Optimizing for truth

So I wrote about different kinds of reactionaries. I'm quite happy it created a lot of buzz, got thousands of visits, and a lot of links from people I didn't know about. We all love to talk about ourselves.

Alas I'm not about to categorize our beliefs and let them be happily everafter. I want closure. I'm annoying like that.

So we all know what we hate. Liberalism. The equality cult. But what are we for?

Some people just want heavenly bliss:

If it means a choice between living in a traditional civilization geared toward the spiritual health of its citizens or living in a barbaric society geared toward the physical wellbeing of its inhabitants, I would choose the first, even sans penicillin. As has been said, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)

Some care about their racial brethren:

Whites must return to quality learning, quality thinking, and quality behavior. This won’t guarantee prosperity- that is hard to come by these days for anybody- but it will provide dignity and self-respect, which a jet ski can’t.

And others want to maximize intelligence, people be damned. And they give links to what is coming:

Breakthrough in a theory of intelligence might enable a quasi human AI.  (This is mindblowing shit)

The importance of the Higgs boson. 

Experiment tries to build a perpetual motion machine. 

What do these three positions have in common? Only that they regard the equality cult as working against their goals. The faith addicts believe that the equality cult breaks the authority of God and the religious hierarchy, which breaks the ground for spiritual health.

Ethno-nationalists believe that progressivism undermines tribal solidarity by outlawing discrimination and giving power to individuals who can't handle themselves. Without the natural laws of tribal organization, hierarchy, a certain amount of xenophobia, patriarchy, etc. society crumbles in disorder.

Singularitarians believe that the equality cult is taking resources from intelligence maximization into caring for unintelligent animals which produce nothing of worth. They believe you need free markets to set up a system in which people are forced to behave rationally and maximize total intelligence, hence techno-capitalists. The sort of society that would result from rationalizing free markets is beyond the point. People suck anyway.

Now I focus on attacking techno-capitalists. Why? Well the traditionalists position is self-refuting. Sorry fellas. If you think that where there is an altar there is civilization, you have a pretty low threshold for civilization. You can keep your sanctimonious highs for yourself, and get stoned with your spiritual health.

Ethno-nationalism sounds good, very good really. But it is not feasible anymore. Nationalism isn't some natural law of human societies. It is a particular historical phenomenon where modern polities acquired the means to fool their subjects into believing they were part of the same tribe.  David Friedman has this paper on how you can derive the size and nature of a polity by its system of taxation. By depending on income tax, i.e. taxes on labor, states have an incentive to produce a cohesive, monocultural populace that will not want to migrate, i.e. deprive the state of their income taxes. Of course that's not all the story, but you get the point. Nations were artificially made through massive state propaganda. States today have no incentive for that. They live off financial engineering. Ergo ethno-nationalism is not going to happen. QED.

So the only plausible way out of demotism is techno-capitalism. Now let's see techno-capitalism from two sides.

One is the moral side. Techno-capitalism is in some sense a sort of religion, in that it postules a purpose for human existence. Nick Land put it square by talking of optimizing for intelligence. Humans are purpose driven animals, and the withering of traditional religion meant people just didn't know what to do with their lives. What to strive for. Nationalism for a while became a good replacement, an even better replacement than the original, by channelling the most basic human purpose of them all: advancement of the tribe. Of course tribalism is zero-sum, and quite dangerous given the firepower of the industrial age. So after WW2 it was understood that human purpose was to be found in individual utilitarianism. Hedonism. It feels good, but few people can handle it, and if taken to its logical conclusion it destroys you, and society.

We still have no good alternative, but if you listen to what many intelligent people say, there is this common thread that the better people don't seek pleasure. They seek truth. Why do we write blogs, and read others, spending hours and hours every week? Because we feel good by contributing to what we think is discovering the truth. In an amoral world, truth-seeking is one of the few places where an intelligent man can pursue the moral high ground. Well, truth-seeking taking to its extreme is intelligence maximization.

So the moral foundation of techno-capitalism is solid. It is hard not to feel excited reading those science articles linked above. And even if further technological progress might produce the AI singularity, bringing forth Skynet and Terminators, what is the alternative? Kim Kardashian and Kanye West? Or a "traditional civilization geared toward the spiritual health of its citizens"? Good luck with that. You can have intelligent people feeling good by discovering the truth, or you can have them beating each other in the sanctimony treadmill until they unleash the leftist singularity and go Pol Pot. There's nothing in between.

