Curtis Yarvin Transcript
00:02.34
cactuschu
Roe V Wade overturned w or l.
Curtis:
L
cactuschu
Okay, what do you think of psychoanalysis?
00:03.10
Curtis
Um, what do I think of psychoanalysis? Um, do you mean in the strict Freudian sense?
00:12.94
cactuschu
I mean in general Freud looks at basically like anything right? What do you think of it as a general tool?
00:16.63
Curtis
Yeah I mean I think that psychoanalysis works if it works because it's essentially what we now call therapy and as far as I know the best the sort of most effective forms of therapy are very. Sort of humble and much less literary things than Freud and Lacan you know there are things like you know cognitive ah behavioral training. You know, really just things to just assume that you're just like literally training a clump of neurons and generally I think that sort of. My impression is that kind of the dumber therapy or coaching gets like the better it works and so yeah, I'm not Freud was a very imaginative fellow but you know I can't really see much else in him.
01:08.32
cactuschu
Yeah, how about discerning truth in politics right? You have all these times when people are when people are proposing 1 thing and there's ah, there's a clue here to what they actually mean.
01:18.73
Curtis
Well, yeah I mean that's ah ah, it's a kind of analysis. Um I guess you know my school of politics is really what's sometimes called the italian elitist. School of political science which is really the best introduction in English to the Italian elitists is James Burnham the Machiavellian and so I feel it is an excellent book and so I feel that when you're looking at any kind of political situation.
01:43.62
cactuschu
Yes, an excellent book.
01:56.11
Curtis
You should certainly not take it at face value. You should not assume that it is what it's pretending to be. You should try and find sort of the objective correlates of reality like a good example of this in today's um you know government is ah or today's Us government is is an exercise I recommend you know anyone try which is that they go up to anyone who knows how Washington works and say we don't have an executive branch. We have a legislative branch and if I ask you to, most people will actually get it without they'll be like ah hand. If they have trouble understanding it. You should point out that the budget policy and personnel of every agency is set into you know what's called law but are really administrative directives from the congress and. Whereas the way that the president communicates with the agencies is basically press releases and so you actually have a system where moreover what we call the legislative branch which we call a parliamentary branch does not actually have any parliamentary procedure or process. It is actually nothing like a parliament except in form. It is not a bunch of guys standing around on the floor convincing each other of shit and so you know these people are not statesmen in any way shape or form. In fact I think the future is for them to be basically actors like you. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who is famous. In fact, cast for the role of um of a congresswoman and so basically right away if you start looking at the most important government in the world. You see that largely the symbolic nature of these things and the real nature of them just starts to become very very divergent and you know so even to say like. You don't even want to start from the symbolic meaning and try to sort of correct that you want to start from a sort of tangible reality and you notice the tangible reality is that. Agencies testify before congress. They don't testify but for the president right? Yeah and and for just for None example, right? and and and so you actually don't have an executive branch. You have this sort of ritualistic nominating role.
04:21.63
cactuschu
Citizen.
04:38.52
Curtis
And um, like the idea is that the nominees are in charge of they you know the political appointees are in charge of the agencies is just pure bunk and so so like you're um, you're looking at. Systems which are like real systems inhabited by like many many honest, you know, sensible people and these systems do not describe themselves as their real forms and so to just assume that is actually normal and natural and not even like terribly awful. For sort of the political history of the present to be systematically obscured by the very language that we use to describe. It is just like you're not even if you're not acknowledging that. That's the None problem that you have to solve. You can't really even think about these things properly because you're thinking in terms of these illusions.
05:38.54
cactuschu
Right? Yeah, and sorry to interrupt you this early. This will be cut out but it is your mic very close to your mess. Ah.
05:45.38
Curtis
No, no, no no I'm um I was done there. Um, it's fairly close should I turn it up and move it and move it away. Okay, yeah, like popping got you? Okay is this better. Okay.
05:54.91
cactuschu
Yeah, and move it a bit further away. Yeah because you're getting a lot of like bumps or like yeah yeah or well we won't know for a bit. But yeah, it sounds better at least.
06:05.20
Curtis
Okay, okay, ok, good good. Um, excellent. Okay yeah I was a good stopping point. Anyway, let's go forward.
06:15.73
cactuschu
Yeah I Think why trying to draw some kind of correlation at least seems important though is that I think in broad strokes There is this kind of direction. That's the government. Change in right increased centralization becoming slightly more or dramatically more left-w wing depending on what timescale you're looking at um and.
06:42.16
Curtis
Sure sure I mean you have to analyze as long as you sort of translate from the nominal terms into the real terms. You know you can study them and you should study them sort of in real terms like you know, no government. Well I mean. Sort of saying the government is getting more centralized over time is not in any way like that's not a government, something that the government would really save itself in order to do that. You're already forcing yourself. To Basically you know as we would say you know in college in the eighty s deconstruct you know exactly you're you're basically you can't I mean this is just is just very like in so sort of I mean they of course took it in these ridiculous directions. But
07:22.90
cactuschu
Sitting.
07:36.85
Curtis
You know, basically saying that you can't sort of analyze any situation until you've deconstructed the language that you analyze it in is really important. Otherwise you're just analyzing it in terms of these illusions.
07:53.20
cactuschu
Actually, let me change the question a little bit. What do you think of psychoanalysis as a political tool as in a tool for powder. Okay, so we have this. We have this problem.
08:01.22
Curtis
What do you do? You elaborate a little bit on what you mean by Psycho analysis and this is it sounds like you're almost asking me to invent something here. Um so why don't you invent it yourself. Um.
08:10.39
cactuschu
Ah, yeah, so right now what we're looking at is we're looking at ah I think a political landscape where a certain kind of emotion. Um best hits emotional kind of like None chords are very are doing great and some of those are like diversity some of those are empathy. Ah, right? and you've kind of given a very good explanation and actually we can. We can do that a little bit after as well give an explanation of the kind of fake empathy that exists. But I think something that's been kind of rising as ah, rising as a kind of counter example.
08:39.36
Curtis
Sure.
08:48.78
cactuschu
This or as a counter technique to this is that there's this guy who basically goes around saying like you know like ah you know like progressivism you know they're kind of like empathy shaming. This is just cluster B Personality disorders and ah I mean I think it's a little bit oversimplified.
08:59.27
Curtis
Um, a half right.
09:06.28
cactuschu
Ah, but I think that's actually a very potent political tool. It gives a kind of understanding to people of like oh wait. The thing that you thought was good. The thing that you thought wasn't questionably good here is like what it actually means right? and that's kind of like a very compelling narrative to people.
09:15.69
Curtis
yeah yeah I mean when yes when you see psychoanalysis of course I go straight to Freud or whatever you know what I would say is yeah, it's it's just it's it's a it's a code word and you know.
09:23.35
cactuschu
I Mean it's similar right.
09:31.98
Curtis
If you were to just say you know psychological analysis or even like sort of character analysis. Ah you know I would come closer to agreeing with you. I was asking um a close friend with a background in what we call social Justice The other day I'm like an asker.
09:41.82
cactuschu
Game.
09:50.73
Curtis
Does the attraction of these movements does it feel like an addiction to you does what it gives you the kind of energy that that it gives you feel addictive and she was like sort of Maybe there's like something right and something wrong about that and I'm like well you know from None perspective I could say that this gives you a feeling of power from None another perspective. It gives you a feeling of meaning or a feeling of impact or doing good. Granted, it may actually be doing good that sometimes happens um and and so sort of you know the question of the evolutionary landscape of ideas in. A system where politics is driven by the marketplace of ideas has to include an analysis of the attractiveness of those ideas irrespective of how epistemologically. Compelling they may be and what we see is we see the rise of these kinds of packages of you know, sort of ways of thinking ideas and perspectives that I think. Would strike most people from the past is not very epistemically convincing and yet they strike they seem very successful and so we have to explain sort of the psychological causes. That causes these things to be compelling. We can look around ourselves and we can say why do people feel good about supporting the war in Ukraine like or why supporting the Ukrainian side or you know, ah, whatever it is. They think they're doing things that make people feel like ah you know you'll go around and you'll see them often. Um. You'll see Ukrainian flags like I was in rural portugal. You know, a couple of weeks ago. There were ukrainian flags and if you go around of course the Bay Area you'll see ukrainian flags here in Texas there are ukrainian flags and many of these flags you'll notice they still have the folds in them. They've sort of recently been unpacked like this. Tremendous sympathy with the Ukrainian people is recently discovered and so there's something obviously there's a kind of strong heard emotion here. This is a very packaged sort of thing. It's not too different from the king of the agit prop that is the left wing.
12:32.11
Curtis
Regimes in the Eastern bloc used to inflict on the population like you've got to go to the official Demonstration. You've got to wave the official sign. You know that was a little tawdry but um, but there's an attraction there. You know there wouldn't be This isn't wholly engineer. There's an attraction. To this cause and you know it's reminiscent of the attraction to sort of many other causes. There's this sort of generic concept of Activism and we can say you know what makes leftism feel good. Leftist ideas feel sort of glowing and warm and you know that that um makes them so successful when you know for example, they may have such a poor track record. And yeah I like that. If you call that psychoanalysis sure analyzing you know, understanding the psychology of the supporters of any system of power is obviously crucial to like understanding what to do about that system of power.
13:42.99
cactuschu
I think I mean something more specific which is trying to draw the kind of underlying desires which I guess is quite similar to what you mean? Um, but ah yeah I mean it's quite simple just to.
13:49.23
Curtis
Me: Yeah, why don't you say why? don't you say more you have you have you have some ideas to present.
14:01.35
cactuschu
I mean just compare it to the kind of classical Freud example right? There is this desire that we think hair is like oedipus syndrome right? like this like I do mean like the kind of most basic example.
14:05.40
Curtis
Well enlighten me enlighten me because I don't know I don't know much about Freud. So yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no let's yeah, like let's assume let's assume let's assume um, you know speak to me. As if at least on the subject of a fraud I was a small child or a golden retriever and um.
14:26.57
cactuschu
Yeah, so essentially we have the situation where people are expressing these desires and then they have actions that they justify with those desires and you take a look at it and it's and they don't line up.
14:43.23
Curtis
Um, right.
14:44.96
cactuschu
Um, and now I'm not saying necessarily that 1 explanation or another of Freud's examples that he gave are particularly correct or not but 1 one notable example is well what drives human sexuality. Well perhaps perhaps it is that when you're.
14:50.29
Curtis
Here.
15:01.63
cactuschu
Ah, when you're growing up you and develop this kind of sexual desire for your mother and you want to kill your father and have sex with your mother and that's the kind of like Freudian um is still an oversimplification. But um.
15:07.25
Curtis
Yeah. Sure I would, I would definitely advise Freud to um, speak for himself on that one put um um, ah.
15:18.56
cactuschu
Yeah, yeah, but essentially you have a situation where I think it's true that a lot of these that there is actually quite a lot of correlation between the explicit narratives that people give and the kind of underlying psychological tones.
15:35.42
Curtis
Um, sure sure sure sure and and and and yeah I mean the um which you notice is you notice that a lot of these tropes have things in.
15:37.22
cactuschu
Even if those aren't sad, those aren't necessarily obvious at any glance.
15:54.31
cactuschu
Yes.
15:54.38
Curtis
Common or sort of you know things in common that do not match sort of common narratives and so um, you know this is basically you know Casuistry is another good word for this ah practice carlyle with his sublime indifference to political correctness called the Jesuitism. Where you're basically like you say you give a reason for an action or a reason for a perspective which does not reflect an accurate analysis of your own motivation or purpose. And because it doesn't reflect the sort of Accurate analysis. It basically causes people to model your mind in a way that is not apparently true and you know the sort of the connection to I think that. Most people when they sort of commit an act of leftism don't understand that it has the psychological impact on them of making them feel more important and that's a very basic human desire to feel important. Ah, you know important chimpanzees have little baby chimpanzees and unimportant ones I don't know maybe and it doesn't matter and so you're basically when your motivation for. Participating in these things is essentially to make yourself feel important that would be described by you know that is self-importance that is vanity and you know sort of nobody ever thinks that they're being vain or especially that they're being vain. And what often ends up being a very callous way because this is one of the things you know ways you can sort of distinguish between sort of false and true charity or empathy or altruism or whatever you want to call it is. There are always. Sort of little tells where someone who's concerned who sort of had a genuine empathic connection would react differently from someone who just wanted to feel important The example. That I give is um, usually is Imagine. You know you're walking on the road and you see a motorcycle accident and the Motorcycles fly over the guy flying into the curb on his jacket you know hits his head and spins Out. You go over there. You're the first one ah over there.
18:38.50
Curtis
You take off his helmet to see if he's okay, whoops he just broke his neck. If you hadn't done that he would have been okay, he would have been banged up but now because he broke his neck. He's paralyzed for life. Ah whoops and so if that happened to you in real life. You'd be pretty burned up about it and what we see sort of again and again with various forms of political leftism that happened to backfire you know from from the Russian revolution to the Arab spring is that the people who supported them. Don't appear to get that sort of backlash of ooh I tried to do a good thing but instead I did a bad thing. The bad thing doesn't actually really register emotionally on them. They're not really super disturbed about what happened, they're like oh yeah I tried to do something good, but unfortunately it didn't work out. And they're not sort of looking. They're not kind of searching their souls for that consequence and that is I think good evidence that what attracted them originally was not a genuine Empathic Bond but you know simply vanity and ambition.
19:54.58
cactuschu
Um, yeah, have you ever read the book the Elephant in the brain by Robin Hanson Okay it kind of describes a similar thing it describes basically like so the act of self-deception right? All the ways that people kind of.
20:01.18
Curtis
Are um, no are.
20:14.22
cactuschu
Um, the story is that people tell themselves and he basically makes the case that it's all like post- talks justification right? or that it's mostly post hoc justification that there all these kinds of experiments a very funny 1 is like you have.
20:22.12
Curtis
Um, this.
20:27.93
cactuschu
Ah, you have 2 pictures of women you ask? Ah you ask a man which woman is more attractive and then you kind of like do like a bait and switch you do like a little parlor trick and you give them the the opposite picture and you say like why did you pick this woman and people will kind of like people will kind of give very clear like justifiable answers like they'll they'll rationalize their like quote unquote choice.
20:37.63
Curtis
Great.
20:43.83
Curtis
Right? You know, right? right.
20:47.00
cactuschu
Um, and of course they didn't make that choice of course is like complete bullshit right? because they put they actually picked the other person and most people don't even notice and and basically that you have the situation where I think that there are many um, quite malicious, quite malicious, kind of goals or at least desires and that at least. Ah. And that what's happening here, especially in politics is that there is almost like a 1 to 1 there is almost like a bijection to these things right? you can kind of Map Map the narratives or the appeals to emotion to the actual like cynical take.
21:12.98
Curtis
He went to the actual ah you know? Yeah yeah I don't know that the cynical think is malicious would be a strong term I think you know the closest you get is. Is that it ends up as kind of fundamentally a moral way of thinking that would be closer to my analysis. Ah yeah, yeah, and okay, okay, okay, contest me contest me contest me dar.
21:35.50
cactuschu
I Don't think so I would contest you there right? and I know you and I know you think that taking a kind of a more emotional position to these things is not good but like okay so the reason why I say malicious is that there's actually I think. That there is a kind of um, there's just way too much tolerance towards people who are either self-deceptive or are kind of making these kinds of emotional appeals that make them seem like they are well-meaning and I think that having like a concept of malice. That is devoid of saying okay what is this person's kind of explicit like Self-justification and as if people don't lie I think having a definition of malice that doesn't fall for that like the most obvious kind of Exploit is actually just yeah, it's actually just better.
22:25.44
Curtis
The problem. Yeah I get that because it's because it's certainly that form of malice if you want to call it that has caused many of the serious political and historical problems of the recent past. On the other hand I think the problem with that usage is that because you're bending whenever you bend a word a little bit like that. Um, you're not really looking at the same level of malice as a serial killer. And the thing is the level. You're sort of looking at the truth that serial killers don't really matter and it's not really usually such a thing at the political level and most of what we would call Evil is due to what you describe as Malice. That's true. But the thing is that if you basically bend the word, you give the target a way to escape because the target can say this is malice. I'm not this and they can say that accurately and so you don't want to. You know you don't want that to be.
23:28.24
cactuschu
My.
23:39.87
Curtis
Chess moves in response to your rhetorical chess move and the thing is that also one of the things that you're doing with that word is you're doing something very subtle. You're explaining this really subtle way in which these evil people result from these people being. If anything like there's something morally culpable there but it is sort of more negligence than malice and you know negligence is better than malice. It's obviously like it's much more common. It's really the thing and it's also much more curable than madness than malice. And so when you basically say this is kind of the farthest I would go is this kind of ambitious negligence and really you know it's like if I were to describe the sort of I'm kind of a believer in the theory that world war one was more or less designed. In the foreign office in London and but of course it had a kind of negligent malice to it because they envisioned a war that would be even quicker and more bloodless than like the franco-prussian war and they were never anticipating this world ending horror and. So again, but malice. Yeah, like it's just too. It's sort of like what you do when you start with malice and you basically are like trying to prove that that word. From a propaganda standpoint you're in the sort of standpoint of indictment and it's true that these people need to be indicted but those sort of that's not really sort of the best propaganda approach in some ways you actually want to like. Set out the story of what happened and then have your listener being like holy god these people should be indicted and sort of charming it in the sort of most accurate and clear but sort of soft and not judgmental terms. I think it gives you more effective propaganda and effectiveness is the only judge of propaganda.
