* Nested comments still resist the new regime at this stage.

I only became a methodical Moldbug reader in 2011, so I cannot pretend to have followed the degeneration of the Unqualified Reservations comments section in real time. What I did see, making my way back through this blog, was the rapid collapse of its comment threads into an open cultural gutter of no conceivable interest to anybody with a three digit IQ — a situation that hit nadir and remained there. We are talking about what — even inactive — remains arguably the most important blog in the history of the medium. If anyone wants to suggest that its accrued commentary is a model to be emulated, they are encouraged to make the case, for the entertainment value alone.

At the other extreme of cognitive ambition, is 4chan/pol/, a veritable sewer of senselessness, where the idea of an intelligent conversation is an absurdity from the start. This is a discussion forum that revels in its own crass vulgarity. It too is a negative model, to be deeply appreciated for the lesson in degeneracy it provides.

My default assumption is that everything tends to ruin, unless actively tended. UR shows what a naked laissez-faire policy leads to, if crudely interpreted as confidence in self-correcting bohemianism. Spontaneous order requires dynamic entropy dissipation merely to survive.

This blog is not a commons. It welcomes visitors who add value, tolerates those who do no harm, and ejects agents of degradation. Up to this point, policing here has been very light, but there is no firm principle behind that. If it becomes necessary, the full panoply of police powers will be exercised without the slightest liberal qualm, and these are potentially considerable. Insofar as the space of this blog itself are concerned, they are in fact effectively unlimited. Occasional demented goblins seem to derive great satisfaction from provoking crack-downs. If these individuals are deluded enough to think that inciting such responses represents some kind of cognitive dissonance here, by driving a departure from the generally tolerant policy in place, they are very much mistaken. The only rigid principle here is absolute (local) authority. Gibbeting goblins poses no ideological contradiction whatsoever. There should probably be a great deal more of it, the more random and graphically brutal the better, just to make this point. (This auto-suggestion is being taken under advisement.)

A more difficult problem is posed by the right vulgarians, at least superficially. Their intentions are not, it appears, disruptive. They merely seek to crank down the general tone of commentary here to a more popular level, with direct rhetorical offensiveness to progressive sensibilities considered a positive factor. I have to confess to finding some of these visitors likable, but their objectives will not be tolerated. With the conclusion of this discussion — at the latest — the desired tone here will be imposed, by whatever mixture of selection, editing, and scolding is required. This is not a negotiable matter.

The first Chaos Patch here drew an analogy between a blog and a virtual micro-state. Considered at a sufficient level of abstraction, the principles of governance are basically identical. Authority is absolutely concentrated, guided by the incentive to maximize the value of an estate, which only subsequently introduces pragmatic policies of extreme laissez-faire tolerance, since freedom maximizes productivity. People here are basically free to say whatever they like, with the understanding that scum will be ejected without apology or reservation. Anyone tempted to explore the limits of tolerated scumminess has profoundly misunderstood what is going on here. Once again, this is not disputable beyond the norms of tolerated disputation. Scum have no rights here, whatsoever, and the only definition of scum behavior that matters is that decided by the government or local sovereign power (and that’s me).

So what counts as scum behavior? Basically: classlessness or incivility. There are absolutely no limits being set on the ideas that can be promoted by visitors here, as long as they are presented with some minimum of decorum. Vulgarity, slurs, abuse, snark, and scum rhetoric in general, on the other hand, is not acceptable. Intelligent or humorous comments that cross some of these lines will not be suppressed, if their transgressions plausibly serve a higher cultural purpose. Sovereign Admin alone decides each problematic case with absolute discretion, perhaps drawing upon advice from other respected commentors where appropriate. Yes, this is an elitist dictatorship (duh!).

