If what follows seems scary to you on Christmas Eve, well, down at-bottom I’ll reiterate one final Redemption Daydream. One thing that one good man might do, to help us all.
Alas, he is surrounded by morons. So he won’t. But speaking of morons...
== Moldbug 2024:
What this Wormtongue tells us about our insipid New Lords ==
Well, well. Instead of Elon, is this the “guy I know in highest places”? Oy.
Only now – via his acolytes Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance – this monster’ll be strolling the White House, crooning gleefully that “Decadent democracy is over! Onward to absolute monarchy and feudalism!”
Do I exaggerate? I’ve dissected this nasty, ingrate “endarkenment” fetish before. Its roots and branches and openly-touted plans for us. And I tell you that Elon Musk is saintly and harmless, by comparison to this horror.
They know that the vast, educated middle class has access to powerful technologies that -- should we become enraged -- could make the guillotine seem like louffah. Hence, the very concepts of science and democracy and meritocracy as great equalizers must be undermined and then destroyed.
Lately, in his role as ‘Thiel-Whisperer‘ and ‘Speaker-to-Gullibles,’ this lobotomizer-to-oligarchs – Moldbug, also known as Curtis Yarvin -- prompted me to ponder an outrageously cartoony fantasy character --
-- the bewitcher-of-Thèoden, Tolkien’s Grima Wormtongue.
And I made that connection long before I took a closer look.
== Supposed smart guys – clutching desperate chants ==
Once again, I challenge these incredible ingrates to a fact-off!
I assert that I can easily disprove every aspect of your justification incantations! Even most of the baseline/underlying ‘facts’ that you deem foundational.
Moreover – whether or not I am right about that – such a challenge, issued by a person of my stature, ought to elicit CURIOSITY, at least in minds that are as free and sagacious as you guys claim that yours are.
Inability to utter the sacred catechism of science -- (“I might be wrong, so let’s find out!”) -- is prima facie evidence of a cult. And – given that Moldbug’s followers are either rich harem-seekers or else incel wannabes – it’s a highly masturbatory cult.
What I do know from past encounters is that Moldbug/Yarvin dreams of becoming Top Dog – or lackey-vizier to one – in the coming restored feudalism. (He never liked it when I predicted his future role to be ‘kibble.’)
== The gauntlet, the gage, the glove is thrown! Pick it up, feudalists? ==
But hey, Brin, aren’t you taking a big risk, insulting them, this way?
Well, yes. But I have five capsule answers to that.
1. Delusionals, who surround themselves with flatterers, imagine that they can quell or repress the 100 million nerdy top fact-users on this planet, plus their half a billion co-workers. Folks who know cyber, chem, nuclear, nano, bio and so on. Plus medicine and the law. They think the boffins will settle down to their place, if smacked a little.
But, in the words of Bruce Banner, you won’t like us when we finally get mad.
2. I’m loyal to the first civilization that ever at least somewhat instituted fairplay. And hence the only one that produced not only justice, but also Adam Smith’s prescription of flat-fair-creative competition -- the c-word that no ‘conservative’ ever utters anymore...
… in their rush to ally with “ex” commie-kremlin-commissars, plus murder sheiks, hedge parasites, carbon lords, cable impresarios and inheritance brats, all in order to resume 6000 years of feudal darkness...
… even though Adam Smith’s c-word (‘competition’) is what made this the most creative (another c-word) of all eras.
But you dopes would quash it, just like every insipidly stoopid king or lord of the last 6000 years. (Shall we tally the exceptions and wager over the few kings who were measurably wise? Were there even ten, across all continents and 60 centuries?)
3. Oh, then there are the prepper-bunkers that you guys keep building – fantasizing that you’ll emerge after the dust and poisons settle, to be worshipped as demigods by ragged survivors. Only, this aftermath won’t resemble either Mad Max or A Canticle For Liebowitz, pals. The survivors won’t go burning books and lynching nerds… but they'll wait eagerly to greet you, when you emerge, blinking like cicadas in the sunlight.
And yes, we nerds have the schematics and locales of every deep or mountaintop ‘prepper’ compound. (Want proof?) And those hidey-holes will not have the desired outcomes. Especially after you do what I’ve heard some of you (like J.D. Vance) openly say… that you expect to deliberately trigger “The Event.”
Except we’ll know and remember. The survivors will remember.
