Step 1: I berate Moldbug.
Step 2: Moldbug doesn't read my blog.*
Step 3: Moldbug gets much better.
*(Nor does anyone else for that matter.)
The fuck? Why does this work?
Oh well, it does work so I'ma keep doing it. Yay acausal networks or whatever.
Still major omissions, though.
Reminder: America is faking the shit out of its mortality statistics because there's fabulous cash prizes for doing so. It's pessimistic to assume half of the stated c-vid deaths were in fact c-vid related. On the other hand the "lockdowns" have killed enormous numbers (largely via stress) so maybe it balances out? (Like 5-10% bonus mortality.) Fascists gonna Fasc; they were going to do something enormously self-destructive, the only question was which gun they were going to shoot themselves in the foot with. (In fact lockdown orders had no effect whatsoever on human movements; instead the isolations are internally-motivated.)
Also remember these are strangers and if they die it not only doesn't matter, but may even be slightly good. Seems Moldbug was confused by this intuition and thought it was about the election instead. God thought Grandma should die, and then she did. Vae victus.
Maybe take vitamin D like I told you to and you won't die next time. Not my advice? Not my responsibility, not my problem. Please subscribe to my youtube channel and click the bell - as if I wouldn't be immediately banned.
Also don't forget China is assraping their own statistics. We have no idea what the virus actually did or is doing in China. You could literally get more useful data out of a ouija board.
In countries who aren't buggering their numbers, ncov really has been just a flu. About 20% worse than a bad flu year, to be more precise. Mortality is best estimated at around 1 in 400, where flu usually tops out at 1 in 500. (1 in 100 detected cases are critical but 3 in 4 cases are asymptomatic.) My own country suffered 13% more c-vid deaths during flu season as compared to a bad flu season. Also the new virus kills the same people; influenza cases have plummeted because c-dog gets them before the flu can. Of course [not buggered] doesn't mean [good]. It means [not completely worthless] unlike China and America's numbers. Maybe the flu replacement thing is America-only and seems to be happening because bullet wounds are coronavirus now.
"It is incapable of a hard lockdown because it does not really have a government."
That would be lovely. In fact it has something like 1000 gerrymandered governments with 1000 petty kings, one each. I assume there's a Road Czar somewhere whose home county has properly built and maintained roads. A hard lockdown crosses royal jurisdictions, so good luck with that one.
Violently tell a burglar to fuck off and after see if you can still tell me there's no government with a straight face.
As last time this isn't an exhaustive list of serious errors, but it's no longer 1 per 2 paragraphs, a vast improvement.
15 comments:
I used to read UR back when it was "cool" and I thought of Moldbug as a pompous ass that can hide a few good thoughts in a lot of verbal diarrhea. Apparently, he hasn't changed that much. Well, maybe his "good thoughts" aren't that great either...
If you really think it was verbal diarrhea, then demonstrate it. Find a passage and clean it up.
Yarvin's problem, to quote Moldbug: "It’s a damned lie, that’s what’s wrong with it."
He's not writing down what he genuinely believes. As per JBP, that doesn't work. Straussianism (and Platonic lies) always make the liar look like an idiot.
The pseudonym could produce sharp and intelligent prose, while the legal nym has great difficulty on the best day. This matches the pattern a little too closely to be easily dismissed as a coincidence.
It's one thing if the writer is in fact an idiot and can't do any better. Inherent idiocy is a renewable resource and best ignored. It's quite another when a non-idiot uses moronic writing to seduce other non-idiots into giving up on any kind of intellectual standard.
Alternatively, Moldbuggian Fascism again. Complains about Pontus; because he is a barbarian from Pontus. Something something demand for propaganda.
Historians try to hide the fact that most periods are fake. The obvious inference is that we ourselves are likely to be in one of these fake periods—periods from which even the best and wisest thinkers have nothing lasting to add, because they are just not in touch with even their own present reality.
I thought this was very good. It has, in fact, felt like that for quite some time, and nobody has said it quite like this. I've mainly noticed that it's culturally static--I remember talking about the gorgeous girl from Chicago, whom I saw in the original onstage--she literally made a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Then the movie that won all the awards came along, and my late brother insisted I see it. But my impression was that it lasted one or two minutes. It was so bad it seemed to be over a few seconds after it started. This was not Ann Reinking and it was not Bob Fosse's original choreography. And things could be said to have been so fake that people had stopped seeing the fakeness at all. It's a dance show, and nobody could dance. People didn't care--they thought Renee Zellweger was just fabulous when she was not only unattractive but couldn't dance a lick. That's just the first time I saw this *paralyzed-by-Medusa* sensation. Then I saw a lot more of it in the 00's. It actually seemed to alleviate some in the teens, but I may be judging it based on my moment of perception, as Kant said (one of the things he said.) No, not totally, there was an unimportant movie with aging Al Pacino that almost nobody saw that I thought was alive. Most fiction has been dead for some time.
