In 2021, the captive mind is an embarrassment of riches. I have
already used Milosz’s Gamma twice, and yet here is his very image—a
fellow named Will Wilkinson, who used to flirt with illegal ideas when
he was young and now drops a red-cheeked apple on power’s desk every
morning.
I do not believe that I have ever before been in the position of
attempting to read something by this logorrheic maniac, but I must
confess that I am facing considerable difficulty in progressing past
even the first stanza of this incredibly pretentious piece of soporific
sludge. It would seem more efficacious in his case to make more use of
the more informal writing style employed by other writers. I find it
difficult to comprehend the type of mind that would read such an essay
and come to the conclusion that its author has anything worthwhile to
contribute to the ongoing discussion in the free marketplace of–
*ahem* Sorry, I don’t know what came over me there. As I was
saying…
I don’t think I’ve ever tried to read anything by Yarvin before, but
I’m not even through the first paragraph and my eyes are glazing over.
Just use normal words!! People actually think this guy is
insightful?
Cargo cult ~~inttelligenc~~, ~~intelelectual~~... Cargo cult smarts.
(I loved the story which I once heard at uni, There was a math teacher who while walking always kept feeling the walls, sliding his hands past them. And eventually, students, impressed with this teachers impressive math skills, started to emulate him by also touching the walls when they walked).
If Moldbug was into writing science fiction and not writing neoreaction, he would write ready player one fanfiction, where half the popular 80's references are replaced with more obscure ones to show off how much of an OG Gamer he is.
My father has a similar story.
He flew helicopters around the time of the Vietnam war, specifically Hueys. Helicopters are still pretty dangerous machines today, but they were really dangerous back then. The learning process was an even mix of formal learning and doing something that got you almost killed and then not doing that thing again.
He described a process as such. Pilot almost dies, and therefore finds themselves in possession of new knowledge^(TM). Lets say it's the tail rotor that broke and proceeded to ~~almost kill~~ enlighten our pilot. Pilot now knows to slap the tail rotor before taking off, even though it's not on the checklist, just to prevent that from happening again. No point in learning the same lesson twice, right?
Anyways, pass forward a few decades and our pilot remains very much not dead, and now has enough close escapes that upper management has decided that they really should convert some of those near death experiences into formal training for future pilots, so that they can keep some of the new guys around longer.
So our senior pilot now begins taking out new pilots for training flights, and of course our pilot slaps the tail rotor. After all, he's been doing it for decades now, and he remains very much not dead, so it's worked right? Of course our young pilots look up to this senior pilot, and purposefully imitate the tail rotor slapping, *but they have no idea what they're looking for or why*. They just saw an older and more experienced pilot doing it during their training, so they figure out that they should do that too.
Chances are once they graduate from their trainer they move on to a new helicopter that doesn't even have the same defect that damn near killed our first pilot. So they're slapping the tail rotor to detect a defect they don't understand, that can't even happen on this helicopter because it almost killed someone else. And since most of these pilots manage to not die, they develop lifelong habits they never stop doing. In a few decades some of them end up becoming trainers and continue the process, creating complex webs of inherited habits that aren't strictly necessary anymore, but have become a sort of folk superstition among pilots within certain organizations.
TempleOS was also by someone who couldn't help but spew racism, but at least Davis had schizophrenia as an excuse for that and the software architecture.
Most of what he writes is gibberish. Usually I cannot even muster the energy to be offended.
I am pretty sure his blog is mostly there to show off his Soviet book collection.
> People actually think this guy is insightful?
Even [some](https://twitter.com/glenweyl/status/1361034821741539329) of his writing [subjects](https://graymirror.substack.com/p/glen-weyl-the-slave-of-history).
> I do not believe that I have ever before been in the position of attempting to read something by this logorrheic maniac,
this is literally the shortest thing Moldbug has posted in the past decade.
I urge you to read *Neoreaction a Basilisk* instead. El read Moldbug so the rest of us don't have to.
[archive.is](https://archive.is) specifically doesn't report itself as a bot, so it usually works pretty well. And in fact it worked just fine on the OP link, which can now be viewed here: [https://archive.is/BJ4lx](https://archive.is/BJ4lx)
this is one of those rare things these days: a Moldbug that’s short
enough to take apart. He used to write at this sort of length, but
people kept pointing out his bad logic and hilarious misunderstandings
of basic terms - the latter being why he started using the style where
he spends the first thousand words of an essay redefining basic English
words to make his startling conclusions sound profound.
In this one, Moldbug doesn’t bother forming an argument at any point,
and spends his thousand words on disconnected invective he thinks sounds
clever.
using stolen emails in a typically nasty way which is proper for a
journalist and would disgrace any scholar or gentleman
I’m actually surprised none of them have tried denying the Topher
leak; I expect they know they can’t get away with calling Topher a
liar.
https://graymirror.substack.com/p/will-wilkinson-the-slave-of-power/comments
>Marco Feb 19
What the fuck, Curtis; this isn't even 100,000 words. I barely started lubing up. Are you ok? Are those polyps serious?
>Best regards
"how dare someone say I am a reader of Mein Kampf! why, just the other day I was reading the great Mein Kampf, where it says that anyone who accuses someone of reading Mein Kampf is a liar"
I do not believe that I have ever before been in the position of attempting to read something by this logorrheic maniac, but I must confess that I am facing considerable difficulty in progressing past even the first stanza of this incredibly pretentious piece of soporific sludge. It would seem more efficacious in his case to make more use of the more informal writing style employed by other writers. I find it difficult to comprehend the type of mind that would read such an essay and come to the conclusion that its author has anything worthwhile to contribute to the ongoing discussion in the free marketplace of–
*ahem* Sorry, I don’t know what came over me there. As I was saying…
I don’t think I’ve ever tried to read anything by Yarvin before, but I’m not even through the first paragraph and my eyes are glazing over. Just use normal words!! People actually think this guy is insightful?
Can we link to moldbug only using archive.is or archive.org? must we?
this is one of those rare things these days: a Moldbug that’s short enough to take apart. He used to write at this sort of length, but people kept pointing out his bad logic and hilarious misunderstandings of basic terms - the latter being why he started using the style where he spends the first thousand words of an essay redefining basic English words to make his startling conclusions sound profound.
In this one, Moldbug doesn’t bother forming an argument at any point, and spends his thousand words on disconnected invective he thinks sounds clever.
I’m actually surprised none of them have tried denying the Topher leak; I expect they know they can’t get away with calling Topher a liar.
Hmmmmmm.
This guy’s a proper narcissist, isn’t he?
” Not that it matters, but he also lies about me—which is not proper for a journalist”
This whole back and forth between the neoreactionaries and the rationalist bloggers is beginning to remind me of this…
Sounds kinky