An aside: how do I know these guys? Criminy, Ted Kaczynski sent me his book The Anti-Tech Revolution from prison, hoping for a blurb! Yarvin would deny any overlap with TK, but there’s far more in common, than not! Moreover, both Doug Rushkoff and I have been asked – directly by lordly ‘preppers’ -- how to solve their biggest worries, like “How do I keep my security staff loyal, when money isn’t good anymore?”
Indeed, I know that Isaac Asimov felt daunted, that those who were inspired by his ‘psychohistory’ speculations included not just brilliant fellows like Robert Reich and Paul Krugman, but also Osama bin Laden and Shoko Asahara. So, sure. Sci-fi fertilizes a billion flowers. Some stink and others may save the future. Hey, don’t blame the bee.
Back to directly addressing the stinkiest flowers…
== Okay, guys, almost done with my howl of defiance =
4. Let’s suppose that – as now seems plausible – your revanchist oligarchy does succeed at crushing this latest Periclean renaissance and restoring default feudalism -- (#1 on my list of Fermi Paradox theories, BTW.) In that case, are you so sure that you will be the final beneficiaries? The final kings and lords?
As I show in Existence, it’d take a clade of trillionaires much smarter than you.
Key point. Many of you got rich by being predatory Second Adopters. Or third, plundering first innovators, as happened in every industry, from railroads to radio to the WWW to e-cars and palantirs. (Bezos/Amazon appear to be a very rare exception.)
And hence, will others (currently biding their time, less flamboyant and noisy and noisome than you) simply take from you the august thrones that you have painstakingly erected, through your betrayals?
For one thing, those second-wavers will have millions of vengefully angry nerd-allies on their side! Will you?
And hence… will those second wavers even want to keep around yattering ‘advisors’ like rabid-frothing moldbugs?
Not if they’re smart enough to take everything that the takers took.
Perhaps instead they’ll surround themselves with those who fought against the mess you dopes are making. Advisors who thereupon are capable of offering advice that’s not masturbatory-lame flattery?
It’s what Machiavelli did – who fought like hell for the Florentine Republic – till he finally realized that dream had fallen into shadow. At which point Niccolò (I knew him well) switched with agility to advising the Dukes, so that their undemocratic rule would at least be laced with some actual sapience.
And if you don’t instantly perceive where I went with that – if you are incapable of understanding it on a first read -- then maybe that’s meaningful. Might it testify that you aren’t as synaptically well-endowed as your flatterers tell you that you are?
Flattery that’s all part of their beneficial advantage – those simpering advisors – but not yours.
== What I’m leaving out ==
Oh, did I say there were five reasons? Actually, there are seven… and I’m not telling the rest of them! Not today. Because telling might help some of these ingrate traitors to succeed. And also because… well… like Niccolò, I’m not giving out free advice.
Not till I see you are definitely winning. But it’s still way too early to count out Adam Smith and Franklin and MLK and Marshall, et. al. All of whom were geniuses. Unlike you.
Or to count out the members of every profession that studies and investigates facts. Or women, who know what you harem-builder misogynists plan for them.
Or vast numbers of normal, keenly-aware human beings who know that an open-transparent and self-critical civilization remains a better bet for them than any or all kings ever were, for any or all of our ancestors.
But especially… I sure as heck won’t talk about #5 through #7 till I see your offer. What you’re willing to pay. Just out of curiosity, of course.
-------
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== And finally, as my last December Daydream, I'll reiterate a tactic for Old Joe – How he could torpedo the noxious pirate ship of traitors and fools ==
Speaking of powerful men who are surrounded by shortsighted fools...
Hey Joe Biden, there is one last, super bold thing you could do that might tip over the clown car that’s bearing down upon us all.
It would defy Putin’s putsch of the USA...
... and defy the mafioso heading to sit in your chair…
... and it’d defy the incompetents in your own party, who put us in this position.
Do this and be remembered for it, forever.
=============================================
27 comments:
Not—repeat, not—apocalyptic level pessimism. However, not only are we going to be subjected to four years of nagging by MAGAs, but also far-leftists, and far-far leftists who want to kill-kill; and request donations so they can sit at restaurants to plot a Revolution that won’t ever occur.
It all takes much of the joy out of what remains of life.
