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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26578 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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The rot runs deep.

Take a look at this paper. Here's the abstract:

It is incorrect to consider tidal power as renewable energy. Harnessing tidal energy will pose more severe problems than using fossil fuels. This study provides quantitative estimates to show how using tidal energy can destroy the environment in a short amount of time. Tides are induced by the rotation of the Earth with respect to the gravity of the Moon and Sun. The rotational energy of the Earth is naturally dissipated by tides slowly. Consuming tidal energy further reduces the rotational energy, accelerates the energy loss rate, and decelerates the rotation of the Earth. Based on the average pace of world energy consumption over the last 50 years, if we were to extract the rotational energy just to supply 1% of the world's energy consumption, the rotation of the Earth would lock to the Moon in about 1000 years. As a consequence, one side of the Earth would be exposed to the Sun for a much longer period of time than it is today. The temperature would rise extremely high on that side and drop extremely low on the other side. The environment would become intolerable, and most life on Earth could be wiped out.

Do read the paper. It's not long and it's a good test of one's bullshit detector1. For the impatient: the author assumes a 2% growth rate for humanity's energy use and projects that forward a thousand years.

The paper's isn't that interesting once you spot the trick. But it does bring up two interesting thoughts:

  • If the NYT picked up this story, do you think they'd have the nuance to highlight the shall we say questionable assumptions in this paper? Or would they just blare a giant headline stating "TIDAL POWER WILL KILL US ALL!" (Sub-heading: solar and wind the only way forward...)? Would they even link to the original paper? I think the world's complexity has surpassed the abilities of the average MSM reporter/editor/reader. Even if journalists are perfectly honest and impartial, they are too susceptible to manipulation to be trusted. Barring a drastic change in our media, the information content of the typical news article is now capped at zero.
  • How far can we extrapolate from this example? This guy's apparently a professor at Stanford and apparently he's been teaching there for some time (the paper refers to a grad-level class in 1993). And it's... pretty easy to find garbage papers. Here's another one. For a broader perspective, consider the replication crisis, accounts like this one, and digging back to the ancient year of 2009, Climategate. This is why for example I think Global Warming/Climate Change/etc... is nonsense. That we have the tools to model the Earth's climate at all is (imo) an outlandish claim (it's a complex dynamical system the size of the planet with billions of poorly understood interactions!). That we can project this model forward a hundred years (with all of its many intrinsic dependencies on other complex systems like human civilization) is another outlandish claim. And that we should restructure all of society based on these projections is yet another outlandish claim (with a side-helping of massive conflicts of interests). And at the bottom of it all are people like our dear Dr. Jerry.

1 I suppose this is technically consensus building. If you think the paper's arguments are reasonable, I'd be happy to discuss that as well...

digging back to the ancient year of 2009, Climategate

Am I the only one who finds Moldbug's writing style completely incomprehensible? He rambles on for paragraph after paragraph, smugly self-assured, and at the end of it I come away with literally no idea what he's trying to say. The only thing I'm confident of is that, whatever it is he believes (which is something I am wholly unable to glean from the actual content of what he's written), he thinks it's so self-evident that you'd have to be an utter cretin not to already believe it.

It's an experience not unlike reading TLP/Edward Teach, but at least in that case the incomprehensibility does seem to be deliberate (for whatever reason).

He rambles on for paragraph after paragraph, smugly self-assured, and at the end of it I come away with literally no idea what he's trying to say.

As in you read the whole linked article and have no idea, or gave up after the first ten or so paragraphs? Because while undeniably excessively verbose, containing frequent tangents, and actually being less about the Climategate and more about how the Climategate is yet another example of how power corrupts, it presents clear points with solid justifications.

If you're interested in something much more concise and aimed at someone who is not already on the same wavelength you might want to read the AGW section of this: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified_22/ . It is not, strictly speaking, about the Climategate, because it predates it by a few months I think, but it predicts it presciently.

Am I the only one who finds Moldbug's writing style completely incomprehensible?

the earlier stuff is more readable. he is leaning into the verbosity in part because that is what is expected of him. no one subs to moldbug for hot takes. they want to work for it

Moldbug's writing is good actually.

