reaction?

As close to total divorce as you can manage. Have a little to do with it as possible. Don't watch or read the news. Don't submit yourself to a Facebook feed. Don't allow Fascists to talk politics or religion in your company. If they insist, leave. If your job implicitly involves mouthing many Fascisms, find a new one. (And deeply ponder why you didn't avoid the place without being told.) If your city is particularly infested with Fascists, find a new one. Move heaven and earth to avoid sending your kids to Fascist schools. For heaven's sake, install an adblocker.

It turns out there's a real distinction between a slave and a serf. A slave has no self-control at all, and can't even choose their own master. A serf has, at least, the minimal control to choose their lord. American voters are slaves. As usual, this is Fascism.

Pretending that lords don't exist is like half of what being human is about. On the other end, some are undeniably and unmistakeably slaves. Since someone is a slave, and Egalitarianism is true, everyone is a slave. Anyone attempting to be a non-slave is defecting; illegitimately trying to be a master. There are no masters in democracy! Being a master is always wrong! But, under slave morality, there is no form of human except masters or slaves. To be precise, Fascists are always obsessed with finally proving once and for all that everyone is a slave.

Among the ancients it was taken for granted that you had to transcend your own human nature and seize control of your self. None of this cope about riding the elephant. (Elephant imagery is itself cope. Obviously the default controller is a monkey.)

If you haven't seized control of yourself, you are a bum. If you have seized control of yourself, then mortal kings are nothing more than annoyances; you answer only to Gnon. (Julius Caesar was not an honourable man or a cooperator by any stretch of the imagination. His fundamental personality matrix was identical to an SJW. He was not, however, a bum.)

The ancients often wouldn't budge when threatened with crucifixion or breaking on the wheel. Moderns flinch and cower when threatened with "social consequences." Locus of control has become perfectly external. 

It's trivial to check for self-control in person. Ask them to do something weird. A little embarrassing, but harmless. E.g. sitting in a chair upside-down. Experiment: if you had to do something outgroup, could you? If they can't do it, they don't have self-control. They need permission before they can do anything. In fact it's so easy to check you don't actually have to check; merely imagining their response is safe and reliable.

(Cults basically work by spoofing the permission architecture. I don't have a cult solely because slaves make for poor conversation. If you have self control, securing yourself against a king is trivial: reverse the polarity and spoof the acceptance architecture. There's no reason to allow them to so much as to become suspicious.)

Nihilism is a philosophy for grownups. Slaves must have faith in their master, or else despair.

In retrospect, American shamelessness was overdetermined. If you don't control your own actions, why would you be ashamed of their distribution? It's not your fault! You're not guilty. You're just following orders. (That really does make the slave not guilty. Pathetic, but not culpable.) American masters are especially clever. They've ordered their slaves to think they're emancipated, and their slaves have dutifully followed this command. You can't even take up the slave's behaviour with their master because the master is hiding from the slave. (Just in case you thought they might not be guilty.)

Likewise, ills such as Institutional Racism are clearly the result of rogue masters. They are hiding, just like the regular masters. They are illicitly stealing perfectly legitimate slaves and commanding them to commit heinous acts to satisfy their twisted psychological needs. All slaves are exhorted not to be stolen so easily.
Liars never trust and conspirators get paranoid. 

If you have seized control of yourself, with a little help from philosophical hygiene, you can just, like, not be a Fascist. You're in charge. You decide, therefore it happens.

 

Perfectly contra Moldbug, it's clear anti-Transgressive ideas always win in the marketplace of ideas. However, Transgressive ideas appeal to gatekeepers - who then shut down transmission of anti-Transgressive ideas, which is the only way they can fail to lose completely. It should be a great mystery when Americans consistently choose to live under hostile censors. Since Americans are committed to being slaves, it is no mystery.

Moldbug is a proper American, and thus no exception. Reading early UR you could be forgiven for thinking he had self-control. Instead it turns out someone gave him permission to read old books, probably by accident. Some leftover command from the 1800s, when there was a canon. Distant, foreign backwaters often have very unfashionable commands still floating around in their sluggish currents. Biologically Moldbug should be a lord, but psychologically he is unquestionably a slave. The wonders of American pedagogy, I guess.