@pjebleak @Recursive_idiot @UF_blog But of course. Stephanie Meyers is the gateway drug. http://t.co/jboJSuhqQj

— Laboria Cuboniks 0.2 (@nervemeter) August 5, 2014

.@nervemeter @pjebleak @Recursive_idiot @UF_blog Quick, someone start a band: Too Late For Tricia

— Mr. Archenemy (@mr_archenemy) August 5, 2014

The entire review (for Fanged Noumena, one star), by ‘Amazon Customer’ and entitled: Stick to Stephenie Meyer, for heaven’s sake! —

My 15-year-old daughter Tricia is a great fan of vampire fiction, and I bought this for her from a remaindered book stall, thinking it would be just up her street. The rather childish daub on the cover did make me think that perhaps the book would be too young for her, but seeing as it was priced at 40p I reckoned I could not go too far wrong.

None too soon, in my view – but too late for Tricia, I fear.

What are the high-priority topics that should be under discussion right now? If ‘high-priority’ is taken to mean hard, long-term, and ultimately decisive (so we should be pushing on with them as soon as possible),  so much the better.

ADDED: CP#13 Topic Summary:
— Academic background of NRx
— Linguists are strongly represented
— “Isn’t the death of the mad scientist one of NRX’s chief criticisms of the Cathedral?” [In certain quarters …]
— What are NRx economics?
— What is to be done with the adminstrators?
— “Toxic memetic outbreaks have been ended quite stably with atrocities.” (Qin Shi Huang)
— “Of Iron and gold and silicon is the metalic god assembling itself, flesh is just burning fuel.”
— The paradox of popularity. (Is it one?)
— “Has Xenosystems run its course?” (Handle pats this weary nag gently on the nose and puts in a call to the glue factory.)
— Pedophilia
— Let’s talk about the Jews.
— Democratic secessionism in Europe
— The return to metaphysics
— “It’s important to make the failures of progressivism stop seeming normal.” (Imaginative fiction has a role.)
— Super-normal stimuli and the exacerbation of vice (a capitalist horror story)
— “How does Cthulhu (god of memes) work and what exactly is it?”
— Sovereignty and ethics
— Action!

… Damn, POS pseudo-connection can‘t even manage that.

(Have they hung Bryce yet?)

ADDED: Looks like it’s possible (finally) to put up a few tropical retreat snaps (and seems like they’re clickable):

(I can’t get enough of this arborohorror.) One more:

ADDED: The two posts that have made all this (‘Trannygate’) craziness worthwhile —

(1) Nyan Sandwich at More Right “… is Neoreaction a heretical political-insight-seeking movement, or a right-wing activist movement?”

(2) Nick B Steves on the Official Neoreactionary Position (endorsed by the most right-wing person on the Internet).

Special merit badges for anybody who can link at least three of these topics into a coherent insight point: nerds, Piketty (+), Thai micro-media, alien signal, killer robots, democratic crisis, and heavy whining …

(For anyone unfamiliar with local traditions: it’s an open thread.)

ADDED: “I used to think that such people were blowing smoke, deliberately lying to make a point, but I am increasingly willing to consider the possibility that they’re just stupid.” (Discuss.)

ADDED:

I dreamed I saw Samo last night Alive as you and me Says I "But Samo you're ten years dead" "You're just mindkilled" said he

— St. Rev. Dr. Rev (@St_Rev) May 26, 2014

ADDED: Cthulhoid kickstarter. (Via @PuzzlePrivateer)

(Launch topic — Entryism.)

ADDED: Anyone applying for retro-entryist special ops from our side has first to pass one simple test. Re-phrase the following statement briefly in your own words, without sacrificing any of its intellectual rigor:

gender binary is rooted in white supremacist, anti-Black and colonial logics

— Che G. (@chegossett) April 20, 2014

Once you’ve completed the exercise, you’re ready for this. ADDED: … but this was supposed to be about Project Idaho. So a little prodding —

@MikeAnissimov @Outsideness But as long as we agree on the importance of Moldbug’s neocameralist project there is no reason for conflict.

