Stats for nerds
3recommend
5mentions
4people
2020–2024years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The Coming of Neo-Feudalism - Joel Kotkin (its a brainful)
Algorithns to live by - Brian Christian
Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel khaneman
The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom - James Burnham
- Yeah the self licking icecream cone is a classic at this point and correctly identifies one of the problems with new government (or any organization) programs/agencies/projects. Without explicit end goals and objectives that when met will trigger the dissolution of the program/agency/project as having successfully completed their mission, they end up existing to find reasons to exist. We see it everywhere today.
For example, at one point 50 years ago it was decided that we needed to do things to get more females into universities - a noble goal. So we set up a variety of things that made it more accessible to females and the things we did were successful. The way we did this is questionable (lower standards for females, in part) but they accomplished the goals. But we still have these systems setup and the people who run them have become entrenched and organized and any motion to dismantle them is met with aggression. You can extrapolate this well beyond females.
So we end up in a situation where more and more people find a prime mechanisms of elite credentialism (elite universities) as unfair and meaningless. And our pool of elites are weaker and unable to defend themselves against the rise of populism since so many of them aren't actually elites in reality, even if they pretend they are or believe they are being oblivious to all the artificial mechanisms that put them there in the first place.
Anyways, the book "The Machiavellians" is a good read. https://www.amazon.com/Machiavellians-Defenders-Freedom-Jame...
- I think I'm less pessimistic than you are but I get where you're coming from.
According to Pareto (yes, that Pareto), there is a natural ebb and flow of this sort of national vs self interest that exists within the ruling class. In a healthy society there is more circulation in and out of the ruling class which allows those with more of a national interest to dominate when that is necessary. If there is too much self interest within the ruling class and not enough circulation it ends up "killing the host".
I would definitely recommend the book "The Machiavellians" by James Burnham for a formal survey of these sort of ideas. Pareto is one of these Machiavellians and so his work is analyzed.
- “Anti-authoritarianism is an elite value”
https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1522341844960436224
Also see Burnham, “The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom” or Hayek, “Rules and Order” section “Principles and Expediency”.
In general it’s the elites who have to care about norms and principles, and hold each other accountable. Voters care about expedient matters such as gas prices.
- I really enjoy listening to Thiel. I think I've watched every interview with him I could find on Youtube.
He's actually very deep into the metaphysical stuff, in particular he has a deep understanding of Christianity. This is my favorite interview with him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO_00POR-Po
Yarvin is a much deeper thinker than what those quotes would suggest. He's very much focused on the nature of power and he's extremely well-read. Every time I watch a new interview with him I end up buying another book or two. I recently finished The Machiavellians by James Burnham which is the book he always recommends people read. Yarvin actually invented the terms "redpill" and "bluepill" interestingly.
As far as Nick Land goes, I will check him out. I see that he tends to be associated with Yarvin so I am surprised I've never heard of him. I tend to view "scientific racism" (and when I use that term I assign no moral weight to it) as a trap. On a purely rational level I can understand the logic behind the ideas but when you introduce the irrational dimension (e.g. the Imago Dei for starters) it becomes a lot harder to defend. Thomas Sowell actually does a good job delegitimizing many aspects of that approach on a rational level in his studies that compare wealth and income within racial groups but across cultures (e.g. Chinese within China vs Chinese in Southeast Asia or even American blacks in the 1940s vs American blacks today). Nassim Taleb has argued very forcefully that the idea of IQ is complete pseudoscience.
But yes, any person that the Cathedral (a term from Yarvin) goes after is someone at least worth looking into.