—-
Am not complaining—simply not looking Zestfully forward to the next four years. What sort of sadist would? Tell you what: if one of you becomes a space tourist by going on a suborbital flight, then some enthusiasm will return.
Deal?
Interesting
I had never even heard of this "Curtis Yarvin"
I do feel a bit guilty that I am here (NZ) with my popcorn watching the USA like some awful soap opera
Duncan, seriously? You and Tony need to be building servants quarters for all the US scientists and doctors and etc who will be your gardeners and uber drivers, soon.
Der Oger, (from last post)
You might be using the term "long-termism" in a way I don't understand. My first impression of the term is "What's wrong with that?"
It is a well documented fact about migrations that most people don't migrate. Even when war and famine are killing them, many hunker down. It takes ENORMOUS pressures to create refugee streams.
So… unless Thiel and Musk become successful warlords… no refugees fleeing to Mars. Short of that, you'd see a commercial colony up there and community rules you won't like. Take care when it comes to trying to stop that because the people who ARE willing to go ARE willing. Make their personal choices for them and you'll become adept at adding to the support ranks of people you oppose.
———
Lots of people over here worked on the long term problem of opening the space frontier before Musk got involved. Where do you suppose he found the people he hired to build re-useable rockets? I assure you the talent pool was already well stocked and hungry before Musk's money came on the scene. He wasn't even the first multi-millionaire to build a company in our corner of the emerging market. He was simply the first to have 'just enough' money to get past the early barriers that bankrupted the rest of us.
———
A strong democracy with workplace safety regulations, environmental protection laws, a strong social web (which is not limited to welfare payments), unions and an informed citizenship slows down that process, as do limits to the tax money they can get for their dream.
Which process? Acting to open the space frontier?
Please do remember that the US is not Germany. Many of us are not easily inclined to expect our legislators to correctly imagine a sustainable future that includes an open space frontier. It is far easier for us to be suspicious of our lawmakers. Seriously. Who would believe Matt Gaetz gives a damn about the world economy 100 years from now? Much easier for us to believe he's looking for another 17 yr old to get laid and staying out of jail.
Alan Brooks,
…
I beg your pardon
I never promised you a rose garden
Along with the sunshine
There's gotta be a little rain sometime
…
Lynn Anderson
———
Roll up your sleeves and "punch a nose" if you can.
If you can't, we shall do it on your behalf. 8)
I am still quite convinced we are 'generally' heading in the right direction, but I'm willing to whack at the obstacles that try to grow on our path. Lots of us are ornery enough to do it. You'll see.
US scientists and doctors and etc should be aware of a few things.
1. Pay attention to which way to look when crossing the road (driving's on the left's easier)
2. neither Australia nor NZ have a tipping culture.
3. read up on bio-fermentation techniques, as it's the only way we'll be able to provide enough protein to feed y'all
4. It's pronounced 'Melbun', not 'Mel-bawrun'.
5. Maybe wait a few months to see whether or not reGina can get her little pet Dutton installed.
6. Boxing day's forecast is 40C. Plan your white Christmases accordingly.
I have two spare bedrooms available - although I will have to move the electric motorbike out of one of them
Busy rebuilding my old shed so less salubrious accommodation for more when its finished
four years of nagging by MAGAs, but also far-leftists, and far-far leftists who want to kill-kill
I'll think it will be the other way round.
But radicals will use the outrage generated by that.
A company a town away or so produces containers used to house refugees. We can surely need your doctors, teachers, and scientists, and we should also offer your soldiers fired because they are trans or woke or don't want to invade Denmark or whatever a place in the European armies.
I’ve been beaten up and threatened before—you just don’t know the Street.
You might be using the term "long-termism" in a way I don't understand. My first impression of the term is "What's wrong with that?"
I worry less about securing the long-term survival of humanity, I argue that the way how this survival would look like under the likes of Musk and Yarvin would not be one worth living in for 99% of us.
(BTW, I don't say it wouldn't be a stupid plan to go that road - or not a dark one - I just entertain the idea that they might have this plan.)
It is a well documented fact about migrations that most people don't migrate. Even when war and famine are killing them, many hunker down. It takes ENORMOUS pressures to create refugee streams.
This pressure is already building up. Climate change, the situation in Africa, political divisiveness, the tilt towards totalitarian societies, growing inequality plus a president-elect threatening to invade 4 countries.