25:59.62
cactuschu
That's very interesting because I'm not sure if I didn't know actually didn't know how to evaluate. I don't know how to evaluate this claim. Maybe this is kind of a difference Between. Propaganda in the immediate term and and in the kind of iterated term right because in the immediate term I feel like just connecting it with malice is more effective but maybe that's not the case in the long term and yeah I'm not sure what to make of this.
26:15.77
Curtis
E.
26:26.54
Curtis
It's you have to, it's too like when you're oppositional. It doesn't convey your sense of the right to rule and if you think about sort of. The attitude of the best possible next regime toward the previous regime.. It's sort of full of sympathy because it sort of can afford to be historically generous like there's sort of as little. Odium is possible toward anyone in the previous system. It's just like your judge Judgment is that a lot of people were very small cogs in a very big wheel and the whole thing failed and had to be gotten rid of and. The Gentler you are about it the more sort of majestic you seem and so yeah, yeah, right? And so the like if you sort of have this kind of softer.
27:20.29
cactuschu
Right? Dang is definitely a communist right.
27:34.96
Curtis
More gracious, more king-like rhetoric I think you're just going to do better in the long run because you're basically it's not about your opponents. It's about you. It's not about sort of Shrilly indicting your opponents. You know , any level of shrillness just drives people away.
27:53.12
cactuschu
M.
27:54.75
Curtis
You know what you want is for them to realize that you know even though there are 5 of you and 5000000 of them. You're actually the adults in the room and so that's why this sort of you know, understated and sympathetic judgment which is sort of you know it's like what you want is.
28:02.86
cactuschu
She.
28:13.77
Curtis
To give these your enemies as much sympathy as historians in the twenty third century will feel the need to give them. They're just like yeah there were these guys like you know, a lot of good guys you know, but the thing was fought. You know and ah so the and it'll be a very informal history at that time and yeah, so like.
28:20.98
cactuschu
Sit me.
28:33.83
Curtis
That's why I sort of go for these more Gentler less sort of less shrill terminologies I mean both in sort of the negative and the positive directions. You may know my objections to terms like rationalist or modern monetary theory or whatever basically.
28:48.41
cactuschu
Yeah.
28:51.84
Curtis
Presume their own correctness and universality. Um, and um, yeah I mean some of the most successful political labels of all time like whig and Tory used by you know. People that are called these names of many periods. You know both of these are descended originally for terms for cattle rustlers. Ah um, just thieves, bandits , highwaymen , just the scum of the scum right? So you know there is always this like strength that comes out of like ironically boasting of None ne's weakness and um, and harmlessness it just it feels better than you know, having having aggressive terminology and you know there's always there's you know there's plenty of time to try these bastards after we. Ah after we take over. There's no need to drown before then um.
29:42.76
cactuschu
Yeah, there is a tradeoff though between that and the ability to take power.
29:48.90
Curtis
Um, no, um because I think that it's true that people learn the things that work in the modern sort of way. Age and so this is a very very ironic age. We live in the most ironic, most sophisticated society in terms of media consumption that has ever existed and so.
30:14.79
cactuschu
Hing.
30:24.68
Curtis
And politics doesn't you know you see some hints of it in Trump but sort of no one understands like just the power of aggressive modernism even in politics like no one understands like. How ironic you can be or like all the ways you can break the fourth wall and so when you're basically understated and calm. You leave yourself with a lot of room to get wild when you're based.
30:57.34
cactuschu
Um, what do you mean by Aggressive modernism?
31:02.40
Curtis
I mean aggressive modernism. I mean subverting the conventional narrative with any kind of irony whether it's modernist or postmodernist. I mean basically saying I'm going to acknowledge that. The Presidency is a symbolic office I'm running for. I'm going to basically say this is going to be None gag from beginning to end. You almost see that in Zelinsky in the Ukraine right? You know and the and and so like.
31:25.10
cactuschu
Um, yes.
31:33.40
Curtis
When you see like that versus like you know this message paid for by Mike Pence you know it's just like we're watching like None different levels of technology and you know Trump is an entertainer and did very well off of that. But like. I mean we could do far better than that right? And so yeah, so ordinarily like in terms of and just like shrillness of any kind which might have been like rousing to like scottish cowherds in the 1750 s you know. Is like a turnoff. It comes. It's like whiny on some malice you know, like now man you're like these guys hey man these guys are just doing their jobs. You know, but you gotta look at the shit and be like hey man this shit sucks and and like have a little more like you need to be. You need to sort of own your frame a little more and sort of if I go back to sort of the historical view like you know, no one in 2022 is writing a history of the wars of the roses. That's like a vicious indictment of the. You know lancastrian bastards or you know like like ah a staunch upholding of the claims of the house of York like there's no like 1 ne-sided history of the wars of the roses like no one would dream of writing such a thing and so there's sort of no sense of like this is part of our time and we need to struggle against it and we need to condemn. You know Richard the none for his like bad shit right? Nobody is sort of writing that way and so if you have this sort of sense of emotional detachment from the present if you're drug point a term clearly pilled. You basically it's like. You have sort of less of this kind of haze over your thinking. You appear calm and others are not calm and um, you just look better. It's just like better tactics really and whereas whenever like it used to be that the hard sell worked. In like early advertising they were like you know the new you know Oldsmobile ballbuster like you know this just just the scar will bust your balls faster than any other car. You know I mean but but now it's like you'll watch old things from the period of early advertising that are meant with. Let dead seriousness and you can only interpret them as camp and you know that's like that attitude toward content basically needs to govern the attitude toward political communication.
34:20.67
Curtis
And that hasn't really happened yet in my opinion or that revolution is only just kind of started to happen. Um, and yeah, that's ah, that's why? ah oh no I mean you know.
34:29.44
cactuschu
Are we gonna see it anytime soon? Yeah, this is a Desantis up for the job.
34:40.31
Curtis
Like this is exactly like Desantis doesn't break the fourth wall even in the way that Trump would you know Desantis is like I'm going to issue this very serious executive order right? You know and it's just like dude. What does this even do right? You know and like he doesn't um and so in the way that he takes sort of many of these populace will like take the office seriously and I you know want to do the republic you know, right? and. You know what will happen is whatever level of energy he puts in. He's putting that level of energy into the normal process of his office. And the normal process of his office is designed to completely immobilize and contain him. You know the normal process of the executive branch in today's Washington is to basically prevent there from being anyone with the powers of Fdr and. Who was it? Let's face it. He was a king, he was the Ceo he was the Steve Jobs of the new deal. You know? and um he um and and so like if you're going to burst the cage.
35:56.17
cactuschu
Excuse me.
36:10.17
Curtis
Of those powers in any way and basically get any serious amount of electricity through from the voters to actual Power. You're going to have to sort of break a lot of bars and the best way to do that is not with sort of. Sincerity but with humor just to sort of laugh at the idea that these bars are real and as soon as you sort of laughed at enough of them. They'll all start fading away into like oh yeah, we thought there were bars but we just imagined that there were bars and so part of like making. Those radical actions work in a sense that the whole frame, the whole setting of what they used to think of as politics was this like theatrical production and we are now like you know, walking the camera is now walking out of the theater and into the real world. Right? You know and and and and maybe the theater will even be. You know, deconstructed you know and and actually physically destroyed and so this sense of like the sort of emotional Justification. For bursting the bars of this ridiculous cartoon Presidency is associated by this emotional feeling of constant ironic Transgression. It has to be just cool and funny and fun. It can't be.
37:37.76
cactuschu
Moon.
37:43.61
Curtis
Um, my god we have just realized that we are being oppressed by malice right? You know, no man. It's just like we're tired of old shit like it's not working like what are you going to do like you got to replace it. That's what we do in America. You know we replace things we're good at.
37:53.41
cactuschu
Um, yeah.
38:01.00
Curtis
Ah, you know what was fdr doing like he created a whole new government to send on top of the old 1 why do you think you did that you know right? and and and you know it's like once you you have to have the sort of confidence to kind of dispel these extremely intricate. Bizarre sovietica like structural illusions that sort of have been imbued on everyone and that can't really be done. It's a rational thing but it can't really be done with rationality. It has to be done. You know in a sort of artistic and emotional sense like you know when like you know Saul is on the road to Damascus like he didn't meet some Greek philosopher who proved to him with syllogisms that like Jesus was the son of god right? you know.
38:55.74
cactuschu
M.
38:57.61
Curtis
And no, you know he had a he had a flash of insight and that flash was his and you know that's sort of the way like the way you need to break people out of Plato's cave is a sort of emotional shock that sort of. Is not really best delivered though you can use reason. Reason is sort of great but you know basically just the feeling of being out of Plato's cave will soon lead you to reason yourself out of it. And if you don't want to get out of Plato's cave nothing will get you out of Plato's cave and yeah, that's my I don't know that that's.
39:38.14
cactuschu
And what's the goal of this kind of emotional signaling right? Who are we signaling to is it. The bureaucrats do it. The public is like who is this convincing.
39:44.85
Curtis
Um, good question. Um, you're convincing perhaps different people in different ways because different people have different kinds of roles in a transition. Um. It's very very good I was just thinking about speaking about Roe versus wade which maybe we'll talk about later speaking about Roe versus wade. Um, you know.
40:20.67
Curtis
Um I was just reminded of basically all the reasons that it is an l and one of the reasons why it is an l is that. Part of the most effective strategy for any new way of thinking is to subvert the ruling class the ruling class still has is dominated by these memes that feel empowering. But. They're also typically the smartest , most selected people in a society and so you know if you basically think of the top None classes in a modern western society as elves and hobbits basically politics is the elves and they're. Allies against the hobbits. We won't speak of the allies of elves and the ah and and so when you have cultural policies that either appeal to the hobbits or even worse. Allow the hobbits to impose their hobbit lifestyles on elves as though the elves were just big pretty hobbits or something like I don't get it at all like this is wrong and and like you know like it's really bad.
41:40.91
cactuschu
This is.
41:47.37
Curtis
And like elves do not have to put up with this okay like and they shouldn't have to like it's wrong like that's very clear and and so you know what this causes elves to feel is that they're being oppressed by the hobbits which is frankly, all told utterly. Ridiculous because in fact, they're not oppressed by the hobbits. In fact, they oppress the hobbits but you know when the hobbits sort of managed to strike back. Wow that feeling of oppression which is sort of always there in um, you know it's like. You can be imaginative and you can be anxious but when you're anxious and imaginative. Um, well you get what some people call Paranoid ideation and so as soon as you know you're afraid of that like. People are stalking your children for weeks right? and then you see a guy pop up behind the hedge with a black mask on and you're just like see right? You know anything that will sort of give substance and form to your otherwise incubate and rather example less Paranoid ideation is just like this huge gift.
42:57.55
Curtis
Right? You know and and you're and you're basically so you're basically taking these elves and you're basically reminding them. Oh yeah, you know now that hobbit laws affect your body , right? You remember the most important rule of politics which is um. Carl Schmid's distinction between friend and enemy and now you know you know you were starting to think like thoughts of lying like I don't even know like working with hobbits in some ways like you know you go in the hobba town. You wear your nose. You know, like okay, okay, but you got to remember who your friends and enemies are and now I think you remember um and you know in closing let me just say 3 words elf together strong so you know basically vote elf no matter who right? you know? and so.
43:49.79
Curtis
The thing is you've basically you've done this thing where you go and make your enemies like stronger and you know we're over like hobbits like if there's any hobbits out there I don't any hobbits listen to your podcast because because what but you know if there's any hobbits out there I guess I went on. Tucker Carlson's you know internet show which is maybe my address to the hobbits if there's any hobbits out there. Um, um, you should know that not all the leaves are against you. Okay, so basically they're like dissidents or like you know, basically dark ls.
44:24.45
cactuschu
Intellectual dark elves.
44:25.50
Curtis
And you know yeah the intellectual dock elves you know and these dock elves. You know they're on your side. They're actually based on your thought that they're not. We're not one of you. Okay I don't look like one of you I don't smell like 1 of you I'm frankly I'm not even sure if I like you but you know I'm on your side.
44:40.15
cactuschu
And
44:44.20
Curtis
And and and and you know this is how as a doc elf I feel so you know all I'm saying is like you know I think considering as like we live in you know, elf-oc occupied America that maybe we elves could do some good for you. Okay, but basically. What happened here is that anything we were trying to do you just took a giant shit all over so like it's fine. Your hobbies I expect. It's going to happen but like let's you know, just because your hobbits doesn't mean you're stupid. Okay, like let's think about what happened here.
45:08.34
cactuschu
If.
45:21.45
Curtis
And like you know, try to see if we can have a way of doing things that involve actually winning and not like taking a huge L like this. Um, and yeah, you know so I mean this always happens. This is otherwise you know. If people didn't do dumb shit like this we wouldn't Lump. We wouldn't have won a long time ago. But you know it's a home. That's I mean basically you're the way I would summarize that L since we got over it since we got into it is that um. In any long term conflict a win is when a win in a battle is when after the battle future operations are easier than they were before the battle if that is true then the battle has strengthened your interests regardless of who. Holds the battlefield if that is not true then the battle has damaged your interests and so you know the question in a conflict is is like when you're basically looking at a policy and you're saying well this has this good result and you know I find abortion fairly appalling. Although I do take kind of a Roman view of the subject. And when I'm like okay the dividends of this policy must be so great that you're willing to damage your cause for it is that really no like you know don't I mean that's the thing is that if you don't have. Power and listen until you have absolute power. Your political actions should never be directed at direct outcomes. They should always be directed at attaining more power because that's how you win and you'll notice the strange correlation between that principle and the way um and our discussion of leftist Psychology earlier.
47:12.36
cactuschu
Yeah.
47:14.43
Curtis
Ah, that is not a coincidence at All. Ah in my opinion and um, and so if you want to sort of emulate that thinking with that effect in a way that doesn't involve a bunch of like self-deception and you know, malicious Negligence. Um. Then like you have to actually explicitly think in terms of oh is this action making me important, powerful or less powerful and we can easily see that the action is making us less powerful making you know the ah. The faction that actually loves and cares for the hobbits is less powerful because it makes their enemies more powerful and it makes their allies less powerful and so like the case closed they improve ah l.
48:03.36
cactuschu
Yeah I mean I'll make a diagonal attack on that and I want to be clear I mean I think that the the decision might actually be a win even strategically because um I really see I really see kind of social progressivism or wokeness. Whatever you want to call it.
48:12.88
Curtis
Um, hum.
48:21.61
cactuschu
As kind of ah as a kind of acid towards institutions right? So if you think about the kind of democratic party. They are going to these institutions that were built up by Fdr even before him and these have kind of continued on forwards and and ah in in None right yeah go ahead.
48:33.00
Curtis
Yeah, okay, let me and I and I can I interrupt you and I interrupt you. If you know, let me interrupt you because I think you know one of the sorts of errors that lead to errors like the one that I think I see here.
48:39.98
cactuschu
Yeah.
48:47.44
cactuschu
That I'm going to make in 5 seconds
48:51.12
Curtis
You're going to make in 5 seconds you know you're going to say that this is basically an accelerationist position because you know making these institutions more incompetent speeds up their collapse and I don't think there's any correlation between incompetence and collapse have you ever been to? Ah Latin America.
49:07.20
cactuschu
Ah, yeah, I've been to Brazil once.
49:09.82
Curtis
Yeah, yeah, so there's a lot of public incompetence in Brazil and has it collapsed. Thank you for joining us.
49:15.30
cactuschu
No, but I think that when you have an organization that says these kinds of like democratic pacts which are like trying to win political power right? and I actually do think elections matter more. Maybe that's a mistake in and of itself. But ah.
49:22.37
Curtis
You know.
49:28.85
Curtis
Um, sure, the public.
49:32.73
cactuschu
When you have these organizations that actually kind of work right? They actually do help democrats get more votes , right? and that they're kind of and they're kind of being made worse at their purpose which is getting Democrats more votes I think that that's still kind of a win.
49:36.42
Curtis
Right.
49:42.93
Curtis
Yeah I think they're like I think your Cube ball is probably hitting a few too many cushions there. Ah and and like so the thing is you can construct all sorts of indirect winds. From anything and um, you know, None order consequences. Fourth order Consequences. You know the pool ball goes off the pool table and hits a spectator in the head and he turns it to be hitler right? You know and and and and like I just like that's fine.
50:12.52
cactuschu
Ah.
50:22.29
Curtis
You know, 2 things 1 is as long as you overthink 1 thing you should overthink everything and actually your search should always have this bread bread first quality right.
50:33.26
cactuschu
Yes.
