One thing I noticed when I was archive-binging his site was that there was a very distinct threshold (which I think occurred sometime in ’09, but don’t quote me on that), when the primary message Moldbug was trying to convey abruptly switched from “Silly progressives! Democracy doesn’t work like you think it works” to “Democracy is the worst thing that ever happened in the history of forever”. This transition was accompanied by a marked upswing in his general level of bitterness.
This is in part a strategy to keep out the wrong contrarian cluster. But yes reading say Vladimir_M is a better use of time. Moldbug does have some very good essays though.
That sounds very like using the reader’s sunk cost fallacy as a marketing move.
I did like Moldbug’s essay on the problem with academic computer science, and his rants on computer technology in general. I get more of a sense he knows what he’s talking about, rather than pontificating as an interested amateur. (Even when I think he’s wrong, it seems a more informed wrong.) It could just be greater subject interest on my part, of course.
Ten years late to the thread, but I wanted to make a clarification for people who might see this.
Yudkowsky’s characterisation comes from a good faith misunderstanding of what Yarvin (Moldbug) is doing. Yarvin is perfectly capable of separating the normative from the descriptive, but this is much less relevant to his project than to Yudkowsky’s. Yudkowsky is trying to solve AI alignment, and therefore ideally needs a very pure conception of the terminal values of humanity, or the coherent extrapolated volition of humanity. But this is purely theoretical axiology, and in the context of political philosophy, it is rather ephemeral.
Political philosophy is more concerned with the distinction between long term goals and short term goals. This is related to terminal values versus instrumental values, but there is no clear dividing line, since the long term goals are also constrained by material reality and therefore contingent, which contingency separates them from true terminal values. Since a sharp dividing line between long term goals and short term goals would be arbitrary and fail to properly capture the nuances of the spectrum, Yarvin does not draw such a line. He does not however conflate goals belonging to different time horizons, so he is also not committing the “fallacy of grey”.
I too think I agree but I think there is a spectrum when it comes to the separation of normative claims. Example: Both Marx and Kaczynski failed in distinguishing the normative from the descriptive, but Kaczynski less so.
Politics mindkilled him; he cannot separate the normative and the descriptive.
One thing I noticed when I was archive-binging his site was that there was a very distinct threshold (which I think occurred sometime in ’09, but don’t quote me on that), when the primary message Moldbug was trying to convey abruptly switched from “Silly progressives! Democracy doesn’t work like you think it works” to “Democracy is the worst thing that ever happened in the history of forever”. This transition was accompanied by a marked upswing in his general level of bitterness.
And his inability to say anything in less than a zillion words. He can’t get started in less than a thousand.
In general, life is too short to spend it working out what Moldbug’s actual substantive point is.
This is in part a strategy to keep out the wrong contrarian cluster. But yes reading say Vladimir_M is a better use of time. Moldbug does have some very good essays though.
That sounds very like using the reader’s sunk cost fallacy as a marketing move.
I did like Moldbug’s essay on the problem with academic computer science, and his rants on computer technology in general. I get more of a sense he knows what he’s talking about, rather than pontificating as an interested amateur. (Even when I think he’s wrong, it seems a more informed wrong.) It could just be greater subject interest on my part, of course.
Can you provide an example?
Ten years late to the thread, but I wanted to make a clarification for people who might see this.
Yudkowsky’s characterisation comes from a good faith misunderstanding of what Yarvin (Moldbug) is doing. Yarvin is perfectly capable of separating the normative from the descriptive, but this is much less relevant to his project than to Yudkowsky’s. Yudkowsky is trying to solve AI alignment, and therefore ideally needs a very pure conception of the terminal values of humanity, or the coherent extrapolated volition of humanity. But this is purely theoretical axiology, and in the context of political philosophy, it is rather ephemeral.
Political philosophy is more concerned with the distinction between long term goals and short term goals. This is related to terminal values versus instrumental values, but there is no clear dividing line, since the long term goals are also constrained by material reality and therefore contingent, which contingency separates them from true terminal values. Since a sharp dividing line between long term goals and short term goals would be arbitrary and fail to properly capture the nuances of the spectrum, Yarvin does not draw such a line. He does not however conflate goals belonging to different time horizons, so he is also not committing the “fallacy of grey”.
I think I agree with this.
I too think I agree but I think there is a spectrum when it comes to the separation of normative claims. Example: Both Marx and Kaczynski failed in distinguishing the normative from the descriptive, but Kaczynski less so.
I do agree with this.
Name three.