FAQ: Political Exploration

“Is Brian X” and Other Questions

I think my approach to learning and writing about politics is somewhat counterintuitive to most people who are interested in politics, so I’ll take some time to clarify it before my critique of the New Right. 

Why do you talk to X?

X could be Jonathan Rauch or Curtis Yarvin. It could be Alex Nowrasteh and Jeremy Carl. I have many people on the podcast who take polar opposite positions to each other. I think this is fine given that I have very deliberate things I want to learn with my podcast.

The first thing I should say is that I entirely reject the slave morality “platforming” argument. If people listen to my podcast and make poor decisions, then the blame is solely on them. Shifting the moral blame to competent or rigorous thinkers because they are competent and rigorous is repulsive. If you believe in this aspect of slave morality I have no clue why you follow me. Not only should you unsubscribe, you should block me on twitter.

A better question is what upside I see in speaking with people I mostly disagree with. One is that I could be convinced otherwise. But even if I am not, learning about the patterns and axioms of argumentation are crucial. This is most obvious in my conversations with Tyler Cowen, Jon Rauch, and Malcom Kyeyune, where I spend close to an hour each trying to probe the ground observations of why we disagree. In Rauch’s case, he believes Trump rediscovered a form of propaganda that simply cannot be handled by our existing political system, and simply was not attempted for at least several decades. In Tyler’s, he ascribes some form of utility to any dominant social process (near the end). I also think our disagreements on Alan Turing and social liberalism reveals similar differences in ground observations. With Malcom, this ground difference is over the ability of humans not only to learn from history but to correctly predict using history.

The point is to uncover people’s actual intentions and reasoning from their rhetorical reasoning. I believe in a soft version of Lacan’s analysis where it’s common for people’s non-socially-desirable intentions are strongest and simultaneously hidden, but I believe it’s possible to overcome that obfuscation by asking the right questions. These lines of “preparation” to uncover those questions and get to the actual disagreement are very important to me. For example, if I interview Tyler again, which will likely happen at some point, I can set the track to our disagreement much quicker than in our first interview. This is also true for different people with similar beliefs.

By far the most common question is:

Is Brian X? Is he New Right? Is he Libertarian? Is he EA? Is he anti-Trump?

In general, my approach to groups or ideologies is that I’m willing to be part of most things that I don’t completely agree with, so long as they’re willing to accept me. I wrote earlier that in most part, populists are willing to accept anyone with a common enemy. Libertarians are also extremely accepting of almost all critics of state bureaucracies. EAs at least publicly claim to be accepting of everyone who is rationally forming their opinions. We’ll see if that continues. I definitely have been convinced by factual arguments on economic and political theory by all of these groups. 

A socialist recently DMed me praising my “Marxist” critique of regulatory capture. I’m reminded of this article by Samuel Hammond on the similarities between Libertarian and Marxist analysis. I think something interesting about trying to address widespread problems with the most straightforward language is that people from different factions will often naturally code this language as their own. From my audience reaction, I’m someone who is perceived to be more “on the side” of my readers, as opposed to someone like Bari Weiss who is often read by both the left and right as “on the other side”, even by her own readers. 

In this aspect I’m simultaneously new right, libertarian, EA, and maybe even socialist at the same time, which really doesn’t make much sense. But I think in general political labels don’t make much sense, and from a utilitarian perspective this way of relating to them is the best for me and the best for intellectual movements in general. If you think that my political theory is helpful and interesting, then I’m happy to be cited in your articles and invited to your events. Otherwise, I understand if you don’t. 

One thing I don’t want to do is hide my beliefs. I try to be as specific and unambiguous as possible about why I think bureaucracies are failing, how “public health” actively harmed the public health, how midwit selection produces progressive ideology, why envy is an underrated psychological motivator, or anything else I find important to contribute. I want to alienate the right people, as you can probably tell from my answer to the previous question. I want to cultivate a community that roughly agrees on the most fundamental questions of political theory and psychology. But simultaneously if you can’t even bother reaching a medium-length article on how I think bureaucracies work, you shouldn’t bother thinking about me at all, let alone what ideological camp I fall into.

On the Trump question, I think my disagreement with Jon Rauch very clearly outlines my position. I definitely do not consider myself “Never Trump”, both because it’s factually wrong, i.e. “what if it was Trump versus Hitler”, but also because it doesn’t capture my disposition towards Trump. I think that the Trump administration was ineffective, highly captured by special interests, and directed conservative energy towards fruitless pursuits. I don’t think he is an existential threat to the United States or the world. I hope he doesn’t run or loses to DeSantis. There are roughly two camps to the “What time is it?” question, which I’ll discuss in more detail in the later article. One is the Curtis Yarvin camp, which believes that our political situation requires precision and coordination. The other is the Michael Anton camp, where brute force (i.e. Trump) is required. I would say that when it comes to openness to discussion and ideology, Anton is right, but when it comes to tactics and effectiveness, Yarvin is right. If you know “What time it is”, it makes sense to tolerate a broad camp of ideological disagreement for the sake of dealing with more immediate problems, so long as those disagreements don’t make it harder to solve the problem in the first place. When it comes to Trump, who I believe has on net frustrated dissident energy on ineffective whims, there is a significant upside in drawing red lines. In short, I don’t believe in points for effort.

A more pressing question is about votes and policy. I think an oddly convenient overlap with all of the groups I interact with is that remaking public health and preventing future pandemics is an extreme top priority on an exponential distribution. When it comes to practical influence on the electoral system, I’m basically be a single-topic voter. I support challenge trials, banning gain of function research, limiting emergency powers, and cost-benefit analysis. There’s some inconvenient history that this raises. Barack Obama banned gain of function and Trump resumed it. At the same time, as far as I’m aware the most vehement advocate to resume this gain of function ban in elected office is Rand Paul. It’s not obvious which politicians actually most effectively achieve these goals, although in terms of staffing and organizations, I would say conservatives have an edge.

Why don’t you write more about cultural issues? 

Short answer: I think other cultural writers are just better than me.

Something that’s very important about how I think of this newsletter is that I think I’m a very bad writer. I don’t have a great model of how people will react emotionally to my writing. I just try to keep it simple. This is why I only write about things that I think are unique or not well known. It don’t think too much about cultural issues because either way I don’t think I have much to contribute. If you want to figure out “where I stand” on various culture war issues you can just ask me on twitter. 

Are Some People Better Than Others?

A theme of several podcasts is individual differences between people, many of which are genetic. Unlike some other online writers, I don’t think this creates a moral hierarchy. It is true that some people will create better vaccines and machine learning algorithms than others. But in general if you have a different way of life than me, I don’t really mind. I agree with this passage from Richard Hanania:

To the extent there was a broad upper class identity in previous generations, it had more of a foundation in truth. The upper class saw itself as smarter, more refined, and better able to exert self-control. It therefore cultivated these traits. Now, with that obvious path to class differentiation closed off due to egalitarian ideology, something must come to replace it.

In a way, feeling differentiated by mathematical ability makes me less motivated to differentiate myself culturally. In general though, I mostly feel indifferent towards people who have different ways of life. I don’t feel any need to be morally superior. Framing things in that way just isn’t instinctive to me.