Help me @sneerclub you’re my only hope https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/matt-yglesias-considered-as-the-nietzschean
Some right-wingers have responded to the piece, but their responses are mostly “but I like being bad and cruel” - which seems to prove Bulldog’s point.
I think we can do better - that it’s possible to make a case against “slave morality” that doesn’t rely on being pro-badness and cruelty.
Fuck me, you’re making me read Slatescott again. I can’t wait to see how he will case for badness and cruelty without relying on being pro badness and cruelty.
Skimmed a bit up to the discussion of architecture not being as impressive nowadays or something.
Ok here we go:
Tate has, in some sense, many good qualities. He’s strong, athletic, and motivated. He earned tens of millions of dollars through hustle and hard work. He’s charismatic and compelling and, before his arrest, was one of the Internet’s most iconic influencers. I think master morality has to approve of all these things.
“Hustle and hard work”? That’s what we’re gonna call being a sex trafficker?
Hand tipped here:
I would like to end up with an overall negative view of Tate. And if I do a simple calculation, (virtues - vices), then it seems like if his nonmoral virtues were strong enough, they could overcome the moral vices. If Tate was a really really good kickboxer, he might still end up in the black. It seems much more intuitive to say that no amount of nonmoral virtues can make up for his moral vices. But now we’re back at the full slave moralist package again! Some “compromise”!
If we accept that there are some vices that cannot be made up for by virtues, we might need to cancel someone. People might need to be held responsible for the things they do. So Scott cannot accept it. There has to be a way to let the baddies in as long as they’re actually doing important work.
You can argue “master morality is about being strong and good; slave morality is just about preserving your pathetic little feelings”. But most of life is people’s pathetic little feelings. People have proven over and over again that their decisions - about what to do, what to buy, who to vote for, even what to die for - depend more on what lets them feel dignity and self-respect than on any purely material considerations.
Slight of hand: now slave morality is all about feelings and master morality is about material needs. What the heck? We established that slave morality was based on the idea that masters inflicting real hardships on their peasants was bad, didn’t we? You could make the same argument about Scott morality (as described above) because the objective would be to allow you to feel good about supporting people who do bad things as long as they also do good things.
And speaking of slight of hand, this is going to be my pull quote:
Hanania is terrible at being right-wing.
Tate has, in some sense, many good qualities. He’s strong, athletic, and motivated.
Really telling since none of those are good characteristics in the moral sense of “good”. Like what the fuck is “motivated” even doing there, Sauron was also extremely motivated, mate.
And if I do a simple calculation, (virtues - vices)
“…then I have shit for brains.”
This comment tho:
I wonder if there are people who go to r/antiwork to obsess about the rigged system, and then go to r/StarCraft to appreciate pro players achieving glory in battle. Seems like one’s morality might be highly domain specific.
“Haha I’ve caught you you hypocritical lefist! You enjoy (watching) people better (at StarCraft) than you after all!”
If Tate was a really really good kickboxer, he might still end up [morally] in the black.
What the heck am I reading?
If I wanted to sound like a rationalist I’d tell Scott to check his fallacies, specifically category error. It’s just such basic, wilful misconstrual on his part. Yeah, me liking my spaghetti quite salty doesn’t mean I want to add salt to the dessert!
That’s all besides the original point being that a rigged system is one where the best do not rise to the top, so even if our socioeconomic system and… Starcraft streamers (lol) were comparable categorically, which shouldn’t have to be said they in any way aren’t, the OG point is precisely that so much talent goes underutilized and glory unrealized due to a lack of broad cultivation and opportunity.
I don’t get what makes people this way, with such small souls, just painstakingly intent on being miserly. Same thing with JK Rowling, she has all the money in the world to have the wildest pleasures or to leave everything and go off to some yurt for a spiritual search and instead she just purposefully acts in the most destructive and self-constricting manner. And this applies more generally to the awash-in-cash techbro and rationalist sets as well. You have the resources to do really interesting things, and yet you dedicate your time to making Juiceros.
