scott alexander just straight up saying that his goal was to sell reactionary talking points to a non-reactionary audience is just such utterly on the nose, smoking gun proof that i was right all along. as i always am.
You’re acting like this is some kind of dramatic confession, but to me the most surprising thing about it is that it was apparently meant to be secret.
I dunno, maybe I’m some weird combination of extremely insightful and extremely dense. But I didn’t think it was any kind of secret that Scott thinks neoreactionaries have some ideas worth spreading. And it seems Scott is actually more suspicious of HBD in private than I expected. The not-denying-it dance he’s been doing for years made me think he was a straight-up believer, not the kind of guy who says “probably partially correct or at least very non-provably non-correct”.
You and I have argued before, mostly about topics like this one. About the allegedly conspiratorial nature of rationalism. Now I’m wondering what, exactly, we disagreed about.
Did we agree about the public message, with you claiming the existence of a reactionary hidden message I didn’t believe in?
Or did we unknowingly agree about the actual message, but disagree about whether it was meant to be hidden?
Maybe we can clarify this with a simple yes-or-no question.
Do you think Scott was lying when he said to Topher that he thinks the majority of reactionary thought is garbage?
first i would like to re-iterate, as i have said many times before, that i believe, and have always believed, that scott is a liberal. a right-wing liberal, loosely affiliated with the right-libertarian cluster, but nonetheless a liberal.
that said, i think what's instructive here is to look at what specific parts scott does say he considers garbage. to quote the email:
The Neoreactionaries provide a vast stream of garbage with occasional nuggets of absolute gold in them. Despite considering myself pretty smart and clueful, I constantly learn new and important things (like the crime stuff, or the WWII history, or the HBD) from the Reactionaries. Anything that gives you a constant stream of very important new insights is something you grab as tight as you can and never let go of.
Second is goodwill to the Reactionary community. I want to improve their thinking so that they become stronger and keep what is correct while throwing out the garbage. A reactionary movement that kept the high intellectual standard (which you seem to admit they have), the correct criticisms of class and of social justice, and few other things while dropping the monarchy-talk and the cathedral-talk and the traditional gender-talk and the feudalism-talk - would be really useful people to have around. So I criticize the monarchy-talk etc, and this seems to be working - as far as I can tell a lot of Reactionaries have quietly started talking about monarchy and feudalism a lot less (still haven't gotten many results about the Cathedral or traditional gender).
Third is that I want to spread the good parts of Reactionary thought. Becoming a Reactionary would both be stupid and decrease my ability to spread things to non-Reactionary readers. Criticizing the stupid parts of Reaction while also mentioning my appreciation for the good parts of their thought seems like the optimal way to inform people of them. And in fact I think it's possible (though I can't prove) that my FAQ inspired some of the recent media interest in Reactionaries.
as he makes clear, where he diverges from them is that he doesn't think the monarchy/feudalism stuff is very useful, in addition to the traditionalist gender roles and talk of the cathedral.
now do you think it's fair to say the majority of reactionary content, even at the height of NRx, consisted of monarchy/feudalism talk and the "cathdral" terminology? or were HBD, crime, class, opposition to social justice, always basically the majority of reactionary content even at peak moldbug era? of the parts he objects to, only traditionalist gender roles got even close to the airtime that those subjects got.
so yes, given scotts own description of what he found to be garbage and what he found to be gold, i think he's misrepresenting the ratio. i mean, he had to split monarchy and feudalism apart from each other to try to pad his list.
moreover, the fact that "ability to spread things to non-reactionary readers" is something that comes to mind- and specifically comes to mind in the context of why not to become a reactionary- is very telling. seemingly, the concept of "improving" the reactionary movement's thinking from the inside has occurred to him, but been rejected that specifically on the basis of how it would negatively affect his ability to spread the memes outside that community.
what's interesting is that that's not so much a reason why not to become a reactionary as a reason to not tell people if he's a reactionary. again, i think scott is a right-libertarian, and i think the whole situation is instructive of where right-libertarianism finds itself in alliance with reactionism- but it's an interesting thing to bring up in that context! it's simply not something relevant to what he chooses to believe, but rather something relevant to what he chooses to tell people about his beliefs.
Alright, thanks for the rundown. Sounds our main disagreement is about how honest he is about being what he is, and not about what he actually believes.
Still one thing I’m not clear on. When you say Scott is right-wing, how far right do you mean? Obviously he’s to your right; do you think he’s to the right of Sanders? Of Warren? Of Biden?
Sorry if this is something you’ve said a dozen times; I don’t really follow you closely enough to know all the things that you regularly say.