In my view argument against techno-capitalism goes against the right half of the term, that is capitalism. The question is, does capitalism, and the concentration of wealth it produces,  enable intelligent maximization? Or it does it inevitably degenerate in an unequal society where cronies become lazy and just use their resources to stay on top and keep everyone else in the bottom? What is hierarchy and does it always work? Are free markets self-sustaining? Leftism has momentum inherent to it, momentum which in the end brings over the leftist singularity. Does libertarianism have momentum though? Or is it self-defeating? My impression is that it is. I will try to elaborate in a later post. The keyword is Korea before 1910.

This was worth waiting for -- it's great. My problem begins with this: "In my view argument against techno-capitalism goes against the right half of the term, that is capitalism." At least in part, that's an artifact of an imbalance in the term you've picked. 'Capitalism' is irreducibly technical (or techno-scientific) and commercial, which is to say that it summarizes 'techno-commerce'. Your objection, strictly speaking, is an anti-commercial rather than anti-capitalist one, suspicious of market dynamics as the principle driver of technical innovation. Clearly, you work is cut out for you there, because -- quite apart from any cybernetic argument demonstrating that catallactic commerce maximizes economic feedback intensity -- the historical complicity of technological explosion with market-oriented social processes is overwhelmingly strong. The old (and now forgotten) growth-positive communist model was exactly the attempt to retain technological advance without a market-based economic infrastructure, and the failure of this project was spectacular. The era of consumer computing destroyed communism, because the Soviet heartland could not do Cyberspace. I don't think this is a controversial conclusion. Fascism is more flexible, of course, and precisely because it subordinates markets to a more sophisticated system of controls, it also proves itself more technologically adept. Insofar as it works, it preserves a capitalist (i.e. techno-commercial) social motor, and to the degree that it impairs this -- which it is bound to, to some extent -- it falls prey to socialist dysfunction. Economic momentum is inextricable from commercialism. Political momentum is something else, as you say, which is why a Left Singularity is even imaginable. I'm sure you'd agree that Left Singularity is dramatically incompetent, as far as technological development is concerned. In the short term at least, its popularity is unaffected by that. If there was an anti-commercialism that works, we'd know it by now.

Here are my thoughts on neoreaction and Christianity: http://occamsrazormag.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/is-christianity-inherently-left-wing-and-egalitarian/

"the historical complicity of technological explosion with market-oriented social processes is overwhelmingly strong." I don't contest that. Nor am I pushing for fascism. I'm not pushing for anything really, I'm just trying to think what is likely to happen. The (relatively) free markets since the 1980s have unleashed a technological revolution, which has caused a profound societal change. It's pretty obvious that plutocratic rule has come back. Given that the conditions aren't just there for another socialist rebellion (Western societies are older and less homogeneous, there is no USSR to coordinate, Jews don't give a shit anymore), it is fair to say that the plutocrats have a free hand. The free markets have produced a plutocracy. Will the plutocrats push for ever freer markets? Or will they push for Brazilization? Will Fnargl go on being Fnargl? Or did he only became Fnargl because it was his only way of achieving power in a demotist system? Creative destruction is scary business, I just wonder how sustainable it is.

Which relate how with this post?

I was responding to this post and then got distracted.... Capitalism can and often does have great feedback loops but seems to be a great leveler. Instead of having a grand vision of where to go, capitalism operates in small blind steps. Sure, the "grand vision" can be misguided, as with Marxists, but some vision is probably preferable to no vision. Capitalism seems to work best when steered by higher caliber people, such as the old WASPs in America or the 19th century Liberals one finds in Trollope's novels.

"Creative destruction is scary business, I just wonder how sustainable it is." Exactly!