“Haha I’ve caught you you hypocritical lefist! You enjoy (watching) people better (at StarCraft) than you after all!”
It’s almost as if there’s a difference between winners and losers in a game we play for fun, and winners and losers in having a place to live
such an excellent nazi bar they have there.
Nietzsche doesn’t “speculate” that slave morality kicked off with the Jews because they were a particularly oppressed group, and really got going under Christianity. He states it outright, and he doesn’t care whether any oppressed group could have done the same. He interprets the known history of Christian and Jewish morality as being the history of “slave morality” and calls it “genealogy” - it isn’t an economic argument.
That’s all I’ve got, I don’t care.
It is really fucking maddening how people like Scott won’t think of morality, or politics, or economics, or really any kind of social or philosophical question, outside of the realm of the psychological. The history of the world can only be about overcoming bias.
But that’s just the thing! Nietzche’s fundamental innovation is to view all of these things: morality, politics, economics, indeed any kind of social or philosophical question through an incredibly narrowly psychological lens. It’s his obsessive persistence in this, and his excessive sensitivity to the deep irrationality in human nature (I hesitate to go with many people in saying “brilliance”, because what’s “brilliance”?), which makes him such a powerful critic of Western culture. For Nietzsche, the entire history of the world is nothing more than the history of individual sick people working out their issues, and generally doing badly.
But Siskind doesn’t have any of that, because he can only think in terms of a shallow combination of overcoming bias and his own unexamined prejudices. Siskind’s problem is that he doesn’t even view the psychological psychologically.
I ain’t reading all this. I don’t even know who Yglesias is.
My first thought: Man, why the fuck does the numbering of the sections annoy me so much?
Second thought: Ok, I’m skimming this because again fuck all these words. Looks like he’s trying to explore something about “master” and “slave” morality that I will not dig into because it’s probably a bunk formulation of thought. Why does Edward Teach, the pirate, come up? The section did not appear to explain it.
Final thought: Okay, I think I was right not to read any of this. Essentially, it is just a paean to some truly terrible people (Tate, Hanania, Ayn Rand etc.) in the form of a shaggy dog story, with Nietzche referenced a lot.
Anyway, now I’m fighting the urge to get drunk on scotch, listen to “No Surprises” by radiohead and walk into the fucking ocean
TRUE FACT: Matt Yglesias is the reason Bluesky has a block function
I missed that(or have forgotten it already, a think which happens a lot with me re Yglesias. I have him mentally tagged as vague shithead, but never can recall why (and am aware this could be wrong)), tried a google search and couldn’t find anything, what is the story?
David told the story in a recent Tech Won’t Save Us episode, basically Matty boy came to BlueSky, everyone started laughing at him for his bad takes (as well they should), and Matty cried for a block function so long and intensely that they gave it to him so he’d shut the fuck up.
no, he complained and they scrambled to implement it for the Important Journalist
who essayied to post a few more times and was pilloried again
I guess my brain tweaked the story into something a little bit less bleak in self-defense.
I’m skimming this because again fuck all these words
fuck all these words
Perfect summary of Slate Star Codex.
Edward Teach is supposedly the pen name of The Last Psychiatrist who was sort of a precursor blog to slatestar, if only in the sense that it was a psychiatrist who was also a good writer, blogging about the human condition. He was doing parable-style short-form fiction way before slatescott, for instance.
While I don’t remember there being any particular ideological overlap, both him and siskind seem to scratch the same itch for a lot of people, and siskind claims to be a fan.
ideological overlap
Oh they absolutely are both infuriatingly coy reactionaries.
Here’s for instance a million words by TLP, and they all say “i hate women”.
I might actually hate TLP so much more, because he’s more seductive, better at that typical nietzschean flattery of the reader, and for some reason even people here tend to view him more positively.
Wasn’t that like his last post ever though?
Him not being an overt eugenics enthusiast while also not being the popular face of AI scientology probably helps ingratiate him to people here. Additionally, even though admittedly I haven’t really bothered to revisit since he stopped posting like a decade ago, whatever overall sociopolitical agenda he might have had can’t have been as glaringly obvious as siskind’s, which can make for some inconsequential reading.