As for your question:
I actually don’t know what the majority of neoreactionary content is/was about. My anecdotal impression was that the chief focus used to be anti-Cathedral stuff, but I have no confidence in that. Since that kind of thing is infinitely more likely to catch my eye than the same old racism is, I’m liable to overestimate its importance.
I’m prepared to take your word for how sizable each issue was within the neo-reacto-sphere.
i would say that i get the impression scott is to the right of all three of those figures and is aproximately politically on par with gary johnson.
regarding the cathedral: that terminology was largely just popular within the very specific context of the scene around moldbug specifically- which gets at the ambiguity at play here, are we talking about the reactionary right in general or NRx specifically? Stefan Molyneux for example is certainly a reactionary, but i don't recall him using the cathedral terminology much, if at all.
I’m quite confident that’s an over-estimate of his right-y-ness. Though he is, naturally, quite a heterodox thinker.
Past conversations have taught me I shouldn’t assume we’re talking about the same thing. But I had NRX, a few HBD bloggers, and maybe a few incels in mind. Reactionaries that Scott has actually paid mind to, and had in 2014. I’m not sure Scott has ever even mentioned Molyneaux, and his opposition to Trumpism is pretty clearly sincere.
Scott voted for Warren in the 2020 Democratic primary.
as we all know, Scott has a history of being extremely honest about his political views, as evidenced by the emails under discussion.
@philippesaner also how often do incels talk about "the cathedral"? hell, how many time has, say, hbdchick mentioned "the cathedral" in her writing?
edit: and was "his opposition to Trumpism pretty clearly sincere" when he wrote "you are still crying wolf"?
I honestly don’t know. I'd expect a decent bit? Most of them probably don’t call it the cathedral, though; they’d probably rail against “the leftist media” or “academia”
scott alexander just straight up saying that his goal was to sell reactionary talking points to a non-reactionary audience is just such utterly on the nose, smoking gun proof that i was right all along. as i always am.
You’re acting like this is some kind of dramatic confession, but to me the most surprising thing about it is that it was apparently meant to be secret.
I dunno, maybe I’m some weird combination of extremely insightful and extremely dense. But I didn’t think it was any kind of secret that Scott thinks neoreactionaries have some ideas worth spreading. And it seems Scott is actually more suspicious of HBD in private than I expected. The not-denying-it dance he’s been doing for years made me think he was a straight-up believer, not the kind of guy who says “probably partially correct or at least very non-provably non-correct”.
You and I have argued before, mostly about topics like this one. About the allegedly conspiratorial nature of rationalism. Now I’m wondering what, exactly, we disagreed about.
Did we agree about the public message, with you claiming the existence of a reactionary hidden message I didn’t believe in?
Or did we unknowingly agree about the actual message, but disagree about whether it was meant to be hidden?
Maybe we can clarify this with a simple yes-or-no question.
Do you think Scott was lying when he said to Topher that he thinks the majority of reactionary thought is garbage?
first i would like to re-iterate, as i have said many times before, that i believe, and have always believed, that scott is a liberal. a right-wing liberal, loosely affiliated with the right-libertarian cluster, but nonetheless a liberal.
that said, i think what's instructive here is to look at what specific parts scott does say he considers garbage. to quote the email:
The Neoreactionaries provide a vast stream of garbage with occasional nuggets of absolute gold in them. Despite considering myself pretty smart and clueful, I constantly learn new and important things (like the crime stuff, or the WWII history, or the HBD) from the Reactionaries. Anything that gives you a constant stream of very important new insights is something you grab as tight as you can and never let go of.
Second is goodwill to the Reactionary community. I want to improve their thinking so that they become stronger and keep what is correct while throwing out the garbage. A reactionary movement that kept the high intellectual standard (which you seem to admit they have), the correct criticisms of class and of social justice, and few other things while dropping the monarchy-talk and the cathedral-talk and the traditional gender-talk and the feudalism-talk - would be really useful people to have around. So I criticize the monarchy-talk etc, and this seems to be working - as far as I can tell a lot of Reactionaries have quietly started talking about monarchy and feudalism a lot less (still haven't gotten many results about the Cathedral or traditional gender).
