Intelligence can be defined as the most general purpose (or abstract) adaptation. High short-term (but still multi-generational) fertility, in contrast, can reflect a merely local adaptation: the ability to game unsustainable welfare systems for instance — the case with the Hasids in Israel, among many others. In addition, r-selection strategies can easily appear differentially advantageous in the short-term, especially when environmental challenges are artificially relieved. (It’s not even clear to what extent biological replication is globally adaptive — in a world increasingly populated by robots, it certainly shouldn’t be unreflectively allowed to define ‘adaptive’.)

If the New Reaction is not to bore itself into a coma, it has to learn to run innovation and tradition together as Siamese twins, and for that it needs to think time, into distant conclusions, in its ‘own’ way. That can be done, seriously. Of course, a demonstration is called for …

Did you provide this presentation (did I fail to see it? Is it bitcoin? Are you Satoshi? (I’ve been wanting to ask that for ages, it’s like reverse Spartacus)).

However, if by ‘success’ we mean ‘continuing to be at the cutting edge of human evolution and culture and intelligence.

Well that IS THE question: How do we define “success”? So far, in the modern experiment, cultures that have pushed the farthest hardest seem to be experiencing some unintended maladaptive consequences. Now it’s a matter of prudence and taste to determine how such pitfalls relate to various technological breakthroughs and how they might be avoided. But who’s to say that avoiding the “cutting edge”, say staying 10 meters away from it, may not be the most adaptive default disposition? By raw Darwinian metrics, those who breed best, win. By such a metric, the Amish, the Hasidim, Fundamentalist Mormons and Catholics win hands down.

The ‘neo-‘ in neo-reaction is a backdoor, letting in all kinds of things that most reactionaries would rather keep out.

Amish, Mennonites etc. are OK, but there’s not much honor in being an ethnographic zoo-specimen, politically dependent upon a social order that one can do nothing either to advance or contest, let alone understand.

Now, the question is: Are they doomed? I hope not. I wish them well. However, the Amish or the Mormon Fundamentalists aren’t exactly going to launch us into the next phase of human evolution or culture. They will succeed if by ‘success’ we mean ‘continuing to be Amish’ or whatever. Don’t get me wrong: I personally find value in those traditionalist communities. Hell, I spend my vacations living out of a backpack in the mountains. However, if by ‘success’ we mean ‘continuing to be at the cutting edge of human evolution and culture and intelligence,’ then, no, those communities are not successful. (I hastily reiterate: they aren’t attempting to be successful in that way, so I’m not judging them for not having produced Nobel prize winners.)

Different kinds of success, then. The problem with Left Democracy, of course, is that success is pre-defined for one-and-all in terms of the stupidest, most entropic, and least intelligence-optimizing values.

The waters you waded into with this post (not too cryptic, I think) are not necessarily inviting to a certain kind of neo-traditionalist. There are reactionaries who simply want to return to some simpler time. For them, reaction is literally about ‘going back’, about ‘restoration’, rather than about finding a new stage for the future growth of human intelligence and achievement. I’m thinking of the Fred Reed, Edward Abbey types of reactionaries; I don’t think they care about building extropic systems or optimizing for intelligence because they’re perfectly happy with equilibrium–bring back the 1950s! Or better yet, the 1890s! And let’s just stay there this time around. A simpler time. Emphasis on simple.

This desire for equilibrium does require extropic effort–but the goal of the desire is to come to rest again.

Of course, equilibrium is impossible, which is why the traditionalist Right is always doomed to fail. I say that with a tinge of remorse, though, because clearly the 1890s and 1950s in America were more optimized for intelligence (or, at least, less entropic) than America circa 2013.