Here’s a big one that’s sort of up a meta-level from a lot of the descriptive beliefs:
Older societies/cultures are optimized (NR) vs. older societies/cultures are chaotic messes (prog)
NRs expect older structures to be very well adapted to their conditions close to ideal, or at least far better than anything progressives would invent from a blank slate. Progressives tend to see older structures as arising from a very complicated, often Moloch-driven set of interactions that optimizes only very weakly for things like social stability and doesn’t optimize at all for, say, most members’ happiness. There are separate but related questions about whether history optimized societies for the right things and how effectively it optimized them.
This is essentially summarizable as level of belief in Chesterton’s Fence. A neoreactionary thinks the fence must be there for a damn good reason, whereas a progressive figures there are lots of stupid reasons the fence could end up there.
And when we start from the blank slate, NRs expect the right answer to look a lot like traditional societies, whereas progressives believe human cognition should be able to drastically outperform historical evolutionary forces.
An argument I think I’ve heard from some of the smarter progressives (but I may have built it myself as a steelman) is that older societies/cultures may have been optimized for older conditions, but technological change has far-reaching social consequences that make those optimizations no longer viable.
The typical example seems to be birth control making sex outside marriage viable, but I must have heard it in a different context, since it clearly fails in that one. (STDs. Drug resistance is likely soon.)
You’ve probably both heard and invented it; it’s one horn of what we might call the Progressive’s Trilemma: “If traditional structures are not optimal, they must be either a) insufficiently optimized, b) optimized for the wrong values, or c) optimized for the wrong conditions”. I doubt you’ll find many progressives who don’t believe some measure of each of these depending on the issue.
(EDIT: You could call it the Chesterton’s Fence trilemma: If the fence shouldn’t be there, then either it was put there by an idiot, it was put there by a bandit, or it was put there when the road ahead was flooded. Or something.)
a) is my point above and b) is related to OP’s Normative Assumption #1.
c) is a bit related to OP’s Descriptive Assumption #3, but might warrant its own statement:
There has been so much rapid change recently that something working in the premodern past is scant evidence that it will work today (prod) vs. the lessons of the past mostly hold true today (NR).
This one is fun because it lets you say ” was indeed wise to counsel thus, but is a fool to apply that advice today”. Perhaps ironically, this has a cultural-relativist-ish appeal to progressives.
(But having a motivation doesn’t make it a bad argument)
The sage does not [necessarily] seek to follow the ways of the ancients, nor does he establish any fixed standards for all times. He examines things in his age and prepares to deal with them.
A farmer from Sung was cultivating his field and came across a stump. One day, he noticed a rabbit running on the field that accidentally ran into the stump, causing it to break its neck and die. After seeing that, the farmer just put away his tools and observed the stump, expecting that he would get another rabbit through the same method. But he got no more rabbits that way, and was soon regarded with ridicule by the people of Sung.
People who expect to effectively govern people in modern times through the methods of ancient kings are acting like those people who are observing stumps.
Progs are somewhat biased in neglecting the combined possibilities that
1 the fence was placed there for a reason
2 it was well optimized for the reason
3 the reason is still valid
4 it is still well optimized
....but the NRs are much more biased, because they are assuming that all of 1..4 are correct. The odds are strongly in favour of the prog assumption that one went wrong.
The typical example seems to be birth control making sex outside marriage viable, but I must have heard it in a different context, since it clearly fails in that one. (STDs. Drug resistance is likely soon.)
Having a non-zero downside is not the same thing as being nonviable.
There’s a nonzero downside to everything .NRs like, since there is to everything.
An argument I think I’ve heard from some of the smarter progressives (but I may have built it myself as a steelman) is that older societies/cultures may have been optimized for older conditions, but technological change has far-reaching social consequences that make those optimizations no longer viable.
IIRC that’s more or less what Scott said near the end of his anti-reactionary FAQ. (That’s also my position, except in most cases I’d weaken it to ‘probably no longer optimal’.)
The typical example seems to be birth control making sex outside marriage viable, but I must have heard it in a different context, since it clearly fails in that one.
Whut? Is northern sub-replacement fertility just because people aren’t having sex?
Condoms have existed since ancient Egypt so they aren’t new technology that the culture hasn’t had a chance to adept to yet. In fact the way cultures tend to adept to condoms is by proscribing their use.
(Not that condoms can prevent all STDs, of course: “A greater level of protection is provided for the diseases transmitted by genital secretions. A lesser degree of protection is provided for genital ulcer diseases or HPV because these infections also may be transmitted by exposure to areas (e.g., infected skin or mucosal surfaces) that are not covered or protected by the condom.” (source))
And not society has ever really practiced 100% for-life monogamy.
Everybody has abundant evidence that the world is an imperfect place, and everything in it, but we still keep coming up with these black-and-white theories.
Don’t know, although I don’t see why cotton or sheepskin condoms would be significantly less effective than modern ones. If the condom can stop the sperm, it can stop whatever else is in the semen.
No, a sperm cell is very substantially larger than a virus particle. Lambskin condoms have not been shown to be effective at blocking virus transmission.
Failing to find an actual paper that does more than mention in passing that they-re not shown effective—it just gets treated as common knowledge. Wikipedia’s condom article references “Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (2005). Our Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era. New York, NY: Touchstone. p. 333. ISBN 0-7432-5611-5.”
And when we start from the blank slate, NRs expect the right answer to look a lot like traditional societies,
There’s no clear definition of “blank slate”...low technology ? Low population? Traditional societies might have been adapted for those conditions., but they are not our conditions.