50:35.28
Curtis
And so yeah, tell me about all the None order consequences positive and negative and then then get back to being on that shit and um and and it's so much. It's so important not to lose track of those of the most basic. None order the qualities of what you're doing to sort of be distracted by these um elaborate pool shots.
51:01.48
cactuschu
I mean I think I'm making a stronger claim than you think because the tradeoff here I think is between the kind of emotional salience which you're losing and then organizational um interference and I mean yeah.
51:13.95
Curtis
So Salience salience I mean salience can come from like emotional salience is only None kind of salience. Ah, you definitely need Salience. You need to jump out. You need to stand out. You need to paint a striking propaganda picture. I find that being a monarchist provides really all the salience that I need because people are just like whoa with the fuck right? you know and and the um you know you're not that far from a world in which.
51:36.10
cactuschu
50
51:49.32
Curtis
You can have a candidate in 2024 even maybe who would just be like yeah if I'm elected I'm going to assume absolute power in Washington and rebuild the government and yeah I think you could yeah I think you get away with it.
52:00.32
cactuschu
Wait really and very.
52:06.45
Curtis
Um, it would just be like it wouldn't be that much more. You know it's sort of what people already thought was happening with Trump right? And you're just like yeah I mean I'm going to be a real I like shit's going to go a crazy man. You know. And like, do you remember Trump's inauguration speech where he basically quotes bane from the Christopher Nolan Batman film? You know he's like I give it to you the people you know and and people love that they love that comic book shit right? You know like. What do people watch when they watch movies? You know today. Do they watch Carrie Grant you know no they watch the marvel fucking cinematic universe you know they want to elect a superhero president and then once they elect a superhero president once he's like yeah I'm a superhero you know I have a cape and I'm going to be an actual president and like. Take command of the government like it says in the constitution boys and like yeah I don't think that that would be like the thing is people have already ched it up to None or None with like Fascist Trump the the the the caudeo the thing is to do it for real does not make them much more hysterical and it's actually much more effective and and yeah I like it basically and and and when that is presented as like. An act of supreme irony which is exactly what it is. It has a completely different feel from supporting the dear leader right? You know it's like Trump's campaign. You know that mood of irony was all over Trump's campaign. It was the best thing about the way he ran. As you know when you see Trump on camera he's like always about to break the fourth wall. He's always playing with the fourth wall right? and and you know he's always conscious that he's being watched as himself on camera by a camera you know and and yeah I just like like people are ready to go to the polls and be like fuck it and that's like ah to me and and it's just much more they're less grounded they're less virtuous they're less violent they're much much much less grounded and when people are sort of ungrounded and frivolous and ironic and humorous. You can just sort of yank them from the earth and plant them down in some other political landscape and they'll be like a man's cool I mean like it's it's ah.
54:51.23
Curtis
Like this is a kind of politics that people have only seen hints of I'll put it at that and um, and and I think it's its power would be I mean certainly if you were gonna let's think of and you know. Ai taking over the world by posting on the internet is ridiculous, but clearly um, you know, um, some yeah yeah, they're already up there The you know the play that is there a ceiling is there an escarve. Yes, they've done well. But anyway.
55:13.19
cactuschu
I Don't know man and non-posters. They're already out there I think.
55:24.63
Curtis
Yeah, that's my kind of preferred sort of strategy. You don't know the dark elves can't do it alone with some sort of hobbit muscle but the dark elves can basically create the story that then comes true.
55:41.89
cactuschu
Um, and so I think actually we kind of had a roundabout way of answering the earlier question which is like who are we who are we kind of convincing we're we're both kind of convincing with the general public to kind of have this shift In. Shift in regimes or shift in Lifestyle but we're also or like how effective this is in terms of changing in terms of changing kind of the.
55:59.99
Curtis
Um, yeah I mean IT well the question is whether like is not the question is whether. The hobbits are ready to accept leaders infused and informed by these kinds of ideas and I yet to say you know, give me a couple of years, give me at least a year and a half before I'll tell you whether there's any evidence for that proposition.
56:23.15
cactuschu
M.
56:37.56
Curtis
But you know it doesn't seem really that tough and in any case, um like. Understanding. Actually you know if there's sort of None thing that um, the american conservative voter needs to understand. It's the sort of power of following rather than leading and um.
57:03.24
cactuschu
M.
57:07.21
Curtis
The ability to simply kind of add weight by following and in exchange is something is an opportunity that he should see and understand and. You know, to give an example of that. Let's say you're a Trump voter here's the way to make yourself the most powerful as a Trump Voter is to constantly read and be outraged about the latest you know Trump News no what you should do is you should download the trump app. Trump app wherever you are in America. Whatever your situation is will basically notify you of any and all elections that you should be voting in when you go. When there is an election you'll be notified you'll go to the election station you'll have um, a ballot to fill in the app will show you a ballot. You'll simply enter it on paper the way it's shown and then leave you'll have no idea what you're voting on or why or who you're voting for. So basically what you're doing by doing this is delegating all of your power to Trump that makes you as powerful as possible unless there's some other motherfucker that you want to delegate your power to which I don't think there is. So you're actually if you're voting sort of ah by electrical command there. You're actually making your vote much more powerful individually because of course then once you have fifty sixty percent of the voters voting like that what that effectively means is Trump. Appoints all these public figures because he's like oh I'm going to cast someone to win this election and then of course once this person wins this election who will they owe their election to Donald Trump what will happen if they do not follow the instructions of Donald Trump they will not be in the app next time there's an election.
58:43.54
cactuschu
Yes.
58:57.36
Curtis
It's very simple and then you know in fact, you could go 1 step further and once you have the sort of superpowered bloc voting in place you could say well. Why should I even have to go to the local school and do data entry can't my preferences just be automatically uploaded.
59:09.81
cactuschu
Moon.
59:14.76
Curtis
Yes, I've delegated all of my political power to Donald Trump so future exercises. My political power will go directly from his server to the government. It won't even need to touch me. I don't need it if I want to change. You know my position. Let's say um. You know I decided I had a spiritual experience and decided no actually I want all of my power to go to Marianne Williamson okay then you have to click a couple of buttons and like sign something other than that, you're done with politics. So great. It takes all you know, not only. You do not feel the moral obligation to exercise power properly. You're actually not exercising power. You're actually exercising much more power because in aggregate one of these block votes is what's mirth much more than some asshole who's like. Um, yeah, wow I see you know there's Tom Hutchchesson who's running for the school board. I don't know who he is but he has a kind of nice name and I saw a sign with his name on the lawn. So I guess I'll vote for him and so you're actually sort of rationalizing and kind of centralizing the system in this way if you did for example, um. You know I have no idea why Trump doesn't do this but you could basically nationalize the midterm elections by saying I'm going to cast someone for all 42935 ah house of representative seats just the way Ac is cast. Then I'm going to get all my trumpies to um, you know and and these people are going to win in the primaries because I can get out the vote because I have notification privileges on your phone because that's what it means to be a Trump Supporter is that you let Trump send you notifications and and these are just notifications to vote. And um, on the day of the vote. Everyone with the trump apple get a notification will track actually with the location where they actually do vote that will enable Trump to actually predict his vote. Of course this will swamp everyone in every primary then when you have this you know Eddie. Proportion of this block vote actually elected to the house. They become enormously valuable in elections because they vote as a block. Not only do they vote as a block they have a single staff. They don't even pretend to be separate organizations. Ah the people on the ticket do not even pretend to be politicians. Maybe they do. Funny things in public. Um, but um, you know all, even all the fundraising would be centralized in this block. So. There's just no tension between any of these people and as a result if you get a majority in the house.
01:01:53.11
Curtis
Congratulations you've turned the Us into a parliamentary dictatorship and so like you know like those are my basically dark elf instructions for like what the hobbits should follow if they want to win. You'll notice. Ah, both the similarities between that and ah, you'll notice that that's very different from the way sort of right wing politics is conducted today in the US, which is like some guy with hairspray helmet hair and you know who's a real estate agent who plays really well. Golf is like. Hey I know everybody I should be the representative and you know well you know the story. So yeah I mean basically like this is just sort of an aggressive modernization of American politics that could happen that I don't know about the election law. But I think it could be done by. Um.
01:02:29.73
cactuschu
Next,
01:02:45.62
Curtis
Anyone with a few billion dollars to spare another.
01:02:47.60
cactuschu
Yeah I think aside from the kind of like the kind of like uploading stuff to the server or stuff if you just get a notification and you go into vote I think other than that it's completely like it's completely legal. Um.
01:02:54.30
Curtis
Yeah, yeah, you just you just automate it. You just automate it and yeah, no no no no no I mean yeah, it's like this is what pisses me off that I don't know anyone with like billions of dollars who could do this right? and um, but you know such things as life.
01:03:10.72
cactuschu
Yeah I mean I would say that the most similar thing is kind of Jim Clyburn in South Carolina right he he gave the endorsement and and you know Joe Biden one South Carolina and yeah um yeah,
01:03:12.53
Curtis
Um, the.
01:03:17.60
Curtis
Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly get another instance of black people being smarter than white people right? you know? and so it's just much more effective. It's just much more effective.
01:03:30.67
cactuschu
I Mean the problem is.
01:03:36.40
Curtis
Do you want to suck or do you not want to ask a very simple question you know and and like yeah anyway I Digress I Digress I shouldn't insult white people but um, and sorry what all right? Sorry sorry white people. Yeah exactly exactly and.
01:03:44.26
cactuschu
I Think it's great for building some form of power but I don't think it's like being great for them right? That's the problem you have to actually delegate it to someone competent.
01:03:53.19
Curtis
Well, yeah, no yeah, you have to get more power too right? I mean ultimately Jim Clyburn is still basically you know serving you know whatever? How should I say this? whatever distant relative of mine. You know what it's like. Chief of staff in the west wing ultimately Jim Clivenner is working for him right? So you know you don't really have this um, this sense of autonomy you know, ultimately, you know it all comes up when you know some guy who is not a client. Um. But yeah I mean that that principle of doing politics that way is basically I'm just like man you can't hack democracy if you still believe in democracy. But once you stop believing in democracy you can hack it and that actually makes it much more powerful and um. So you know there's a way in which this sort of is unlikely to occur spontaneously to the very linear minded american hobbit. However, that linear minded american hobbit is exposed to enough like elf media and has been frankly, elfified. You know to like terrifying proportions and like in a totally unjustified way and that that basically leads them to be able to appreciate this kind of like elf like camp camp and irony and other like you know, fundamentally gay forms of humor right? You know and and.
01:05:23.18
cactuschu
Um.
01:05:25.91
Curtis
So So so like you know that you know sort of unintentionally or you know, kind of accidentally I would say makes this like alliance between you know the hobbits and the intentional intelligent dark elves possible and um. And I think it's very it's like it's the only thing that I can see producing a good result.
01:05:52.40
cactuschu
And is this worth trying if the general public isn't ready for the kind of irony the kind of complete like post-democratic politics yet.
01:05:59.29
Curtis
No, thatity needs to be random up to their ass until they're ready like they'll like it. Um, um, it's it's It's no, no, no the public has never been. You know you need to do it when they still have a little bit of energy left and they're not just sunk deep in this world like weed and vr.
01:06:07.69
cactuschu
Okay.
01:06:17.89
Curtis
Um, but um, yeah, no I think ah I think that it's certainly not too soon to experiment with you know the politics of radical irony in the sense and um, yeah, let's do it man I don't know.
01:06:35.54
cactuschu
This just came to me now. We can strike it if you want but I do you know who drag is like JREG okay you'll love him. He's on Youtube? Yeah, he's some Youtube he's this Youtube comedian satirist.
01:06:42.11
Curtis
AhJ No Yeah I figured it was used from that world. Yeah yeah.
01:06:55.22
cactuschu
Ah, his kind of like made main like series or his first main series is basically like it's called Centric side where and the plot of it is like all of the all the extremists team up and and like not so subtly remove the centrist.
01:07:00.87
Curtis
Um, and I can I can I just can I can I connect you. That's funny. Can I just say you know register it since we're speaking of youtubers I am going to register a small complaint for whoever is listening. I am in Austin because I was supposed to have a debate. Ah ah the youtuber the Youtuber the Youtuber very cringe I you know I was supposed to debate. Ah the youtuber known only as a destiny um you know and you know frankly I handle that cringe.
01:07:22.61
cactuschu
Ah, very christmas.
01:07:37.58
Curtis
Should have taught me something but you know I mean I don't have to say this but like the guy chickened out you know and I'm just like man you know I don't know I and that just saddens me it saddens me that like people would have. Ah, kind of response. But ah yeah, so Jre Dreg Greg Dreg it's dreg okay got it got it. That's really innovative, um, all right more questions more questions. Something about the Roman empire.
01:08:01.29
cactuschu
Yeah.
01:08:08.23
cactuschu
Yeah, um, yeah I think he really has this kind of like hyper ironic and he talks about this in relation to Zoomers as well I think Zoomers are particularly yeah they particularly love this stuff.
01:08:15.52
Curtis
Yeah, yeah, Zoomers have this, zoomers have this glory. They have this glorious corrosive nihilism right? Which is absolutely you know it's not really a positive perspective. It's just sort of where you have to start.
01:08:26.70
cactuschu
Yes.
01:08:32.77
Curtis
You know in creating a positive perspective because there's sort of no there's kind of you know I'm just like zoomer is man. You know there's so much bullshit out there that sort of like cleaning out the Audian stables is not the correct answer right? because there's just more. I mean there's more shit than state like you have to burn down the a um this is yeah people are used to doing this shit I understand you know it's one of the labors of Hercules. He had to clean out the stables of the great ah king augius um, who I guess was a big into cattle probably one of these r one b people.
01:08:53.70
cactuschu
Yeah, explain that metaphor just for the audience.
01:09:12.20
Curtis
Um, and ah the ah um, um, and he had these stables right? that were full of ah you know a very large large very large amount of horses and the um her in he's like okay one of the labors. I guess ah you know I forget we had to because the reason he had to do it was None labors. You know one of the labors was to clean out the stables of Audius the Audian stables and what he did was he actually diverted a river into the stables and it washed all the shit up. But now I'm just like no like there's no river you just have to like burn down the stables and start somewhere else. Like and and until like you have that engagement with sort of what it takes like there's a term that I use for sort of fixing any problem in governance defined as broadly as you can today which is um. For example, fixing software patents I would believe fixing software patents to be what I call a regime complete problem a regime complete problem means that the easiest path to fixing this problem runs through regime change. So if you're pursuing any other paths to fixing the software problem. You know, patent problems like putting things together. Another test case. So the you know supreme court can rule against software patents before the federal circuit in the uspto overrule it you know, um, you're just you're tilting your. Actively engaged in supporting the regime you're supporting power you're doing worse than nothing right? and so you know from the perspective of like the glory of nihilism is that like.
01:10:51.64
cactuschu
Yeah, you're doing worse than nothing.
01:11:04.55
Curtis
Just do nothing is just like start from nothing think from nothing assume it is all like crap and then figure out a little bit more about what it is and like maybe you can sort of start to think of like positive things from there. But these positive things are not going to be anything like the obvious positive things I mean basically you know sort of the mode that the hobbits are kind of naturally in is the mode of sort of instinctive military Action. It's the mode of Struggle. And when you're basically struggling, you're like an animal in a trap you're like ah you know a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf struggles. You know, um, you know what you need to be doing is not struggle but strategy and all of your actions if you actually want to win. All of your actions should be guided by a winning strategy and when your actions are just guided by simple non-strategic like you know what feels good in the moment you're just like a little baby. You're like so easy to trap and kill.. It's not hardly even worth doing. And you know that's sort of like when hobbits make these kinds of mistakes I'm just like damn you know? Ah, okay, it's hard out there for a dark elf I don't know.
01:12:21.97
cactuschu
Right? I use the metaphor of like the tennis ball right? you serve the tennis ball the dog chases after the Tens ball the the dog great happily brings you back the tennis ball and ah yes.
01:12:26.82
Curtis
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the dog does not have a strategy, the dog has an instinct right? you know and the dog is actually not trying to accomplish anything which is slightly weird. Let me take it. Ah, one none and answer texture None um, the.
01:12:46.85
cactuschu
Yeah, sure.
01:12:56.56
cactuschu
Yeah, and I'm just going to register kind of like the most autistic ah objection possible I think which is ah if it's not actually equivalent and it's just harder I would suggest going with the regime hard instead of regime complete.
01:13:03.93
Curtis
Really.
01:13:11.51
Curtis
Why regime hard rather than regime complete right? Yeah yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I now know that is forutistic that it's tourist that is too autistic like the complete is just it's the brand. It's.
01:13:15.12
cactuschu
I mean it's supposed to be like Np and be complete right and be complete stuff is something that's interchangeable. So even if you overthrow the regime you don't necessarily get the.
01:13:30.47
Curtis
You know it's like people will talk. You know like oh if I have a Quantum algorithm it can factor large primes right? They're not actually saying it can factor large print. You know what? they mean when they say I can factor large brons but they react of course like the um, um yeah.
01:13:44.34
cactuschu
Yeah, you have this urge thing.
