I recently appeared on The Bailey—a podcast associated with the rationalist-adjacent Motte forum—to be interviewed by Yassine Meskhout and TracingWoodgrains. You may recognize the latter as the fellow who brought me back as a public figure by creating a
Related to the whole discussion about university admissions, I think that it isn’t completely clear what the universities are trying to achieve anymore. Much like all the other institutions, they seemingly have too many contradictory goals and the one that wins the competition is to service the “client”, be it the students or other places they get funding from.
If you want an interesting and challenging environment on campus, selecting for IQ along with high openness makes the perfect sense. Otherwise, majority of the lower level school systems prioritize for conscientiousness and that’s how you get the kind of students that are constantly doing the assigned repetitive and grueling tasks instead of innovating or rebelling in any way. But I will also point out that openness is the only personality trait that correlates with IQ. If you select people purely on the basis of IQ, exams like the SAT aren’t very good at this at all, you would end up with many highly open, quirky and charismatic people, and not all boring nerdy ones.
This is the episode in which Yassine Meskhout spends two hours trying to (and kind of failing to) understand the value of propaganda and symbolism, instead of just focusing on autistically building coalitions with a rational messaging. Tracing, at least, seems to understand that there is a skill of 'pushing people's buttons' in interesting and unpredictable ways – and that this skill has primacy over the machinery that produces proper governance (e.g, policy and data).
Jeb Bush who sounds like Benito Mussolini is a powerful image. That is kind of what you want. A serious, systematic thinker behind closed doors; but a complete wacko animal on the campaign trail. Or some way of drawing the two up together in a coherent, fluid, sexy persona.
Yassine maybe doesn't understand (?) – the thing that draws you in is the wacko dress-up marketing (this is what builds trust); only then, is it even worth it to consider the schematics and administration that delivers results. This is similar to dating: you only get your day in court if you can make a flashy, hot show *and then also later* back that up with depth, intelligence, sensitivity, etc.
At this point, I don't think this is about being "Right" (wing) anymore. I think we are entering a "post-right" ideology of cultural values against liberalism, where people are leaving the subcultures of self-identification into direct and sincere criticisms.
Liberalism, at the end of the day, is only a governing mechanism. There is so no fundamental primal or cultural or belief content to liberalism. When done well, it adjudicates between many different groups who share important similarities and importance differences. Each group gets a say in how the central authority that mediates it runs, and also certain level of independence from that centralized authority.
What are even the groups anymore? Everyone kind of is in this in-between space where they are loosely bound to old structures, norms, associations – but none of it makes sense. First, figure out what the real interests and coalitions are, and have each one sincerely pursue what they think is good and beautiful. Then, liberalism can emerge within this framework of good-faith, self-promoting negotiation.
The liberalism and its institutions of the 20th century had a certain technological/theological context. This is not the same technological/theological context for the 21st century. Time to figure out what pluralism means in this new context (before we all kill ourselves or become addicted to VR porn).
Sometimes generalizations and stipulating to generally understood shared facts can obscure key details, other times it can move a conversation along instead of holding it up with trivial, non-core minutia. Some Rationalists don't seem appreciate the need for "load bearing fiction" to keep the gears of society oiled (going to play my IDW fanboy card here and recommend Eric Weinstein on this in particular...).
You can have meritocracy without turning every top school into Caltech. Yes, you need creative people that party a bit too... The mandate for lead elite school have always been to select for balanced leaders, not the geeky behind the scenes bit players. This would be patching an existing problem, not rupturing the entire model with a Chinese-style "one test to rule them all".
On white identity politics... The way I've danced around those issues "in polite (but not hard leftist) company" was to always bring up the asymmetries and hypothetical backlash. Well, if you have all the group identity politics on the left, won't the right then respond in kind? Symmetrically applying that to white people as well would be bad, right? Ah now you grasp the problem strategically.
There's a really good political example of this that doesn't hit on racial valence I use as a thought experiment. The UK has asymmetrical quasi-federalism... Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales all have their regional parliaments, responsible for devolved issues like health care and policing. But there is no corresponding regional parliament for England (yes, yes, there is the London Assembly but that isn't in play here). So you end up with people elected from Scotland voting on policies that only effect England in the UK national parliament, but the English electorate doesn't have that corresponding power over Scotland. The so-called "West Lothian Question". A good way to approach it theoretically without bringing the loaded race card into play just yet.
White in-group preferences might end up being reframed as akin to the white ethnic vote 100 years ago with Italians, Irish etc in city political machines. And hate crime laws can also be applied to racially motivated black on white crime.
That one guy sure was fixated on deboonking racial in-group preferences. I think I would have answered him with "I want to keep out non-white people because I want to live around white people, because I'm white." This is completely normal revealed-preference behavior demonstrated by all people everywhere, and only ever treated as weird or unacceptable when a white person dares to articulate it.
Related to the whole discussion about university admissions, I think that it isn’t completely clear what the universities are trying to achieve anymore. Much like all the other institutions, they seemingly have too many contradictory goals and the one that wins the competition is to service the “client”, be it the students or other places they get funding from.
