Understanding the psychology of HBD/Racial Realism/Dark Enlightenment

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Understanding the psychology of HBD/Racial Realism/Dark Enlightenment

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

katlington posted:

That's a cool thread and has thousands of words dedicated to dork enlightenment nerds though MagicMasochist may get asked to source their quotes.

We like it a lot. We try for erudite and well-cited sneer culture poop-flinging. Come on over! Only please do not feed the Cingulate.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2015 14:25

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 13:29

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

MagicMasochist posted:

Thanks again for the link to the proper NRx thread, and I wouldn't mind doing some legwork finding sources, even though ya'll are just gonna like, totally eviscerate it, I assume. I'd heard that you guys aren't too fond of nydwracu, which I find hilarious, because I was friends with nydwracu way back when we were just little kids. He stopped talking to me once he got into this whole blogging thing, and I had to independently find out about it all years later (in 2015).

Nyd needs to learn to write. Do justice to his horrible ideas.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2015 22:58

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Ddraig posted:

What kind of person doesn't know that there are many different types of "white people"? In America, of all places? You can't walk several steps without encountering many variants of "white people". Dutch, Irish, Italian, Greeks, Polish etc.

Certainly anyone who knows Nydwracu should be aware of Nyd's important information on why different strains of white people can't get along either. (Just to be gratuitously on-topic.)

# ¿ Dec 12, 2015 23:08

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Well good news! At your age, there's no end of things libertarians/an-*s think you should be able to consent to that the mean ol' state just won't let you!

uh I think you'll find the word is ephebotarian

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 01:42

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Helsing posted:

On a related note: has anyone from the Dark Enlightenment tried to rehabilitate phrenology yet?

Has sir encountered Koanic Soul as yet? Amazingly, a whole lot of DE types (including Aurini, who has ranted about "snake-melon Jews") actually buy into this poo poo.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2015 01:37

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Darth Walrus posted:

So this guy's giant folder of yeti rape fanart became a prized collector's item?
There's hope for goons yet.

Also highly recommended by the Church of the SubGenius (for the aesthetic).

# ¿ Dec 23, 2015 17:27

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Hbomberguy posted:

Can't believe I haven't seen this thread before now. Not just because I find these groups unendingly hilarious, but also because their existence at all is an indictment of the internet.

Don't forget the other thread, which is long but you will cackle with glee as you read it. Start from page one, it's long but completely rewarding.

Your videos were also wonderfully inspirational for the RW article, and OH DEAR LORD THAT SWEDISH BODYBUILDER'S MANLY TIT FLEXES

# ¿ Dec 27, 2015 13:13

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

The Lord of Hats posted:

It's pretty easy to agree with Rorschach on your first read through Watchmen; it's something you have to read multiple times to really get different characters' takes on the situation, and Rorschach's very, well, comic-book view of the world is easy to comprehend: Ozymandias killed a ton of people, therefore he is Guilty/Evil/Scum. That said, if you go around declaring him your favorite character and talk about how right he is you pretty clearly haven't thought about Watchmen that critically!

Rorschach is far and away the best-developed character in the book, so it's not that surprising.

bartlebyshop posted:

The Borgesian Effect

# ¿ Dec 28, 2015 15:41

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Dapper_Swindler posted:

honestly, devils advocate time. 4chan has gotten a better after 8chan came into being because most of the nutjobs/creeps moved there. plus 4chan has /histories and humanities/ board which isnt to bad, and the mods keep it from being /pol/ jr. yeah /pol/ and /b/ still exist, but i don't go on /pol/ so it doesnt matter.

I must say, it was nice to be able to say about Gamergate "too odious for 4chan".

Jack Gladney posted:

Gavin McInnes is definitely on the periphery of the dork enlightenment, though he has zero influence on Vice today. It might be more "punk rock" contrarian than leftist, though.

Ehh, he's a Taki's Mag racist. They aren't really NRx, in that they can write concisely and have senses of humour (at least somewhat). You'll see NRx in the comments on Taki's but never in the bylines, because oh my loving God they're the worst writers ever.