01:13:50.90
Curtis
Um, all right I get your? Ah yeah, um, yeah, okay, um, back um, back back Maybe online.
01:13:50.89
cactuschu
Ah.
01:14:02.53
cactuschu
All right? Welcome back.
01:14:09.33
Curtis
And yeah, we're where you had more questions. Ah what do you do? yeah yeah.
01:14:10.93
cactuschu
And many many more questions. So maybe this is a bad order. But now let's go really into what the administrative failure looks like because I think having that kind of idea of what The current regime is actually like gives us.
01:14:26.59
Curtis
Um, yeah.
01:14:29.91
cactuschu
Actually this is maybe a good way to lead into it. Have you tried your hand at prediction markets?
01:14:33.19
Curtis
No, um I like the um I guess I was betting on Covid a little bit but I was using real markets. Um, but um, the um.
01:14:41.26
cactuschu
M.
01:14:46.84
cactuschu
So if you're willing to say like what? What would you bet on?
01:14:51.18
Curtis
Um I bet on um, um s and p ah puts in January Twenty Twenty um the um, um the the um.
01:15:01.62
cactuschu
Sin.
01:15:09.74
Curtis
The um yeah, where was I sorry texting with him fancy um run that question by Megan please oh yeah, no, no, no, no, no. The only exception was that um.
01:15:19.59
cactuschu
So have you had any involvement with basically prediction markets?
01:15:29.42
Curtis
I use real markets a little bit to predict Covid but normally I'm not even much of a real markets player. Um, yeah I Just like I think the markets are just sort of general experience. First of all, I'm not interested in love. Play money and secondly the markets like I'm not like I'm just too old for like woofy or whatever, right? you know and secondly sort of in the real markets sort of my I'm just like I Never really see sort of the liquidity on the questions that I'm interested and think I know the answer to.
01:16:07.95
cactuschu
Um, yeah I've had this problem as well.
01:16:08.72
Curtis
And so yeah, the answer is no, maybe I'm not a 2 predictor. Maybe I'm a terrible predictor. But yeah, that's what I'm like and maybe not today.
01:16:15.51
cactuschu
Yeah I remember just looking at some of them with some of the bets that I might make and thinking. Okay, how much money would I make just by dumping everything into the SAndPFive hundred and waiting for a year right? Because these prediction markets I do not resolve very quickly. Ah, and.
01:16:28.91
Curtis
Um, well yeah.
01:16:34.94
cactuschu
Well maybe in this maybe in this economy. It would have been better to have put it into the prediction market. But yeah, um I mean so like what? what do you think? um Biden or what do you think? um.
01:16:35.49
Curtis
Yeah, who knows who knows who knows who knows? Yeah yeah, we yeah yeah, we haven't we have not sorry going.
01:16:53.99
cactuschu
I mean just you just even just saying that it's kind of like I can't even take it seriously anymore. Red viden is not actually doing these things but like what do you think, like what do you think that the kind of regime is going to do about things like oil and inflation. Let's do oil None
01:16:56.31
Curtis
Yeah, sure.
01:17:06.56
Curtis
Um, I think the question is how much demand destruction you can get, ah you know first of all, you'll probably see the world rebalance a little bit and you know Russia will serve China and India et cetera et cetera. Um. I think the question is how much you know the question of the oil price is a question of supply and demand and the question is how much is supply going to be restricted and how much demand can be destroyed by a recession. I do feel like we face a fairly steep problem. Recession and so the ability of that to produce demand destruction that leads to significant price drops is I think best left to analysts of the oil markets which I'm certainly not one of um, like. That's my view on oil. I think there's a lot of um yeah I mean you know a lot of them. Money created in the boom in the covid asset price boom has trickled down to consumers and is hitting inflation numbers and you know how much can that be reversed. If asset prices get sent downwards again again you know, sort of answer unclear. Ask again later. I'm not quite sure that basically you know, especially with some of these exogenous shocks that you can produce enough demand destruction. For your recession not to be a stagflationary recession and I don't really know how the Fed handles a stagflationary recession. Um, but I'm sure it's not pretty um these are all big unknowns for me I guess. Obviously perhaps this is why I'm not really speculating on them.
01:19:13.59
cactuschu
Yeah, fair enough, fair enough I don't know. I've always thought this question has been very interesting because I had Doomberg last season. The chicken analyst. Um, yeah, and the.
01:19:22.76
Curtis
Ah, yeah, what is dober what is doing what is Doberg's view on oil and gas. Ah.
01:19:31.20
cactuschu
I have to explain this to the audience. Yeah, this is kind of everything that he talked about right that basically there's this. Um, there's this ideology that is ah that is very much kind of pathologically against Fossil Fuels this is this is his view and.
01:19:46.57
Curtis
Sharp.
01:19:50.25
cactuschu
And I agree with some of it. Not all of it I disagree with, basically on solar panels. But that's about it. I think solar panels are much better than he thinks. But anyways, um, he basically points out that basically this kind of ideology has led to a very systematic underinvestment especially in the west.
01:19:53.82
Curtis
Is about.
01:20:08.10
cactuschu
But even though like the rest of the world , particularly in the west, I'm living in Canada. There's definitely been a complete bungling here, oils at all time highs and there seems to be no , no, no kind of reaction and in fact, our economy is doing worse ever. Um, but.
01:20:08.62
Curtis
You are.
01:20:14.33
Curtis
In here.
01:20:24.22
cactuschu
Now you have this kind of situation where the chickens are coming home to roost and basically Biden just kind of continues or like once again like I can't take this seriously now but like the Biden regime kind of continues to bury. It's its head in its ass and not really, um, just acting or like just just.
01:20:42.84
Curtis
Well yeah I mean oil oil exploration is a worldwide thing and you know fracking in the US I don't think they fra yeah you don't frack in Canada do you? um fracking.
01:20:43.40
cactuschu
Demonstrate pure incompetence and appear like.
01:20:55.20
cactuschu
Now we have the oil sands.
01:20:59.80
Curtis
Yeah, you have the oil sands right? You know, um, and yeah I mean you know again I Just don't have enough expertise to think hard about the balance between. Oil production oil exploration you know exhaustion of oil resources Plus um um, you know, ah demand destruction from this hellish recession that we seem about to endure and um.
01:21:27.46
cactuschu
M.
01:21:32.64
Curtis
Feel like a lot of the you know the the recession is you're you're in the sort of state of a proto recession where you sort of only see in the None order effects but like the like follow on effects of like where you're like okay the things that are caused by the None order effects tend to be more dire and drastic. Like the stock market goes down but then because the stock market went down a quarter later. You see that everybody stops spending money and you know then like this cyclical factor builds up. Um I think we'll see that I don't know if we'll see that we'll See. We'll see. But yeah I you know I don't know that sort of buying an Index fund would be my investment recommendation for the moment. Um I think yeah I think you know if you're looking. But if you're looking for a good one,
01:22:18.25
cactuschu
Yeah I think the recessionions I Definitely think the recession is going to be long and hard. Um, because yeah.
01:22:28.32
Curtis
Investment to hold right now I want to recommend? Um, you know 1 in particular, it's called um cash ah also known as the us dollar. You know there's ah, there's a crypto version of it. It's called um.
01:22:42.59
cactuschu
And not that one.
01:22:45.50
Curtis
You know, usdc. Yeah you I You know the coinbase one is fine just that. Yeah right i' not like fucking tether or something right? You know? Um, and yeah, yeah, but overall is an investment Recommendation. You know I would advise you whatever your means out there. You know dear listeners it is like. Have some respect for the almighty dollar and just consider an investment in cash and you know, ah ah I mean yes, there is inflation but you know inflation is even worse if you get negative Red Returns You know my friends. So Ah yeah.
01:23:08.71
cactuschu
Um.
01:23:21.95
cactuschu
I mean the dollar is up like 80% on bitcoin. Yeah i.
01:23:22.69
Curtis
Ah, yeah, exactly cash you know it never goes down and never gets old. You know it may not be. It may not be the century for cash. But I think it might well be the year for cash or if you're feeling really daring. There's actually It's so I mean it's not exactly a cryptocurrency. It's a kind of um currency. Um, it's called rubles rubles that's it ah Greek. So basically you know.
01:23:48.70
cactuschu
Where can we get those?
01:23:57.63
Curtis
Yeah, you know I think it's actually rather difficult and this is why I would advise you to spitz the sick with cash and I'm certainly not advocating that anyone obviously no one in your audience would violate any kind of sanctions so it may be hard to get the rules So you know the dollar like you know.
01:24:10.10
cactuschu
I mean there are at least 3 Russians in the audience, at least 3 very lindy.
01:24:14.52
Curtis
The dollar is very aesthetic. You know you know and I mean like they haven't. It's very they haven't gone for like the multiple colors thing you know and it's like yeah you're like can I hold paper. Yeah, you can hold paper right? think about the Russians like think about how happy they would have been if they'd held paper. You know you can hold paper. You can get a safe deposit by it. Works. You know? Ah so yeah I mean that's a little paranoid and in terms of how you hold the cash but but like yeah, just keep it at a bank just like cash in the bank might earn you earn None interest these days really really really good way to save money kits so Like. Just remember you heard that you know a daring investment call. Um, and.
01:24:57.55
cactuschu
For the lawyers. This is not investment Advice Tam Fuck up. Okay I think not giving investment advice from the new world Podcast is not responsible.
01:25:00.72
Curtis
Yeah, and no, no, no it is investment advice I can. I'm gonna suit me I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm good as they're gonna sue you because they held cash.
01:25:17.54
cactuschu
Fuck.
01:25:19.50
Curtis
The rubbles that's not investment advice. That's a joke I was joking but the rules do not buy rubles. They are the currency of Satan but you know the um, um, um even if they you know? Frankly, yeah you know, but ah, but cash 100% sound recommendation and I practice it myself I have some cash you know and um.
01:25:22.89
cactuschu
Ah.
01:25:36.00
cactuschu
Wow Shocking Yeah, not not all in not all in ah, not all in buna.
01:25:38.96
Curtis
Yeah, ah, ah, not in yeah, put my money where my mouth is and yeah, um, ah no I didn't I'm not like Mike Nograts who got a luna tattoo that's ah I feel for the guy you know? Um, yeah.
01:25:54.21
cactuschu
What do you think of that kind of I don't know what? What do you think of the character of people who are in the kind of crypto bubble?
01:25:56.47
Curtis
Mike But Mica what
01:26:05.30
Curtis
Ah, you know people don't have a character. A person has a character . Everyone is different. I guess I would say that you know I believe that I have a rational explanation. Why crypto has value and the farther people get from that rational explanation. Um the more I'm like maybe they I'm not saying anyone deserves what comes to them. But you know some people do.
01:26:41.27
cactuschu
He.
01:26:42.18
Curtis
I Don't know you know and um, definitely like you know anyone could have looked at gar could have and can look at defi and see that the system is not actually lending money to people who participate in productive enterprises with the slight exception of mining. Maybe some min mining is financed out of defi but why would it be. You can finance it cheaper from you know the paper belt and so if you're looking at a system that is paying returns and not just returns but big returns. Without actually lending money to people that are putting in those returns then you know like it or not you have some variation on a machine that only works. Well, it keeps going upward and as soon as it stops going Upward it starts to break and so. You can definitely like it.
01:27:38.95
cactuschu
Yeah I think you're being a lot more subtle than I would be I'm just going to say like made off did not did not promise 20% returns
01:27:45.96
Curtis
This is true. Well I mean you know like I mean you know what you're seeing is sort of more functionally complicated in some ways than a ponzi but it is still getting all of its output energy from its inputs. And it's a variant right? and so you know to watch these? Um, you know things like disintegration is really necessary. You know it's like when you look At. The theory of why and how bitcoin can monetize.. It's a theory of people who have hard hands because their actual savings is flowing into bitcoin. And or other leading currency which they are leading but candidate money which they expect to win and if instead the demand for this candidate money is being set not by incoming savings. But by Leverage bets of various kinds which are effectively extremely. Um, you know, weak hands I Guess paper hands as they say on the Chans Um, then you have this, You know the price becomes this very unstable structure because this you know. It's basically a sort of base of rock with a house of cards built on it and it's in that case, it's very very good for the house of cards to evaporate because otherwise you're trying to put rock on top of otherwise you have this like gotcha in your. In the cement of your sort of demand base for bitcoin and so regularly what we see in these ways in the history of Bitcoin's exponential Rise which does not have to continue forever because you like is that. These people who are speculating on bitcoin but not actually saving in bitcoin get shaken out and um, penetrated and um so you know has that process completed I Hope so I don't really Know. Um. You know, is bitcoin or ethereum more likely to become the standard store of value in the future or neither I don't really Know. Um I know that you can't have a stable standard where the answer is both and I basically think that.
01:30:22.42
Curtis
For anything that isn't on the list of bitcoin and ethereum that value is probably None which makes it a good that should be valued not as a monetary good. But in terms of its intrinsic utility which obviously yeah, um, and. So yeah, that's like you know, like it's never pleasant. You know, um, you know a lot of people jumping out of the Dubai Tawa you know, but you know nature you know.
01:30:52.98
cactuschu
Yeah, it's not good. We don't want to be super negative about this either. The reason why I actually asked the question in the way that I did is actually well like we're both software developers right? or we were both we we have been involved in software development to some degree or another so in various parts of our lives.
01:31:03.90
Curtis
Um, chair.
01:31:10.92
Curtis
On this.
01:31:12.89
cactuschu
But basically um, but basically like there There was a lot of energy and a lot of idealism in bitcoin or in crypto in general and ah the people who are working on these projects like they're still there. They're they're all alive. Hopefully um and that energy is going to go somewhere whether it's.
01:31:19.99
Curtis
Ah, yeah, yeah.
01:31:32.20
cactuschu
It's back to whether it's towards other things and you have these kinds of real changes in the world of Adams as well, right? like all people moving to Miami, people moving to Austin right? Where is this going now, where are the people going?
01:31:36.99
Curtis
F
01:31:42.70
Curtis
Ah, you know, Ah, where are the people going gosh. Um, yeah I don't know um, everything still. I'm skeptical about you know when I was a young person I used to see things as happening very quickly and disasters would happen very quickly and futures would be built very quickly and. Like that's not really how I parse things as much these days and so do I see basically certainly a growth in kinds of various things that in various ways are. Outside the narrative space of the world like grow up and yeah I do but like there's still so little of it and you know it's like you know, give it 20 years. Give it 50 years. You know like. When you're right, You have to be confident that you're right? and that things will take a lot of time before you see how right you are and yeah, that's ah, that's just how we see it all right more questions. Although I think I'm fading a little bit with more questions.
01:33:13.70
cactuschu
Now we can also take a break if you want. How much longer do you think you'll be able to go?
01:33:16.33
Curtis
Um, we could do um we could cut another. I'm fading a little bit but we could cut another um session another day.
01:33:29.80
cactuschu
Um, ah, all right? That's good. Ah yeah Thursday sure.
01:33:40.47
Curtis
Let's do something um, can we do, can we do Thursday of any chance. All right? Let's do it maybe? Um Thursday Thursday morning Austin time something like that Thursday morning at like um. Now. Let's hang on. Let me think, yeah, how about Thursday at noon noon it's central time.
01:34:03.42
cactuschu
Thursday at noon. Ah I don't have anything listed so it should be good. I need to check with 1 other person but I'm like 90% sure it's good. All right in that case. Ah.
01:34:11.48
Curtis
Okay, ok, great, great. All right. Let's pause this and yeah, yeah.
01:34:21.70
cactuschu
Ah, we like to stream in one. Okay I wanted to have a question to a few questions to end this thing maybe like fifteen more minutes is that that fine. Yeah I think like the last thing I want to to get you on it in this half of the recording is maybe a kind of similar question which is like your.
01:34:26.36
Curtis
Okay I can do yeah I can I can do 15 more sure.
01:34:40.53
cactuschu
Your judgment on the kind of union movements like there is yeah like the Amazon stuff Starbucks stuff. Don't think anyone has asked you about that yet , not in public at least.
01:34:42.41
Curtis
The union you are in is like labor unions. Well I mean you know? Ah, yeah yeah I mean so if you look at the history of labor unions in the United States across the last um really none I think you see decreasing relevance and power. Um. You can look at for example and and and the other thing that you see is sort of decreasing genuine autonomy. I'm not saying that there's anything the thing about Amazon having a union or whatever is that it's sort of not. Relevant outside Amazon unless you imagine having that union having some kind of um, external um power sort of power that is not coordinated. In German you know glee fleisch gegessen. Ah that is not you know aligned with the powers that be and I don't really know why people hope for this because from my perspective if you look at the autonomy of labor unions. Over the last one hundred and fifty years you go from the knights of labor which are like true or even Iw which has some intellectual leadership but has a lot of like grassroots energy the knights of labor which is a purely grassroots thing which you know does insane shit like. Massacquering like chinese miners because they were undercutting the wages of the white man just like insane shit that ah you I don't think anyone today would endorse and um, but also they're sort of autonomy as a kind of genuine american leftist populist movement. Is enormous and then you know when you get into the non century and the era of the afl and the cio and kind of big labor. You see them kind of broadly aligned with mainstream leftist or with communist american parties and that alignment only tightens over time you know. Trying to imagine a republican union like america it's ridiculous. So it's like you know you're just you're just looking at this sort of new agency of the like party. So I can't regard it with any significance.