If you want an interesting and challenging environment on campus, selecting for IQ along with high openness makes the perfect sense. Otherwise, majority of the lower level school systems prioritize for conscientiousness and that’s how you get the kind of students that are constantly doing the assigned repetitive and grueling tasks instead of innovating or rebelling in any way. But I will also point out that openness is the only personality trait that correlates with IQ. If you select people purely on the basis of IQ, exams like the SAT aren’t very good at this at all, you would end up with many highly open, quirky and charismatic people, and not all boring nerdy ones.
This is the episode in which Yassine Meskhout spends two hours trying to (and kind of failing to) understand the value of propaganda and symbolism, instead of just focusing on autistically building coalitions with a rational messaging. Tracing, at least, seems to understand that there is a skill of 'pushing people's buttons' in interesting and unpredictable ways – and that this skill has primacy over the machinery that produces proper governance (e.g, policy and data).
Jeb Bush who sounds like Benito Mussolini is a powerful image. That is kind of what you want. A serious, systematic thinker behind closed doors; but a complete wacko animal on the campaign trail. Or some way of drawing the two up together in a coherent, fluid, sexy persona.
Yassine maybe doesn't understand (?) – the thing that draws you in is the wacko dress-up marketing (this is what builds trust); only then, is it even worth it to consider the schematics and administration that delivers results. This is similar to dating: you only get your day in court if you can make a flashy, hot show *and then also later* back that up with depth, intelligence, sensitivity, etc.
At this point, I don't think this is about being "Right" (wing) anymore. I think we are entering a "post-right" ideology of cultural values against liberalism, where people are leaving the subcultures of self-identification into direct and sincere criticisms.
Liberalism, at the end of the day, is only a governing mechanism. There is so no fundamental primal or cultural or belief content to liberalism. When done well, it adjudicates between many different groups who share important similarities and importance differences. Each group gets a say in how the central authority that mediates it runs, and also certain level of independence from that centralized authority.
What are even the groups anymore? Everyone kind of is in this in-between space where they are loosely bound to old structures, norms, associations – but none of it makes sense. First, figure out what the real interests and coalitions are, and have each one sincerely pursue what they think is good and beautiful. Then, liberalism can emerge within this framework of good-faith, self-promoting negotiation.
The liberalism and its institutions of the 20th century had a certain technological/theological context. This is not the same technological/theological context for the 21st century. Time to figure out what pluralism means in this new context (before we all kill ourselves or become addicted to VR porn).
A frustrating yet productive conversation...
Sometimes generalizations and stipulating to generally understood shared facts can obscure key details, other times it can move a conversation along instead of holding it up with trivial, non-core minutia. Some Rationalists don't seem appreciate the need for "load bearing fiction" to keep the gears of society oiled (going to play my IDW fanboy card here and recommend Eric Weinstein on this in particular...).
You can have meritocracy without turning every top school into Caltech. Yes, you need creative people that party a bit too... The mandate for lead elite school have always been to select for balanced leaders, not the geeky behind the scenes bit players. This would be patching an existing problem, not rupturing the entire model with a Chinese-style "one test to rule them all".
On white identity politics... The way I've danced around those issues "in polite (but not hard leftist) company" was to always bring up the asymmetries and hypothetical backlash. Well, if you have all the group identity politics on the left, won't the right then respond in kind? Symmetrically applying that to white people as well would be bad, right? Ah now you grasp the problem strategically.
There's a really good political example of this that doesn't hit on racial valence I use as a thought experiment. The UK has asymmetrical quasi-federalism... Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales all have their regional parliaments, responsible for devolved issues like health care and policing. But there is no corresponding regional parliament for England (yes, yes, there is the London Assembly but that isn't in play here). So you end up with people elected from Scotland voting on policies that only effect England in the UK national parliament, but the English electorate doesn't have that corresponding power over Scotland. The so-called "West Lothian Question". A good way to approach it theoretically without bringing the loaded race card into play just yet.
White in-group preferences might end up being reframed as akin to the white ethnic vote 100 years ago with Italians, Irish etc in city political machines. And hate crime laws can also be applied to racially motivated black on white crime.
On MAGA chuds... At least the Claremont Institute seems to put out productive ideas. However, your path seems very similar to Julius Krein, who also went on the Trumpist to technocrat pathway [https://www.vox.com/21528267/the-ezra-klein-show-trumpism-donald-trump-joe-biden-2020] -- link to a Vox Ezra Klein interview with him.
Finally, it's very true that centrists have eclectic views combining hard left and right, not just squishy vibe ones that are down the middle on everything [https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/24058352/what-were-getting-wrong-about-2024s-moderate-voters].
That one guy sure was fixated on deboonking racial in-group preferences. I think I would have answered him with "I want to keep out non-white people because I want to live around white people, because I'm white." This is completely normal revealed-preference behavior demonstrated by all people everywhere, and only ever treated as weird or unacceptable when a white person dares to articulate it.