[pron]

Except for two problems: his understanding of the material is well below that of a first-year history student (he's a layman more than an amateur), and any decent college book or course contains far better references. Second, there is nothing new about his positions. They're a rehashing of the old mainstream, that was rejected over time because of societal and technological changes he doesn't know and certainly doesn't understand. As someone who studied both physics and history in grad school, his writing about history seems to make as much sense to someone who has actually learned that history as the multitude of texts about Reiki and channeling aliens that mention "quantum energy" make sense to someone who has actually studied physics. It only looks interesting (in a serious way) when you know virtually nothing. I read it in the same way I read about Reiki: a sort of curious anthropological entertainment from an epistemology that diverges sharply from science and scholarship. Sort of like a modern person would enjoy reading medieval texts about body humours or the four elements. So it's interesting to me to see the alternative constructions people who have no real scholarship make in order to understand the world around them.

[NaggingGranpa]

> his understanding of the material is well below that of a first-year history student

Met plenty of history grad students in grad school. Well-read but intellectually very limited, and very herd-minded. But, then, I did not go to an Ivy with a tradition of excellence in the humanities.

> Second, there is nothing new about his positions

Of course there is, it's just the nutty cypherpunk stuff like crypto-locked nukes.

> As someone who studied both physics and history in grad school

You're a member of an extremely small class. He does not write for people like you. It makes no sense to write for people like you if power is the goal.

Marx's writing was childish beyond belief. He did not even know calculus. Yet, look at how much has been unleashed on his behalf.

[pron]

Oh, I have no doubt Yarvin's writings could unleash something, if only because they already did. They're a rehashing of what became mainstream opinions following Romanticism [1]. Eugenics [2] was taught in numerous universities at the beginning of the 20th century. Clearly, some people can find Romanticism appealing today for the same reason they found it appealing in the 19th c., and they will find it appealing, yet again in the 23rd. The only defense is knowing how and why it arose the first time around, and why it was ultimately rejected.

If you want to read a book about the struggle of Romanticism and Humanism, read Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.[3]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Mountain

[pron]

P.S.

For those interested in a direct response by a scholar to another, perhaps less extreme and more sophisticated, charlatan of Yarvin's general milieu, see: https://thebaffler.com/latest/peterson-ganz-klein

[zozbot234]

Eugenics emerged in modern times as a Progressive-era policy. It seems kind of vague and perhaps misleading to link it to Romanticism, when actually it follows along the exact same lines as the secular, "scientific" Humanism that you evidently find so appealing.

[pron]

It emerged as a result of both. Reactionary/romantic ideals have always co-opted what they viewed as scientific knowledge or technology in the service of their imagined past. That progressive ideals may have also ultimately employed horrific tools goes without saying, and that some conservative forces have sometimes opposed them is also true. But that's my point: any presentation of history as some appealing narrative leading to a conclusion is wrong, regardless of whether it's done intentionally by a scholar wishing to push an agenda, or unintentionally by name-dropping, bloviating ignoramuses like Yarvin.

[zozbot234]

> But that's my point: any presentation of history as some appealing narrative leading to a conclusion is wrong

All simplified models are wrong. Some are useful. (And it's very hard to avoid 'appeal' being a critical factor in the popularity of any model or narrative. It acts as a single point of failure in any truth-seeking mechanism, including academia and the like. This of course explains much about the popularity of some contemporary ideas.)

[pron]

Well, Yarvin's "model" is both very wrong (much more wrong than most models by actual scholars) and not useful; we know that because that "model" was once mainstream, and quite harmful.

[NaggingGranpa]

Ignorant? He probably read more old books than you -- which does not mean he understood much. He spent 7 years of early retirement burning his dot-com loot on Amazon.

[tptacek]

That seems unlikely, since 'pron has repeatedly identified himself as a (former?) history grad student / PhD candidate, and, in various threads on the site, has gone into enough depth on the topic that I'd be disinclined to doubt them.

[NaggingGranpa]

Once the full implications of evolutionary biology are grasped, eugenics will inevitably become part of the religion of the future, or of whatever complex of sentiments may in the future take the place of organized religion. It is not merely a sane outlet for human altruism, but is of all outlets for altruism that which is most comprehensive and of longest range.

- Julian S. Huxley (co-founder of UNESCO), 1936

[NaggingGranpa]

It's well-known that the Nazis imported eugenics from Yale and Oxbridge. And eugenics was publicly defended by people all over the political spectrum until 1939. After 1945, it went underground. It never went away.

Moldbug can preach his Carlyleism all he wants. In the end, the unleashing of energy will be due to people researching the genetic basis of intelligence and IVF. The pathological bloviators preach, the unsung soldiers and scientists make things happen.

[pron]

> In the end, the unleashing of energy will be due to people researching the genetic basis of intelligence and IVF.

I'm not so sure. There is a core problem here, and that is that intelligence is not all that it's made up to be. It takes no more than a glance at the current American president to see that. That intelligence (by which I mean relative intelligence) is some ultimate power is, itself, a myth perpetuated by people who consider themselves particularly intelligent. You'd hear similar things about beauty from beautiful people. Clearly, many great works were done by people who were not amazingly intelligent, and people who were amazingly intelligent have done some amazingly stupid things. Personally, I think charisma is far more important. I see no inherent reason why any discoveries regarding intelligence would have bigger consequences than discoveries about charisma.

[NaggingGranpa]

You don't need to understand intelligence that well to change the world. A little predictive power can go very far.

In the end, it's a bit like playing roulette. A small edge and many bets will make you rich.

> I see no inherent reason why any discoveries regarding intelligence would have bigger consequences than discoveries about charisma.

It was not charisma that cracked Enigma and built the A-bomb. Better brains means better weapons, which means conquering and annihilating stupider tribes. It's the history of Mankind.

Charisma helps uniting tribes. But united tribes of many hunter-gatherers can be slaughtered by a handful of machine guns produced by boring industrialized societies.

[pron]

> A little predictive power can go very far.

Yeah, but I don't think intelligent people are better at predicting things (weighted by impact). Again, look at the current US president; or at stock traders.

> It was not charisma that cracked Enigma and built the A-bomb.

No, but arguably neither would have been done when they were done if it weren't for a war that started largely due to charisma.

> But united tribes of many hunter-gatherers can be slaughtered by a handful of machine guns produced by boring industrialized societies.

But it's not high relative intelligence that brought us industrialization. Those same people who were later industrialized had had hundreds of thousands of years of hunting-gathering.