Zodium posted:

perhaps you could explain

Or PERHAPS NOT. Cingulate shat up the other thread with enough multi-page digressions, please don't encourage him here too.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2016 23:01

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Zodium posted:

e: if you think DE is bad, wait till open data initiatives really start taking off and mass idiocy gets a chance to pore over the data for spurious relationships. give it ten years, soft science is about to drown what little influence we have left in a torrent of citizen science bullshit. DE is just the canary in the coal mine.

ehh, I'm a skeptic, dismantling that sort of BS pseudoscience is what I do already for fun. The approach to doing so would be the same as the counterattack on everyone who starts with their conclusion and shores it up with whatever spurious BS they can find to prop it up.

I concur that there will be an onslaught of this BS as you describe, and it'll be pretty terrible. But it won't actually be worse than what we routinely deal with already; skeptics will start addressing the bad thinking in question in proportion to its public notice, and e.g. a well-written RationalWiki article (for all RW's hideous gaping flaws) does get picked up by the press as a source in practice. (At which point they're sourcewashed enough to go into Wikipedia, and the initial heavy lifting's done. Then it's mostly the slog of publicity.)

Getting back to the DE case, it isn't in fact shored up at all well by science or history, because in practice everything they write is pronouncement ex culo. Moldbug in particular is a bloody terrible historian. This is clearer in his earlier pieces, which were quite short! He used to write posts of about 1000-2000 words, with a clear thesis and falsifiable claims. But his commenters kept rudely pointing out his bullshit sources and ludicrous logical leaps, so he shifted to his more famous style in which he makes an amazing claim, spends 1000-2000 words redefining English, then shows that his sentence is not provably wrong if you use his special meanings of words. The bad logic and bad sources are as bad as ever, but nobody who doesn't already ~~hate the ni~~ agree with his broad outlines has the patience to check any more. Job done!

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 20:24

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Woolie Wool posted:

Is reinventing old ideas from principles, giving them stupid names, and passing them off as his own work Moldbug's schtick or something?

The Vosgian Beast posted:

There's a reason he caught on in the Less Wrong sphere.

He didn't get his bad habits - neologism, self-references to self-references to self-references that never actually resolve to a falsifiable claim, delusions of competence, pontification ex culo - from LessWrong, he started about the same time as Yudkowsky started writing the Sequences (and commented on them in the early days). However, they do indeed seem to be why he (a) fit right in (b) succeeded in recruiting neoreactionaries from amongst them.

I will credit Moldbug with less blatant nerdsniping and I couldn't find as many anime references and allusions. (Though I now sorta hope someone will point them all out to me. In general, the answer to "wtf LW?" is always "anime". Yes, even Roko's basilisk.)

# ¿ Jan 6, 2016 13:48

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Ian Winthorpe III posted:

I guess it runs the gamut from complete craziness to valid criticism of the tensions and dogmas inherent in contemporary progressive politics - gender theory wackiness, the schizophrenic attempt to reconcile Islam and Feminism, the ever-shifting grievance hierarchy and the absence of any grand collective vision or indeed, inspiring personalities.

It might be those things if it wasn't the purview of incompetents who can't write. Sadly, in this regard, this is not in fact the best of all possible worlds.

(seriously, these people are the worst loving writers)

# ¿ Jan 6, 2016 15:01

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

1337JiveTurkey posted:

Reading a bit too much into the 'psychology' in the thread title here but maybe there's a link between beliefs like Dark Enlightenment and some sorts of personality disorders. People toss around terms like narcissist or sociopath to describe them but they act quite differently in the formal sense than those sorts of people.

Schizoids and schizotypal people come to mind because they've got a lot in common with the stereotypical DE nerd. Extremely introverted, no close friends, never in a relationship, sometimes lost in an internal fantasy world, have some strange and/or idiosyncratic beliefs, don't fit societal expectations, very aloof, often mistaken for Asperger's , don't react much to other peoples' emotions, don't show many emotions themselves, perceive themselves as "different", tend towards anxiety disorders and depression, and so forth.

Everyone is going to fit a few of those at times but the people who fit all of them even when it's disruptive to their lives are the ones with serious problems. And they're devilishly hard to cure since the person with the disorder doesn't perceive anything wrong with those thoughts and behaviors even if they recognize that their lives are a loving train wreck. So these political beliefs sort of give a way to explain and understand those problems. It doesn't fix anything but it at least gives a sense that they've got a grip on the problem and that there's a solution.

So it may not start with the racism, sexism and so forth but people end up more receptive to such ideas in order to feel less desperately unhappy.