01:37:23.74
cactuschu
Yeah, and do you think that it's kind of like soap stuff like the outreach to to quote unquote working class people is that going anywhere is that any kind of ah sort soab amari that.
01:37:33.61
Curtis
Store up I don't know what this store up is that a fortune thing with it. Oh store up store up so up so I was thinking it was called store op on some kind of 4 Chan thing to like organize the the cashiers at your local grocery store which would be cool maybe hey fortunen if you're listening you know, let's.
01:37:42.40
cactuschu
Yeah I can. Ah.
01:37:53.26
Curtis
Store up. Ah, but yeah, you don't mean store up you mean so up I mean the thing is that that the the problem is that like someone like sohrab's natural natural instincts and I'm not I'm not you know, faulting him. He likes it very much.
01:37:56.82
cactuschu
The.
01:38:12.50
Curtis
I mean he's one of the most cool whereas he like tuva two. He's one of the most cool things I've ever met and um nonetheless basically like when you interface with people through kind of fundamentally. Intellectual tools. You're limiting the like conversation to like other dark els like yourself, you need to find a way of sort of addressing hobbits and. That needs to involve kind of translating your theories into effective propaganda. So it's more like yeah, okay, and and None of the sort of characteristics of ineffective propaganda is that sort of giving people what they want sort of. In this abstract economical sense what they should want rather than you know, exciting them with what they care about and or sort of making them feel. It's like basically as a wonk you naturally think of politics as like a collective action problem. It is a collective action problem. But. You know that's also not quite how and that's the reality that the hoppets have to accept but sort of packaging it that way may not be the way to package it and so I'm just like you know. What do you do to mobilize and motivate people who are like you know, big Nine football fans and like to proceed from that intellectual level? Um, so yeah and I don't and also there's something about sort of having like the hobbits you know? um. Perfectly happy with her word. Hobbit. It's obviously a racial slur. Um, you know having hobbits is um and I guess we can call the non class dwarfs but we only talk about the dwarfs. Um. And um, the that's much better than alternative and the um like acknowledging that hobbits are hobbits and do not think like l's and also do not think like. Abstract proletarians from like marxist days which is where a lot of this is coming from the wow wow actually we're doing what they did. We're mobilizing the proletariat or something and I'm like and and it's just a different world. It's a different thing like your analogies are not going to help you here.
01:40:37.64
cactuschu
M.
01:40:47.55
Curtis
And this is true. Almost always when you basically try to model right? Wing activity on a left wing template.
01:40:56.33
cactuschu
All right? Thanks for sitting with us this time. Yeah, yeah, that'll be great. Awesome Yeah, see you then.
01:40:59.78
Curtis
All right, all right? and we'll do we'll do we'll do another one and I will tell this thing to stop all right here. Excellent all right. This one upload I think now I'm raising my hand. It's up like.
01:41:15.34
cactuschu
Yeah, it uploads. Automatically, it's like saving. It saved lives. It's not very nice.
00:00.00
cactuschu
All right? So welcome back Welcome back. Although our listeners will hear this as one stream.
00:01.96
Curtis
Thank you! It is a different day just to be you know I you know completely transparent. Um, holy shit. It's Canada day.
00:10.16
cactuschu
Yeah, it's like it's Canada day. It's ah it's a celebration.
00:18.22
Curtis
When Canada day was invented was it like None no it must be older than that.
00:22.54
cactuschu
I Have no clue I think it was shortly after it was shortly after confederation. Probably I don't actually know my Canadian history. Well unfortunately.
00:28.53
Curtis
Got it well Canada has erased its history. History doesn't matter to Canadians. I mean you know everything like you know, supposedly there was this past in which you had it like a different flag but as far as I can tell you're about as connected to that. Past is like Saudi Arabia is to like pre-islamic arab culture. Ah um, and have about the same regard for it. So ah.
00:57.79
cactuschu
Yeah, I'm going to cut this out again. But you know the same thing, the same problem as before. Can you just move your mic a little bit further away? Yeah yeah, ah yeah, but yeah, we are getting the kind of pops again. But hopefully hopefully though.
01:03.93
Curtis
Um, yeah, oh a little further away. Okay is that good.
01:15.56
Curtis
Pops. Okay, all right. This is good. Yeah, okay okay I'll pull it down a little bit.
01:16.97
cactuschu
Ah, that's the thing you fixed last time so you should fix it again.
01:24.26
cactuschu
Yeah, all good. Ah oh actually maybe is there any way to adjust it to be a bit louder.
01:33.18
Curtis
Ah louder but short hang on one sec just the input input gain. We have a little more, a little more input, and a little more gain on that input. This sounds good. The quick brown Fox jumped over the lazy dogs.
01:41.68
cactuschu
Excellent, excellent. Yes, yes, it does yes.
01:52.99
Curtis
You hear the pool noises in the background actually like having pool noises in the background. Um, but all right? yeah and moreover it creates a certain ambiance. Um and you have to imagine me ah drinking an Ipa. Okay, ah, let's go.
01:57.24
cactuschu
Yeah, a little bit but I should be fine like I said that that's something that's actually much easier to filter than the pops.
02:10.90
cactuschu
Yeah, so this is probably a question you've answered a lot of times before about what is actually wrong with the current regime.
02:17.30
Curtis
Um, what is wrong with the current regime? What is wrong with the current regime is that its processes are extremely inefficient and ineffective. It just sucks. Um, if you're.
02:31.18
cactuschu
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. What do you think of the sorry good.
02:36.21
Curtis
If you're asking if you're asking what the cause of the suck is that's a different matter at a more complicated question but you know if you're talking about should we or shouldn't we replace this like you know, does it suck or does it not suck I don't know.
02:48.40
cactuschu
Yeah I think more and more people are kind of coming along to that right? even kind of recline and those folks are and they talk about it that they have the word they use for it is like state capacity right? Ah, do you think they're ever gonna do ever and.
02:59.90
Curtis
Yeah, State capacity there you there you go.
03:07.60
cactuschu
Think they're going to turn over to how you think or at least get closer to it.
03:08.97
Curtis
Um, you know obviously um, um, you know in a new regime on my principles. Those principles would be their principles because they're supporters of the regime. So. No, I don't think it would be a leading indicator. Um, I think it's worth noting. However, when you see people who are in some sense public intellectuals whose position is derivative seems derivative of. Power. You should assume that in any regime their positions would be derivative derivative of power and that therefore in the third reich they would be nazis and in Stalin's Russia they would be communists and these same types of people the same sort of. Personality type of the sort of servant of the regime is found worldwide and in all regimes and typically when you see regime change.
04:12.20
cactuschu
M.
04:17.97
Curtis
People with that mindset will simply come to support the new regime. Whatever it is I think if basically I think if the next American regime was Isis I think as reclined would become a muslim. In fact I have no doubt that he would become a muslim and I suspect that he would actually be an extremely devout.
04:21.56
cactuschu
Yeah, and so never.
04:35.28
Curtis
So Lafi muzzles. That's just my guess. But
04:40.38
cactuschu
Yeah, something I've definitely rethought a lot in the past few years is just the capacity of people to engage in motivated reasoning.
04:49.55
Curtis
Um, yeah, like the capacity for non-motivated individual reasoning is very slight and almost not not found in enough people to be worth bothering with really like not not.
05:04.60
cactuschu
Yeah, so and in the next regime. Do we see? Ah, do we see a kind of continuous monarchy, a continuous rule by one or is it just more like there is a monarchy and then it.
05:07.14
Curtis
Not by the numbers.
05:21.44
cactuschu
It builds an oligarchy that kind of persists into the future but it's a better oligarchy in which one of those 2 is closer.
05:25.19
Curtis
Yeah, well oligarchy implies. Um I think you're sort of in between those things oligarchy implies that power has actually descended into that Authority has inappropriately descended. Into the Org chart and so you know that's in general something that is intended to be long lasting and we do want our governments to be long lasting. That's kind of a failure mode. Um, I think that.
05:57.34
cactuschu
Certainly.
06:03.73
Curtis
That was sort of something that Fdr did rather intentionally at his passing. He felt that he had created a machine that would be awesome and would maintain its awesomeness forever. Um I'm afraid this was not the case. Um, that shouldn't sort of gain the proposition that we have to consider the possibility that maybe the reason that people thought the new deal was awesome was that it was awesome. I mean it was full of awesome people doing huge awesome things and fucking a lot I mean you know but like any you know Silicon Valley is full of you know, magnificent failures right? You know so you know the new deal has something great in it and sort of the mistake of the dying fdr in basically. Not imbuing his successor with his own very informal powers is that he's basically saying now we're ready to become an oligarchy and as long as power basically sliding down into the organization is sort of always a disease There's nothing good about it. And it's always basically the result of organizational slackness and a management that has basically checked out it and started doing the three martini lunch or as in the case of Fdr Died right so the thing is that.
07:32.35
cactuschu
Yeah, yeah.
07:37.92
Curtis
You shouldn't really um, at least in the ideal and this problem is always real um or this tendency is always real like you shouldn't see the staff pool of a monarchy as an oligarchy that is a failure mode now. Sometimes that failure mode can be kind of okay and like things can fail and um, sort of power can ebb away from the center in practice and be very hard to get back. But that's still a failure mode. You can actually run, I mean one of the sort. Fundamental principles of Washington that you'll hear everyone say is personnel is policy, who you hire is what determines a policy that is the mode of operation of an oligarchy you know for Elon Musk you know at Spacex personnel is not policy.
08:17.73
cactuschu
Oh yes.
08:30.34
Curtis
It doesn't matter if, like you know, 90% of his employees. Want to build a bigger falcon nine instead of the starship or whatever the fuck they are going to basically follow like all important decisions. Going to wind up being effectively part of you know Elon's vision right? and so you know really this is the whenever you see a monarchy turn into an oligarchy. It turns into a bureaucracy and that bureaucracy you know. Gets less and less effective when once it degrades past a certain point. It starts to actually get corrupt and it just sucks and so there's no reason why the sort of tension and freshness of an organization can't be maintained indefinitely. By competent CEOs who preserve that tension even across generations.
09:34.35
cactuschu
I think 1 problem that that runs into though is that with every kind of generation. You do run the risk the kind of very small tail risk of that Ceo being gross incompetent in some way right.
09:46.57
Curtis
Well and that's why that's why ideally it's a small tail risk which is handled by the existence of a board of trustees which almost never does anything and because the board of trustees almost never does anything it.
09:58.16
cactuschu
Are.
10:03.63
Curtis
Is not constantly executing power and therefore its ethos can remain virginal. It. It does not have to be corrupted by power because it almost never has to use power but when it does have to use power. It really has to use it and so you know there are plenty of companies that effectively operate without a board because for example, Mark Zuckerberg equips himself with magic galactic death shares and it doesn't matter how much of the company he owns he controls this is legal. I actually did it myself. Um, and the um so like the.
10:32.30
cactuschu
Government.
10:39.72
Curtis
The necessity for having this backup Accountability. You know, structure is not absolute, obviously Hereditary Monarchies kind of got by without it but Hereditary Monarchies also produced a lot of duds. Now you could say that in the age of artificial reproduction if you really are doing the hereditary thing. You can do a pretty good job of producing non duds because you've basically got a whole school full of you know potential next Sultans or whatever and you know you can test them to within your heart's delight. Still still. You know. Maybe that's a thing and maybe you know the backup selection committee is also a thing but you really do want that extra. I mean history is done without it but history has had problems and you really do that extra accountability layer on your monarchy. But as you say it's a relatively rare condition and you know life is full of risk and danger I don't Know. Ah.
11:41.60
cactuschu
Right? I think the succession problem is actually 1 of the most understudied ideas or not necessarily the succession problem just for a kind of monarch but actually the succession problem for the entire regime right? for the entire ruling class.
11:48.29
Curtis
Right? right.
11:57.58
Curtis
Um, yeah, well the thing is that the drift happens when 2 things 1 is again if you solve the succession problem for the monarch. You shouldn't have to solve it.
12:00.90
cactuschu
That there's this kind of drift that's happening.
12:15.48
Curtis
For the nobility or the and or the administrative class which is ideally the same thing. Um, you shouldn't have to swap it out because sort of keeping that class keeping a healthy nobility is at least as important to the monarch as keeping a healthy peasantry. Or keeping a healthy merchant class or you know keeping a healthy church like you know and so when you have a healthy nobility. It keeps reproducing itself. It doesn't go stale and decadent. Ah, you know your nobles are just like all around superior dudes. And superior ladies who are just obviously better than everyone else and and and and are capable of, you know, serving important positions on merit within the state and. As long as sort of this kind of the nobility of excellence and the you know the nobility of state service and the nobility of wealth are kind of all the same thing. You've got a very very healthy monarchy and so actually. The care and feeding of the noble class is like I mean all classes need to be cared for and fed. It's just like if you screw up this problem. You have really serious problems and so you know not screwing up those problems basically consists. In running a government that no matter how old and successful it is still feels like a startup, Etc, Etc, Etc it's a hard problem. You see CEOs talk about that like all the time. How do we? you know where IBM is? How do we keep feeling like a startup? Well. Kind of you don't but you are also next to the department of energy. You definitely feel like a startup at Ibm and so you know the um next to lockheed martin you know you feel like it's a startup at Ibm right? you know and and so like maintaining. That sort of energy and that sort of quality is definitely part of the kind of continuing process of monarchy. None thing you can do in a monarchy that was sort of adopted in this weird way in the later Roman Empire is this sort of junior and senior monarch structure where you have kind of a co-founder structure but they're like Eric schmitten and Larry page really of like different generations that way you can have this sort of smooth. You have this co-founder structure which is well known to work. There's a senior partner and a junior partner and then the senior partner sort of um.
14:46.92
cactuschu
Oh.
15:00.32
Curtis
Becomes a partner emeritus you know the junior partner becomes a senior partner and selects a new you know apprentice and he can go through apprentices the way Coco The Gorilla went through kittens you know and and ah. You know this gives you a basically monarchical structure with a certain amount of continuity in it and then if you combine this sort of the continuity and stability of just like a little tiny bit of redundancy like that with you know the power. Of the mysterious anonymous board. Um I think you get um, something pretty cool. Um.
15:40.31
cactuschu
Yeah I mean that's kind of one of the major questions that we're trying to answer on this show is that the selection mechanism is creating that kind of permanent startup. Ah, and yeah.
15:45.73
Curtis
Um, yeah, don't I yeah Don I want to take a like three minute break to answer some text all right. We'll do it.
15:58.66
cactuschu
Ah, yeah, go ahead.
16:06.87
Curtis
I Don't know.
17:47.65
Curtis
Is.
17:54.30
Curtis
Um, like I do not answer something but go back to the fix and which gives from the continued place to and I don't.
18:33.40
Curtis
Hey are we back? Are we There? This is real. This is real all right? Why don't you Ah so um, do you want to re-ask your question or should I just answer it ah and use the old recording.
18:35.39
cactuschu
Oh yeah, yes, no, it's all simulation.
18:51.64
cactuschu
I I think I I'll just re-ask it? Yeah, so one of our great questions that we're trying to answer on the show is essentially this kind of selection mechanism right? This kind of path is better.
18:55.13
Curtis
Um, okay, great.
19:08.33
cactuschu
Or towards a kind of permanent sort of culture and one of the major problems he had in this is that this is actually deeply against human nature right? There is actually this I think quite informative New York Times Podcast about basically um, the history of labor unions. And about how much people really hated this idea of like the I think it was called like the quickening or like the speed up or something like that of basically like not necessarily just ah, wanting to be compensated more for like working better but like an opposition to basically like working better itself.
19:44.93
Curtis
Move.
19:46.47
cactuschu
And I think that's actually just like a very deep part of human nature and it needs to be constantly filtered out of whatever elite or whatever ruling class you have um.
19:58.35
Curtis
Um, that's something okay, let me let me, there's let me answer that question in a number of parts. So none of all, there's an important difference between a ruling. Class and ah a governing cast or a governing set. Um, let's reduce this to the question of people who work in the government and um and and then you know we assume naturally that. Unless something has gone really wrong with the way. Society is regulated the governing class as as it can I mean you know Russia in the none century late none century would be an example of this kind of failure. The governing class should be the center of the ruling class and so. When you look at. For example, the distinction between people who listen to Npr and people who have gs ranks in the civil service in Dc I would suspect that among you know people with gs positions. Um. The ratio of Npr listeners to Fox Listeners is Twitter's magnitude right? and so you know the the ruling class the elite class the governing class and you know the governing set are all the same set of people this is um. This is the way it works in an oligarchy and should not be confused for a universal principle of government. So I think the the best way to think about future. Um, a future governing staff that is probably the best term a future governing staff. A future governing staff. We have many examples of civil services. Um, you know most people don't know this but both.
21:59.91
cactuschu
Yes, I like that term.