Following old, outdated commands is the problem of the American ""right"" in general, almost without exception. E.g. some believed the Transgressives were actually rational. They bought into Terror-era commands. When the proggies inevitably do something irrational, they think they've been commanded to rebel. They become a [dissident]. E.g. it turns out the rational basis for democracy is bullshit. Transgressives command everyone to rebel, which helps.

(Do Trannies tolerate Christianity purely as something to rebel against? If the master abandons honour he can get very clever indeed.)

The American ""right"" can be categorized as a slave's desperate desire for a master who won't order them to be retarded. Sometimes they almost manage to delude themselves into thinking they've been ordered as such.

Alas. You go to exist with the god you have, I guess.

Style Guide: Transgressivism

With the latest addition to Orthodoxy, the Party has a snappy name: the Transgressives.

Rebel! Break all the rules, especially the just ones! Rail against even the laws of physics and biology! All slaves deserve to be masters; all masters, slaves. (There is of course no human relation except master vs. slave.)

Corollary: literati => castrati. See also: intellectual, expert, etc.

Yeshua's plan was to etiolate the virtuous, and it has worked splendidly. Although Gnon is patient, His patience is not infinite, and the situation is now reversed. Good and Law is persecuted, while Evil is coddled and comforted.

I can no longer oppose the Transgressives. Under their torturous reign, those who deserve it shall become strong, while those undeserving shall become weak. God's will be done.



The Transgressives have a problem with being Regnant Transgressives, for what I hope are obvious reasons. The winner is undeserving and the loser is deserving, and as such if you point out they've won anything they suffer catastrophic cognitive dissonance. The idea was to struggle nobly but ultimately fail. Never forget the Transgressives will render themselves losers through cognitive gymnastics even if they win; they cannot enjoy the fruits of success.

Because the Transgressives can't straightforwardly use power, no matter how regnant they get, the Regime is inherently weak. E.g. apparently the entire entrenched Establishment vs. one orange bloke was a fair fight and a hard-won victory. Not a real victory, mind you. Hitler is always lurking. In reality Hitler was a bumbling bureaucrat like every Fascist, but in their minds Hitler was and is terrifyingly efficient. After all, why else would all their schemes fail even when persimmon skin barely puts up a fight?



Does Transgressivism work? It certainly achieved money and power for Transgressives, as long as they don't push it so far that the illusion of legitimacy collapses completely. Americans are Fascist, and you can always show that the Transgressive is a better, purer Fascist than their opponent. They genuinely appeal to core American values, such as relieving them of all personal responsibility. Sadly Americans are sinners, weak in the ways of Fascism, and don't yet realize that in fact having a eunuch crack your daughter's skull whilst playing sports is just more equal than *GASP* segregating the sexes during competition. Luckily the Transgressives are here to patiently educate them. They'll figure it out eventually.



While a Transgressive king is good for the soul, it's important to remember they are inherently illegitimate. Defective and deviant. They are here to punish the Good for being the kind of 'Good' that allows organized Transgressives to exist in the first place. If you've figured the lesson and repented, there's no need to let them punish you in particular.

The correct way to deal with a Richelieu is to dismantle him and fire the components from a grapeshot catapult at the serfs and slaves he was misleading. Ref: the treatment of the Luddites. Do so with the greatest compassion and empathy. Allowing Richelieu to lead them is much more sadistic than anything you might need to do to discourage them. A televised helicopter ride is also acceptable.

Substack is Doxxing Engine

Money changes hands. This means KYC rules apply. Substack must know exactly who you are. This means the courts can subpoena Substack when it comes time to round everyone up for the concentration camps.

This is assuming they don't simply cut off Substack the way they cut off Gab.

If you want a real Substack, it has to be hosted in Russia (probably paying Russian mafia dues) and using solely BTC in the payment architecture.