It is unfortunate that A Gentile Introduction and the Open Letter are the essays most frequently cited to new readers. Moldbug's stuff is best read in chronological order. The writing style is fundamentally stream-of-consciousness. In order to follow the argument, you must be primed with the same thoughts as the narrator. Nested clauses -- far from being unwieldly -- serve as clues and invite the reader to ponder the deeper implications of the content in front of them.

it's good in the sense that it's not something that the average person can ever aspire to. it is demonstrative of a sort of rarefied skill on his part to compose it. is his writing the best in my opinion in terms of style or readability ? no. there are other writers whose writings I find more enjoyable.

Moldbug's stuff is best read in chronological order.

This sounds suspiciously similar to "yeah dude season 1 is a bit of a drag but it gets soo good after that, it's worth it."

I'd say it's much more like how if you try to read later works by a philosopher they are frequently a brick wall of incomprehensible terminology and seemingly nonsensical reasoning, but only because they spent the earlier works defining terms and explaining ideas, some of which are compacted from essay-length down to a single word, and they aren't going to go back over the basics every time they mention a concept.

To use an example closer to this community, if I were to say "The Molochian tendencies of the Red Tribe and Blue Tribe are a result of the toxoplasmosic interplay between competing egregores" it requires reading like 4 of Scott's essays to understand.

Fair. The difference being, once you actually read the essays from which "Moloch" and "toxoplasma" originate, the terms are easy to understand because Scott explains what they mean in plain simple language. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Moldbug ever explained what he means by e.g. "the Cathedral" in plain, simple language, even though from my understanding it's a much less complex concept than "toxoplasma".

My entire post--maybe even my entire blog--reduced to three words. If you want to know how you are governed, this is it: you are governed by Manipulating Procedural Outcomes. It's perfect. It belongs on someone's tomb.

That's about as succinct as you could get I think. The woman who invented the phrase had a longer blogpost about it.

Also fair, though I'd just say that I read a lot of his works in chronological order, and I don't remember ever being confused on what was meant by the Cathedral. I think he did a good job of gradually introducing facets of a very large term, though I understand why some may find the style obnoxious (personally I enjoy it).

I think you've identified two keys flaws in Moldbug's writing. I'm not deeply familiar with everything he wrote but from what I've read, he strikes me as afflicted with Smart Person Syndrome. Because he's smart, he assumes everyone else is an idiot, especially anyone who disagrees with his viewpoints.

He writes like he was partially graded on word count, rather than solely substance, in college and never quite kicked the habit. I've noticed a lot of so-called "thought leaders" (I hate that term but I don't have a better one) have the same issue. 10 words when 5 will do, most of which are only tangentially related to the subject at hand. It's a sort of anti-Twitter where an idea is expanded on way past the point of coherency.

because he’s smart

Or because it’s a competitive strategy.

Insisting that your enemies are idiots usually plays pretty well. Especially when you’re already preaching about sheeple normies bureaucrats. Moldbug isn’t writing to convince.

I think he is. One strategy that quite often works with people is to use a lot of big words and long sentences filled with stuff that’s interesting but largely irrelevant to the point at hand. It looks impressive to outsiders to write 3x more words than necessary especially if you can drop big words and jargon that most people have vaguely heard of. I don’t think he’s actually smarter than the average college graduate, but his game of using words words words to make prosaic ideas sound impressive does work on some people.

What is he writing for, then?

At his best? He’s writing to galvanize people who already agree with him. Putting words to that nebulous fear of the outsider which lives in all our hearts, while presenting it as a special insight. Providing a framework to justify what his audience would like to do anyway: complain about the government, pine for days gone, and above all, oppose woke politics.

Most of the time, at least since he started making money off it? Entertainment.

he strikes me as afflicted with Smart Person Syndrome. Because he's smart, he assumes everyone else is an idiot, especially anyone who disagrees with his viewpoints.