This is a theory that has actually posited by one person culturally familiar with the NRx/LW/technolibertarian subculture in the Bay Area that all three sprung from: he thinks they're all too aspergic to do actual politics so go for a simplified version (and is speaking as aspergic himself):

quote:

There՚s a certain quality that unites libertarianism, rationalism, and neoreaction, and helps to explain my somewhat conflicted attitude towards all of them. They are all in their own way antipolitical, and for roughly the same underlying reason. To put it crudely, nerds don՚t like politics, perhaps because they are generally no good at it. These ideologies are all, in different ways, trying to replace politics with something more tractable to the nerdish brain � something with neat well-defined rules. These formal systems are obviously better than the messy and violent reality of actual politics in every respect but the most important one � they don՚t engage with the actuality of power

I՚m going to just assume that nerdism is something like lightweight Asperger՚s, which means that some of the normal mental circuitry that deals with modelling and interacting with other people just doesn՚t work as well as it should. As a consequence, aspie-nerds tend to be awkward socializers but often with compensating skills at formal reasoning. They can grasp formally complicated structures so they often excel at computer engineering and similar pursuits. They tend to like board games.

The similarity I see in the three ideologies is that they are all efforts of the nerdish to try to apply their board-game thinking to the real world. In some sense these are laudable efforts � what could be more important than trying to come up with better models for understanding and influencing the real world? The three ideologies all have powerful models they are organized around, and that model is a powerful enough tool that it suggests to some people that it is foundational, that the model is somehow sufficient for everything. There՚s a point where a system of useful ideas becomes an ideology, a fetish, and a cult.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 00:42

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Quite a lot of this stuff is pretty much LARPing FATAL.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2016 23:15

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

blackguy32 posted:

So does this group have significant overlap with gamergaters? Or are they in conflict with one anothee? One thing I learned is that a lot of these fringe groups hate each other for various reasons.

Not really. The post-LessWrong rationalists, hence the gay Jew end of neoreaction, put a lot of store by this essay by Ozy about how poor widdle Eron Gjoni who did nothing wrong is a completely reliable source, and that horrible bitch Zoe Quinn is totally an acceptable target, and here's a paper-thin disclaimer. (And never mind actual observable behaviour of Gjoni or Quinn in the year+ since, 'cos "updating on evidence" is for the outgroup.) But little overlap as such; gators are so earnest and NRx are more detached.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2016 13:32

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

The psychology is an archetype the populace are well aware of, thanks. Tumblr on Kylo Ren from the new Star Wars:

wyattsalazar posted:

General ideology: Reactionary, the First Order wing. I was redpilled by Snoke. The tl;dr. version is this: optimize for intelligence, optimize for dark side (As much as possible in a declining galaxy) and select for a complacent population.

Dude is such a whiny privileged edgelord.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 23:59

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Darth Walrus posted:

Really? You seen what these fuckers are like to each other, right?

I don't remotely believe that liberals and reactionaries are two sides of the same coin, but that's an amusingly bad argument.

you need more communist train spotting, comrade. Also, the kulaks totes deserved it.[citation needed]

# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 17:47

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

New from our esteemed colleague HBomberGuy: the alt-right, the little white cuck ball and you! "I would call it the Dark Side, but they're all white."

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 19:14

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Flutch posted:

+1 to that FAT STACK of Zizek-related books on HBomber's desk. Zizek stack as the new Aurini skull??

http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=Z9voDV_ZsB8&p=n#/5007;5013

Those are Mark Hamill books for the Star Wars theme.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 13:28

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

�Now I know what you all want, you want me to cut to a shot of Davis Aurini saying something stupid �� HBomberGuy's part two is up now

# ¿ Feb 10, 2016 13:31

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Hbomberguy posted:

Speaking of Hitler, Not enough people on any side of any political debate have actually read Mein Kampf and that's a crying shame. I'm really interested in the annotated version coming out in Germany, though I'll probably have to wait for it to be translated.

It's a lot of really boring, poorly-written anecdotes (and I know from a native reader that the poorly-written-ness of the translation is accurate), punctuated with chillingly relevant advice for how to get ahead in politics, and the fact it's still good advice says more about how modern politics continues to function than it does about Hitler.

oh god, that thing was in my school library.

(I was po' but went to a school for rich kids. apparently this is suitable reading for rich kids.)

it was THE. WORST. I think I made it twenty pages in. The intro says something about "those expecting an incendiary work of political pornography will be disappointed".

I did like the frequent footnotes, for every time he talked complete bollocks. "This is false."