22:13.13
Curtis
In fact many many historical civil services. Um, there was buying and selling of offices in the church this is known as a simony um Simony Simony don't know how you say that? um. And so for example in the British army until the mid to late none century even military commands were bought and sold. Did you know this? um.
22:43.21
cactuschu
No I did not.
22:47.31
Curtis
And similarly before civil service reform in the Uk same thing and it was basically assumed in a you know in an environment where offices are bought and sold it is assumed that the office is going to yield some kind of a profit so this was combined with a world in which you know. If you were the captain of a ship and you took a spanish galleon you got to keep at least part of the shit you took and but so yeah, a little bit right? you know? and so and so this is a very medieval system of government, same thing in the roman republic you know you have like tax farming. Um.
23:11.95
cactuschu
This reminds me of a lot of China now. Yeah.
23:26.28
Curtis
It is very medieval. Ah you know, but it also likes it's effectiveness and power should not be understated. The point is that we have plenty of examples of sort of transferring from a system like this. To a merit-based system and what you're really looking for is the transition of a sort of patronage structure to a merit-based system under the leadership of an effective Ceo. So for example, you know the construction of the Napoleonic civil service. Is a good example here. Napoleon is really a startup guy and None of the things that Napoleon does It's so amazing is when he's hiring basically people to staff his like super startup the administration he doesn't care what your politics is doesn't care whether you're a jacobin or a royalist or whatever a democrat.
24:10.55
cactuschu
Um.
24:16.64
Curtis
You know, because politics is no longer relevant in New France, it doesn't matter. It's like oh you know it's like asking what bands you were into in the 80's you know and and it's like just as it would be in China. It's like you know there's plenty of people in China living today that now fight and like. Competing bands like red guards in the cultural revolution right? you know and and I mean that shit is just over you know and um and that feeling of combined feeling of number one personnel is not policy. Personnel is just personnel. And basically you know there's 2 option for you as a personnel you know as as a staff officer of a corporation or a regime or whatever either you do your job and do it well or you don't and if you're trying to exert power upward at say like fucking Apple or something. Like you're going to get like stomped like a bug and either after None or None or 3 times being stomped like a bug and reminded that you should keep your mind on the work in front of you and not be like you know designing the Apple watch when you work on Mac Os then ah um um,
25:24.56
cactuschu
The.
25:28.50
Curtis
You know you're going to keep your nose pointed down or you're just a shitty employee and get dismissed and so you know this idea of personnel policy really needs to be discarded in the context of an effective and functional monarchy.
25:44.23
cactuschu
I think that's true in terms of their politics themselves right? They're kind of moral decision making but I don't think that's true in terms of competence right? like 1 of the big questions was like yeah.
25:46.47
Curtis
And
25:52.80
Curtis
No, it's not true. No, no, no, no. So you know the recognized ways of filtering for competence. Do you know one of the unnoticed sort of important events of. Late twentieth century was in the twilight years of the Carter administration. Do they? um they canceled the pace examination which was the standard examination for the civil service. The claim was that it was racist. And they would design a new exam that wasn't racist. Maybe it was racist. We have failed to find a new exam that isn't racist um and the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right? so so so so I mean
26:33.80
cactuschu
Mm. Yeah, it's like a disparate impact right? It's just so silly.
26:47.44
Curtis
When you look at the history of civil service reform from I believe in the US this is enacted by the pendleton act in the u k oh my god there's a report Helen Andrews loves to cite this. Um. You know in the u k the um meritocratic civil service comes in in the middle of the non century and always when you bring in when you have one of these basically like you know, placement based patronage oriented civil services. And you replace it with something modern and efficient. Always what you institute is civil service examinations because otherwise it's basically just a question of who can pull more strings and so the um.
27:38.21
cactuschu
Writes.
27:41.46
Curtis
The cells serve as sort of by examination sort of an elite created by let's face it Async tests I'm sure you've never faced any tests spraying but you know the um you know this this society you know of those who Ace tests.
27:50.84
cactuschu
A.
27:59.88
Curtis
Seems to be basically like yeah, you're going to get people that are just a lot smarter and more driven than the guy who got the job being a tax farmer because his cousin was the prime minister right? and you know so when you're establishing I Mean. You basically have the very concrete problem of scaling up this organization. Let's say let's put this can I put this in a much more concrete Framework. Let's say you're a billionaire.
28:28.86
cactuschu
Yeah, of course.
28:36.90
Curtis
In November whatever 2024 you were.
28:41.73
cactuschu
Hypothetical Billionaire who definitely does not make ah rockets and electric cars.
28:45.28
Curtis
Yeah, well, he's not eligible. He's not eligible. Although that would be an awesome flex. But ah, you know to be elected when you're not eligible. What are they gonna lock those you know, ah, um, um, and in any case. You have a lot of resources, you were just elected president. It is November. It is the beginning of November. You will be inaugurated in the middle of January. Your job is to basically hit the ground running. So therefore you have between November and January you have basically to a little more than two months counting the Christmas break to basically staff up a cadre that is going to assert absolute power into investigating. And replacing the existing government. You have no obligation whatsoever to use any existing org chart or funding once you gain power after you're inaugurated before you're inaugurated. You're going to be paid out of the resources of the billionaire.
29:40.71
cactuschu
But
29:56.60
Curtis
After you're inaugurated. You'll be paid straight from the Fed which by the way is part of the executive branch. So you're basically in a way doing something not too dissimilar to what Fdr did in creating a new government that was sort of on top of the old government except this government actually. Is going 1 step farther. It's going to decommission the old administrative state which was either a legislative or executive or something else, but it's clearly unconstitutional and so your job is to basically. Take it effectively. Oh and by the way you'll be consolidating local government where appropriate which is almost always and so there will be 1 Us police department and the um and so you're basically just rationalizing everything with tremendous force. And the kind of people you would do basically 2 things number None is like very fast screening for IQ combined with demonstrated competence. The other one is to basically take pools of pre-selected people. You know, call up Sam Altman
31:00.65
cactuschu
M.
31:08.97
Curtis
He has the addresses of like None yc founders. Not all these people are awesome, but like the awesome hit rate that is pretty damn high, call up Google. You got to pass a pretty gnarly computer science test to go work at Google right? You know. Ah, the set of people who pass that test again. It doesn't matter what their personal beliefs are, you know if they're like total assholes about it. They want to take the job anyway, you know, um, but you're basically you need a raw. You need a raw labor pool then you need to rapidly bring that labor pool into a sense of.
31:35.27
cactuschu
Yeah.
31:47.14
Curtis
Esprit de corps. Ah your labor pool by the way you know between November and Mid -January these people are going to a compound. Okay, there is no electronic communication out of this compound into the real world.
32:05.21
cactuschu
Oh my I mean that's enough for the a I.
32:06.83
Curtis
you can only make h you can only make http get requests right? I mean ah I I don't think it's enough for these guys right? and and and and you can only make http get requests like you're basically like. No, you can't have this like connected to the fucking press. You're basically saying okay we are going to go and get this incredible pool of incredibly smart fucking people who are going to spend two months both studying the existing government what the fuck it is what the fuck it does. And necessarily broad strokes and then what the fuck do we replace it with and if two months isn't enough to plan that you should be in a different business right? because basically like yeah you know you have to hit the ground running and the only thing that makes any fucking sense is that you're taking over the government. And not just the government by law actually you're asserting the level of sovereignty that the occupying forces in Germany in 1945 had they didn't care about public opinion. Public opinion cared about their opinion.
33:20.86
cactuschu
Yeah.
33:22.96
Curtis
And like the um I mean you know they actually starved the German population to make that point but like never mind that um, like that we don't We don't have any need to do that Besides the whole foods will stay open. You know, but um, um.
33:32.72
cactuschu
Me that we don't do that right? yes.
33:41.68
Curtis
Um yeah, that's basically the um like level of like a regime change project that you have to Announce. So Basically you know of course it will be obvious that all these people went into seclusion. In this way and um, you know like you can't conceal that this thing is happening but you're still going to basically end up on inauguration day with this thing that is basically. Ready to take emergency powers and immediately execute on them. Yeah, you see like you know, like imagine you could be like you know thinking about like ah.
34:22.30
cactuschu
Mm.
34:30.92
Curtis
The ethics of abortion or something or you could be coming up with practical real world plans like this one.
34:36.84
cactuschu
Yeah I think I know there are kind of 2 groups of people in the well this is a small enough camp as it is the kind of tech people who also care about politics um and like care seriously about politics.
34:47.53
Curtis
Right.
34:52.88
cactuschu
But there's actually I think around a None divide on whether a kind of software engineers would actually be good people to hire because I think the problem is with a lot of software engineers or like let's take a close and dear example to my heart right? and the person who runs the USA is like an imo team, right? I can and I know like a lot of people.
34:58.44
Curtis
Yeah.
35:07.80
Curtis
Um, right? Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no so the thing is when you're taking elites like that of course it's a very crude pre-filter.
35:11.75
cactuschu
Who are on the Us Ah, an Imo team they just do not care. They don't care about power at all. Yeah.
35:25.41
Curtis
And you know hn you know like like why see founders are a better tier because these are people that have sort of interacted with reality in a way, you're not just choosing them further Iq Um, you know you know my experience is you know I don't want to be too blunt here but you know my experience is that? um.
35:35.22
cactuschu
And
35:43.25
cactuschu
Deep on key watch.
35:44.64
Curtis
It's very very difficult. It's very very difficult for people with an iq of None to be seen you know and and and and it's just very. It's like you're like the vehicle is just too powerful for its steering right? You know and like the set of rabbit holes that you can go down to go down at that level.
35:49.62
cactuschu
Are.
36:02.19
Curtis
Is effectively like you know, um, infinite um like the um, what's the guys that it algebraic ah Ge ah Ty Tyke Muller do you know the story of Tyke Muller Tyke Meeler Geometry have you heard of Tyke Muller Geometry like it's a math.
36:15.56
cactuschu
Ah, no.
36:21.70
Curtis
Algebraic geometry thing. Ah you know this you know that Mochizuki guy he has his theory. You know his theory is based on anyway. Um, Tyke Mueller basically invented this whole branch.
36:22.51
cactuschu
Ah, maybe vaguely but not really vaguely.
36:38.56
Curtis
Of algebraic geometry. Um and like that is still yielding like he was an immensely talented mathematician um, very young guy when he did all of his work very like galawa type thing right. And tyk neeller was also however, um, a fanatical nazi. Ah he was a national socialist and he was dedicated absolutely to the New Germany and he regarded mathematics as secondary to the New Germany and even though.
37:03.52
cactuschu
Synthesis.
37:11.95
Curtis
His academic structure was perfectly able to get him out of doing this. He insisted on being drafted and um, sent to the Eastern front where some Russian tank crushed him like a bug. Um, and then you know of course we have a large number of Communist mathematicians.
37:26.56
cactuschu
Then.
37:28.34
Curtis
You know, fucking growth in de or whatever, right? you know who's just like and and you know they can't both be right? And so I mean they just can't be right and so you know that sort of intelligence is useful. What you're really looking for is more difficult. I Am a combination of intelligence and wisdom. I am biased. I certainly think that the startup world and Vc world to some extent selects for these kinds of people. This is why I would prefer to basically call the um you know. Why see? Ah, you know alumni before the Google software engineers maybe before the imo winners right? but I mean you know there's a place for the imo winners too right? You know and the thing is that even the people who like it.
38:09.87
cactuschu
M.
38:21.70
Curtis
Using that level of talent takes an enormous amount of skill, one of the things that I always admired like the best engineering project of all. What would you say the greatest engineering project of all time is off time?
38:34.32
cactuschu
Of all time It's all time.
38:40.39
Curtis
All time. That's all, yes that also I believe is the correct answer and when you look at the Manhattan Project Apollo is close Apollo by which I mean basically you know the um.
38:42.60
cactuschu
I feel like the cliche answer is the Manhattan project but that might not be right? okay. M.
38:58.20
Curtis
You know nazi space program. Um, you know the um shenzhen is yeah but that's not not not a project so far. Yeah I mean shen ze is very impressive but it's like a garden. You know these are you know the Manhattan project is an organized topdown thing.
38:58.92
cactuschu
The other one I was thinking of was shenzhen. That's actually very impressive but it's not just second yeah, it's not just engineering right? yeah.
39:14.95
cactuschu
But m.
39:16.61
Curtis
That is run like a startup but is the size of Ibm okay number one that's completely mind blowing number two. It has this amazing pair of like technical and organizational co-founders right? Oppenheimer and general groves you notice right at number 3 which is.
39:31.44
cactuschu
M.
39:35.24
Curtis
Like again, just this is such a classic like Silicon Valley right and then the other thing that's most amazing about the Manhattan project that really just is like I can't think of a duplicate of this was that it took people at the top level of talent. You know? um, um, Niels Bohr here but you know, um, um, and and like to assign them jobs you know normally people at this level of talent are like the thing that you do with this level of talent. Is. You use it to write your own ticket and like even in grad school when you have the top level of talent your association with your advisor is almost only nominal. You're not like doing some little thing your advisor set for you. Your advisor is like I just set the sky free and look at him. Go. And that's where you are if you really are at the level or where you should be at least gotten I mean it's you know more? How fucked academia is probably better than me but like this is the way that it's supposed to be normally in the normal world. Top level and and so to get to the point where Johnny Von Neumann can have a boss and the boss can be like hey you know, ah your job This week is to work out some shit about like you know. Shockwaves in plutonium. How do we model shockwaves in plutonium and Johnny Von Norman who is the smartest man in history basically as far as I can tell is like okay bus I will see if I can get it done this week you know and so you're actually taking when you're taking talent a day. Absolute top of you know the human the absolute right tail of the bell curve and you're actually organizing it into a structure that actually achieves one fucking end which is to produce this incredible. Bomb I mean it's just like it's like a romance. It's like a love story. It's unbelievable. It's like you know nothing ever like this could ever happen again and you see some of the same. I don't think you see exactly that phenomenon in Apollo. And maybe you saw it in the nazi days of the nazi space program. Um, and you know now I mean I don't know there's big companies but you know you see what I mean about the Manhattan project right? and so and so it wasn't like.
42:16.98
cactuschu
Yeah, absolutely.
42:21.67
Curtis
The Manhattan project. You know it's like I like to think of you know if you look at what postwar Vannevar Bush Science would do and how it would do the manhattan project. It would be very simple. It would be like looking. You know a committee has predicted that it is possible to build nuclear weapons true enough in order to build nuclear weapons. We need to make fundamental advances in computing and metallurgy and particle physics and chemistry and None other things therefore. We will create a large pool of grant money. We will put a large number of rf fees to the departments of chemistry and physics and computer science and anything else that might even tangentially be related to a nuclear bomb and we will evaluate the grants that come in.
43:14.82
cactuschu
Oh no.
43:16.30
Curtis
Um, the grants to come in and the grants will come in will basically be like here is my research that I've been working on for 15 years but here is how it is actually about nuclear bombs and ah am I am I just like is this a fantasy am I making this up.
43:28.26
cactuschu
It's a good thing. Fuck.
43:34.23
Curtis
I am what I'm saying like not having the ring of truth and the thing is you might you hey it's sorry it's that it is almost physical pain right? and there is a possibility of this project.
43:34.61
cactuschu
This is very realistic. Ah.
43:45.60
cactuschu
Yes, it is just.
43:53.23
Curtis
Myrate is in nuclear bomb but like 1979 or something you know in the meantime you'll all be speaking german you know and um, like and and you know the principle I mean yeah like the idea of doing it this way was just really great. You know I was doing another podcast the other day where I was like.
43:58.44
cactuschu
50
44:12.25
Curtis
You know cryptocurrency should fund this fund themselves this way because they exactly have exactly the same problem if you're like the ethereum foundation with this like pile of ethereum that you got from building the thing you have to fund like random like grant proposals that are sent to the Ethereum Foundation you can't hire like general groves and put them in charge of like. I don't know what $800000000 of ethereum would be like to take this manager. No yeah, well no, it's it's grants. it's grants it's grants it's all basically aping. You know the most legitimate mechanism in society. So the idea of just basically putting a Ceo in charge and saying.
44:32.63
cactuschu
Is that actually how it works ? That's how sad oh my goodness.
44:49.10
Curtis
Hey, here's $800000000 to make ethereum awesome or whatever is just completely unheard of and unimaginable and like you know that's just one way in which the world but you know we still have corporations. We still have great ceo kings ah you know didn't elon musk changes like twitter profile to say techno king. I know it's just a job description for techno because I know there could be some hope in the world. I don't know um I'm not that I know I and musk or anything. But um, you know I imagine him fondly. Um.
45:11.37
cactuschu
Yeah, yeah I want us. I don't know if I really want to send this entire clip to all of my kind of like very very high Iq friends. Basically.
45:27.35
Curtis
Well, ah, yeah, it is it is it is it is and and and the thing is that you know Napoleon you know the like basically startup gifted kid and who became a national Ceo and called himself an emperor.
45:29.46
cactuschu
Because this is really like a tragedy in the world. Yeah.
