To fully grasp the current situation in San Francisco, where venture capitalists are trying to take control of City Hall, you must listen to Balaji Srinivasan. Before you do, steel yourself for what’s to come: A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpot’s ravings, but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius.

…

“What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”

…

“A huge win would be a Gray Pride parade with 50,000 Grays,” said Srinivasan. “That would start to say: ‘Whose streets? Our streets!’ You have the A.I. Flying Spaghetti Monster. You have the Bitcoin parade. You have the drones flying overhead in formation.... You have bubbling genetic experiments on beakers.… You have the police at the Gray Pride parade. They’re flying the Anduril drones …”

…

Those who try to downplay Balaji’s importance in Silicon Valley often portray him as a “clown.” But Donald Trump taught us that clowns can be dangerous, especially those with proximity to influence and power. In the nearly 11 years since his secession speech at Y Combinator, Balaji’s politics have become even more stridently authoritarian and extremist, yet he remains a celebrated figure in key circles. 

…

Increasingly, Tan has also pursued another key Network State goal: attacking journalists. Balaji portrays the press, especially The New York Times, as the chief enemy of the Network State ideology.  He accuses the venerable paper of upholding something called “Woke Capital.”

…

“So long as you aren’t running a corporation based on hereditary nepotism where the current guy running the show inherits the company from his father’s father’s father’s father, you’re more diverse and democratic than the owners of The New York Times Company. You don’t need to take lectures from them, from anyone in their employ, or really from anyone in their social circle—which includes all establishment journalists.”

…

“Do not hire PR,” tweeted Balaji on April 4, days after Tan’s P.R.-wrangled Times profile. “They want to ‘train’ you to talk to journos. But journos hate you! So this is an obsolete model. Instead, just hire influencers. Build your own channel. And go direct.”

Is there really anything more to Balaji Srinivasan’s whole “network state” idea beyond that tech billionaires should get to build city-states, with groups auditioning online for their patronage; combined with a serious mischaracterization/misunderstanding of Zionism, and Herzl’s role within it?

Kind of don’t want to have to be strong and keep fighting anymore just want to give up and give in im so tired

its so brave that you have such a 2012-coded url in this 2024 world

would you call a bear brave for standing in a new construction suburb or would you recognize the unfamiliar world they built around him

I say this multiple times a day but Im doing worse than ever and nothing will ever be ok again

I honestly don't think I'll ever get better

hey its me, your local burden,

hey its me, your local burden,

there’s something wrong with me.

there’s something wrong with me.

there’s something wrong with me.

there’s something wrong with me.

there’s something wrong with me.

you cant do anything right, can you? you're fucking useless.

I often go to Kendi because he's unusually blunt and straightforward in stating things (possibly because he's not smart enough for the sort of clever obliquity of previous authors), but he's mostly in line with the trends in what was at least implicit in the writings of other academics in the decades before. And it's this academic consensus that both influences legal arguments, and provides cover for those who do seek to level more specific blame (like the whole "we're against whiteness, not white people; and 'whiteness' is a systemic thing" song-and-dance to which they often resort).

Psychometrics has consistently found that intelligence matters for all sorts of good outcomes.

First, they're mostly going to deny that; or at least, argue that there's no proof we can't find a way to get those outcomes while also increasing racial equity.

It's not just this sort of progressive, mind you, who argue that life outcomes need to be decoupled from IQ, but plenty of other left-wingers as well. Both Chris Arnade and Freddie deBoer have each written books to this effect, and even a bit of Murray's Coming Apart pushes in this direction.

I remember, back when I first got on Tumblr, making a point about how much of my reactionary positions are due to seeing some Progressive social trends as incompatible with maintaining industrial civilization, and I got a reply from a pronouns-in-bio type that "you better hope you're wrong about that," because they benefit too much from "progress," and so they and theirs will fight to the death to prevent anyone from trying to turn it back, no matter the cost. So, I can either get to work figuring out how to make keeping the lights on compatible with the Progressive social mission, or else resign myself to the collapse, because nothing is going to stop them pushing our society down this road. After all, if all those outcomes of intelligence require accepting racism, how "good" can they be, really?

I've seen some outlets go from "the so-called competency crisis is far-right racist nonsense" to "well, there's not enough evidence to prove that these negative trends are due to declining competence (and everyone trying to get such evidence is an evil racist)." Which English politician was it, who said that Muslim terror attacks are just part of life in a modern city? Then there's all the similar things about shoplifting, burglary, and so on. So, eventually, it's going to be that blackouts, planes falling out of the sky, rampant crime, etc. are all just a part of modern life, the price we all gladly pay for a diverse and tolerant democracy.

This is why I keep mentioning the ultimatum game. Plenty of humans are willing to take a hit to absolute well-being in exchange for a "fairer" relative distribution, and this varies. Some people are willing to burn down everything, so long as everyone is equal in the ashes.

His insistence that retards be put in charge of keeping the lights on and the water flowing would very quickly result in not having electricity, water, or instruments of governance, and then he'd die of diarrhea.

Both my mother and my brother have had plenty of stories about incompetent-but-unfirable coworkers, and in all cases, the more competent employees end up stepping in to do or fix the work said incompetents either left undone or did poorly, on top of their own work. Sure, they're not happy about it, and in my brother's case it eventually led him to quit, but the restaurant in question is still in business despite, last I heard, still employing the owner's screw-up in-law. There's a lot of ruin in a nation, and forcing firms to provide some number of do-nothing sinecures to Diversity is a lot less visible method of redistributing wealth between racial groups than straight-up government transfers.

So, it won't be "very quickly," but a slow decline. As in the Soviet Union, much of it will be blamed on political enemies, on "wreckers and saboteurs." And as elites fight over shares of a shrinking "pie," their competition via superior purity and fanaticism in adherence to the ideology will only grow ever-more intense.

When it comes to publicizing genetic differences, just who are you trying to reach, and what do you expect them to do afterwards? What do you say to someone who does see "the size and permanence of the gap," and (like Jayman) still demands people pour resources into it, in perpetuity, seeing this as an absolute moral duty, and that anyone who disagrees is a Nazi.

What good are truths about genetic differences, against those for whom "equity" is an overriding terminal value?

Progressivism Incurs A Moral Obligation To Study And Publicize Genetic Racial Differences

In this essay, I will, briefly summarize my line of argument and invite comments.

Keep reading

Brazilification

To slightly paraphrase something I said over at the Motte, we need to be worried less about becoming more like Brazil the South American country, and worried more about becoming more like Brazil the Terry Gilliam film.

i love how since liking anime/fanservice/porn is now hip in chronically online leftist circles they're trying to memory hole that weird period between like 2011 and 2018 where they would screech constantly about how anime was problematic/gross/paedophila or whatever instead of just admitting they were full of shit

xhs

Berlin is maybe the only city I've been in thats in the same natural category as nyc. I feel like by the numbers london deserves to be on the list but it is a truth univerdalky acknowledged that London kind of sucks (possible explanation: the British are a fundamentally provincial people and only developed a true metropolis by aping America)

oh NO