# ¿ Feb 14, 2016 02:19

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Tesseraction posted:

Wait, a version with footnotes? What country were you in?

Australia, around 1983-84ish. This was a UK translation, from after World War II. It tried to be an accurate translation, but was fully footnoted for people who seriously wanted to know what Hitler had actually said. I don't recall anything about it except I found it in the school library and went "WOW" and saw the quote, which was along the lines of:

Professor D. C. Watt posted:

Those who pick it up and thumb it through expecting a work of political pornography are going to be disappointed. It is lengthy, dull, bombastic, repetitious and extremely badly written. As a historical picture of Hitler�s life up to the time he wrote it, it is also quite unreliable. Most of its statements of fact and the entire tenor of the argument in the autobiographical passages are demonstrably untrue.

(and I also recall I lasted about 20 pages 'cos it really is just a pile of poo poo)

So having it start like that and follow through with footnotes noting Hitler bullshitting made me respect it a bit.

Not sure which translation it was, possibly the Manheim, I'm not sure.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2016 02:32

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Pope Guilty posted:

Onan pulled out during sex and that's a lot close to a woman than any of these winners are going to come.

Dex posted:

roses are red,
statists are fools,
it's such loving bullshit
that i can't live near schools

# ¿ Feb 15, 2016 20:31

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

#TheTriggering was mostly startlingly inane. We Hunted The Mammoth posted some suitably biased social justice wario cvck propaganda pieces on it: 1, 2, 3, 4

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 23:34

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Phil Sandifer's book Neoreaction a Basilisk (which I copyedited and advised on) has just kickstarted. Blog post. It does quite a bit of delving into the psyches of Curtis Yarvin (Mencius Moldbug) and Nick Land. Also, it takes the piss out of them relentlessly. I think it's a sheer delight and anyone who enjoys this thread should give the excerpts (one, two) a read.

quote:

Or, to put it another way, this is a book that uses Eliezer Yudkowsky, Mencius Moldbug, and Nick Land as a loosely stitched together foundation on which to build an oddball philosophical structure made of bits of Hannibal, China Mieville, Alan Turing, Thomas Ligotti, John Milton, and a futuristic AI that will torture you for all eternity if you buy a mosquito net.

# ¿ May 1, 2016 14:56

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

GunnerJ posted:

This is my favorite Kickstarter already.

The conspiracy zine edition (that post includes the text of the first three pages) looks exactly like what we used to do in the '80s (I pointed Phil at Prestige Elite to use as the font - Courier is so declasse dahling) and the colour edition looks like it'll be amazing and I really want one.

# ¿ May 1, 2016 15:48

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

To be gratuitously on-topic, another excerpt from Phil Sandifer's forthcoming book, this one on the concept of pwnage - getting hacked - the fear of someone invading your mind and turning it against you.

# ¿ May 3, 2016 21:40

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Bulkiest Toaster posted:

Who are the best alt-right philosophers I should read? Looking to get into the alt-right.

oh gawd. This is not an unreasonable question, but it's a rabbit hole of derp, combining obscurity and inanity like all the best worst Internet arguments.

Alt-Right: rebranded white nationalism (like, that's explicitly what it was and is intended to be).
Neoreaction: a brand put together by the incredibly long-winded Curtis Yarvin, aka Mencius Moldbug. See the RationalWiki article, which I wrote most of.
Dark Enlightenment: an umbrella term coined by Nick Land in a terrible essay of the same name. He is the only one of these bozos with anything resembling intellectual chops, so one is allowed to feel disappointed that he's clubbing it up with these idiots.

The PYF Dark Enlightenment Thinker thread is pretty good (I'm there a lot), if you read the first thirty pages then skip to the end and avoid Cingulate's threadshitting.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2016 11:23

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 13:29

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Pope Guilty posted:

Seriously. Buy a copy off Phil Sandifer and be willing to skim the bits about William Blake toward the back.

Hey, that bit answers the questions the DE ask! Specifically, that (a) William Blake answered all their concerns two hundred years ahead (b) Nick Land in particular, as an educated Englishman, has no excuse not to have known this.

NaB is currently in preparation (I think Phil has two more bonus essays to write - TERFs and Icke) and will be properly released in 2017. Some preview segments here.

there's a bootleg of an early draft up on libgen, cos if you're gonna be bootlegged then be bootlegged by the best

# ¿ Dec 31, 2016 16:15

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