Third is that I want to spread the good parts of Reactionary thought. Becoming a Reactionary would both be stupid and decrease my ability to spread things to non-Reactionary readers. Criticizing the stupid parts of Reaction while also mentioning my appreciation for the good parts of their thought seems like the optimal way to inform people of them. And in fact I think it's possible (though I can't prove) that my FAQ inspired some of the recent media interest in Reactionaries.
as he makes clear, where he diverges from them is that he doesn't think the monarchy/feudalism stuff is very useful, in addition to the traditionalist gender roles and talk of the cathedral.
now do you think it's fair to say the majority of reactionary content, even at the height of NRx, consisted of monarchy/feudalism talk and the "cathdral" terminology? or were HBD, crime, class, opposition to social justice, always basically the majority of reactionary content even at peak moldbug era? of the parts he objects to, only traditionalist gender roles got even close to the airtime that those subjects got.
so yes, given scotts own description of what he found to be garbage and what he found to be gold, i think he's misrepresenting the ratio. i mean, he had to split monarchy and feudalism apart from each other to try to pad his list.
moreover, the fact that "ability to spread things to non-reactionary readers" is something that comes to mind- and specifically comes to mind in the context of why not to become a reactionary- is very telling. seemingly, the concept of "improving" the reactionary movement's thinking from the inside has occurred to him, but been rejected that specifically on the basis of how it would negatively affect his ability to spread the memes outside that community.
what's interesting is that that's not so much a reason why not to become a reactionary as a reason to not tell people if he's a reactionary. again, i think scott is a right-libertarian, and i think the whole situation is instructive of where right-libertarianism finds itself in alliance with reactionism- but it's an interesting thing to bring up in that context! it's simply not something relevant to what he chooses to believe, but rather something relevant to what he chooses to tell people about his beliefs.
Alright, thanks for the rundown. Sounds our main disagreement is about how honest he is about being what he is, and not about what he actually believes.
Still one thing I’m not clear on. When you say Scott is right-wing, how far right do you mean? Obviously he’s to your right; do you think he’s to the right of Sanders? Of Warren? Of Biden?
Sorry if this is something you’ve said a dozen times; I don’t really follow you closely enough to know all the things that you regularly say.
As for your question:
I actually don’t know what the majority of neoreactionary content is/was about. My anecdotal impression was that the chief focus used to be anti-Cathedral stuff, but I have no confidence in that. Since that kind of thing is infinitely more likely to catch my eye than the same old racism is, I’m liable to overestimate its importance.
I’m prepared to take your word for how sizable each issue was within the neo-reacto-sphere.
i would say that i get the impression scott is to the right of all three of those figures and is aproximately politically on par with gary johnson.
regarding the cathedral: that terminology was largely just popular within the very specific context of the scene around moldbug specifically- which gets at the ambiguity at play here, are we talking about the reactionary right in general or NRx specifically? Stefan Molyneux for example is certainly a reactionary, but i don't recall him using the cathedral terminology much, if at all.
I’m quite confident that’s an over-estimate of his right-y-ness. Though he is, naturally, quite a heterodox thinker.
Past conversations have taught me I shouldn’t assume we’re talking about the same thing. But I had NRX, a few HBD bloggers, and maybe a few incels in mind. Reactionaries that Scott has actually paid mind to, and had in 2014. I’m not sure Scott has ever even mentioned Molyneaux, and his opposition to Trumpism is pretty clearly sincere.
Scott voted for Warren in the 2020 Democratic primary.
as we all know, Scott has a history of being extremely honest about his political views, as evidenced by the emails under discussion.
@philippesaner also how often do incels talk about "the cathedral"? hell, how many time has, say, hbdchick mentioned "the cathedral" in her writing?
edit: and was "his opposition to Trumpism pretty clearly sincere" when he wrote "you are still crying wolf"?
Yes, of course. It’s actually pretty damn common to oppose someone without buying every point against them.
I honestly don’t know. I'd expect a decent bit? Most of them probably don’t call it the cathedral, though; they’d probably rail against “the leftist media” or “academia” or maybe “the professional-managerial class”. It’s been a long while since I looked into that side of the internet, but I remember HBD folks and incels being more interested in railing against the establishment for oppressing them socially than in actual science / getting laid.
And Warren is absolutely on-brand for Scott. That’s my read as someone who suspects he’s more pro-HBD than the emails under discussion make him out to be.
Dude’s a highly-educated polyamorous asexual working in an intellectual field. He’s pro-capitalist, but wants all kinds of major reforms, and is a big fan of nerds trying to redesign society. He’s repelled by the GOP’s embrace of outright stupidity and wants to see “competent” technocrats take on more power. Plus he’s almost white. Apart from being male, he’s pretty close to the archetypal Warren voter.
not an apt comparison since Scott routinely rails against leftist media and supposed leftist bias in academia all the time. if we accept the premise that that’s identical to moldbug’s “cathedral talk” then that would indicate Scott was dishonest in saying he disagreed with that.
the claim that Scott is a “typical warren voter” focuses on peripheral aesthetic affectation and not his actually expressed views. does someone who says they agree with NRx on issues of social justice and class sound like a typical warren voter? no of course not, the claim is patently absurd. and gesturing at “all kinds of major reforms” is a nifty way to avoid the question of which reforms he wants exactly- are the economic reforms desired by someone who says they agree with NRx on matters of class likely to be those that would be favored by a Warren voter?