#1
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NYT columnist Ross Douthat name drops Mencius Moldbug in his review of Submission, and provide links to Unqualified Reservations and an article by Less Wrong's Scott Alexander.


http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/houellebecqs-islam-houellebecqs-west/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body

This does not meant that Douthat is secretly a disciple of Gnon (as you can gather from the text of the review, he views himself as staking out a center-rightist Christian position distinct from both liberal decadence and reactionary pessimism). Rather, this provides evidence that people like Moldbug are being read by writers at mainstream media outlets and that their ideas are now being slowly included within the Overton Window.

Edited by RedMaistre ()

#2
Marxsplainer
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what
#3
Online
Post rating: +++++

dank_xiaopeng posted:

what


mencius moldbug is that jewish star wars character from e1


hth

Edited by ilmdge ()

#4
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good, let the right have some anti-democracy freaks, we've got enough stalinists handicapping us
#5
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
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i'm actually writing a frontpage article on scott alexander. dont know if i'll really finish it but here's the opener


Scott Alexander over at the popular blog Slate Star Codex is an interesting case study in liberalism; nowhere else will you find someone who better exemplifies skirting within microns of the event horizon of Getting It before screaming "Nooooo" and zooming off in some other direction; and neither will you find many who choose a crazier direction in which to flee. As evidence I present "Meditations on Moloch," which the author describes as the best thing he's ever written, and a summation of his political philosophy. And yes, while a tad dorky, it is a long, thought-provoking and well-written examination of the tragedy of the commons, game theory and the problems of unregulated multipolar actors, until the last section where virtually out of nowhere he says And Therefore The Solution Is Omnipotent AI.

Edited by le_nelson_mandela_face ()

#6
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yeah that's a crazy essay. let me list in exacting detail a wide variety of ways in which capitalism and the mode of thought that both supports and stems from it fails society and the lives of individual people without even considering the fact that there's a political movement that has been making the same critique for 150+ years because stalin is bad and some feminists were really mean to me once
#7
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
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He knows nothing about leftism and seemed at one point to be baffled at the idea not just that there is a difference between leftism and liberalism, but even that there are some people who that think that there is. He had recently never heard of Manufacturing Consent and called its thesis that the media is biased towards power instead of liberalism "shocking" and "puzzling"
#8
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i hate scott alexander and his shitty codex with my life
#9
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is ok, we still have the best celebrity endorsement

#10
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Yanis Varoufakis was not the product of any *stalinist* ideological hegemony....

#11
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...nor are tankies the ones out there branding cringy lifestyle pieces as "prog."
#12
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le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

i'm actually writing a frontpage article on scott alexander. dont know if i'll really finish it but here's the opener



Hope you get a chance to finish it.

#13
[account deactivated]
#14
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Ross Douthis, Ross Douthat, Ross never catches a break 'round here!!!
#15
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le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

He knows nothing about leftism and seemed at one point to be baffled at the idea not just that there is a difference between leftism and liberalism, but even that there are some people who that think that there is. He had recently never heard of Manufacturing Consent and called its thesis that the media is biased towards power instead of liberalism "shocking" and "puzzling"

is there any particular reason why he has so many followers, who all write in the exact same tone and style as him, usually including many hyperlinks

#16
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
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Makeshift_Swahili posted:

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

He knows nothing about leftism and seemed at one point to be baffled at the idea not just that there is a difference between leftism and liberalism, but even that there are some people who that think that there is. He had recently never heard of Manufacturing Consent and called its thesis that the media is biased towards power instead of liberalism "shocking" and "puzzling"

is there any particular reason why he has so many followers, who all write in the exact same tone and style as him, usually including many hyperlinks



yes. they're from the "rationalist" community, which is a bunch of dudes who are really into the technological singularity. also he's a pretty interesting writer sometimes, when he's not talking about computer gods or seriously intoning bog-standard libertarianism so fallacious that it would get you laughed out of a videogame webcomics messageboard. monopolies cannot exist without a government?? i mean, whoa, man. whoa. whoa

