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Comment by davidgerard | Hacker News Reader

I know other people who know Virgil (surprised how many), and they talk about him getting "rat-pilled" - getting into LessWrong Rationalism, neoreaction, race and IQ theories.

There's lots of LWers in Ethereum, but (of course) most are much more on the ball than to get into scientific racism.

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I remember being in the same circles circa 2012. I found LessWrong to be a bunch of not very interesting wank and pseudoprofound bullshit. I couldn't decide if neoreaction was serious or some kind of many layered satire (later learned it was 100% serious). I know too much about actual evolutionary theory to buy into the IQ cult much. When Gamergate hit my reaction was "this is the stupidest thing I have ever seen... why would anyone actually care about this?"

Then they dropped like flies. Vast numbers of very bright people that I knew got "pilled" in one way or another. As it goes in the poem "Howl" I saw the great minds of my generation... something something something. I personally know at least a dozen formerly smart and creative hackers, scientists, and artists who got their brains sucked out in that era.

I still don't get it. I feel like a survivor of some kind of zombie plague slowly making contact with other survivors.

It's so weird its enough to make me consider the strongest versions of the Russia / underground Reich conspiracy theories and think we were hit by some kind of scientifically designed mind control project... but Ockham's razor suggests simpler explanations unless I see evidence to the contrary.

It was most likely just an outbreak of contagious nonsense that happened to spread virulently through a certain population. I think the hooks were male insecurity (common among male nerds) and a very catchy form of pseudoprofound bullshit that felt like deep thought and profound insight.

yeah - I think it's fully explained by a virulent plague of memetic brain worms, and doesn't need a conspiracy. I recommend Neoreaction a Basilisk by Elizabeth Sandifer to get a handle on it (and not just because my name's in the first sentence).

I've heard some great podcast interviews on it. I think the answer is some of both, since I do think political opportunists of many sorts manipulated and rode the wave.

I do also recall LW as having a fever ward stench too when I visited it back then... not as overpowering as the 'chans, but bad. Its the stench of a lot of people thinking about and discussing nothing with many words.

In any case maybe we will emerge with a greater immunity to pseudoprofundity and superficial appeals to ego wounds and personal triggers (like male insecurity).

I considered Virgil to be a good friend of mine for a very long time, and the last few years have been deeply saddening for me due to his increasingly bizarre beliefs and his irresponsible and inexcusable behavior, especially towards his female friends and colleagues. This is not the Virgil I knew when I first met him.

I cannot speak for other people, but for me personally, the pseudoscientific reactionary ideas you mention were very appealing to me at one point in time because I had, and still have, a very difficult time attracting women. There was a period of time in my life when I spent a lot of time reading pickup artist/RedPill/men's rights content on the Internet until I managed to escape it, mostly via the help of supportive friends. I think that there are a lot of misguided nerdy young men who fall into this frightening rabbit hole, where one bad ideology leads to another.

The worst part is that it drives good women even further away. Now you're not just a nerd but also an asshole.

The kinds of women you will get by being an asshole are the kinds who are assholes themselves. The result is usually an abusive relationship where she treats you like shit, which further reinforces the misogynistic ideology by "proving" once again how bad women are.

So yes it's an obvious downward spiral. Kudos for seeing it.

It sounds like Virgil slammed more kool aid than I thought.

It's because, just like with Objectivism before it, once one start to accept neoreactionary tenets, then their conclusions seem unavoidable. They're less illogical than one would hope or imagine.

The biggest inoculant, personally, was reading "Guns, Germs, & Steel" in my late teens. Other important concepts that have helped me to design arguments against bullshit:

* Pedigree collapse (undermines race realism and Great Replacement)

* Sex chromosomes/allosomes (undermines binary sexual theories and pre-queer gender theory)

* (Computational) complexity theory (undermines classical analysis of Chinese Room, Simulation Arguments, Newcomb's Paradox, other LW favorites)

* Plate tectonics/basic geology (undermines space denial)

* Worryingly: History of the USA (undermines Lost Cause, Deep State, etc.)

There is a big underlying current that I have noticed: Those who committed to classical liberalism were the ones swept away, while neoliberals, metaliberals, feminists, and Marxists were not moved. This is the big change in the shape of the left wing, to the extent that such a thing exists, and probably a large part of why it seems so much further to the left than it used to be. The alt-right tide washed in, and washed out a large part of the center of the beach when it went back out.

Also, as you point out, people aren't getting laid. It is depressing to ponder whether the real inoculant may have been the fact that I had a girlfriend in high school.

Yeah, I also learned to talk to other humans in my late teens and had girlfriends (and friends in general both male and female). I think a lot of this bollocks preys on people with severe social issues. Unfortunately it sucks them into hate and resentment circle jerks and keeps them from finding actual escape hatches.

BTW I have lots of issues with Ayn Rand but IMHO Objectivism is less loony than this stuff. She once wrote that "racism is the lowest form of collectivism," and I agree. She wouldn't be a friend of this stuff if she were still around, but she died in the late 80s. I actually think reading Rand in my teens and early 20s was an inoculant for me. I do think she was an original and very often misunderstood thinker even though I don't think she was ultimately successful. I consider her a liberal heretic rather than a right-winger and oddly enough I compare her to Marx as someone who had brilliant insights but whose prescriptions don't quite work.

This podcast is worth a listen:

https://parallaxviews.podbean.com/e/ep-8-jeffrey-a-tucker-on...

> Also, as you point out, people aren't getting laid. It is depressing to ponder whether the real inoculant may have been the fact that I had a girlfriend in high school.

I can't quickly find a cite, but I recall something about how, when the PLO didn't need the Black September guerilla group any more, they deradicalised them by ... finding them girlfriends

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