— Hurlock (@_Hurlock_) April 24, 2014

@_Hurlock_ @Outsideness I don’t agree on it. There’s no reason for conflict because my position is already dominant.

— Michael Anissimov (@MikeAnissimov) April 24, 2014

@MikeAnissimov @Outsideness Out of curiosity, why did you abandon Moldbug’s project? (if you were ever interested in it in the first place)

— Hurlock (@_Hurlock_) April 24, 2014

@_Hurlock_ @Outsideness muh, I abandoned it nearly as soon as I found it. I care about Europeans, not some cultureless shekel-worship.

— Michael Anissimov (@MikeAnissimov) April 24, 2014

… and just one more (for now), which exactly captures my sense of the present trajectory:

@Outsideness @_Hurlock_ Which’ll come first, do you think, Kool-Aid or cannibalism?

— Mr. Archenemy (@mr_archenemy) April 24, 2014

ADDED: Some relevant satirical free association from Fuimus.

ADDED:

“They laughed at the trailer park.”

… so, 24-hours later, there’s not much in the way of gripping travel news to report. We’re heading to the Mogao Caves tomorrow, which should be worth talking about. Up to now it’s been desert and donkey-meat and the general weirdness of the Chinese West, but with a mind oozing uselessly like gritty mud, it doesn’t add up to anything remotely profound. Perhaps later.

The thing I want to introduce tentatively here, because it has to be re-introduced more thoroughly quite soon, is hyperstition, and in particular; hyperstitional method. I’m getting the strong sense that there are things it simply won’t be possible to do otherwise. (I’ll try to explain.)

There are a variety of plausible ways to explain the basic ‘idea’ of hyperstition. The most pertinent of these, here, right now, is that it is an attempt to systematize the philosophical usage of fiction. By framing a philosophical discussion within fiction, rather than within an assumed consensual understanding, it is advanced as a perturbation of disbelief, rather than a modification of belief. How to proceed philosophically from the artificial background assumption that everything is a lie? That’s the hyperstitional question (whose Pyrrhonian and Gnostic resonances are immediately evident).

Practically speaking — which it always should be — the fork taken is to formulate thoughts within the ‘voice’ of a synthetic (fictional) subject instead of propounding them in the name of a privately and socially accredited one.  The preliminary hypothesis: greater experimental diversity of thinking is to be expected when it is conducted in the mode of ‘what might be thought’ — comparatively free of ego-commitment and first-order social games. (Orwellian ‘thought-stop’ is the confirmation of this hypothesis from the other side.)

Beginning from a fictional self has a Buddhist slant, to be discussed at some later point. Being in Dunhuang is what makes it worth mentioning at all.

While all of this is relevant to the problem under development as ‘sub-cognitive fragments’ (i.e. how to think), the return to the question of hyperstitional method, to me, has mostly come in the other direction. My philosophical retardation is infuriating, but my literary blockage is utterly intolerable. There is nothing of which I am more sure than that abstract literature, or metaphysical horror fiction radically pursued, is the undertaking which claims me, but there is equally nothing that calls forth more titanic forces of procrastination. The obstruction, quite obviously, is ‘me’ — and hyperstition suggests a solution to that, or at least, a method directed decisively towards a solution. Find the way to speak on behalf of that thing which can say what you cannot (or something like that).

What hyperstition has yet to fully do (I still believe), is to close the loop, subsuming itself definitively into fiction. It has to become a story, rather than a theory of stories, before it can be said to have attained consistency.

Much other chaos (including shoggoth, crypto-currencies, and child management).

So Chaos Patch …

ADDED: How about telling me what we’re not talking about enough?

ADDED: Among the things provoking thought at my end right now, are shoggothic modernity, and block-chain governance. (I’m trying to keep them from running into each other too much, too quickly.)

ADDED: Hugely enjoyed butting in on the PAF event — not a vast amount of shoggothism, but a delightful opportunity to chat with some thoughtful people about time, capital, artificial intelligence, and what the hell is this neoreaction bullshit (?).