And there's the sensation of life passing by even more quickly that seems due to the vapidity and fakeness. When Charlie Rose was still talking to big names, that always seemed just conversations about procrastination--about how ISIS was going to last 'forever', things like that.
I've always found big, prestigious awards are an anti-indicator. Seems like you have to bribe someone, and why do that if your movie is already good? That, or the slightly less corrupt wheel-greasing skills come at the cost of movie-making skills. Similarly you can be good at science or good at getting Nobel prizes, but not both. I'm sure it's galling for them when they have to reward real science due to overwhelming external prestige.
Fascism is a false religion, and thus any devout Fascist, no matter how smart, will be elaborating the lie. Maybe that would be okay if the Fascism myth was any good, but instead it's a terrible story.
Fascism is a false religion, and thus any devout Fascist, no matter how smart, will be elaborating the lie. Maybe that would be okay if the Fascism myth was any good, but instead it's a terrible story.
I was transfixed by this for over an hour last night, wrote a comment, but decided I really must trim my loquaciousness. It's got two totally different dimensions, one for each sentence, and couldn't be more elegant and witty at the same time. When we were talking about 'apolitical art' yesterday, that could be the one locus of even the Fascism myth sometimes being in form that is good, just because of symbols and motifs that might be used--however not for the purpose of any political agenda, and not consciously Fascist. Same with all other '-isms'. Although, for one example, 'pretty art' in Nazi Germany was always kitsch, and that's what often happens (if that's Fascism, I'm never sure what your definitions are for Fascism, Communism, Democracy, Authoritarianism, Libertarianism, Democracy, Soft Totalitarianism, etc.)
I don't know much about the Nobels except that I hear who wins them. Some of the Pulitzers seem okay, and occasionally a National Book Award--although they gave one to Susan Sontag for her novel In America, and she was easily America's Worst Famous Novelist. The Oscars may have had a few years of innocence from the late 20s into the early 30s, but although everybody knows they're totally political and, as you say, bribe-oriented (with different currencies, I imagine), most don't know they were already sick at least by the mid-30s. Greta Garbo was not only the biggest star, she was also the best actress, but they didn't like her attitude, so she was nominated 3 times and never got it till very old--one of those Consolation Prize 'Lifetime Achievement Awards', which she never thanked them for, never accepted or even mentioned. They had to nominate her, or they'd be giving themselves away. From then on, it's just been this obviously mundane vanity thing--yet here was even more of the fakery, proven to have been operating successfully for almost 85 years. People still take it seriously, even though shit is constantly awarded. Only thing else to be said is just that it's much worse in the last few years.
Well, that was loquacious anyway, but that paragraph is pure gold, moving seamlessly from an 'infinite' category into a 'finite' one. If a story is good, that's the thing to always do. But since it's 'not any good', it's much funnier to hear of it.
Umberto Eco (Fascist) tried to define it and I refined it into a seven-point diagnostic. http://alrenous.blogspot.com/2019/11/eco-pretends-to-think-about-fascim.html
Moldbug used the term demotism. It's fundamentalist egalitarianism. Any "for the people" system is a form of Fascism. From Nick Land we get the insight that Fascism classic is basically furtive, insecure Communism. If it's real Communism you're all dead, all are equal only in death, so in practice it's always Fascism. Libertarianism is the most furtive kind of Fascism. Fascism is inherently authoritarian but any other theocracy is also authoritarian without necessarily being Fascist. Likewise all Fascisms are totalitarian but not all totalitarianisms are Fascist.
America is not less Fascist than Soviet Russia. Instead of concentration camps for kulaks they have concentration camps for children. Instead of fighting the Eternal Capitalist they fight the Eternal White Man. However, America's Fascism is feminine instead of masculine. Women are less principled and when it comes to Fascism that's a good thing.
--
Goodhart's and Gresham's law. You can have an Oscars or whatever for a few years, but cause and effect gets reversed. Rather than good movies getting Oscars, it becomes that good Oscar-getters are called directors and the excuses they produce get socially exalted into movies. The Oscars (and Nobels) would much rather reward people directly than reward artifacts, but as you say they must maintain the kayfabe.