"truth-seeking taking to its extreme is intelligence maximization." Well. Is it? The men who clothed you, provide you with all you consume, warm you, made the house around you and the machine you type on, the networks that carry your words seem to have found truth in achievements. Granted for which you give them money. Let's not forget farmers. You do eat. And lets not forget the armed Helots - soldiers, police, spies who count - who also undergird all by standing sentinel and acting as necesary in the interests of the rest. I have no use for this decaying, degenerate corpse of a government. The worst of tyrants mad and impotent. However if you're the alternative I'm very glad I'm an armed Helot, from the very backbone of Armed Helotry. I consider myself these days a small "r" reactionary - that is we'll do without the racism, thanks. It was no great leap for the Left to decide that whites who disagree with them are the new niggers, and it's already no leap for you, it's in the compact.

It is inaccurate to think free market as the cause of plutocracy. Any system has the tendency to corrupt under power grab; plutocracy is just the particular manifestation of power grab corruption under free market system. Plutocracy relies heavily on political regulation of economy, which is a violation of free market. No, free market plutocracy doesn't push for free market, rather it try to limit its freedom. But since it survives in the name of free market, it cannot go too far in it, not without the help of other anti free market ideologies. Free market plutocracy seems more lenient and has a less destructive healing process than other systems human has tried.

"The free markets have produced a plutocracy." -- I'm not going to dogmatically negate that thesis, but it's at least questionable. The plutocracy that is evidently entrenching itself today owes much to the revolving door between 'private' too-big-to-fail financial conglomerates and 'public' regulatory authorities and other political positions. It seems at its strongest where market disciplines are weakest. Is it reasonable, then, to attribute the phenomenon entirely to commercial dynamics?

Sorry to repeat so much of your argument (in the comment below) -- I was dithering around so long that I missed your remarks. They're very sound.

Well the traditionalists position is self-refuting. Sorry fellas. If you think that where there is an altar there is civilization, you have a pretty low threshold for civilization.

Well, that was a rather low blow. To notice that an altar is a sufficient condition for civilization, or even to aver that it is a necessary condition for civilization, is neither an admission that civilizations are all the same, nor that the barest level of civilization is "good enough" for de Maistre or those who dare quote him. So you do recognize the necessity of religious traditionalism?

The sort of society that would result from rationalizing free markets is beyond the point. People suck anyway.

and...

So after WW2 it was understood that human purpose was to be found in individual utilitarianism. Hedonism. It feels good, but few people can handle it, and if taken to its logical conclusion it destroys you, and society.

Even hyper-rational techno capitalists care about the kind of society they inhabit, don't they? Aren't we all at least just a teeny bit Speciesist? I think neoreaction does (must) accept the "realism" of local customs, traditions, religions, and mores as a coherent (more or less) set of (more or less) slowly adaptive memes that solve underdetermined, very complex social problems--problems which would render a group less fit or extinct--and not see them, as the Marxists would have it, as a largely cynical ploy to allow the Oppressor Class to oppress the Oppressed. Obviously not all such "sets" are equally coherent, nor a fortiori do they all line up equally with the remainder of observable (yet currently officially denied) reality: social hierarchy, sex difference, race/group difference, microeconomics, etc. But those "Meme Sets" which do better so line up have, it is undeniable, done a pretty amazing job of presenting at least pretty good solutions _to complex social problems which in their limit tend to get a lot of people killed. So it seems, Spandrell, you admit that unfettered techno-capitalism unleashed on humanity has the potential to do as much damage on society as liberalism has done. Perhaps more, being more efficient. This is not surprising because capitalism itself arises out of the hyper-rationalism of the Enlightenment. Capitalism unconstrained, like equality unconstrained, like liberty unconstrained have predictably devastating social consequences. But the toxin in the mix is the "unconstrained" part. And religious traditionalism is the natural constraint to ideologies gone wild. Remember social problems are underdetermined in potentially chaotic space (Pol Pot great example), so there are many _pretty good_ solutions, but none which can be calculated a priori by brute force... i.e., by pure rationalism. So in a sense, and I think you admit this, reaction _needs_ religious traditionalists on board. I know that's a drag. Singulatarianism does not give us a boner, of course, but we're perfectly happy with natural increases in secure, effecting, and not insane government._

Hate to pile on but I agree with Land and Baker. Plutocracy, where it exists, is evidence that markets are not free, whether or not they are nominally "Capitalist". Free markets require (more or less) sound money and (more or less) low barriers to entry--neither of which we have had in the industrialized West for a long time. The computer tech revolution was due to low (state-imposed) barriers to entry and (probably more to) laws of semi-conductor physics. But it is, if anything, an exception that proves the rule. State Capitalism, trading on government force to win elections (and vice-versa), acts generally against free markets and is a long-term stranglehold on technological development.

