"Curtis Yarvin, who hypothesized a neo-feudal search engine, which he cutely named Feudl, as early as 2010"
Did he? It's absolutely nowhere on google or DDG except in Morozov's article. Yarvin's blog archives are all indexed.
"3 The ideas behind Feudl are described on Yarvin’s blog, Unqualified Reservations. Essentially, Google was not too feudal but too ‘woke’—too democratic."
Yeah, I call BS. Back in 2010 the word 'woke' (as an adjective) was practically unknown outside of AAVE and had no negative connotation.
I presume the author is referring to this blogpost[1]. The proposed name of the system is actually "Feudle", which might have made it harder to find for you.
The word "woke" did indeed not make an appearence, but this choice quote: "Eventually, all desirable content will move out of the anarchic slums and into this new, happy gated community. And junkies will be shooting up in the old Google building." His idea seems to have been that hierarchic—or "feudal"—arrangements would be preferrable to the "anarchic" ways of information indexing Google uses.
To be fair I do not think of the proposed search as particularly “feudal”. He is basically just describing what people do by appending “Reddit” to their Google searches. I think Yarvin diagnoses partt if the problem correctly, but misses (1) the massive amount of money that can be generated from paid manipulation of rankings (by Google or others), and (2) the adversarial environment this creates.
I wasn’t particularly interested in entering the discussion (mainly providing the link and an explanation), but I used the word "feudal" because Yarvin himself used it, in the name as well as in the description of the system.
Yarvin was talking about Google Search in 2010 as a mutated but recognizable version of PageRank. That's correct, I think, but it was already heading in a different direction. By the end of the year the NYT was reporting on malicious manipulation of search results for profit¹ and Google responded quickly by changing their algorithm². Then, as the "don't be evil" era draws to a close, Google gets more and more aggressive about extracting user value and the 'democratic' PageRank (which Yarvin was by no means alone in identifying as such³) is totally subverted. In 2016 Trump wins and 'fake news' – successively renamed to 'false news', 'misinformation', and now 'disinformation' – becomes the issue, and Google responds to that, too⁴. So post-2016 there really is a kind of sociological health and safety factor in the algorithm, and it's only then that Morozov's 'woke' becomes applicable to Google Search.
Now if anyone was going to guess that something like that would happen, it'd be Yarvin – but none of that is in that 2010 blog. When he said 'democratic' he meant exactly what Wired did in the article linked below – the action of masses of people. It's Morozov that makes the association between 'woke' (i.e. P.C.) and 'democratic', which has all sorts of implications. A woke-democratic Google Search isn't one that is powered by democracy, but one which protects democracy – meaning, protects the masses from manipulation by exposure to sociologically harmful 'content'. Sensu Yarvin, that is neither feudal nor democratic. It is in fact oligarchic.
The final irony is that when Morozov fudged the name Feudle, wittingly or no, and omitted a link to the blog in question, it was entirely in accord with the idea of exercising democratic power by not giving UR any link juice, but the result of that when posted to HN – a site not lacking in markers of community reputation – is that two people find the link (thanks again) and a small discussion ensues which otherwise would not have happened.
> Yeah, I call BS. Back in 2010 the word 'woke' (as an adjective) was practically unknown outside of AAVE and had no negative connotation.
My understanding of that passage was that the author was paraphrasing Yarvin - who from my understanding is somewhat of a monarchist? I remember his moldbug persona from the blog-o-sphere back in the mid/late aughts as someone who would write long meandering posts in the comment section of pickup artist blog; which ironically is where much of this alt-right stuff started. Kind of (darkly) funny that lot of the intellectual scaffolding for this new authoritarian political philosophy is a at its root a visceral reaction to feelings of powerlessness and lack of agency in dating women.
Sorry, this is just completely wrong, at least regarding Moldbug.
> I remember his moldbug persona from the blog-o-sphere back in the mid/late aughts as someone who would write long meandering posts in the comment section of pickup artist blog
He got his start on the 2blowhards blog, which was not about pickup artistry at all. While I suppose it's possible he left comments on pickup artist blogs, he never wrote about pickup artistry on his own blog except to dunk on them (e.g. https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2013/06/civil-liber...).
> the intellectual scaffolding for this new authoritarian political philosophy is a at its root a visceral reaction to feelings of powerlessness and lack of agency in dating women
During the entire time of "Unqualified reservations" existing he was happily married. Moldbug has never written about women's rights at all (neither for nor against). It's simply not a focus of his work. I challenge you to find one written sentence of his that indicates that he is a misogynist.
It’s where his audience was, and where the discussions took place.
I think saying that moldbug was responsible for the intellectual scaffolding of the alt-right overstates his role.
The intellectual underpinnings of the alt-right world view is more closely aligned with the stuff expressed on Roissy’s blog than anything moldbug wrote. Imo, moldbug was just a convenient associate who was tapped to lend the movement a thin veneer of intellectual rigor.
Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer” does explore the common quality of low status/perception of failure in the personal development of German authoritarian leaders.
(Yes, yes - Godwin…)
Otherwise powerful people (or people capable of being powerful) can obviously have some kind of internalized “low status” beliefs, so it’s not much of a stretch to expect them to seek explanations/redefinitions that deny those self-perceived weaknesses.
Did he? It's absolutely nowhere on google or DDG except in Morozov's article. Yarvin's blog archives are all indexed.
"3 The ideas behind Feudl are described on Yarvin’s blog, Unqualified Reservations. Essentially, Google was not too feudal but too ‘woke’—too democratic."
Yeah, I call BS. Back in 2010 the word 'woke' (as an adjective) was practically unknown outside of AAVE and had no negative connotation.