Think of Syria as a pattern that will repeat again and again: Failing Ecosystem > Unrest & Civil War > Migration > More Division > Politicians who will give a damn about failing ecosystems.
So… unless Thiel and Musk become successful warlords… no refugees fleeing to Mars.
Maybe we see corporate warlords in the near future. If the public pressure on the billionaire class increases, we will see fortress-villages and mercenary companies grow.
Short of that, you'd see a commercial colony up there and community rules you won't like. Take care when it comes to trying to stop that because the people who ARE willing to go ARE willing. Make their personal choices for them and you'll become adept at adding to the support ranks of people you oppose.
Yes, but that works the other way round, too. Even if the intention I alleged was true, there is a decent chance that there will be a large number of people who think that rich people should be delayed, denied and deposed. And they know, this is why you have a class-based law enforcement and justice system. And this is why they fight worker's protections and social security so hard: Because they want you to have no other options.
BTW, my uncle was such a guy who would go for it. From what I know, he had a rough youth, went to the Navy, became an electrician, worked on oil rigs and later for a large company on the world, and finally sat on the works council of that company. He died of ALS 15 years ago.
Which process? Acting to open the space frontier?
Yes, and to rule it. Or at least, get statues erected and universities named after them.
Please do remember that the US is not Germany. Many of us are not easily inclined to expect our legislators to correctly imagine a sustainable future that includes an open space frontier.
Well, only 12% or so of our legislators do here. The media controlled by oligarchs and conservative politicians plus a bunch of radicalized activists were very successful in transforming climate change activism into a form of terrorism.
Far-far leftists WANT to kill, but they don’t have the numbers anymore.
—-
Probably what will happen is atomization.
Aside from that, I don't believe that those who build their escape bunkers in NZ would not try to shift the policies to their tastes.
There will be no safe haven for anyone for the next few years to come.
Probably what will happen is atomization.
Their plans are in plain sight.
Step One: Do something outrageous to create mass protests, the more violent, the better.
Step Two: Use the insurrection act for a self coup.
@Alfred,
Now I'll have that song stuck in my head all day.
Well, there are worse fates.
I think our host is mistaking the source of the current political turmoil. The problem is that climate change doesn't fit in our natural cognitive mode. It is too slow, and too insidious. Yes, some oligarchs are taking advantage of it, but they wouldn't get far if people were not easily persuadable. We are built as opportunistic and competitive animals. To become careful husbanders of limited resources requires more co-operation and cautiousness than comes to us naturally.
In a sense, that is why we need more female leaders, because that way of thinking comes more naturally to many (but not all) of them. Unless we understand our own weaknesses, we cannot overcome them.
It is also why people like Musk are exactly the wrong sort of people in our current predicament, because they are extreme predators, whose strengths are the strengths needed in a frontier society not a fully mature one.
I also think the economic changes we need are fairly obvious within the correct paradigm. One of the great unspoken issues that the great strength of our current economic paradigm - specialization - is also a great weakness, because it implies redundancy. We need to actively protect people from the risk that specialization implies, or we are doomed, because the specialized will violently resist progress that makes their specialization redundant. I think a UBI goes part of the way to insuring us against the danger of redundancy, as does heavily subsidized education and medicine. We should be selling those things in those terms, that they are necessary in order to enable change and progress.
Denmark makes a counter - offer ...
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/denmark-offers-to-buy-us
... and increases spending on defense in Greenland.
Der Oger,
I mean, yes, increased spending, but wasn't it going to be spent on runway upgrades, some drones and patrol boats, and a couple of dog sled teams? It's not like the Danes are installing air defenses.
I guess it must drive rumpT nuts that he will be in charge of the most powerful military in the world, but he can't just take countries over because of these pieces of paper with words on them. I think they're called treaties*.
They didn't even let him nuke a hurricane or two last time. Sad.
Pappenheimer
*I sincerely hope the JCS won't have to make the call to disobey direct orders if their CIC goes completely around the bend; they must be praying it's all bluster.
Duncan those of us with skills will do the carpentry and build a shed bigger than your house!
Tony 40c? Think I’ll head to the Falklands!
Denmark buying the US? Better rulers I cannot imagine!
Alfred:
Into every life a little rain must fall…
…or… this perfection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIa2QOTyJGw
You are all WELCOME for the perfect Christmas earworm!