45:47.80
Curtis
Um, he had this great line where he's like every regime is safe so long as the most talented people are in the government and the thing is when you look at sort of new deal america like that's like clearly true like the center of like all the amazing stuff that happens really is. At that time Washington d c and so like that's the Silicon Valley of its day even like I wouldn't you know I really we go that far and um, so yeah and where the and.
46:18.98
cactuschu
Yeah I mean just look at where the money is moving right? like it's and it is impressive. Even if you don't like it.
46:25.49
Curtis
And where the and where the talent is going and where like there's just like the energy there like things are getting done right? and they're getting done really fast like the the procedures are startup like they're very loose right? and and so you know. Like you clearly can't have unless people unless you have the most talented people executing in a loose framework like that where their talent is really taken full advantage of by giving them. Sort of having that kind of lossless looseness in the organization that they can exercise individual authority at a low level which is not the same as being in charge of policy and um, you know that is sort of part of it . I mean it was just different. Time but the thing is if you're creating a completely new administration. It has to have that spirit about it. It has to have this just like spirit of like sweeping away everything and it has to have the spirit of being like so insanely superior I mean like imagine you're you know. You and None guys. Um, all of whom are as smart of you and None of them. You know, I got a silver medal in imo and one of them has a PhD in history and you're just like okay, what should Us foreign policy be? Let's start from nothing right? you know and and like the experience of that. It's just like completely exhilarating and unforgettable and it's through experiences of that you know seriously look up the history of something called the inquiry which later became the council on foreign relations. It's almost exactly like that right? and um. And so that feeling of having just an amazing set of people who are just like absolutely convinced that they're there to found something completely new and completely different is just like. That group will collectively feel that they have the right to rule and no one else in our society including the people who actually do a rule feels that they have that right? The people that actually like if you go close as you go closer and closer to like the center of what matters in dc. You will get the same common sentiment that holy shit, no one is in charge like I look up and I don't see anyone but that must mean that I'm in charge but I look down and I'm definitely not in charge and that's sort of the feeling at the top level. They're just like holy shit. There's no one in charge of this insane system.
49:06.43
Curtis
And the um that in that can't help but be different in a new regime like None form of chaos can't take over from another form of chaos and so you'll have this like tremendous esprita core. And a sense of purpose and action that will just completely destroy and flatten and render completely meaningless any of the like political prejudices opinions you came in with and this is why Napoleon can be just like I don't know what. Testing regime he did or whatever but he's just like if you pass the test and you're a good civil servant. It doesn't matter what your ideology is and you know that when you get to that point and you've established an elite with that character like no old elite. King, come to you and be like wait but you should recognize our you know credentials you know our all of our you know like all of our like you know, credent on like yeah, okay, you know what? the None thing we're gonna do. We're gonna take all of those credentials, we're gonna log them. We're gonna say what credentials you achieved under the old regime. And we'll standardize them and so we'll say you know like going to an iv like it won't say brown or Harvard. It'll be like ivy league you know that'll be measured according to your that'll be like um merge with your Gpa and so it will be like you know. Okay, your performance. And this technical field was a three point seven. It's actually politically incorrect in the new regime to even say the names of these old institutions. It's like using the n-word you don't say Harvard like you know you might yell it out of your car window if you were like mad someone right? you know and and um.
50:49.30
cactuschu
Whom.
50:56.79
cactuschu
So.
51:00.32
Curtis
But yeah, but don't you don't want anyone to hear you right? you know? and so you know what you have from the old regime is like okay these are the credentials you got and by the way that number just like an Non dimensional number will be adjusted based on whether you received um. Or you know, positive or negative. Um, is there no gentle way to say it? Um, race-based um you know credential intervention and so right you know if you basically got into a school that we won't name because of your race. And you got a 4.0, maybe that's treated as a 3.0. Maybe you gotta pay the price on that end you know, um, other than that like the um, you know it's just like okay here is this old system whose technical judgment. We trust in most respects. Ah, whose judgment of the humanities. We don't trust at all as far as math goes. It's pretty much perfect, but so was the Soviet Union you know as far as um, sociology goes. We don't really need to keep any of this work but look if you got a sociology phd that shows that you. You know, work hard and we're able to keep your nose clean. You know like you should get something from that credential and it will be a credential that says you worked hard, understood statistics and know how to keep your nose clean. Ah, but if you have math you know, ah math needs to be preserved. I like there's no regime that has really been able to liquor up math. Um. I mean Nazi Map is fine right? You know and even nazi physics is very questionable but nazi math is fine and um.
52:38.20
cactuschu
Yeah I posted like a screenshot from Pascal Jordan's Wikipedia today you know like that had there. There's a recent headline that was like um that was like who decides we're in a recession white people or like white. It's like.
52:44.81
Curtis
No.
52:52.28
Curtis
Ah, oh my god that I know it.
52:56.75
cactuschu
Do you? You can't make this shit. It's like and I posted just like I just like quote tweeted this I posted like um pascal Jordan's Wikipedia page. It's like he was relegated from the from the nazi regime for believing in Einstein's physics
53:07.62
Curtis
Um, yeah, yeah, right? I mean and and and the um, um, yeah, that's ah, that's an appropriate signal of dissent right? You know and the um but math math even if they're right math is fine right? You know and it may not have made the strides. That it would have been made if there were more jews right? That's true, but they're like proofs aren't wrong and um and so you know every when you're basically nonetheless you know where the one of the chief hotbeds of national socialism was in Germany in the 1930 s that's right.
53:46.28
cactuschu
Doctors.
53:47.30
Curtis
Universities. Um, and so you know I believe never having been there I believe we can say that the German University was successfully denazified. Um I don't see any pockets of nazism remaining you know, but maybe I just haven't looked closely enough I don't know we should look into it. But. You know the? um, ah you know I don't I don't really see it and so you know whatever the ideology of the university is it will match the sort of because a university is a group of young talented. People. It is a group of young ambitious people and it will help. You will know the beliefs of those people will sort of match the opportunities that ambition offers and so if you know the people. In heidelberg in 1931 imagine them cells as the ss officers of a future nazi regime. That's very exciting. I mean think of the uniforms right? and they like to be able to. To sort of be excited by the Tilos of victory to see that telos directly to see the new thing that you're going to be creating that is very very exciting and so you know that sort of like. Any new regime has to capture and own that excitement probably before it exists but certainly after it exists it has to be like actually okay working at Google used to be exciting but the new exciting is working for the president. Like and the quality of people is such that. Yeah, but you could never get that job right? and so you know that level which is really frankly, not entirely true or the way that never mind um, but um, you know, so that sense of like. Scaling up a machine for ruling like that is like really really possible and then the question is sort of can you maintain it and that's just a matter of keeping your personal processes sharp.
56:11.64
cactuschu
Um, yeah, that'll be the yeah.
56:12.96
Curtis
Um, I'm not going to use the word I think after the change if you know if you say h r like that's like the n word. That's like Dan where like if you say i'm you know if like if it was ironic I'm like okay I get it but like you know you should be careful with that. But if you meant it seriously. Like you're going. You're done like you know your name goes on a list somewhere and any you know I mean it's not good. So you know yeah yeah yeah we don't have Hr we have a person to the guy lucks with you wait no you're canceled right no we don't have hr we have personnel right? and you know, um, um, personnel is mainly um.
56:35.61
cactuschu
Yeah, to Google arts with you.
56:50.60
Curtis
You are concerned with finding and keeping the people who will be most effective in working for your organization. So super weird though I know that's a real reframing. But that's the goal of personnel right? and so you know the personnel problem of I just got elected. I need to basically hit Washington with a bureaucratic paratroop invasion force in none can are there people that can do that shit fuck yeah am I one of them fuck no are there people that can like make an amazing shot at that.
57:14.28
cactuschu
M.
57:20.58
cactuschu
Um.
57:26.95
Curtis
Fuck yeah and like imagine if like in November you know 6 None Trump is like okay None selling the hotel secondly building this machine right? You know I mean and instead and and from you know, the interesting question is sort of what interactions.
57:36.51
cactuschu
Me.
57:44.80
Curtis
Such a machine should be with people who actually know Washington as it is because you want them to come from a perspective which is outside of Washington and cannot be captured by it. But you don't want them to be completely ineffectual against this black box. And so there's sort of an interesting kind of leveling or sprinkling of like you know what? You also need, besides the Yc you know, founders or whatever is a sprinkling of people who worked inside the regime who see it completely inside the administrative state. Who see it in a completely unsympathetic, realistic and cynical way and are basically willing to share that reality not because they'll be working for the next regime. That's absolutely forbidden but they'll be like um you know you know? yeah. I mean even in West Germany the fact that they hired so many nazis was mistake and and West Germany's fine, but still why right? you know? and um the um um and so like. You're basically getting sort of a roadmap like Fdr actually interestingly enough did something similar to this. He created something called the bureau of the budget which is a bureaucratic ancestor of the modern o and b and it was not actually about budgeting at all the idea of the bureau of the budget was that.
59:10.37
cactuschu
50
59:13.84
Curtis
Important to be efficient with taxpayer dollars and because of this basically the bureau of the budget can send an agent anywhere in the government to report on whether money is being used efficiently and of course that means to report on anything so he basically creates this parallel civil service that can act like a parachute. Into the fucking state department's Paris desk and under the pretext of being like are you wasting money like be like a commissar and be like okay this is what you're going to do now and so like it was things like that that gave Fdr his just like. Utterly tremendous power and then of course you know this is ah is at a time when the university worlds is expanding rapidly and he's a feeder. He's just feeding off of that supply of human quality. You know the way I always express this I don't think I've used this on your thing before is it's like. Imagine you're going to Harvard and you graduate with an economics degree in 1934 and you know someone who knows someone who knows Tommy Corcoran or felix frankford or or None of those other mockers as we say in yiddish and. Your friend is like maybe I can get it. You know you get good grades and then you get a call and the call is like hey you know Billy why don't you come to Washington and you're like okay but what will I be doing and the guy on the other end of the phone is like don't worry about it. We'll figure it out when you get here.
01:00:45.94
cactuschu
She is.
01:00:47.63
Curtis
And and you get here and they're like all right here's your desk here's ah, $3000000 go electrify Arkansas right? you know and and and that's the yeah, that's basically my caricatured experience of the new deal. It wasn't all like that epic but like there was a lot of that. You know, the same guy graduates from like you know Harvard with a degree in economics and like you know 2021 and it's like um when do he goes to the post office and like there's an envelope there and it's like um, you've won the unpaid internship right? and you go and right.
01:01:19.90
cactuschu
Um, yeah, it was just tragic.
01:01:23.64
Curtis
I mean it's just like it's tragic right? And so the thing is that basically it's tragic and the result is that you know the Washington machine is no longer getting the people. Best people at all because who wants to do this who wants to do this is basically Tracy flick if you've seen. Ever seen the movie election with Reese Witherspoon Tracy Flake is basically playing Hillary Clinton. She's playing this like a very ambitious good girl. Um, and um, the um, um.
01:01:42.49
cactuschu
No.
01:01:52.59
cactuschu
So.
01:02:01.13
Curtis
Like yeah I mean that's the kind of people who want me and that's the kind of people who wind up in Dc now right? and they're just like they suck and so you know one of the things. Um I should probably get off the line in a little bit but um, you know. Let me close with this example. So one of the sort of great transitions like this is the transition from the roman republic to the Roman Empire what really happened in this transition is that the roman military. Is put in charge of the roman state which previously had been um, ruled by like letters between Roman Aristocrats and a very corrupt and not very effective way and. That revolution there's an example of that revolution of effectiveness of these None different systems of governance which for which let me sort of put the last part first and. Think about the modern example of this the modern example of this is Barack Obama's health care signup site where basically they tried to build this bog standard website dc style and spend hundreds of millions of dollars and failed and then some mother fuckers from Silicon Valley who all of who share Barack Obama's politicslitic I'm sure. Came in and basically built a site for them in like three weeks using python and an old 46 linux box or something right? I mean whatever there was just a huge disparity in the quality of these ways of doing things you remember that right.
01:03:40.67
cactuschu
Cool. Oh yeah, totally.
01:03:41.39
Curtis
Brian. Ah so the um but the parallel to that in the late roman republic and Early Roman Empire I think is super interesting. So what happens is that Rome in like 75 Bc something like that Rome has this huge problem with pirates and you know a modern comparison might be like the drug cartels in Mexico. Like these pirates there are like generations of pirates. They are like pirate Kings. They're all involved in politics in some ways. It's all really corrupt and dirty and it's becoming like this huge ass problem for Rome because Rome needs to feed itself with grain from North Africa and the problem is between North Africa and Rome there's like the ocean and that's where you get pirates. So like finally the republic is desperate and they're like you know what? ordinarily we would have managed the campaign against pirates in the civilian way. But why don't we manage it in the military way and the roman military at the time is like the most one of the most effective militaries in history. It's constantly tested by fighting against the gauls caesar himself has performed this like these amazing feats of like massive gall aside like he kills like hundreds of none of gauls like you'd kill, a. Freaking mosquito like and you know performs he like I mean his military like he's still considered one of the greatest generals of all time. He's like the elon musk of killing Gauls right? You know? And so um, but the guy actually gets. None here is what happens is the senate is like we're going to suppress the pirates. We actually care and because we actually care we're going to do it the military way and we're just going to put one guy in charge of suppressing the pirates. And he's not caesar this is like a proto caesar this is Pompey Pompey who was after called pompey the great because of pulling off of this shit and pompey is like and they're like the senate is like okay Pompey is like has what the romans called imperium absolute command of the sea.
01:05:44.97
cactuschu
Um, june.
01:06:00.86
Curtis
If there's any activity in the whole Roman world that is plausibly related to the ocean pompey gets to do whatever fuck he wants with it on pompey a young guy very much is thought up guy given this power is like. Okay, and without any computers without any internet without any phones without any guns without anything but like wood and bronze and donkeys I guess he had steel. Um. Pompey managers in three months to clean the entire Mediterranean of pirates and for this reason he is known as Pompey the Great and and like. He's just like okay where you bill a fleet the you know the fleet goes here that you know right? and he just plays it like a video game and and like just makes shit happen in a way that would impress any startup founder and like shit happens and the pirates are done.
01:06:56.54
cactuschu
Who?
01:07:12.15
Curtis
And all of Rome is just like holy shit like the normal way of solving things according to the Roman Republic's been practiced for 400 years, founded by Romulus who, like you know, sucked the deck of a dead wolf or something right? You know? um now that wasn't you know? but um, the like.
01:07:27.29
cactuschu
It's something like that.
01:07:30.71
Curtis
Something like that right? There's a wolf thing. Definitely you know and it's it's courts. It's very courts you know and and the like and instead when we do things the way like Alexander the great would have done them. We get the same results as Alexander the Great, which is that they just suddenly get done. You know and basically at that point people can't really believe in the republican system anymore because they basically know that basically putting Elon Musk in charge of suppressing the pirates is going to basically leave you with no pirates in three months whereas putting the state department in charge of suppressing the pirates is basically means your wife will probably be raped by a pirate right? You know and and so like at a certain point you know Napoleon remembers Napoleon's dictum that every government is safe if the most talented people are in charge. Like the way Washington worked in the 1930 s attracted the most talented people the way Washington works today does not and so you have this natural you know to coin a phrase or not going to phrase excuse me circulation of the elites is sort of is ready to happen.
01:08:30.79
cactuschu
6
01:08:41.83
Curtis
And the ability to kind of make that circulation happen with the energy from non Elite forces is sort of the interesting problem of how to kick this off. But once it gets started it one Stop. Why would it stop? Right? You know you're ah esprit de core of like being one of these like sharks ripping apart the carcass of this like ginormous dead whale of the None century regime like you know once it's it's I mean that'll be an amazing job and you know. I'd like to think it's going to happen. But there's no sort of gradual way to do it. You basically have to do the thing that I describe: you have to basically come in on day one with an already prepared replacement government and that replacement process just has to never pause or stop. And as soon as it's clear that that's happening everyone will run because everyone knows that it's just Over. Can you see it? Can you imagine it?
01:09:45.76
cactuschu
Yeah, something that strikes me from there. Yeah, something that strikes me from there is that kind of power plus confidence creates the other right.
01:09:55.58
Curtis
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and confidence can create so much of its own power. It's not even funny and basically that sense of like this is exactly what Trump had if you had you know.
01:10:01.50
cactuschu
Um.
01:10:12.13
Curtis
Tremendous bluster he was like a guy who's taken a bunch of poa classes and pretends to be like a football jock he had a bunch of like blisters but he never had that fundamental confidence. You know I was reading a book by ah someone who was not a fan of Fdr and they had this paragraph long description of Fdr and I was like. Holy shit. That's a description of Trump except but for None change so basically Fdr is incredibly vain. He's incredibly charismatic. He can fill a room. He's incredibly like funny and like dominating and cool. He has the attention span of a fruit fly. He's.
01:10:33.14
cactuschu
Ah.
01:10:50.55
Curtis
He's very clever but not very smart. Um, and there's just like only he has enormous common sense and there's sort of only one difference between him and Trump which is that Fdr has enormous confidence and Trump is incredibly neurotic.