I read your post on Eco, which I hadn't earlier. I'll get to it in a second.
I had to look up the pronunciation of 'kayfabe', and have been looking up others that I had taken for granted. At first, I thought 'Crete' must have been something I'd never heard pronounced, but then realized that was impossible, and everybody really did call it 'Creet'. I almost felt strange pronouncing it correctly to someone the other day. I did know a Slovenian girl who said it like "kret-tah", the short 'e', but that's not the Greek way, but which does have the accent on the first syllable. Here's one of the things that turns me on: Finding out that the 1500 B.C. Throne Room of the Palace of Knossos is largely renovated, but that the gypsum throne is original. And the Knossos Palace plans--I even know where there bedrooms and bathrooms were. This book is lavish, and cost $5, says 'fair condition', and looks brand-new to me. Now I'll know all about those panels of texts in the Met galleries when I go back.
Fascism is inherently authoritarian but any other theocracy is also authoritarian without necessarily being Fascist. Likewise all Fascisms are totalitarian but not all totalitarianisms are Fascist.
These are all hard because until I heard people on Nick's blog talking about it, and insisting upon what it is/was, I had only heard the usual conventional things, like Germany's Nazis being fascist, but not totalitarian (although that might have been said, but I hadn't heard it; that one is not difficult, though). So do you mean the 'totalitarianisms that are not Fascist'...rather, what are some examples? You say that Soviet Russia was Fascist, so was that not real Communism like North Korea as extreme example? Nick says China is authoritarian but not Communist, I guess because so capitalist. We all always called USSR 'communist' and Germany 'Fascist', so that may just be part of the usual dumbing down of things. There were lots of people who were surprised that the U.S. and USSR did capitalism with each other, trade.
I'll shoot this and then continue a bit more. I went to an Eco reading once, remember little. I had read his novel The Island of the Day Before and thought it almost as bad as Susan Sontag,definitely not as good as Rushdie, and I don't quite love his work either.
America is not less Fascist than Soviet Russia. Instead of concentration camps for kulaks they have concentration camps for children. Instead of fighting the Eternal Capitalist they fight the Eternal White Man. However, America's Fascism is feminine instead of masculine. Women are less principled and when it comes to Fascism that's a good thing.
So was Soviet Russia Fascist, totalitarian and Communist all three?
I don't doubt you on America's Fascism being feminine, just because everything seems to be becoming more domesticated. I'm sure, for example, women don't mind staying inside more, and even all the time. There was a fire in my building, and 2 women (both Jewish, if that says anything extra, probably not) would not leave their separate apartments. Yes, they are less principled, but this cooperation with all the domestic rules makes people think they are more principled, doesn't it? And having to cater to their ridiculous demands made culture even more fake than it was beginning in 2017 with #MeToo. I gave you the clip of NYCBallet in its Golden Age, they were the best in the world in terms of creativity for a couple of decades, even better than the Russians. They are now just as totally FAKE as the movie of Chicago, and they are only later because some big popularized movie is lower by definition. Not only was Peter Martins shoved out, but other boys were thrown out, because one of them's girlfriend saw a nude picture of herself--I think he'd sent it to a pal, but who the hell cares. No mention of invading his personal computer's privacy was ever made. The greatest male dancer at ABT left just then, although he made some deal in which the 'offense', many years ago, was not publicized. I lost a case in Small Claims Court just before that against an old woman filmmaker in whose film I'd played Debussy either had the court rigged, or the arbitrator said the money I claimed I was promised (it had started off as something much smaller, which is why nothing was ever made into a contract) could go into arbitration, "but there's just so much acrimony". Since when did people sue because of the 'non-acrimonious'?
So why is it that 'when it comes to Fascism' that women's lack of principle is a good thing? Putin's Russia is surely Fascist too. What isn't Fascist? Switzerland? It feels very oppressive there despite the magnificence, but I think they have a leader among 6 or 8 (not worth being accurate about) who changes every year or two, so there's no cult of personality. But no other countries have quite had their good fortune.