I think there's a problem that affects a lot of writers wherein they get so close to their ideas that they lose the distance and objectivity that would allow them to assess how these ideas would be met by someone encountering them fresh. "Because I understand it, it must be comprehensible to anyone of approximately my intelligence." But there's a world of difference between coming up with a smart idea and actually explaining it effectively, which is why you need beta readers to ensure that your ideas are coming off in the manner you intend. I'm sure if this was suggested to him, Moldbug would of course insist that he doesn't want his ideas to become diluted or "dumbed-down" by making them more accessible to the "lay person", but this defense smacks of insecurity to me. If you live in a democracy and you want to influence policy you have to meet the voters where they are, which means explaining your ideas in a way that makes sense to the biggest possible audience. Maybe Moldbug would claim he's not trying to influence a big audience, but rather a curated intelligentsia who are themselves powerful enough to influence public policy. Not to blow my (our) own trumpet, but this website is full of high-IQ autistic nerds with thousands of postgrad degrees between us who are not shy about giving controversial or even taboo topics/positions a fair hearing - if even we have trouble understanding what he's trying to say half the time, that suggests it's a deficiency with the writing style, not with the intelligence of the readers.

I've noticed a lot of so-called "thought leaders" (I hate that term but I don't have a better one) have the same issue. 10 words when 5 will do, most of which are only tangentially related to the subject at hand. It's a sort of anti-Twitter where an idea is expanded on way past the point of coherency.

Richard Hanania wrote a good article arguing that it's rarely worthwhile reading non-fiction books about ideas (e.g. Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Pinker, pop philosophy, pop psychology etc., as distinct from history books, biographies and so on). He argued that the core idea of such a book can usually be succinctly expressed in essay form (<10k words) with no loss of fidelity - but book publishers have no way to make money from essays, so they get the writer to pad out the essay with numerous examples of the phenomenon they're describing, personal anecdote, and filler passages to bring it up to book length. He gave the specific example of The Righteous Mind, a book which I enjoyed and agreed with the core premises of - but 400 pages, really? Scott has covered more ground than that book in a single blog post of a few thousand words.

Probably a lot of writers who get into the habit of doing this find that the habit starts to infect even their non-book writing, resulting in even the articles published on their own blogs becoming needlessly bloated.

I acknowledge that this comment itself may come off as an example of precisely the negative phenomenon I'm describing.

completely incomprehensible

I assume it's some sort of Straussian/obscurantist thing; intentionally hiding your points to prevent normies from being able to read it.

Much less charitably it's because his points are weak & often vibes-based, and any reasoning he makes would evaporate if stated explicitly and with any sort of rigour beyond Darkly Hinting to what you mean and letting the reader fill in the blanks. The few times he has written about things I am familiar with, the content really has been rather poor – take this article, for example, where he argues that a software that is only able to perform HTTP GET requests is safe, as such requests don't affect the server content. Anyone that has worked in web security know this is blatantly wrong, as there is probably hundreds of easily performed exploits and escapes for that weak of a sandbox.

Yes, Moldbug is a vibes-based writer who has been saying the same thing (moderated or exaggerated as necessary) since 2008. That said, there are some all-time classics on UR and his focus on the 'long arc of history' (whatever one calls it) is important. Also, his impact on Thiel is single handedly responsible for a lot of the modern weird right in the US and for subsequently 'converting' a lot of high-status and wealthy people to reactionary ideas about democracy and the state.

Am I the only one who finds Moldbug's writing style completely incomprehensible? He rambles on for paragraph after paragraph, smugly self-assured, and at the end of it I come away with literally no idea what he's trying to say. The only thing I'm confident of is that, whatever it is he believes (which is something I am wholly unable to glean from the actual content of what he's written), he thinks it's so self-evident that you'd have to be an utter cretin not to already believe it.

No, you are not the only one. I can usually understand what he is getting at, but Moldbug is ridiculously long-winded and meandering. I have found that it is best to just skip the introduction and skim his articles until he starts actually talking about whatever he is talking about, which tends to be several paragraphs in; in the climategate article, I would start reading at "In reality, there’s no way...", then start skimming again whenever he goes on a tangent. Even then I don't often think it's worth the effort; I prefer the dark enlightenment thinkers who write clearly, like Jim and Spandrell.

It's an experience not unlike reading TLP/Edward Teach, but at least in that case the incomprehensibility does seem to be deliberate (for whatever reason).

I've heard it theorized that Moldbug is also being obscurantist on purpose, in order to keep away the riff-raff, but I have no idea if it's true or not.

Have you seen the programming languages Hoon and Nock he designed for his Urbit computing platform? It is the most obscurant thing I’ve ever seen outside of esoteric programming languages like Brainfuck.

I enjoyed that Bioleninism post.

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