01:11:05.64
cactuschu
Moon.
01:11:06.71
Curtis
And this is because Fdr is from the highest social class. He's from one of the great families of America and Trump is like nobody bourgeois arrives right? You know Trump is like middle class Trump is a peasant and that difference is sort of what. Sink it in a way.
01:11:27.74
cactuschu
That's quite interesting. I'm not sure if I buy that, but I think that's the only difference, though I think the kind of administrative comfort capability.
01:11:34.14
Curtis
No, no well no Trump Trump that's the thing fdr didn't have any administrative capability. But the thing is because of that confidence he was able to delegate to people who did have that competence and he did not feel threatened by them. And so he delegated to a whole bunch of amazing managers people like Harry Hopkins um who are even the Manhattan project like Fdr isn't going around like you know tinkering and how though they're trying to build nuclear bombs like basically.
01:12:01.24
cactuschu
M.
01:12:10.34
Curtis
Frs Principal was like I'm a very lazy person I like to find someone very capable and put them in charge if I later hear evidence that they're fucking up I'm very lazy so I will just shoot them and find someone else because that's easier to and the I not shoot them shoot them. You know, but um, the like.
01:12:24.80
cactuschu
No.
01:12:29.92
Curtis
The sense of like Fdr's ah it's that confidence which creates that ability to delegate whereas what Trump was always doing was that anytime someone anytime the press wanted to destroy someone in his administration they would build that person up. That's what they did to bannon.
01:12:46.46
cactuschu
You remember.
01:12:47.60
Curtis
Until basically Trump was like oh wow this guy's a threat to me. Maybe this is really the bandit administration as approved by Trump and I'll show I'll see what proves that that isn't the case and then he shoots bannon you know and so like that's just yeah, that's just his you know. It would be wonderful. I believe that all human beings can change. I could imagine a Trump administration in which Trump delegates his power to someone all of his power to like the Chief of Staff and says, ``You run the government, I'll go on Tv and play golf. Um, but I just don't know. That he has the stones for that. Yeah I just.
01:13:23.70
cactuschu
Yeah I don't know I'm so not convinced because like who is like 1 person in the Trump administration who likes you like you talked about bannon like I don't really see benon as a kind of amazing um often.
01:13:34.23
Curtis
No no know in in in in. Yeah, no, no, no, no well you know there was one I'll give you 1 exception. So so the exception um is people like Bill Barr or John Bolton
01:13:37.47
cactuschu
Either right? like there's who in the Trump administration is like that kind of operator there. There was like no 1 right? You have to find those people in the None place.
01:13:52.83
cactuschu
John Bolton really interesting
01:13:54.50
Curtis
So if you look at if you look at people like bar and Bolton um, you know there's basically the normal personnel choice when staffing these agencies which I don't think Trump should have ever even started with he should have just discarded them and built new ones. But the problem in trying to staff these agencies which is an essentially impossible problem to do right? is that you have to choose between 3 groups of people. Um, you can choose um hacks who just want to occupy the job and do what they're told to do and have it on the resume so that they can later consult. And really just care about having a nice car in a good family. Um, you can appoint true believers which is something only a democratic administration will do for obvious reasons. Um, and then the true believers are full of piss and vinegar and try to actually get things done. Um, because.
01:14:45.30
cactuschu
Wait, Sorry , what's the obvious reason? It's not obvious for some reason.
01:14:51.15
Curtis
because a republican president is always opposed to the bureaucracy and and so if you appoint true believers at the department of energy. They're climate change fanatics. Trump doesn't want to do that right? Regardless of the truth of whatever right? and so the true believers are another set. Um. You have the um and then finally you have the set of people like Barr and Bolton and what these people are. They're basically knix knights; they have the same view of government that Nixon did. Nixon basically is very smart. Probably the highest iq president of the non century and maybe Wilson maybe Nixon you know and Nixon looks at the government and this being like this is a clown show and the reason it's a clown show is it's being run by these like clown hippies or proto hippies. Para-communist ideologies and here's how we are going to demonstrate that we are the natural ruling party of America. We are going to take this clown show and you're going to run it properly like grownups so you know Bill Barr does not want to destroy the justice department. He wants to basically create a justice department. Which is essentially under adult supervision. He doesn't approve of sort of all this like russiagate stuff. He knows what a scam that is but he also doesn't want to use it to destroy the department. He just wants to make it not happen and he wants to return. The professionalism and the original purpose to these existing regimes are the same with Bolton; he's like the mission of national security is to secure the US like come on. Israel's not as a threat where national security iran is let's bomb Iran right? you know and like that or not. Um, you know there's a sort of at least a logical consistency to it but it's a completely different thing from having people that are just completely that find this organization completely alien roughly is alien is like a jewish kid from Brooklyn finds. You know the like ss headquarters when he's asked to de help demobilize the ss like there's just like no possibility that this thing should continue existing whereas the bolton bar review even though these are guys that you know. You know as my father. My father is a state department veteran. He's like what Trump really needs is guys that know where the bodies are buried and Bolton and bar know where the bodies are buried but they're not interested in digging up the bodies at least they're interested in. You know, planting like a nice crop of corn and forgetting that there are any bodies buried anywhere.
01:17:15.42
cactuschu
Um.
01:17:28.76
Curtis
And like there should be no more killing no more bodies definitely but like you know, let's harvest the corn you know and and and let's not dig up the northwest corner of the Cornfield and and have it as well. These trucks coming through like you know news trucks police tape. You know what that is going to do to your corn. Harvest.
01:17:45.65
cactuschu
Um.
01:17:47.28
Curtis
Right? You know and that's basically the attitude of the nixonians that they're basically going to run the government like grownups and the public who consist of grownups are going to look at this and be like oh yeah, we said we wanted a grown up government. Thank God We finally got one.
01:18:04.25
cactuschu
That definitely happened.
01:18:05.64
Curtis
Unfortunately, like exactly right? you know and and so um, yeah, like you don't want to like you definitely don't want to repeat that mistake. Ah, um, and and. But yeah, it's just like it's like the more concrete you make it the more easily you can see it happening and it's not like a violent or dystopian or bloody or anything process. It's actually just very very joyous to see these old things just fall into dust. And the minute they fall into dust. It's obvious that they always should have been dusted right? If you work at the state department, whether you're in an embassy overseas, if you're in an embassy overseas, if the inauguration is on Tuesday, you're getting your tickets home. No later than Thursday and. The building will be on the real estate market in that country. Um, by at least next month don't think that you're coming home to work in the Truman Building. The Truman Building is closed and also has been demolished with the flags of many nations intact inside it. I don't know if you've ever been in the state department headquarters obviously. And so what is left of the state department. What is left is the personnel records which indicate what rank you achieved. We can't take this achievement away from you. You worked hard so that future employers will get to know that um and it records your salary and thus plans for your pension plan. Ah, you're done. Um, you're not going to starve. You're going to get checks every month. These checks will come to you directly from the Fed which can print money so it will print money and give it to you fine and you can write your novel and like you know when you're basically. Doing that when you leave it when you're so confident in what you're doing that you leave this organization completely in dust and the dust realizes instantly that it has no desire to get back together and reform the organization. Like none like nobody's like who used to be a stai officer on Tuesday and got fired on Wednesday is like on Thursday like we must restart the revolutionary movement. No and that's not how it works you know and and so like once that is clear like. The faster you move the more quickly. The old regime will become dead and the debtor it will become and the debtor it gets the harder and harder it seems to reverse the change and that's basically the feeling of regime changes. You just set that process.
01:20:51.48
Curtis
On fire and you go through it rapidly until your enemies can no longer execute because they simply do not recognize the world they would have to execute in Yeah, exactly like you need to basically smash them into a position.
01:21:00.19
cactuschu
This kind of disorientation is very important. Yeah.
01:21:08.99
Curtis
Where they could theoretically if they had some organizing principle in practice. There's no organizing principle and they have no idea what they would do to resist certainly doesn't involve violence I mean you fire all the state department was that 40000 people is that really going to create a for mob of None armed paramilitaries on the capital mall resisting no like none of these people has ever been in a fist fight. You know, um, and and so you know.
01:21:34.79
cactuschu
I don't know painting it as an insurrection would be pretty very useful. Yeah yeah.
01:21:38.60
Curtis
Yeah, right? but they wouldn't even do that right? You know like like crowd control on these fuckers is trivial and um, you don't even need water cannons. You need like super soakers you know and you need like a loud Bullhorn. You know like. Um, you need to offer the Mys screen bars right? you know and like these are not Powerful. Strong, dangerous people. They're just not and so it actually is when you just look at this principle.. It's so much easier to kind of tip the system over than you think. And the like level between you tip it over completely and you don't tip it all over at All. It's just a total nuance and Either. You're doing nothing or you're doing everything and yeah, yeah.
01:22:24.99
cactuschu
Yeah, because it's like a crusade right? It's like a you know like there's like preference Cascade This is like a power cascade very talent cascade. Yeah.
01:22:32.17
Curtis
It's a power cascade. It's ah it's a power cascade and basically after that power cascade. Everyone takes all of the little doubts that they had in their mind that they carefully snuffed out every time they thought these thoughts and all these thoughts come rushing back and.
01:22:37.97
cactuschu
Look.
01:22:49.67
Curtis
Unify themselves into a new thought and the new thought is I was a dissident too. I always hated all of this right and and and like that is their truth and you have to respect that truth at the same time you know.
01:22:52.81
cactuschu
Yes, that's.
01:23:04.48
Curtis
I Mean if you have evidence that you were dissonant. You know you know the like you know the the court will treat you in a different category but you know but you know let's assume that there was no evidence and you were in at a dissident in your heart and let's go along with believing that everyone was a dissident in their hearts which. Perhaps in a certain way they were but not in any obvious or useful way and and and like and that's the feeling of a real regime change and everyone's life changes like if you're doing the same job and in the same career before and after the regime changed. That's really unusual.
01:23:29.69
cactuschu
Tith it.
01:23:42.55
cactuschu
Really.
01:23:43.48
Curtis
As a mathematician yeah, maybe yeah, absolutely think about what jobs you would be doing in East Germany like before or after what they call divenda the turn like you know who is suitable for a job as a school teacher in the old regime and in the new regime right? You know you can sort of go down like you know.
01:23:53.59
cactuschu
Mmph.
01:24:03.00
Curtis
Basically even if you can just sort of rotate people in careers. So you might say okay, let's take San Francisco but in the new San Francisco we're going to kind of rotate down the hierarchy of force. So the new judges. Be staffed from the old police force and the new police force will be staffed from the old special forces and so you basically have the navy seals arresting people and then ah you know, asking people who used to be San Francisco cops what should be done with this comeback. And ah you know, um, um, and so there are ways in which you can completely reset the government without using people who worked outside the government just by sort of creative reuse of skill sets outside existing organizational capacities. Like basically saying okay the judges of the new world will be the cops of the old world right? And um I don't think there would be much crime in this regime. I mean there might be some initially but I don't think it would really um, work out. You know, um. And so there's actually you know there's things like that that you can do and sort of staffing up the new organization. But you know the speed that this happens with has to take everyone's breath away. Speed is just so important.
01:25:29.84
cactuschu
I think the thing is that to me the speed part seems like you said right? It seems kind of inevitable if you have the kind of None 2 aspects right? If you have the confidence in the power if you have yeah.
01:25:39.75
Curtis
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but the speed is like there's you know that could be slowed down and it shouldn't be slowed down. It should just execute at a rate that totally baffles its enemies and the um you know because. As long as they can't sort of sit still and think about you know they start to think about how to respond to a current situation and then the situation changes and then you've got started thinking. That's how it should feel.
01:26:01.64
cactuschu
Um.
01:26:14.84
cactuschu
Yeah, like so.
01:26:16.69
Curtis
And that's how you feel , that's how you make the enemy feel when you're winning a war.
01:26:23.26
cactuschu
Yeah I think that kind of disorientation is actually a kind of very very natural effect in a lot of cases right? people who are just naturally not operating at the same level. The kind of disorientation is nearly constant. So yeah I do think.
01:26:30.32
Curtis
Yeah.
01:26:36.90
Curtis
Um, yeah, right? You just want the whole thing to be like completely beyond them and above them and like just it just needs to work so well and so fast and in order to do that. It just needs such absolute confidence in its authority.
01:26:41.99
cactuschu
Yeah.
01:26:55.91
Curtis
And like that confidence will just like get the response that it needs I'm convinced that and.
01:27:00.56
cactuschu
So yeah, so how do we? This is kind of like the um post power or near and post power situation. Um, a kind of parallel question to that.
01:27:16.39
Curtis
Um, yeah, yeah, and that's ah, that's us. That's a slightly earlier and slightly slower process.
01:27:18.68
cactuschu
Is getting the staff for um, taking power right? which is basically like campaign staff or like campaign political media. Yeah.
01:27:30.97
Curtis
You actually want that group to be separate from the people that actually take power for the specific reason that you want to take don't want to take your eye off the ball. You don't want them to be basically thinking about what they do once they win once they win when their job is actually done, their job is just to win.
01:27:39.23
cactuschu
Um.
01:27:49.27
Curtis
So there are lots of shops that are like you know. That's a sort of longer, slower hiring process and you definitely want people with intersections with real real reality and even with political reality like. You know? For example, like you know the set of people like young whippersnappers that made Brexit happen is like a thing you'll find these little pools of existing talent in various places supplementing them heavily with things like selection by IQ test. Um, in similar things you have a little more time to sort of create that elite because of course it takes some time for the whole thing to get to its culmination. It's not like you're None month like None to the inauguration project and um. So yeah, it's like you know. But yeah, you're looking for like sort of misfits with a clue who nonetheless know how to get things done. It's almost more like the job of winning office is fundamentally an advertising problem. It's fundamentally a public communication problem. It's fundamentally a narrative problem. Calls for artists not social scientists not like you know, not even people who know how to govern it causes for people. You know it calls for people who know how to create a look and a feeling a movie director would do you know a fine job.
01:29:12.72
cactuschu
So we don't have to have any kind of execution competence until there is actual power.
01:29:19.73
Curtis
Um, yeah, not and not in the sense of I mean you have to execute a campaign effectively. But it's a very different kind of governance.
01:29:29.83
cactuschu
Yeah, that strikes me as I don't know that it doesn't maybe I'm a bit kind of like maybe I'm I'm kind of a bit um over. Overthinking these elections but having a kind of staff and having that kind of understanding or operational ability in terms of dealing with kind of the play by play of all of these um, all of these kinds of.
01:30:03.28
Curtis
Sure it is very important. It is yeah oh don't get don't get me wrong. It's very. It's a very hard problem. I Just want to sort of conceive it as separate from the problem of actually creating the new regime.
01:30:03.36
cactuschu
Events that might happen while you're on the campaign trail that to me seem very important and that to me like selecting like those people seems like quite an equal task.
01:30:19.27
cactuschu
Yeah, sure.
01:30:20.98
Curtis
Because those people should be focused entirely on their job of winning.
01:30:24.94
cactuschu
Yeah, like I don't like like let's say I had ah I had a billion dollars and I and I were going to do this today I actually think it's very nontrivial of like where I would go about choosing these people right? yeah.
01:30:34.70
Curtis
Oh yeah, Oh yeah, Oh yeah, very very very very. You know the very untrue you alright?? Um, I should go. This was fun. Um, and um I think I've basically sort of laid out most of what I know and can say. Publicly about this process and I you know hopefully you'll agree that it's actually a fairly reasonable process surprise all right? Let me answer the last question of the show.
01:31:02.82
cactuschu
Yeah I just want or do you want to answer like the last question of the show. Yeah, and I mean this is very close to what we've been talking about already. But what is something that has too much order and needs more chaos or something that is too much chaos and needs more order.
01:31:17.36
Curtis
Well there's lots of things that have too much chaos and need and more order. Um, the New York city subways have too much chaos and need more order um things that have too much order and need more chaos tend to be things that are sort of too heightly tightly held within. Ah, monopolistic context. So perhaps an example would be like the Apple app store which I think should be not None store but like a mall of stores and um, sort of each mall each store within the mall should actually be curated but instead you have this like. Monster of things that are like ranked by horrible gamable metrics and then gated by this ridiculous app censorship process which is frankly, incredible and um so yeah, that's basically like. Too much order in a way too much like it's not even order. It's a kind of like but you could call it too much order. It's sort of too much stasis, too much like too much order, imagine like building a house in San Francisco that's also like too much order in a sense. It's too much. It's sort of this ex this overproduction of procedure I don't know that I'd call it order and like the highest spiritual sense but it is definitely something like having too much order does that make sense.
01:32:42.00
cactuschu
Yeah I totally agree with ah the app store points this that's actually like a very that's underrated inefficiency especially in the tech world. Yeah.
01:32:51.40
Curtis
Yeah, it is. Is it all right? all right? Brian um, this was a huge pleasure and um, let me know when it's up and your readers can find me at Graymoor Dot Substack Dot Com that's gray mirror.
01:33:08.90
cactuschu
Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for coming on.