I think his aggressive contempt for the reader also makes TLP a much easier writer to bounce off of into a healthier direction. Like, I remember reading his stuff and thinking “wow, this guy is an asshole” and being more concerned than excited when something made sense. Eventually those parts that kind of made sense connected to a framework with less hate and rage.
good writer
I reject the implication that Slatescott is a good writer.
He seems very aware of how writing works at least, and unlike EY some of his fiction is serviceable.
If someone is talking in parables it’s a red flag for me dawg.
He wasn’t usually. Another difference with siskind was that with TLP you mostly knew where you stood, or at least I don’t remember any near-end-of-text jumpscares where it’s revealed the whole thing was meant as really convoluted IQ apologetics, or some naive reframing of the latest EA embarrassment.
Yeah I mean, TLP is a lot more perverse. His reactionary ideology pemeates everything he writes but he never comes out and actually affirms anything. The only rhetorical mode is critiquing the supposed psychological perception of theoretical persons. No statement of fact is ever made. Any opinion one could ascribe to the author is plausibly deniable. I find it despicable.
This feels like someone setting up a novel-length strawman.
Remind me, do we have actual proof that The Last Psychiatrist is a real person and not a persona Scott made up for his most unhinged bullshit?
Not super proof (I have not checked it myself) but TLP was doxed (long before the whole ‘scott was doxed’ thing), so they are not the same person.
In the sense that TLP isn’t Blackbeard, no, we don’t. But I would suggest that, unlike Scott, TLP genuinely understands the pathology of narcissism. Their writing does something Scott couldn’t ever do: it grabs the narcissist by the face and forces them to notice how their thoughts never not involve them. As far as I can tell, Scott’s too much of a pill-pusher to do any genuine psychoanalysis.
Also, like, consider this TLP classic. Two things stand out if we’re going to consider whether they’re Scott in disguise. The first is that the dates are not recent enough, and indeed TLP’s been retired for about a decade. The second is that the mythology and art history are fairly detailed and accurate, something typically beyond Scott.
(In true Internet style, I hope that there is a sibling comment soon which shows that I am not just wrong, but laughably and ironically wrong.)
I am going to state my well-worn opinion that TLP doesn’t do that, he doesn’t have a particularly good grip on how narcissists think, certainly doesn’t say anything that could productively grapple with narcissism, is a boring asshole, and is shit at his job. But his style is incredibly flattering to the reader’s pessimism. He knows how to tell you you’re getting the good shit nobody else will give you - it’s just that it isn’t particularly good shit.
Check out Section III of your classic.
What have you learned so far? Do you think you’ve understood?
You heard the story, you heard the words, but your mind unheard it and replaced it with something else. Even after I tell you this, you’ll have trouble remembering it.
You think Narcissus was so in love with himself that he couldn’t love anyone else. But that’s not what happened, the story clearly tells it in the reverse: he never loved anyone and then he fell in love with himself. Do you see? Because he never loved anyone, he fell in love with himself. That was Narcissus’s punishment.
You thought Narcissus rejected all those people because he was in love with himself, but he rejected them all before he loved himself. Loved himself? Do you think Narcissus rejected them because he thought he was better than them? Or better looking? How would he have known he was so beautiful? He didn’t even recognize his own reflection! He rejected all those people because they loved him.
What does he do with that passage? It’s a numbered section so it must be important! He bullies you. Or rather, he bullies somebody. But of course, you DID read sections I and II. So you know that in the last sentence of Section II he’s cleverly turned the tables on the traditional interpretation of the story, a point he goes on to reiterate at the end of this Section III. But he’s planted in your mind one of two ideas, depending on what kind of reader you are (a) if you’re a pliable reader, you might question whether you REALLY got it without being told a second time, (b) if you’re a little more self-confident, now it occurs to you that there IS another kind of reader - not nearly as careful as you are - to whom Section III DOES apply.
