Of mendacity, mold, bugs and other things.
BingoBoingo Best preambulatory clause:
WHEREAS F.DERP issues synthetic equivalents of worthless fiat businesses fraudulently purporting involvement in Bitcoin and exposure to the Bitcoin economy with the irresponsible support of the US propaganda machine as well as the allegedly private investment arm of the US Fed, in order to allow unfettered price discovery for the underlyings in the actual Bitcoin stock market ;
mircea popescu That reminds me BingoBoingo : I was gonna say I don't like curtis yarvin / mencius moldbug for the following very specific reason - he sounds exactly like a propaganda job for smart people. That is to say, he admits some "outrageous" points, which gives him some credence in the eyes of the more naive intelligent folk, youngsters mostly. He then turns around and uses this capital to consolidate the very monster he pretends to position himself against. Stuff like Unqualified Reservations: The BDH-OV conflict is a very plain example in this spirit.
This should be reason enough for anyone to avoid taking up cudgels on behalf of either.
Orly ? The whole thing works, intentionally or not, as a fine work of Mr. O'Brien. Only a fucking imbecile would imagine that THAT is the book of the insurgency.i The insurgency is not derping with stupid books, the insurgency is the mob, amassing power at the bottom of the market fluxes in the utopian world. This because back at reality ranch, the only way to win the game is to constantly attack all the way to the king. There's no prizes for having lost the game but "successfully sieged a rook" - which is the spirit behind that clauseii, and generally speaking the spirit behind everything that'll ever work.
dignork He is consistent, Moldbag is proposing a model of "better" government, when current one crashes, for whatever reason.
mircea popescu He is consistent in the sense that he doesn't want the current one to crash. Once that's on the table, the difference between Yarvin and Dutta is purely cosmetic.
dignork More that he doesn't see how it can be crashed, so he stays passive.
mircea popescu I do not believe so. If this were the true case he wouldn't have been out there trying to make a bitcoin-killer-app six weeks after it became obvious to him bitcoin is the killer app.iii He'd have been here, long ago.
dignork He claims that democracy is self-stabilizing mud, and hence almost uncrashable.
mircea popescu I am aware. This is not a disinterested claim.
dignork In any case, through his writings I was searching for a better model, but he forgot to provide one, so it was fun to read, but nothing more.
mircea popescu Reading can't hurt anyway.
BingoBoingo I am astounded by that post, the structure and foundation of his argument, and his conclusions. Applying Subcontinental templates onto US society with the readiness a programmer might call some javascript data structures to be used in python.
mircea popescu What I most took exception with was the inane proposition that the mob (w/.e he calls it, D something) had "no cultural institutions". Fuck off, the only reason you can even have a decent meal in New York is the fucking mob. As far as that lasts, if it even survived past the Brahmin Bloomberg. But that aside, the relative success of b-a as compared to every other dickless-shitheadiv run channel on Freenode and beyond speaks directly to the superior cultural achievements and ability of the structured society.v
BingoBoingo Or that H and D are specifically "Blue" as though he has never been to this "Middle America".
mircea popescu So to come round circle, I guess he could be just incredibly fucking stupid, as dignork proposes. Perhaps. Be that as it may, he's a reasonably useful toolvi, and in a utilitarian world his idiocy does not define him as his utility does.
BingoBoingo Maybe he works as a "convenient highlighter". I've never really liked his argumentative style as he tries to put forth the grand societal argment relying on mush that seem reminiscent of Urbit "jets".
dignork I never said he is stupid, but the proposed model is not thought through.
mircea popescu De facto, in the "malicious or idiotic" dilemma you were proposing the latter. Or at least it's what I read.
BingoBoingo One can not build a banana republic by stacking deck chairs on the Titanic. The water's too deep.
dignork That's an extrapolation, but a good one.
mircea popescu I don't consider idiocy to be any more all-encompassing than genius. One can be a Chemistry genius and die of accidental exposure. One can similarly be a complete idiot in say politics and yet an accomplished farmer. (And yes I'm thinking of Jefferson).
dignork Malicious vs. idiotic problem is an intersting one: when I see somebody smarter than myself, by say +3 points, I can assume that he didn't find a solution because it required +4. Alternative: I assume that he is +6, because that's how smart he supposed to be to fool me... default would be +3.
mircea popescu This however is not supported by what we're discussing. When you see someone who displays the mental gymnastics required to comprehend the FFTvii and then fails to resolve a problem which requires merely differential calculus... What then ?
dignork It also can be a mental barrier, for example if he tries to maintain humanism, while rejecting democracy.
mircea popescu Functionally, this is idiocy (denying the fruits of reason lest they interfere with the desires of emotion).
dignork For most, self preservation is above reasoning.
mircea popescu No argument. Most don't get to serve as cultural reference points. For this reason.
BingoBoingo Amazing how the Yarvins don't separate their reasoned arguments from their emotional rants.
mircea popescu Do I ?
BingoBoingo You write in a way that the elements of the emotional rants and reasoned arguments have clear seperations discernable to readers.
mircea popescu I wonder if this is in any way my merit. I always thought the distinction is the job of the readership.
BingoBoingo May be because you didn't grow up on Ingles.
mircea popescu Or maybe it's because I killed Andreas AntonoWhatevs.viii
(after the shortest of pauses)
mircea popescu No but I'm seriously offended. The entire fucking pile of a century worth of Chomskis and whatnot "brahmins" has produced exactly 0 cultural output. It's not that the US doesn't have a great brahmin novel. It has NOTHING, and this schmuck has the unmitigated audacity to belittle other shit from atop of all that nonachievement ?! It contributed to the culture of the world less than fucking Chad.ix At least the Chadians dance and shit. Stupid ass US "brahmins" can't even take their clothes off.x
BingoBoingo I blame Husserl and Derrida.
mircea popescu Neither were USians.
BingoBoingo The USian Brahmin emulate the French, for some god awful reason.
mircea popescu What French lol. I fucked French. They're emulating a 1844 postcard sent from Paris, Wisconsin and drawn by some out of work industrial sketcher dude.
BingoBoingo More their imagined sense of the French. The USian brahamin could have done great if they would have let James starve when the dumpsters ran out of food and instead elevated Peirce.
mircea popescu Even leaving that scandal aside, consider their treatment of Buffett. Guy comprehends more economy than the entire profession of academic economist in the history of the United States. Yet... they're doing some pathetic recouping of old-and-senile Buffett now, mostly predicated on denouncing as heresy his actually useful contributions, two decades prior.
pete_dushenski At least Chadians dance and shit.
Friday, 29 August, Year 6 d.Tr.
