Comments on: Hit-Piece of the Week

By: Cicada

Cicada — Sun, 22 Jun 2014 21:51:55 +0000

I wasn’t aware that Udolpho was anti-democracy, either.

By: E. Antony Gray (@RiverC)

E. Antony Gray (@RiverC) — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 16:19:39 +0000

As it is said of contest winners, ‘they have their reward’.

By: Peter A. Taylor

Peter A. Taylor — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 21:18:43 +0000

Max Faget used to complain about “pharisees”. An expert would make a rule to solve a particular problem. As long as the original expert was around, he knew when the rule made sense and when to ignore it. But then after he retired, his successor inherited the rule, but not the insight or authority to ignore it. We end up drowning in an ocean of rigid rules, each of which only make sometimes makes sense.

By: SGW

SGW — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 16:39:18 +0000

Sounds about right. These three paragraphs do seem to sum up the central problem around which NRx is organized quite well.

“The explanation for this contradiction is a very simple one: by definition, civilization is the process of taking intelligence out of human minds and putting it into institutions.

The ideas of the smartest people (usually embedded higher barbarians) are externalized and encoded into the design of institutions, which can then make far stupider people vastly more effective than their raw capabilities would allow.

But in the long term this fails. The smart people die, and their ideas become obsolete and ritualized. Initially, more intelligence is being externalized into institutions than is being taken away through ritualization, but at some point, you get a peak, and the decline begins. As entropy accumulates, it becomes a simple matter for another wave of lower barbarians on the periphery to take down the civilization.”

By: admin

admin — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 16:31:48 +0000

It certainly doesn’t strike me as a defensible judgment.

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 16:29:14 +0000

Many of Moldbug’s compliments struck me as either insane or disingenuous, such as this one.

By: nydwracu

nydwracu — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 16:14:39 +0000

Moldbug is wrong, Udolpho is from Something Awful and still writes like it. Dude paid actual IRL money to sign up for an internet forum and he thinks he can call people nerds.

By: Lurker

Lurker — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 15:09:58 +0000

I managed to keep a straight face until this line;

“[…] it’s a useful medium-term goal of the left to prevent the total failure of the state.”

Good to know we’re dealing with a real forward thinking bunch here.

By: vimothy

vimothy — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 13:38:09 +0000

I would like to think UR is one of the Web’s top anti-democracy blogs, but surely above me are Deogolwulf and the formidable Carter van Carter. That is, if you don’t count Udolpho. In any blog contest that includes Udolpho, Udolpho is the winner.

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/ur-will-return-on-thursday-april-17.html

Curiouser and curiouser!

By: Karl F. Boetel

Karl F. Boetel — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 12:14:34 +0000

Someone named Udolpho has gone full Rousseau in his “neoreaction primer” here. Highlights/fnordings include:

“young nerdy fellows who go up into the attic and larp about in grandpa’s clothes”

” ‘human biodiversity’ (racism)”

“they haven’t done the hard work of understanding the context of their own complaints”

“soothing defensive posture, functioning much as a hugbox does for autists”

boy howdy sure does sound like he done learned all about them naorarcshunaries