I think I was going to go over too much, but one thing has been interesting me lately that I only noticed 3-4 years ago, maybe less. Plagiarisms of a couple of words or a phrase that I would put into any kind of writing if I thought it was smart. Since they weren't actually singular, it wasn't real plagiarism, but like 'pure gold' as I used it last night I had never used before, but I remember I have also never heard it, simple as it is, heard but once in someone else's writing, but in a very old movie review by Pauline Kael. In the first smallish book of my Cine-Musique trilogy, I was constantly forcing myself not to plagiarize phrases (never whole sentences and always applied to other contexts, just that they had seemed original. Somebody, writing about L.A., was talking about how all through it from one end to the other that 'context clues were missing'--'the same patios, the same leggy poisettias', all the same. I changed it to 'context keys', but was conscious that I wouldn't have thought that up myself. Although I then developed it into images that were about 'someone carrying his context keys on him', even though that was L.A. too. But I used the idea that this figure was surrounded by this kind of barren land free of 'context clues'. I did the same thing in the second book occasionally, there were echoes I liked, thought them smart, turns of phrase placed in wholly new contexts. Sometimes I used styles of other writers automatically when write about the same domains.
Recently, I've noticed I do this all the time, in speech or writing, and throw in lines from a song without crediting it (never more than a few words, one line at most), which isn't serious, I'm sure. I just wondered if it's an over-saturation of too much of everything, sensory overload that just spills over or back into itself. I have never done actual plagiarism of any whole passage, or even a whole sentence. Just little things like 'was no longer in evidence' of 'By way of comment'. But these are obvious enough that I may have just associated them with one writer and they weren't original at all.
I think Moldbug's pulling out that "we are in one of those fake periods" was so profound because he puts it as following that "most periods are fake". The first is something you knew but didn't want to have pointed out because you were living in it, but the second I would have never thought of. Which periods aren't fake? This was interesting. (the use of 'was' automatically there instead of 'is' is an example of a quirk in an author which I always thought had a strange resonance. Someone wrote a review of nothing other than The Starr Referral and said "This was an interesting document", which was in character, but 'is' actually more correct, isn't it? Anyway, what Moldbug did was something like what I said about McEwan's 'writing straight through the iPhones', and before that, Boulez's 'cultural mediation' he had felt necessary not to go backward, and so on. All those things, though, keep it from being mere kitsch (sometimes I'm in the mood for kitsch if it's 18th c. French.) I did have a troll for 8-10 years who did huge real plagiarisms for posts, but as usual, I didn't figure it out all that fast, then it turned out that most of them had come from other people's poems or fat sections of reviews from the London Review of Books. He thought it was 'open gaming', but I cut off communication.
Apologies for not having the energy when I wrote this to then proofread--at least I'll fix it to 'social mediation', and that had to do with some theories of Adorno that were of some interest, and the first place where I heard the word 'tropical' used for some parts of Boulez's music.
The other was more important (although it's not that important.) It was, seemingly after just putting it down (The Starr Referral), lor maybe almost even still holding it in her hand, she wrote "This was a curious document". I like that tense even though it's wrong. But 'interesting' is pathetic by comparison, insofar as such minutiae of style matter to one.
I kinda feel like I've already answered most of your questions. In any case, the answers are not important. Instead I shall go flagrantly off topic.
Truth is horrifying to liars. I am on Nick Land's side when he is on about this horror.
Horror is the essence of pain (or perhaps vice-versa). I am not on Land's side when he on about this horror.
Truth is horrifying to liars. I am on Nick Land's side when he is on about this horror.
Horror is the essence of pain (or perhaps vice-versa). I am not on Land's side when he [is] on about this horror.
Then what is the essence of pain and what is the essence of horror, and why aren't they each other's essences? if you're not on his side about that one? I wonder if you think one should just know this because you think they should, and that any query about it is obviously someone not doing the work of thinking for themselves--e.g., questions you think you already answered (you didn't but very miserly, as if I would have asked them had you not brought them up in the way you had) should be common knowledge. They are not.
So sometimes you're not on the side of truth, even if it's about something you consider important. Or he isn't. All I can know with certainty is that you're on Nick's side about one thing and not on his side about another. Or he is right on one, but not the other. Or you are or aren't.
*(Nor does anyone else for that matter.)
It's better to give things like this a long time to sink in, otherwise I wouldn't have finished my current project, or at least I'm very close to it--or at least having it fully secured to sail on confidently. And I came very close to self-sabotage, but didn't, because of learning in Lausanne how to slip over these insults breezily, and not respond to them till you're forced. The Swiss are past masters at delayed reaction--and my goodness! that one wasn't even passive-aggressive--you were literally cancelling me! or trying to. or joking, which I'd give you the benefit of the doubt on. Or that was at least one of the things that kept me from self-sabotage. Although this one is not the most important one (the important one was, maybe is, very important, so much so that last night I wrote you that I wanted to murder somebody with an Old Testament dagger if I could get away with it--not you, of course, you're mostly entertaining; but that's how close it was), so your little unpleasantry probably posed no danger. The important thing is that I walked away with all the chips. Several people affirmed it--to my delight, although I already knew it without their accolades. That's all I need tell you about it, because I did tell you about it in very abstract terms twice before.