Breakthrough in a theory of intelligence might enable a quasi human AI. (This is mindblowing shit)

There, I fixed it for you. These are not science articles, but vapid effusions of starry-eyed scientism garbled by half-educated 'science journalists' writing specifically with the intention of blowing unsuspecting minds. Too much enthusiasm is a dead giveaway. I advise strongly against reading such stuff.

They live off financial engineering.

We'll see how long the party lasts. I seem to remember that late Imperial Rome used to live off financial engineering, which in those simpler times took the shape of the debasement of coinage and other equally crude measures. The money economy tanked, serfdom exploded and subsistence farming cum stationary bandits was in. The Soviet Union used to live off a kind of financial engineering too, pumping capital from the consumer sector and agriculture into its military-industrial complex by means of price management, supply restrictions, forced savings and maintaining a firewall between the consumer currency (cash roubles) and the industrial currency (credit roubles). When those sectors were pumped dry, energy exports propped the system up for a while; eventually an external price shock finished it off.

If you are primarily concerned with technological progress, as I am, then you should probably be concerned about saving the white gene pool. Whites are currently a pathetic and degenerate people, but we do have a proven *historical* track record of technological and scientific innovation that is unsurpassed. It hasn't been that long since that period of innovation so the genetic potential has not yet been lost. White decadence is mostly spiritual, moral and cultural, rather than genetic. But that gene pool is under threat as minorities with no track record of scientific innovation overwhelm formerly innovative countries like Britain and the United States. East Asians appear to be more intelligent than white people (on average) and they are certainly more vital and less degenerate at present. But their track record of technological innovation is not quite as good as that of Europeans. Furthermore, innovation is not a zero sum game; it is more beneficial to have two or more centers of innovation, rather than just one. Multiple centers of innovation can feed off each other and accelerate innovation, as well as serving as backups in case another civilization goes crazy the way Western civilization did. Additionally, different human population groups think differently. It goes beyond just IQ to many different measurable aspects of personality and cognition. We don't fully understand what factors lead to innovation, but it is exceedingly likely that they are real, measurable and heritable. We do know which population groups have a track record of innovation and which ones don't. When a historically innovative gene pool is subsumed into a historically non-innovative gene pool, something of value may be lost. I'm an ethno nationalist not because I hate minorities or even because I love white people. White people are kind of pathetic. I'm an ethno nationalist because I want a future with high levels of technological innovation, eventually including colonization of other planets. Carving out some sizable reservations for white people would probably be beneficial to that goal, at least until we have a much more comprehensive capability for understanding and engineering the human genome. From an evolutionary perspective, white people don't deserve to survive due to our low biological fitness relative to other population groups. But evolution doesn't care about technological advancement. We should probably think about protecting low fitness high innovation population groups, assuming we want a future with maximized technological innovation. The same conclusions would apply to East Asians or other groups, but their gene pools aren't really under the same level of threat, since they're not as foolish as white people.

Spandrell (and Nick), What's so great about techno-capitalism? If we re-engineer society so that it is organised around the market, as opposed to state bureaucracy, is it really better? In what sense? If we agree that maximising the growth in output is the ultimate aim of society; the it comes down to whatever method is more efficient. But I don't see why we should agree that.

"[States] live off financial engineering. Ergo ethno-nationalism is not going to happen. QED." Financial engineering is looking so, so solid these days

"The free markets have produced a plutocracy." The opposite. Regulatory capture has produced a plutocracy.

Like you, I have a soft spot for ethno-nationalism, but the reality is, that unless a state is already an ethno-nationalist state (e.g., Liechtenstein), then any attempts to create one will just result in an "ethnic bunker"--see Orania: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orania,\_Northern\_Cape And that's just no fun at all.

What's your search for truth in regard to, Spandrell?

For instance, I assume you're familiar with Modbug's reservationism? Beatrice is Moldbug's euphemism for God. Quite obviously with regard to man, the search for truth would necessarily have to begin with what God says we are, what our purpose is, etc. And the only place you will find that is in some sort of religion. Or am I missing something?