#17
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they all write like they love the sound of their own voice
#18
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le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

he's a pretty interesting writer sometimes,


wrong

#19
Mike Nelson here.
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i've only read the first quarter of 'submission' but i don't actually think the satire is as simple as endorsing patriarchy. what the main character says is that he thinks patriarchy is stupid but it is at least an order (or belief that structures an order - an imaginary). and he's sort of making fun of what will happen in france if it loses the anchor of an imaginary - it is liable to take whatever else is on offer, especially when there's a minority that has beliefs. in his last book he sketched a sort of possible france as the restoration of the provinces, of a sort of revival of petty production and local culture, against the globalism of meaningless commercialism. which he deliberately tied to william morris' views (a sort of free association of producers) rather than explicitly invoking the far-right, which he insults. when he invokes huysmans in submission he does so because huysmans had the journey from decadence to an imaginary, which houellebecq finds captivating but is unable to endorse. so i think it is much more a question of saying to france: what are you willing to fight for? and his cynical answer is sort of, well, don't ask me, it's not my problem. history will continue on whatever happens.
#20
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"at least it's an ethos"
#21
Mike Nelson here.
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i also tend to think that reaction tends to sort of thrive in the corners where conventional explanations of the world clearly no longer make sense but the left alternative is such a clear negation of their identity and hopes that they simply choose to believe nonsense. and i think that is happening already quite deeply in most western countries, where the right is embracing buffoonery and vicious attacks and all the mainstream liberal technocratic bourgeois parties can offer is to avoid that insanity without positing a specific alternative. even if you look at the leftish candidates that have become popular recently, none of them really offer an alternative mode of living or alternative culture. corbyn's main economic platform is quantitative easing and public railways, bernie sanders just wants smaller banks and public health care, tsipras insists he just wants a manageable national debt. and we can rightly criticize those people for being false leftists but for most people the options they think are presently viable are those or worse. if the left can't develop a concrete coalition to win power then they really will be drifting within parameters set by others with much more resources.
#22
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +

c_man posted:

"at least it's an ethos"

i was going to quote that in that post but i forgot lol.

#23
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*sighs deeply* back in the USSR:/
#24
Mike Nelson here.
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even the 'tankie' sort of stuff seems like a comprehensive rationalization of what exists (or at least existed) instead of a critical-utopian alternative, like it's just the mirror image of liberal technocracy where instead people praise the chinese bureaucracy or something because it hasn't embraced every aspect of the old washington consensus (which was more of a paradigm than a reality anyway because it failed). an actual emancipatory socialism while being aware of the fact the CIA exists etc. is pretty much submerged.
#25
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getfiscal posted:

i've only read the first quarter of 'submission' but i don't actually think the satire is as simple as endorsing patriarchy. what the main character says is that he thinks patriarchy is stupid but it is at least an order (or belief that structures an order - an imaginary). and he's sort of making fun of what will happen in france if it loses the anchor of an imaginary - it is liable to take whatever else is on offer, especially when there's a minority that has beliefs.



Funnily enough, this is similar to Douthat's own read, with the added twist that he thinks Houellebecq's point is that what Westerners are being tempted by is not even "patriarchy" at all, but the promise of an intensification of the existing consumerist life-style of the average metropolitan bourgeois male :

"But why can't Houllebecq's point be precisely that the actual subconscious desire of Western man, liberal man, late-modern man is not really to somehow to return to a true patriarchy, where you have to shoulder real burdens as the price of your authority, but rather to just play-act patriarchy with a giggling child-bride or three while still drawing a government salary and living in a rent-stabilized apartment in a safe modern city?"

Edited by RedMaistre ()

#26
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getfiscal posted:

even the 'tankie' sort of stuff seems like a comprehensive rationalization of what exists (or at least existed) instead of a critical-utopian alternative, like it's just the mirror image of liberal technocracy where instead people praise the chinese bureaucracy or something because it hasn't embraced every aspect of the old washington consensus (which was more of a paradigm than a reality anyway because it failed). an actual emancipatory socialism while being aware of the fact the CIA exists etc. is pretty much submerged.

isnt the cia existing a condition that prevents actually emancipatory socialism concretely.

#27
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getfiscal posted:

i also tend to think that reaction tends to sort of thrive in the corners where conventional explanations of the world clearly no longer make sense but the left alternative is such a clear negation of their identity and hopes that they simply choose to believe nonsense. and i think that is happening already quite deeply in most western countries, where the right is embracing buffoonery and vicious attacks and all the mainstream liberal technocratic bourgeois parties can offer is to avoid that insanity without positing a specific alternative. even if you look at the leftish candidates that have become popular recently



You are being too optimistic. For every 20 something acolyte of Moldbug going on about cucks, there is a Chief Elk or a bad_dominicana. If the failure of the center right led to Trump, the vapidness and dysfunctionality of the center left parties has helped nurture the proliferation of (notionally) ultra-left petty bourgeois subcultures that, like their rightwing counterparts, walk in a haze of bastardized academic jargon and narcissistic histrionics. But sadly, unlike the reactionaries, the "activists" of those groups are quite willing to be corralled back into parameters set by the technocrats ("It's not too late for Whitesnake to start playing and Biden to take the stage with his shades on.")