Since I'm up dealing with a yuletide turkey, I wish peace on Earth to men of good will. (The rest of you sods can beat each other up, because you're going to anyway.)
Pappenheimer
It's funny, I spend more time these days criticizing psychohistory than touting it. I only see it being used for studying and modeling the past - not prediction. The two great blessings of being human are mortality, and not knowing the future.
“If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.”
- Margaret Atwood
Actually, I think treaties have very little to do with preventing conquest in today's world. Powerful countries like the US simply ignore inconvenient treaties and international law when they interfere with their goal (see Iraq and Afghanistan)
Most people don't recognize that military conquest has become prohibitively difficult since the early 20th century. The reason is increased firepower of military weapons.
During the US Civil War, generals had to mass their armies to achieve significant firepower. The standard armament was a muzzle loaded, single-shot guns with rifled barrels, along with a bayonet attached. The bayonet turns the rifle into a spear for close quarters combat.
Given the slow rate of fire, you needed to mass those troops to get significant destructive power. By the early 20th century, however, machine guns would wipe out mass formations plus increased explosive power made insurgency tactics much more effective. Thus, instead of armies marching around in clumps, you'd see "fronts" with soldiers deployed along an entire thousands-mile long border to prevent outfanking.
So, not only did the scale of military battlefields expand with increased firepower, but also the effectiveness of citizen insurgency drastically increased.
A small amount of plastique that a single soldier could carry can blast entire large structures. This means insurgency tatics in which small teams can take out significant targets then melt into to populace become more powerful. At the strategic level, this means a populace willing to die and who can obtain a small trickle of outside weapon supply can keep a fight going for decades, until a great power gets tired of the casualties and decides their conquest just isn't worth the cost of holding it. So, how did the US succeeded in rebuilding Japan and Germany after WW2.
Yet, subsequent failed attempts at nation building in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq show how difficult conquest has become. So why was the Marshall Plan wildly effective, while nation-building attempts ever since have been abject failures?
Well, the post WW2 world presented unique circumstances where the conquerors COULD control the outside supply of arms. After WW2, the US Navy had a fleet if over 600 ships. One of the nation building targets (Japan) was an island chain, and the US Navy had pretty much wiped out the biggest rival navies. Bottom line, after WW2, it would be jard to get a blasted fishing boast past US patrol vessels, much less a ship carrying arms for insurgents.
In Germany, the Soviets could have theoretically supplied arms to an insurgency against Allied forces BUT the eastern front had seen such brutal fighring thar Stalin might have faced a coup had he tried to supply nazi rebels. Essentially, the conquerors could starve any insurgency movement in Japan and Germany.
In Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan the US simply couldn't deploy enough force to cut off outside supply. Anyone remember the Ho Chi Minh trail, where the communists transported arms through dense jungle by f'n bicycles and hand carts? Hell in the Ukraine War, the Ukrainians shoved the Russians out of the Black Sea using a flood of drone speedboats to attack capital naval vessels, using consumer electronic equipment. This shows how minimal hardware can have a big strategic effect due to the huge destructive power of modern weaponry. If a small amount of people are willing to die to get rid of a conquerer, it's extremely difficult to stop them.
One of Spider Robinson's guest characters at Callahan's could see the future and didn't dare act to change it, because he'd tried before, and things got worse. He'd be able to see you getting hit by a car, but the best he could do was stand by with a medkit. It sucked.
Pappenheimer
You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning.
How would that help? Since you'd also foresee the consequences of not acting?
You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.”
From the 2019 Watchmen miniseries:
"Doesn't every relationship--by definition--end in tragedy?"
Hi Dr Brin - it's a New Zealand shed - so it's already bigger than my house!
Plenty of room for more - there are only about 1 million people on South Island
Der Oger - if it all turns to custard and the ones responsible flee to New Zealand then with a culture that is a mix of Māori and Scotland the oligarchs will not have a good time
I can see arguments about long pig or the correct use of lungs for haggis
And as OGH says we will know exactly where any hideaway bunkers are located
because he'd tried before, and things got worse.
The comics usually give stupid reasons why Batman doesn't just kill The Joker and be done with him. The most cliched being, "Then I'd be just as bad as him."
The one and only time I saw a good, believable argument given (and I don't remember the particular reference) was Batman explaining to Alfred that he was afraid that if he killed The Joker, then something even worse would come along.
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