Claiming that you could have designed ancient societies better is not exactly a core belief of prog.
It’s not necessarily organic adaptation versus design … progressives can argue that modern societies are an organic cause and consequence of rapid technological change.
Here’s a big one that’s sort of up a meta-level from a lot of the descriptive beliefs:
Older societies/cultures are optimized (NR) vs. older societies/cultures are chaotic messes (prog)
NRs expect older structures to be very well adapted to their conditions close to ideal, or at least far better than anything progressives would invent from a blank slate. Progressives tend to see older structures as arising from a very complicated, often Moloch-driven set of interactions that optimizes only very weakly for things like social stability and doesn’t optimize at all for, say, most members’ happiness. There are separate but related questions about whether history optimized societies for the right things and how effectively it optimized them.
This is essentially summarizable as level of belief in Chesterton’s Fence. A neoreactionary thinks the fence must be there for a damn good reason, whereas a progressive figures there are lots of stupid reasons the fence could end up there.
And when we start from the blank slate, NRs expect the right answer to look a lot like traditional societies, whereas progressives believe human cognition should be able to drastically outperform historical evolutionary forces.
An argument I think I’ve heard from some of the smarter progressives (but I may have built it myself as a steelman) is that older societies/cultures may have been optimized for older conditions, but technological change has far-reaching social consequences that make those optimizations no longer viable.
The typical example seems to be birth control making sex outside marriage viable, but I must have heard it in a different context, since it clearly fails in that one. (STDs. Drug resistance is likely soon.)
You’ve probably both heard and invented it; it’s one horn of what we might call the Progressive’s Trilemma: “If traditional structures are not optimal, they must be either a) insufficiently optimized, b) optimized for the wrong values, or c) optimized for the wrong conditions”. I doubt you’ll find many progressives who don’t believe some measure of each of these depending on the issue.
(EDIT: You could call it the Chesterton’s Fence trilemma: If the fence shouldn’t be there, then either it was put there by an idiot, it was put there by a bandit, or it was put there when the road ahead was flooded. Or something.)
a) is my point above and b) is related to OP’s Normative Assumption #1. c) is a bit related to OP’s Descriptive Assumption #3, but might warrant its own statement: There has been so much rapid change recently that something working in the premodern past is scant evidence that it will work today (prod) vs. the lessons of the past mostly hold true today (NR).
This one is fun because it lets you say ” was indeed wise to counsel thus, but is a fool to apply that advice today”. Perhaps ironically, this has a cultural-relativist-ish appeal to progressives.
(But having a motivation doesn’t make it a bad argument)
cf. Han Feizi’s attack on the Confucians
Progs are somewhat biased in neglecting the combined possibilities that
1 the fence was placed there for a reason
2 it was well optimized for the reason
3 the reason is still valid
4 it is still well optimized
....but the NRs are much more biased, because they are assuming that all of 1..4 are correct. The odds are strongly in favour of the prog assumption that one went wrong.
Having a non-zero downside is not the same thing as being nonviable.
There’s a nonzero downside to everything .NRs like, since there is to everything.
IIRC that’s more or less what Scott said near the end of his anti-reactionary FAQ. (That’s also my position, except in most cases I’d weaken it to ‘probably no longer optimal’.)
Whut? Is northern sub-replacement fertility just because people aren’t having sex?
Condoms.
Condoms have existed since ancient Egypt so they aren’t new technology that the culture hasn’t had a chance to adept to yet. In fact the way cultures tend to adept to condoms is by proscribing their use.
How recent are STD-preventing condoms?
(Not that condoms can prevent all STDs, of course: “A greater level of protection is provided for the diseases transmitted by genital secretions. A lesser degree of protection is provided for genital ulcer diseases or HPV because these infections also may be transmitted by exposure to areas (e.g., infected skin or mucosal surfaces) that are not covered or protected by the condom.” (source))
And not society has ever really practiced 100% for-life monogamy.
Everybody has abundant evidence that the world is an imperfect place, and everything in it, but we still keep coming up with these black-and-white theories.
But many societies have held 100% for-life monogamy as something you should do.
To put it another way, no society has ever had a murder rate of 0%, but that doesn’t mean we should declare murder acceptable.
I was responding to a point about viability.
Don’t know, although I don’t see why cotton or sheepskin condoms would be significantly less effective than modern ones. If the condom can stop the sperm, it can stop whatever else is in the semen.
No, a sperm cell is very substantially larger than a virus particle. Lambskin condoms have not been shown to be effective at blocking virus transmission.
Not that I don’t believe you, but would you happen to have a source I could use for further reference?
Failing to find an actual paper that does more than mention in passing that they-re not shown effective—it just gets treated as common knowledge. Wikipedia’s condom article references “Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (2005). Our Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era. New York, NY: Touchstone. p. 333. ISBN 0-7432-5611-5.”
Here’s a nifty visualization of the scales involved: Cell Size and Scale
There’s no clear definition of “blank slate”...low technology ? Low population? Traditional societies might have been adapted for those conditions., but they are not our conditions.
Claiming that you could have designed ancient societies better is not exactly a core belief of prog.
Sorry, I meant ‘designing the ideal modern society from a blank slate’, i.e. sitting down and thinking about what modern society should be like.
It’s not necessarily organic adaptation versus design … progressives can argue that modern societies are an organic cause and consequence of rapid technological change.