I certainly agree with the rest of your post though.

Edited by RedMaistre ()

#28
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +

stegosaurus posted:

isnt the cia existing a condition that prevents actually emancipatory socialism concretely.

i hope not!

#29
Post rating: +

RedMaistre posted:

getfiscal posted:

i also tend to think that reaction tends to sort of thrive in the corners where conventional explanations of the world clearly no longer make sense but the left alternative is such a clear negation of their identity and hopes that they simply choose to believe nonsense. and i think that is happening already quite deeply in most western countries, where the right is embracing buffoonery and vicious attacks and all the mainstream liberal technocratic bourgeois parties can offer is to avoid that insanity without positing a specific alternative. even if you look at the leftish candidates that have become popular recently

You are being too optimistic. For every 20 something acolyte of Moldbug going on about cucks, there is a Chief Elk or a bad_dominicana. If the failure of the center right led to Trump, the vapidness and dysfunctionality of the center left parties has helped nurtured the proliferation of (notionally) ultra-left petty bourgeois subcultures that, like their rightwing counterparts, walk in a haze of bastardized academic jargon and narcissistic histrionics. But sadly, unlike the reactionaries, the "activists" of those groups are quite willing to be corralled back into parameters set by the technocrats ("It's not too late for Whitesnake to start playing and Biden to take the stage with his shades on.")

I certainly agree with the rest of your post though.



I don't know who these people are but I don't like them.

#30
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getfiscal posted:

even the 'tankie' sort of stuff seems like a comprehensive rationalization of what exists (or at least existed) instead of a critical-utopian alternative.....an actual emancipatory socialism while being aware of the fact the CIA exists etc. is pretty much submerged.



To me, the concern here is misplaced. The ultimate lesson of "tankie sort of stuff" is to be done with all political utopias while at the same knowing that, pace the recurring chorus of all anti--utopianists, this disillusionment does not detract from the value of what has been done. To be a "tankie" is to know that the failure of the millennium to arrive does not free us from the violence of historical necessity or absolve us from the task of reconstruction. Its to know that wars and revolutions are suffered through, and cleaned up, individually but always only "occur when the necessity of the case requires (Hegel)" not because of the "force" of ideology; nor can their occurrence be held back by anyone's good intentions. The political discourse of this or that hegemony (or would be hegemony) can at best, like Moses, help release springs that they themselves did not create while enroute to a land they will never dwell in. Expecting anything more of them is to be as much unjust to ourselves as to them.

This is in part simply a restatement, with the confirmation of a 150+ of subsequent historical experience, of the judgement upon the limitations of political thinking (which includes the demand for the imposition of some subjectively conceived "critical" alternative) that Marx expressed in his The King of Prussia and Social Reform By a Prussian:

β€œThe principle of politics is the will. The more one-sided – i.e., the more prefect – political understanding is, the more completely it puts its faith in the omnipotence of the will, the blinder it is towards the natural and spiritual limitations of the will.”

Edited by RedMaistre ()

#31
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"Their error is that they know nothing good here: all they care for is something else to which they will at some future time apply themselves: yet, this world, to those that have known it once, must be the starting-point of the pursuit: arrived here from out of the divine nature, they must inaugurate their effort by some earthly correction."

From Against the Gnostics by Plotinus
#32
Occupied Aztlan
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rude
#33
hi
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babyhueypnewton posted:

I don't know who these people are but I don't like them.

Marxism is for white dudebros, the Palestinian struggle is anti-black, Castro is a repressive white dictator, Zionism isn't settler colonialism and Beyonce is the greatest living revolutionary.

hth.

EDIT: updated with links.

Edited by HenryKrinkle ()

#34
Post rating: +++++

HenryKrinkle posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:
I don't know who these people are but I don't like them.
Marxism is for white dudebros, the Palestinian struggle is anti-black, Castro is a repressive white dictator, Zionism isn't settler colonialism and Beyonce is the greatest living revolutionary.

hth.

