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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   18982 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024

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Eh, not terribly true for me, unless "sort by new in reddit style threads on themotte," "read newest substack articles of people I run across" or occasionally, "look at the newest (not algorithmically generated) tweets for someone on nitter" count.

I don't know that his post will prompt lefty investigations here; it's not like he's acted terribly right-wing besides merely investigating the matter, and it's pretty egregious.

I assume he can flee to conservatives, even if he's not really one, for defense for this kind of thing, if needed.

That said, can you imagine the articles they'd write about themotte? (I suppose that would solve any evaporative cooling problems for the short term, but lead to large quality and moderation problems.)

Edit: Actually, maybe the anon (I believe?) account with enough biographical information to make doxxing not hard might be pretty attractive to some journalists. (How many gay-married ex-mormons in law school are there?)

It's kind of amazing to me that we've stayed under the radar for so long.

Really? This is a forum comprised of ~100 nobodies and maybe 3 D-list Twitter celebrities (Sorry, TracingWoodgrains and Kulak).

This is one of the least-important corners of the internet. A fun distraction at best.

I am highly disgruntled at being linked with those in the company of a Twitter celebrity, even a D-list one. You take that back!

Who knows. I’ve always been a fan of a Scott Summer quote that the top 10% read the NYT and the top 1% spend their time on some obscure blog/message board. The DEI and critical theory types were all obscure before they took over everything.

The rationalist were obscure before they took over AI and Bitcoin. New ideas come from people who skim the NYT but develop their mental models elsewhere. Mass adoption of ideas won’t flow thru here but the laboratories upstream of say a Hannania weren’t developed on big twitter followings.

I would say in past generations ideas like neoliberalism were developed in academia by a Friedman toiling in anonymity but my guess is that’s not where the big cultural ideas will come from in the future.

I’ve long wandered if anyone I know in real life posts here and there’s a few who seem to fit the mold.

I would say in past generations ideas like neoliberalism were developed in academia by a Friedman toiling in anonymity but my guess is that’s not where the big cultural ideas will come from in the future.

Neoliberalism (horribly vague word but the meaning here is clear from context) wasn't developed by (either) Friedman toiling in obscurity. There was an organised movement of classically liberal economists, founded by Hayek just after WW2, which recruited people like Milton Friedman and encouraged them to get involved in advocacy.

The Mont Pelerin Society is attacked by lefties as a vast right-wing conspiracy, but it was no more conspiratorial than any other professional network - it was just a professional association of like-minded politically-engaged economists that conducted its affairs in public. Arguably it is the prototype for the modern ecosystem of right-wing think tanks.

But to some degree neoliberalism was invented by a bunch of economists toiling away in academic semi-obscurity - the MPS was treated like a bunch of kooks (Friedman wasn't, but he was a serious economist because of his macro work, not his libertarian work) until the 1970's when suddenly there was a political need for what they were selling, and Reagan and Thatcher found a ready-made intellectual edifice to tell them both how and why to do the things they wanted to do anyway.

The Mont Pelerin Society is attacked by lefties as a vast right-wing conspiracy, but it was no more conspiratorial than any other professional network

Nah, I'm going to side with the lefties here. "No more conspiratorial" doesn't mean much, when these sort of organizations are plenty conspiratorial. I don't even know if there can be "just a professional network" of economists. Economists aren't plumbers, there isn't a neutral way to judge their practices, and any way they will associate themselves will have more to do with ideology than professional practices.

it was just a professional association of like-minded politically-engaged economists that conducted its affairs in public.

Oh come on, this is literally "it's not a conspiracy, it's just a group of people acting together toward's a common goal!".

Arguably it is the prototype for the modern ecosystem of right-wing think tanks.

How is it a prototype? This whole model of influence goes way back to how the Catholic Church gained it's influence over Europe, if not to ancient philosophers whispering into the ears of emperors.

and Reagan and Thatcher found a ready-made intellectual edifice to tell them both how and why to do the things they wanted to do anyway.

Not necessarily what they wanted to do anyway. I think someone (possibly Friedman) remarked how it was weird, and basically dumb luck, how someone like Pinochet would go for a market system, rather than more fashy ideas associated with military dictators. From what I understand he just wanted to be notAllende, and the Chicago Boys happened to be at the right place at the right time.

We've stayed under the radar because we are very small. Even Scott is only recently on the radar and he's orders of magnitude larger.

The mainstream media tends to avoid signal-boosting intelligent dissident voices. They want controlled opposition and/or clownish opposition. Much easier to write about Alex Jones or @420MAGAPepe1488 on X.

Similarly you don't see LibsOfTikTok engaging with Noah Smith. Much easier to dunk on the squad

The last time I saw Noah Smith get into a twitter argument it involved him giving an extremely common word (Growth) a novel and unintuitive definition and then "dunking" on people who didn't use it. I'd rather get into an argument with him than the squad to be honest.

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