21 Comments

"But I remember this kid and I love him. I’m proud of him. His mom subscribed to Phyllis Schlafly’s newsletter, not the New York Review of Books. He didn’t get to go to Exeter. He drew Tippy the Turtle and got a mail-order course from the Art Instruction Schools. He didn’t get to go to Princeton. He got a scholarship to the University of Northern Iowa and found his path in life at Ayn Rand summer camp."

But if today's incarnation of this kid posted his views on Twitter or whatever zoomers do instead of blog, he'd deserve to have his future destroyed by a salaried hateblogger at a media conglomerate, right?

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1) I have never held the view you attribute to me here. I am not sure Robby Soave has either. 2) Across several of these posts I am skeptical of a recurring logic that you employ that goes something like, *I, Will Wilkinson, used to think in a way that I now regard as wrongheaded, so therefore, other people I am conversing with who are wrong must have the motivations and flawed logic than I once did. 3) you are still judging the SSC piece based on elaborate presumptions about the internal motives of everyone involved, rather than based on the content itself and whether it is factually accurate.

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Feb 23, 2021Liked by Will Wilkinson

I feel a little bad that I enjoyed this piece so much, but this kind of autobiographical exposition is a good way to show your work. Also thank God I'm not closely following this on Twitter.

I remember when Gladwell posted that Steve Sailer poll, and I remember your comment! That was back when Jim Henley was still posting all the time and the exchanges were great. All Wesley Yang's provocation did here is make me nostalgic.

There's value in what you're doing, thanks for being brave enough to do it.

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This post was just as verbose as any by moldbug, and twice as catty.

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Perfect response to all the stupidity the last one stirred up. "We don’t get to choose where we start out." Exactly right.

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Wait, the Institute for Objectivist Studies had their summer program at *Oberlin*?!

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Two quotes that popped for me...

First, "It took me a long time to see it, but I eventually got it into my thick skull that the naive Millian liberal “I may strongly disagree with your opinions, but I am open to learning from a friendly debate” worldview is the opening that illiberal trolls like Yarvin exploit to normalize their repugnant opinions and recruit off less objectionable platforms."

There's a paradox that plagues cosmopolitan liberal values--one of their greatest strengths, their openness and tolerance, in practice is a great weakness that gets turned against them. They read others by their own measure, beset by a certain naivete about how power operates, particularly in the minds of those who don't share their worldview and values. I think the lesson of the Trump years is that liberals have to develop a better understanding of how power functions in order to rebuild the bulwarks of civil discourse. Put another way, there's no such thing as not canceling. To some extent, liberals need to own the libertarians.

In turn, the opposition reads cosmo-liberals by their own measure. Hence the second quote:

"I suspect that their animating assumption is that woke scolds side with “power” out of a combination of greed and fear, have no reasonable argument or justification for their opinions and will hasten to blindly display their blameless purity by indiscriminately devouring their own at the first hint of anything even superficially resembling a past mind-crime. "

I agree and would add that this is total shadow projection. Jordan Peterson often invokes the frame that socialists don't love the poor, they just hate the rich--that the smiley face of progressivism is just a mask for resentment. Neoreactionaries don't see their own self-righteousness, and don't see that they're in the grip of an ideology, because they fancy themselves scientific realists, empiricists, rationalists (and they don't see the differences and potential contradictions between these). They simply can't fathom that some people actually genuinely care about the poor, oppressed, marginalized, etc.

I suspect--and this is the vibe I am picking up in your writing--that the skeleton key to all of this is the psychology of ideology. I am not as familiar with the Rationalists space, but the IDW seems to share this trait: the term "ideology" performs an ideological function in their discourse of which they're unconscious, reinforcing their self-belief that they are rational and their opponents are hysterical, tribal, mobbish, etc.