I studied the post for some hours last night. It was by far the best I had read about the Covid numbers, made complete and convincing sense, and the thorny style was ultimately just right even though it took me a long time to grasp some parts of it (you are probably aware that I am very bright, but also slow. This is a rare condition, but it does happen. I know of only one other case, and he was my best friend. That is not to say that either of us have/had any knowledge of physics.) I didn't read the Moldbug this time, though. He's often right, but it's ugly writing. I took another 2 hours to write another comment, but decided not to post it, which would have also ruined me, but although you've got a more-than-usual-even fire to this post--what with the judicious but frequent use of sodomic terms--assraped statistics is certainly new and peculiarly glue-dried--and the 'truth' you've now partially told, or the 'fact' you've partially told, whatever, happened to be useful to know: My own country suffered 13% more c-vid deaths during flu season as compared to a bad flu season. I don't suppose I could seriously say I would ever have a specific interest in Montana (even though it is surely magnificent in many ways), and things have led me to believe that the images that came to mind were always lurking underneath as unlikely--I've long been a student of nature even though primarily an urbanite, and I knew about the difference in skies, but hearing what you had to say about that was heartening from someone else.
But sometimes you disclose personal things when one least expects it, and hasn't really even asked for them. I thought you were American, of course, but it hardly matters; in fact, it's more interesting that you're not, no matter what it is. I guess the 14 years of 'public school torture' won't evaporate, so they still operate as these certain moods you have, and it seems clear that most of Moldbug's satellites don't think of urban culture as anything but the trivial, because they usually see them as somehow 'leftist', which is very stupid (and probably even the apolitical Arts are 'just leftist lies' themselves. There's a wider variety at UR, so there is true free speech there, or as close as it comes to it, and people with urban tastes are not condemned--New Yorkers always are except by Angelenos, Parisians, Londoners. It tends to reveal the felt inferiority of the provincial--the urbanites are supposed to prove urban culture isn't better, although it certainly is, by bowing down to folk music and country music, etc.) It's hard to understand how someone like you would still be reacting to those things from school years ago, though. I thought you had it all worked out, or thought you did. Or maybe you meant something else. Or nothing in particular, maybe that was your 'passive-aggressive' you were talking about. But if that comment is "flagrant" (and it is), I should observe that much of your writing is quite flagrant; that's one of the best things about it. I can write even more flagrantly (possibly), but not on someone else's blog. That's a wonderful exercise for someone as profane as I am, and why I admire Nick, but don't really like him, because he trolled me mercilessly for a few years. I got revenge too, in a way he was never allowed to forget, and without having to lift a finger. He deserved it. But you don't do things like that, and you didn't know HE did things like that, I bet. That's why I always force myself to take you seriously, even if I'm feeling lazy (the comments I was so tired about are a different thing; I really wanted to say something to you right then, although I usually would have withheld them till I had time to proofread. So doing that once was a kind of trust and distant-galaxy commitment, i.e., I don't know who you are, where you live, how you spend your days, anything but, as you call them, some of the artefacts.)
I really like talking to you, although it goes against the grain of your 'ingroup'. You're probably playful some of the time, but not most of the time. And I can't be convinced that any 'ingroup' I've ever come across, other than just New York City as a whole, has been worth being a part of. You say it's 'cold outside', but I think it's stifling inside--any of them. I guess it's true also that I don't really care whether horror is the essence of pain, or vice-versa--either one of them is bad enough to deal with, and there is no life that doesn't have some of them. And something like THAT is to me trivial. Either one is a horrible reality of life, who on earth needs an 'analysis' of either's 'essence'. So you needn't answer that at the top either, not because this time you 'already have', but because I don't see how to know that it affects the experience of either, which is all that is interesting. I guess you can think about it all the time--he does, now that his children are grown, but I thought you were happy. Maybe you are.
Still, the cussing every few words was very Rabelaisian and just funky enough. I hadn't liked it before, it hadn't anywhere near this virtuosic. I'm glad you tell me (and others) about Moldbug--things we wouldn't know just by reading him ourselves--because that way I get it in a kind of 'dessert form'. I think the trick with your posts is to give them several days--for me at least.
Post a Comment