What effect does this have? Primarily, it’s giving you the idea that TLP is the smart one in the room. The straight talker who keeps people on their toes and makes them pay attention.
But what’s true in his reversal isn’t actually that clever, it’s actually just this:
if no one ever seems right for you, and then the one person who does seem right doesn’t want you, then the problem isn’t the person, the problem is you
Now if I had told you this banal truism in that one sentence, and then added to it the heavy implication that you - and everybody else you know - is a pitiable narcissist who needs to read a lot more blog posts to get well, you might be tempted to say I was (a) an arsehole, (b) going a bit overboard with the narcissism thing.
You might not be tempted to read the other 7 or 8 sections of my post.
This stuff has real consequences. TLP’s particular view puts such banal truisms on a foundation of reactionary masculinism and pessimism. You are fallen, and you - you pitiable narcissist - need to be SHAKED BY THE THROAT to cure you of your narcissism. Well I am here to tell you that that’s wrong. Perhaps it works for this person or other, or they THINK it works for them because it flatters their own aspiraingly muscular pessimism, but by and large it doesn’t. By and large, what works for people is communication, community, and connection.
And he makes it sound, if you really twist it apart, like that’s what he’s telling you works. But he isn’t! He’s telling you to eat what you’re given and forget entirely about what you thought you wanted.
He is RIGHT that nothing is never not about us. But that doesn’t make us narcissists. That sets up an implied standard that he doesn’t state outright because it’s ludicrous: in order to not be a narcissist, on this view, you would have to never consider yourself in your own choices. Those choices, by the way, which are the only choices in the universe over which you have any control! It’s funny that we’re doing this in a thread about slave morality, because I would hazard that at the root of TLP’s pessimism (re: narcissism) is the impossibly high standard for self-sacrifice set by Christianity - a standard I have personally seen bring many people to their knees (and that is, of course, another criticism of TLP: to take him at his word is to learn how to punish yourself into oblivion).
If it helps you on your way to those things to be bullied now and again, fine, and I’ve certainly seen that work on a temporary basis, but TLP’s panacea stops at the surface and takes no interest in the deeper person. Of course it does, he’s doing a Hunter Thompson bit!
Oh, you misunderstand. It’s not for me.
NSFW
I’ve been to plenty of shrinks and never been diagnosed with anything outside of neurodivergence: giftedness, ADHD, and autism. I appreciate TLP because it had helped me understand and manage my narcissistic parent.
Nonetheless I agree with your critique of the writing style; it’s got all the fake edge of a 20s frat boy learning about existentialism for the first time.
Well I’m not really critiquing his writing style. I’m using a reasonably complementary analysis of his writing style to sternly criticise his thought. That means I fundamentally disagree with your own paragraph in praise of his thought, whereas I actually disagree with you that his writing is poor - I think he’s an intelligent and effective writer.
NSFW
He may have taught you to “manage” your narcissistic parent, that’s not for me to say, but that only means that he’s given you certain instruments which happen to help you deal with your relationship to somebody else’s problem. It actually tells us nothing about whether he genuinely understands that problem, and understanding that problem is both the task that he has set himself and the alleged skill you praise him for.
If you don’t respect the NSFW rules, then I’m not going to reply to you again.
I’m not massively invested one way or the other in your refusal to reply because I violated rules I didn’t know existed that you didn’t explain and which don’t make any sense to me
I guess I can edit the original comment to ALSO put…explanatory text?…in a NSFW box
I’ll be honest, Scott never gave me hives like a peremptory psychoanalytic reading of myths can.
Could practically feel him vibrating with righteous hatred during the “leftists have slave morality!” bit.
If only he’d read that article somebody wrote about how you should try to be charitable to your outgroup…
can’t wait for his nuanced reading of anders breivik’s manifesto
Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman
How is anyone able to read this article beyond this “Charlie Brown Had Hoes”-ass title?
@mtraven23 @sneerclub semirelated: I suspect the optimal position on the tall poppy syndrome spectrum is not at the extreme (having none of it at all).