It's telling that Peter Thiel takes pride that he remains "committed to the faith [!] of my teenage years" and not accidental that said faith includes the belief that aging is a disease. "I was told there'd be flying cars," etc. After awhile, most of us just grow up and realize Ayn Rand was a gateway drug to real philosophy. What's missing in the techno-fascist-libertarian-utopian set, I think, is introspection. Souls don't fit within their ontology (souls are minds and minds are brain and brains are slow computers), so introspection is a waste of time. But psychologically, that's a recipe for disaster--dissociation and repression leading to shadow projection--that inhibits learning and ends in dogmatism.

Cartoonist Tim Krieder said it best: that many libertarians are, at heart, authoritarians.

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The review isn’t a very good piece of writing but weirdly also is not particularly supportive of the racist insinuations Yarvin and others seem to what to impugn you with. Sure it doesn’t really condemn racist implications (but doesn’t really endorse them either?) and yes defends a system which doesn’t try to make up for the past injustices, but like ... you were a Randian kid writing in early college? Obviously you were going to complain about resting non-redistributive policy on mere statistical studies! Good lord the kind of crap I wrote back in the day.

We’re all kind of embarrassed about what we used to think, if we weren’t, we would still think it! 🤣

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One of the most surreal aspects of this whole debacle is that Scott Siskand had already allowed his name to be published in 2017, and specifically in connection to his blog. The book is readily available on Amazon and other places... he’s thanked right in the front of the book:

The Technological Singularity: Managing the Journey (The Frontiers Collection)

It was evident at the time that Siskind’s defenders (to be clear I’m a SSC reader) in the rationalist, anti-work or anti-censorship communities were mostly just slinging shit. They didn’t care that “doxxing” didn’t apply here, or that a right to pseudonymity for a thought-leader amongst powerful and influential people should at least require convincing support.

Yet, somehow they mostly won the conversation through aggression, obfuscation and attrition - all the more reason to believe there is quite a bit more depth to this story.

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Will, my dude, Im willing to grant whatever premise you want on the SSC thing if it means getting you back to regular posts. Personally, I dont care if you supported, or didnt support Sailer, Murray etc...this whole thing has evolved to cat fighting, it seems. Im looking forward to you eventually schooling this right leaning Libertarian on, for example, why liberal freedom requires democratic equality and other interesting topics.

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Not gonna lie, I teared up a little reading that second to last paragraph. That kid doesn’t sound so bad, I’m glad things worked out for him 👍

Also I’m pretty sure I’m younger than the average Model Citizen subscriber, but as someone who turned 3 the year you wrote that Bell Curve review, the idea that it would have some huge impact on my opinion of your work is pretty funny to me. I too have changed a lot in the past 25-26 years!

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There’s an underserved group of people in the market for takes who want an admission that Metz’s article was really bad, but that so too are SSC’s takes on race (e.g ‘crying wolf’ is one of the worst takes I’ve ever read). I think most people frustrated with your prior article think that you ignored the many factual errors in Metz’s piece. Anyways, this is exceptional prose and I loved reading the autobiographical section especially.

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I love that kid too. Of course it helps that you evolved. But then we'd all be pretty deplorable if we hadn't.

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"It was heavy and satisfying to hold. I’d never purchased a brand-new, non-discounted hardcover that wasn’t a textbook. "

I very much feel this comment. I remember going to the WTC Borders and buying a hardcover book (just! to! read!) at 22 and feeling like a real adult.

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If you haven’t been told this already, you are crushing it. You should be very proud of the newsletter and the podcast.

I’m new to your work, discovered and binged your podcast over the holidays. I subscribed to my first and only sub stack a few days after learning you were fired.

Your writing is superb and your success a great example of Midwestern excellence.

It’s a delight to have your ideas being discussed on Twitter and in print during such an important time in the life of our nation. When the daily temptation is to be guided by the worst fears of my inner critic, or to concede like so many around me, that now is the time to prioritize entrenchment and security over strengthening our democracy and promoting revolutionary change.... you’ve inspired me. I’m challenged to move beyond being furious and “right” about the state of our country and how we got here. We need more truth now or things will become much much worse.

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Loved the Village Inn back in the day.

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