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Notes -
On Inferential Distance
There's a pair complaints that get made here on a semi-regular basis to the effect of how "The right" lacks a positive vision/will to power, and more generally the how the whole Left/Right spectrum is incoherent. These complaints are often deployed in tandem with the old Bryan Caplan take about the left is defined by being anti-market and the right is defined by being anti-left. I disagree, and given how I've been accused by multiple users of "torturing the meaning of words" and "doubling down on obvious falsehoods" over the last couple months, and I feel kind of obligated to elaborate.
Entering college life as I did (as Freshman on the GI-Bill Student after 12 years as combat medic), I found it difficult to discount the degree to which certain cultural assumptions dominated the school's culture. I often found myself feeling a bit like Captain Picard in that one TNG Episode where the alien-of-the-week's individual words are readily translatable but their meaning is not. When I first read Yudkowski's post on "expecting short inferential distances" it crystalized something that I had already grasped intuitively but had been struggling to put into words. The concept of "inferential distance" subsequently became something of a bugbear of mine. In 1984 Orwell posits that the key to controlling discourse was to first control the language and I think he was on to something with that. As I've previously observed, for all the talk of theMotte being "right wing" it's userbase is overwhelmingly progressive in background. Being college educated is the default here. Atheism is the default here. A belief in identity politics and Hegelian oppressor/oppressed dynamics is the default here. These assumption (and yes I am calling them assumptions) get baked into the discourse and people who don't already buy into them end up facing an uphill battle if they wish to participate in the discussion. Often times I'll find myself choosing to not bother but I can't help but notice that this amplifies the problem, "evaporative cooling" and all that.
While I recognize that language is more performative than it is prescriptive what I am endeavoring to do here is something like a rectification of names. A lot of what I am about to say is going to be a rehash of things that some of you will have already read before on Lesswrong, SSC, or on theMotte prior our departure from Reddit. But in the interests of engaging with people we disagree with I will attempt to restate my case for the record...
What do I mean when I say "Western Civilization"? I refer to the intellectual tradition that is essentially a marriage of middle eastern mysticism and classical Greek/Roman formalism. This tradition rose to prominance in the first century BC and spread rapidly along the mediterrainian coast ultimately conquering most of Europe and eventually spreading to the new world. One of the core elements that sets this tradition apart from both it's contempraries and predecessors is a belief in "sanctity through service" which in turn translates into requiring a woman's consent for marriage, viewing dogs as high status animals, and regarding slavery with something of a jaundiced eye. There is a debate to be had about to what degree early Christianity created these conditions or was simply a reaction to them but I don't think they matter all that much. It looks to me like a chicken and egg type question as regardless of on which side you fall in the debate the two are inextricably linked. The venn diagram of cultures considered "western" and cultures "heavily influenced by Christainity" (as opposed to other faiths Abrahamic or otherwise) is practically a circle with Jesus himself quoting Homer and Aeschylus in his sermons.
Relatedly, I maintain that the left vs right spectrum are best understood as religious schism within the western enlightment, with the adhearants of Locke and Rousseau on one side and the adhearants of Hobbes on the other. The core points of disagreement being internal vs exterenal loci of control and the "default" state of man. While this model may have fallen out of favor in acedemia over the last few decades I still believe that it holds value in that it "cleaves reality at the joints" by pointing to real differences in how diffrenet classes within the west approach questions of legal authority/legitimacy while still accurately reflecting to the original etymology, IE which side would one be expected to take in the French revolution.
Users here will often argue that the existance (or non-existance) of "an imaginary sky-friend" or individual loci of control are not relevant to whatever issue is being discussed but I disagree. I believe that these base level assumptions end up becoming the core of what positions we hold.
I've caught a lot of flak in this sub for "no true scotsmaning" by equating the alt-right with the woke left but I can't help but notice that they seem to be coming from the same place. That is an underlying assumption on both sides that if only all the existing social barriers/contracts could be knocked down, utopia would be achievable. This is a fundamentally Rousseauean viewpoint where in violence, inequity, and injustice are all products of living in a society. Meanwhile I find myself barrowing pages from Hobbes and Burke, grand ideas are nice and all, but social barriers/contracts are what ensure that the trash gets picked up, and that supermarket shelves get stocked and that I would argue what makes a civilization.
Edit: Fixed link, spelling
You make several very bizarre claims in this post, which reinforce my perception that you basically have no theory of mind as it regards people on what you call “the alt-right”. (Pro tip: pretty much nobody identifies with that term anymore; the “alt-right” as a movement splintered years ago.) You have correctly identified that we radically disagree with mainline American-style conservatism, but you go totally off the rails when you start imputing to us views that you associate with progressives.
For example, you consistently accuse me and others of believing in a “Hegelian oppressor/oppressed dynamic”. Surely you must know that many of us, particularly those who are inspired by figures like Moldbug, are sympathetic to the idea of an absolute monarch. Many of us reject the entire constellation of ideas about “human rights”, meaning that the concept of “oppression” is not really coherent under our worldview. A common through-line in most dissident-right thought (although certainly not all!) is a warm embrace of natural hierarchy, and a consequent belief that it is both right and proper for some people to have significant power over others as a result of the naturally unequal distribution of relevant qualities between different groups in society. Some on the more esoterically-inclined corners of the right are even interested in the ancient Indo-European “trifunctional hypothesis”, which holds that the division of society into three distinct and essentially impermeable castes - a theory of sociopolitical organization which recurred in basically all Indo-European-derived societies, and which has its most enduring expression in the still-extant Hindu caste system - is a reflection of the divine will. These are not people whom you will ever hear calling something “oppressive” or “unjust”. Sure, most of us believe that the current ruling class that has power in much of what you call “the West” is illegitimate and has lost the Mandate of Heaven, but in no sense are we opposed to the existence of a ruling class in general, nor of hierarchical and unequal distributions of power more broadly.
