I would recommend to others to sample the Moldbuggery list, and not to start with Scott Alexander's writings. The point of Moldbug's writings is not to be 100% accurate. The point is to expose you to new ideas and old forgotten books, so that you yourself can create a more accurate version of reality. You won't get this by reading Scott Alexander. To really get the value of the writings, you need to actually read the old books that Moldbug recommends reading. It is very, very interesting to read an account of the Revolutionary War from a Tory or Loyalist who was actually there.
Yeah a lot of people who like his writings have criticized that term. I don't really like it myself, but it kind of stuck. The word does refer to a real phenomena that currently doesn't have a mainstream name. So Moldbug gets credit for identifying the phenomena and picking some name for it. I'm not sure what a better name would be - the Clerisy? the Mandarinate? the Congregation?
But, it is a lot more accurate to see ideology and religion has basically the same phenomena, with belief in a deity being pretty much spurious, than it is to see ideology and religion as two entirely different things. So I give Moldbug credit for pointing out that progressivism is basically the same thing as a religion.
Read it to see for yourself but this is long-winded, pseudo-intellectual garbage advocating fascism. Moldbug is a follower of Thomas Carlyle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Carlyle
There are definitions of fascism by which Moldbug is advocating fascism. There are definitions of fascism by which FDR or Woodrow Wilson were fascists. The definition of fascist by which Moldbug is a fascist is not the same definition that made fascist a synonym for evil incarnate. Moldbug certainly does not want a mob with pitchforks to take over the government and to murder the Jews and go on a global plan of conquest. To thus smear him by association with such an ideology is to be maliciously uncharitable.
The purpose of his blog is to create hyperbole in the opposite direction of the current prevailing ideologies. The blog is shock treatment to get you to think about our society as a time traveler from two hundred years in the past or in the future might see it. He tries to snap you out of presentism. So there is a lot of crazy stuff in it. But there is a lot of information and perspectives that can be found nowhere else, and if you read them and incorporate them into your world views, you will have a more accurate picture of current reality, and you will make better predictions about world events.
I do agree with the long-winded part. Some people like his whimsical, sci-fi jargon infused, verbose writing style, others cannot stand it. That is a matter of taste.
There is a lot to say about paragraphs one and two but I'll limit my comment to number three;
"I do agree with the long-winded part. Some people like his whimsical, sci-fi jargon infused, verbose writing style, others cannot stand it. That is a matter of taste."
I would agree that such a style, up to a point, is a matter of taste. But beyond that point I think that verbosity, long run-on paragraphs, detours and "long-cuts" into side issues and irrelevant historical background, etc. serves two rhetorical purposes. First, to obfuscate and ameliorate a point he can't state plainly; that he is advocating a dictatorship [I call it fascist, you can call it whatever you want]. Second, it gives him the appearance of saying something deeper and more important than what he is actually saying, i.e. pseudo-intellectualism.
"create hyperbole in the opposite direction of the current prevailing ideologies"
This is accurate and well-said.
I differ greatly in the value I'd assign to the end product. It takes way too much work to untangle the possibly true, mind-bending stuff (<5%) from the sophomoric, reactionary (in the most derogatory sense of that word) stuff (>50%). It's not worth it.
Also, and I say this as someone who enjoys reading long-winded essays for fun: the information density is too low.
And finally, given the above: way too much attitude.
I would say that about 20% of the time he nails it square on, and another 70% of the time he goes overboard but he is still closer to the truth the current mainstream view. I think he appeals more to people who 1) are significantly disaffected with mainstream politics, and 2) do not believe that that problem with politics is insufficient progressivism.
If you believe the political situation is more good than bad, or if you believe it is bad only due to not being progressive enough, bad due to America not being enough like Sweden, then you won't find Moldbug at all convincing.
But if you are disaffected with both the mainstream right and progressives, then you are in search of an alternative theory of why everything is going so rotten. And in that case, Moldbug's theories are a revelation.
"But if you are disaffected with both the mainstream right and progressives, then you are in search of an alternative theory of why everything is going so rotten. And in that case, Moldbug's theories are a revelation."
Far from being a radical repudiating "the currently prevailing ideologies" I would say that he is steeped in the currently ideologies and just advocating their logical end; dictatorship. The Left and Right are both intellectually bankrupt and now just seek power for power's sake, i.e., they stand for nothing. The society is ripe for a dictator and we will get one as soon as another economic or other crisis arises. The Left and the Right secretly are hoping for such a crisis and that their gang happens to be in power when it happens. Writers like Moldbug are a harbinger of the future of the US as we drift toward dictatorship and they existed in Germany before the rise of the Nazis, laying the intellectual ground work.
Fortunately there is real intellectual opposition to this fate in Ayn Rand's philosophy. You should read "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" and more importantly her intro on ethics "The Virtue of Selfishness". She identified what is wrong with the Left and the Right and proposes an alternative ethical and political theory to support Capitalism and her writings are crystal clear and to the point.
Capitalism is great and all. But capitalism's natural base, propertied high-caste men, make up only up only 30% of the electorate in the U.S. (and that percentage is falling). So how can democracy protect capitalism? Power is real, and power abhors a vacuum. Either you have it or someone else does. The hard problem is how to get a power structure that preserves liberty and free markets. I've never seen a good Randian or libertarian solution to this problem. I don't agree with Moldbug's solution, but at least he shocked me out of believing that democracy was the answer, and got me thinking about a lot of alternative possibilities.
I also think that American's get in a trap where we think that tyranny==dictatorship. The left is power hungry and totalitarian. But it has no desire for a dictatorship. The tyranny is the distributed tyranny, peer-to-peer tyranny, of a thousand different bureaucracies, SJW's, judges, civil service agencies, etc, all with their petty fiefdoms creating problems.
If you are looking for a place to start try What if there's no such
thing as chaotic good? (http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/what-if...). It is a short and fairly standalone post that well shows Moldbug's most major line of thought and writing style.
That reads like a right-wing mirror image of critical theory—a logically flawed mess that attempts to hide its defects with a long-winded obtuse writing style.
