Jim Accepts Basic Sophism Premise; Other Predictive Nonsense

Demotist "The North Korean regime is based on lies, [...]  The US regime is based on lies" is a subset of sophist. "Sophistry is the art of using the tools of philosophy to gull those dumber than you into believing lies that empower you."

Apparently my most effective persuasion strategy is shut up and wait.

"Moldbug blames the evil of the modern state on insecurity of power. His solution is security of power. I don’t believe it."

Yes he does. Lies are inherently insecure. Laws can be flawed but aren't inherently insecure. Power is an illusion only if you feel oppressed, as you would rise up if you could. If, as in most times and places, power is pretty much okay, it isn't an illusion.

It would be better not to call the power per se an illusion. It relies on the coordination barrier, which is real; it's not as if the individual rising up would succeed, as in a real illusion. The illusion is of general consent. I and my friends may think the anti-racists have gone round the bend, but when I speak up, everyone else shouts me down, so it's just us, right? It would be better to say that powers that rely only on a coordination barrier do not feel secure and indeed are not secure, and as a result constantly attempt tyrannical measures to attempt to shore up their power.

One efficient way to make the population feel oppressed is to institute a thought control system.



I also realized that sophist theory predicts universal sufferage and the war against the middle class including anarcho-tyranny.

"Lesser sophists, dumber, more gullible, less sophisticated, are pwned by greater sophists." Conversely, with a limited electorate, the dumbest in-group feels the need to conscript yet dumber proto-sophists as allies against the smarter sophists, because even the dumbest group in any subset eventually works out it is being had.

Pre-penultimately this process ends with a universal electorate all focused on opposing the top, smartest sophists. Penultimately, it ends with the smartest sophists fighting against the next-to-dumbest sophists for control of the underclass against everyone else, with the smartest sophists usually winning.

Ultimately, even the dumbest extant human works out he is being had, and the system falls apart.



In longer form...
Democracy arises in part because coercion is wrong and everyone knows it. Therefore, the state, the institute of coercion, constantly needs to justify itself. One way is to claim to govern as a representative of the will of the people or with the consent of the people; but this unavoidably means the people must be allowed to voice their will or grant their consent, and hence, voting.

Of course this is all a pretext. The point is coercion; if there's consent, it's not coercion and it would be unnecessary to evoke democracy or substitutes to justify it. Thus, limited franchise.

Sophists reliably choose the will/consent of people route because their expertise is in putting a ring through people's noses and leading them around by it. But once the limited franchise is established, the lowest echelon (once they clue up) can put rings through the noses of new franchisees, and dupe them into opposing the upper echelons not through rhetoric, but through this voting charade, and it works for a time because the uppest, top-out-of-sight class can't threaten the charade too directly. The new lowest yet numerically biggest echelon eventually clues in and rings up the next tranche. All the while, the most senior tranche is thinking up new ways to dupe the rebels into supporting what they think they're opposing.

Formal power ends up in the hands of the lowest possible intellectual echelon, who are easily puppeteered by the uppest class. All the intermediate tranches end up pairwise deadlocked. Sometimes the next-lowest echelon, by virtue of familiarity (anti-bubble virtue) can wrest the underclass away for a time, so of course they must be destroyed, but this releases the deadlock on the second-next-lowest class, who take their place. As far as possible, the underclass is expanded to consume everything between the uppest and lowest classes. The middle class is simply not that dumb, and resists mightily. It simply cannot be made as completely dependent as the underclass.

The underclass, being ultimately under the control of the top-out-of-sight class, is frequently forgiven all but its most egregious crimes. The middle classes, constantly threatening to dupe the underclass into siding with them,  are still a threat, and must be constrained over and over by rings of rules. They have to be demoralized, put in their place. They have to be shamed into not pursuing their own interest against that of the elite, or they would succeed.

OWS is a nice example. Clearly, OWS is about the 2% trading places with the 1% by recruiting the 98%. While I can't speak for the non-writing parts of the 98%, at least half of those who do write seemed to think it was cool. If OWS weren't fighting the last war it would have worked. It would have recruited the 49% against the 1% and successfully traded places, with nothing in it for the 49%. (But they were fighting the last war, 'democracy' as political formula has moved on quite a bit from my simple story, following its railroad into deep sophistication. E.g. elected representatives have voted their power away to permanent bureaucrat buddies, so they can retire from politics and get hired by their buddies into the new, now-powerful, but electorate-immune, positions.)

All of this because somebody wanted to lie their way to power through rhetoric.