EDIT: updated with links.


i love the ivy league grads who get paid by online content producers to write articles about how female pop stars are emancipatory revolutionary agents, an idea so stupid only children could take it seriously, but since these ppl went to elite schools in amerikkka they justify it with a lot of pretty language, reference bourdieu and spivak, etc

occaisionally i understand the urge to become a nick land retard and say we deserve the capitalism that will kill us,


I want to fuck the rich blogger girls, i want them to choke me and spit on me, I wANT TO MEET THEIR FATHER HELLO I AM YOUR FUTURE SON LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME IM COVERDIN SHIT, LOOK WHAT YOUVE DONE TO ME EBEORIETEMETHHPITI

#35
Post rating: +

HenryKrinkle posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

I don't know who these people are but I don't like them.

Marxism is for white dudebros, the Palestinian struggle is anti-black, Castro is a repressive white dictator, Zionism isn't settler colonialism and Beyonce is the greatest living revolutionary.

hth.

EDIT: updated with links.


Yikes!

#36
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piss posted:

HenryKrinkle posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:
I don't know who these people are but I don't like them.
Marxism is for white dudebros, the Palestinian struggle is anti-black, Castro is a repressive white dictator, Zionism isn't settler colonialism and Beyonce is the greatest living revolutionary.

hth.

EDIT: updated with links.

i love the ivy league grads who get paid by online content producers to write articles about how female pop stars are emancipatory revolutionary agents, an idea so stupid only children could take it seriously, but since these ppl went to elite schools in amerikkka they justify it with a lot of pretty language, reference bourdieu and spivak, etc

occaisionally i understand the urge to become a nick land retard and say we deserve the capitalism that will kill us,


I want to fuck the rich blogger girls, i want them to choke me and spit on me, I wANT TO MEET THEIR FATHER HELLO I AM YOUR FUTURE SON LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME IM COVERDIN SHIT, LOOK WHAT YOUVE DONE TO ME EBEORIETEMETHHPITI



Boy, that was sure a sharp turn at the end! Yikes!

#37
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Horny Leftist: do u have any condom
#38
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +

piss posted:

HenryKrinkle posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:
I don't know who these people are but I don't like them.
Marxism is for white dudebros, the Palestinian struggle is anti-black, Castro is a repressive white dictator, Zionism isn't settler colonialism and Beyonce is the greatest living revolutionary.

hth.

EDIT: updated with links.

i love the ivy league grads who get paid by online content producers to write articles about how female pop stars are emancipatory revolutionary agents, an idea so stupid only children could take it seriously, but since these ppl went to elite schools in amerikkka they justify it with a lot of pretty language, reference bourdieu and spivak, etc



*gets nose job*
*struts around in underwear*
*sings about going to the club and getting some monster dick*
*is Lenin*

#39
[account deactivated]
#40
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +
the "neoreactionary" movement (here i should also use "movement" in scare quotes because it's a completely negligible number of dudes who post on the internet) actually largely grew out of the "rationalist" movement (a slightly less negligible number of dudes with a sympathetic ear from the STEM dorko demographic but who have yet to do or affect anything whatsoever). "rationalist" is in scare quotes for many reasons, but the short answer is that despite being guys who Fucking Love Science, whenever actual science comes up against their beliefs, they declare that science is wrong.

this will take a sec, but i'm not even talking about anything particularly controversial in science, either. like, according to Rationalism, let's say a man comes up to you and says give me one dollar or i will torture one gazillion simulations of you in the Matrix for a gazillion years. obviously the chances of the Matrix existing and this guy really being an AI and having the ability to torture anybody in it is extremely small, but then you balance that against the gazillion years of a gazillion yous' torture and the likelihood that you're really one of the simulations and it seems Logical and moral to give him a dollar to prevent it. this is a serious thing they think and talk about.

if that isn't enough, the actual number they like to use is creating "3^^^3" simulations, which without going into to much math is a number so impossibly vast it cannot have any relevance to anything even on a cosmic scale. for example, there are estimated about 10^80 (1 with 80 zeroes behind it) particles in the the universe. If it needed only a single particle for each simulation and could run one perfect simulation at every smallest possible interval (10^-44 sec) every second (10^7 seconds/year) then by the heat death of the universe (10^100 years) you could run 10^229 simulations. that exponent has three digits. 3^^^3 is 10^trillions of digits. it is thereby physically impossible for any computer to do this number of simulations no matter how large or fast it is. their response is that we don't know if physics is like, wrong, maaan

Edited by le_nelson_mandela_face ()