You also make several claims that suggest that you yourself are operating under a very sanitized and cherry-picked model of “Western” history itself. For example, you claim that
How the hell do you square the latter claim with the very easily verifiable fact that the societies you identify as “Western” happily operated the largest and most sophisticated global chattel slavery operation in human history, doing so for several centuries, and did so while developing elegant theological and philosophical justifications for that slave trade, which they saw as entirely consonant with the “Western” and “Christian” worldview? If these men don’t count as “Western”, who does? Similarly, you claim that valuing women’s consent in regards to marriage is a hallmark specifically of “Western culture” - which you define is explicitly requiring Christianity (or “eastern mysticism”. Yet the Greek and Roman historians like Tacitus famously identified the pagan Germanic tribes - who had no exposure either to Christian mysticism nor to Greco-Roman formalism - as significantly more egalitarian in terms of gender than the Greco-Roman civilization. These historians would comment bemusedly on how much power women had in these cultures, relative to how much power the women back home in Greece and Rome had. (And this is to say nothing of the incomparably greater power that women had in, for example, many Bantu societies, which were even more profoundly removed from any remotely “Western” influence.) So, it’s very difficult for me to take seriously your claim that women’s liberation is something that sets “Western civilization” apart from other civilizations.
Overall, I think that you speak far too overconfidently about things that you lack the background to comment in an informed manner about. That’s totally fine; most of us in this sub are generalists who overestimate our own knowledge on certain subjects from time to time. What causes you to draw extra criticism for it is the specifically grouchy and condescending “get off my lawn” demeanor with which you approach these conversations; you seem to think you have some gatekeeping power, maybe as a result of your status as a former mod, and you seem to consistently act as though you know what people believe better than they themselves do. I’m telling you that you don’t, and that it might behoove you to have a far more open mind as it regards people telling you what they actually believe, rather than trying to fit everyone into an increasingly stale and restrictive schema whose limitations are becoming more abundantly obvious with every passing year.
The obvious counter in my view is to ask, "where in does 'identity' reside?" I would argue that whether or not anyone identifies with that term anymore is irrelevant because my post is not about what people like Curtis Yarvin, Richard Spencer, or Steve Sailer might identify as. It is about who they are, where they are from, and what positions they hold. Consider this a parallel to the recent posts on "trans rights". Regardless of whether an individual "feels female" (whatever that means) there are those who will never be convinced that the man in a dress is anything other than a man in a dress. They can adopt the superficial trappings of belief in an absolute monarch, but that doesn't make them believers.
By contesting the claim that it was conducted "Happily" or that it was the "largest and most sophisticated", slavery had been the norm/default for pretty much all of recorded history and I don't think it's a coincidence that abolitionism didn't gain traction until when and where it did.
See, this is exactly what I’m talking about. ”I know what you really believe. You might think you believe something, but I know better than you what you believe. I see into your heart of hearts.” Okay, Hlynka, please tell us explicitly in what sense Steve Sailer believes in Hegelian oppressor/oppressed dynamics. (Aren’t you the one who once stated, with zero evidence, that Steve Sailer is a Hillary Clinton shill? What was the last Steve Sailer essay or tweet you read?) Please also explain what, specifically, unites Steve Sailer and Curtis Yarvin politically; what particular policy positions would they both advocate for?
We are talking about a vast commercial enterprise spanning entire oceans and transporting over ten million people. Yes, obviously slavery was the norm in human history, and I don’t want to shortchange the very impressive slave-trading prowess of the Ottomans, the Vikings, the Romans, or the Barbary pirates, but they just don’t hold a candle in terms of raw numbers and sheer scale, both geographically and in terms of wealth transferred. Yes, the British Empire was instrumental in ending slavery, but it only did so after being an enthusiastic participant in that same slave trade for centuries before that. It’s all the same civilization! If “being anti-slavery” is a characteristic of Western civilization, then Western civilization began about 1800 years after you claimed it began.
He cannot and he will not; this is less charitable than I typically am, but from his treatises on this topic I get the sense that he hopes by force of repetition alone to cement a tendentious and sweeping thesis of why everyone who disagrees with him is aligned, no matter the level and incontrovertibility of evidence provided to the contrary. You are not wrong to correct him, but you will get nowhere in doing so.
I'm not claiming that they are aligned, I am claiming that they are of a type, and that the type is specific. The Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks might have been bitter enemies, but no one who hadn't already picked a side in that specific fight would try to claim that weren't both "communist".
I am characterizing the whole Id-Pol framework the same way, and for all the accusations of uncharity and attestations that "Our identity politics is different from their identity politics." I have yet see anyone here really grapple with that issue. Why should I, as someone who thinks identity politics is a load of bullshit cooked up by Berkley Marxists, believe in identity politics or treat the different varieties there-of as anything less than equal?
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It's not about what one believes, it's about what one is. To continue the trans analogy, you are free to believe that you are a woman but others are just as free to believe that the presence of a cock is proof otherwise.
Beyond that, I feel like @FCfromSSC has already addressed your claims better than I could. What makes you think "class" or "race" are even valid concepts to begin with? What makes you think that that anyone can (or ought to be) judged by anything other than their behavior? As I recall I didn't accuse Steve Sailer being Clinton shill with zero evidence. I accused him of being a tool of the Democrats/Media Establishment because he had chosen to join David French, Jennifer Rubin, various other "Never Trump" figures at the National Review in endorsing Clinton over Trump back in 2016.
It's one thing to abstain/recuse oneself from a scenario where you see no good outcome, it's another to actively aid the opposition...
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