I think Foseti got at the crux of the problem with Scott Alexander’s Anti-Reactionary FAQ:
In his previous writings on reaction, Mr Alexander has faithfully described the view of most reactionaries. The problem with his latest piece is that he doesn’t. It is not a staple of reactionary thought that everything is getting worse. To the contrary, I’ve never read that argument from any reactionary anywhere.
(As I’ve previously written I think most of us work in fields where advancement is quite obvious. Our frustration is that while we see progress in some areas virtually every day, nothing outside of these limited areas seems to be getting any better. Instead it all seems to be decaying — a process which itself is hardly a historical novelty).
Let’s correct his statement: It is a staple of Reactionary thought that massive improvements in technology have been very effective in masking massive declines in virtually all other aspects of society.
Outsideness goes one step further:
The progressive assumption, which neoreaction contests, is that it is natural and good to spend the advances of civilization on causes unrelated to civilizational advance. A more controversial formulation (supported here) is that the Cathedral spends capitalism on something other than capitalism, and ultimately on the destruction of capitalism. It tolerates a functional economy — to the extent that it does — only on the understanding that it will be used for something else.
Elementary cybernetics predicts that if productivity is recycled into productivity, the outcome is an explosive process of increasing returns. Insofar as history is not manifesting accelerating productivity, therefore, it can be assumed that social circuitry is being fed through non-productive, and anti-productive links. Techno-commercial Modernity is being squandered on (Neo-Puritan) Progressivism. In the West, at least, that is what is getting worse.
“It is a staple of Reactionary thought that massive improvements in technology have been very effective in masking massive declines in virtually all other aspects of society.”
The problem with this statement is that it is not falsifiable.
I am an empiricist. I like science. One of the neat things about science is that it gives you the ability to test statements we think are true against the data. If you cannot test general statements about how things work then there is rarely reason to think these statements are true.
But now the reactionaries have essentially said “all that data (and boy does he have a ton of data) doesn’t count. Technology did it. Or something.”
Maybe they are right. But if the dozens of graphs and charts and statistics on almost every conceivable measure of well being in the faq cannot be used to test the validity of the reactionary movement’s central claims, then what can? How can we falsify reactionism?
I keep asking these questions to the reactionaries I know and nobody has given me an answer. It is a bit frustrating.
Any body here want to take a shot?
Reactionary thought is not a scientific thesis. Why does it need to be falsifiable?
History is not a double-blind trial. I am an engineer, so this rarefied view of science seems incredibly foolish to me. All models are wrong, but some are useful.
The Reactionary model of the past does not require me to bury my head in the sand and hide from uncomfortable truths. That is useful, even if it does not have all the answers.
The Cathedral produces loads of sophisticated propaganda — some of it is called “science”.
The default assumption is that everything is getting better every day, and if it’s not getting better that’s because it’s insufficiently progressive.
Every reactionary who writes anything has pre-rebutted Scott Alexander’s FAQ — the first thing you have to demonstrate if you’re a reactionary is that things aren’t as fantastic as they appear. Since we don’t have an alternate Earth to compare you’ve got to use your judgment. No hiding behind some numbers (which can and will be gamed, of course).
Oh, and progressives have a nasty habit of murdering people who conduct experiments in non-progressive rule.
See South Africa and Rhodesia for examples.
Tell me that those aren’t both worse off in absolute terms.
Of course anti-progressivism is falsifiable. But you have to learn and deploy logic. You have to admit that the Rationalists were not wrong about everything they said.
Alexander is abusing data, not using it. But, like any smart progressive, he abuses it in sophisticated ways. To falsify it means having more integrity than he has corruption.
(The tragic thing is that Alexander is blind to this corruption. He absorbed it uncritically and now can’t absorb the tools necessary to repent.)
Because we don’t have a proper control experiment, the logic must be held to a higher standard, and even then it won’t ever be totally reliable.
Nevertheless, this also applies to Progressivism. If you think Reaction is unfalsifiable, then you think it is meaningless, which is like falsification in every way that matters. However, you simultaneously tar the proggies with the same brush, if you’re being consistent.
“However, you simultaneously tar the proggies with the same brush, if you’re being consistent.”
Absolutely!
This is one of the reasons I am open to reactionary thought in the first place. Reactionaries are very good at showing just how loosely connected progressive thought is to reality. My hope is that the reactionaries can hold themselves up to the same standard.
Experiments and double blind trials are not necessary here. As another commentator rightly said, you can’t do those with history. (Though this hasn’t stopped Peter Turchin and the cliodynamists!). I suggest something much easier:
* Identify the central tenets of the reactionary movement
* Identify what evidence would prove these tenets untenable
* Check and see if this evidence exists
It is really that simple – but it requires an unnatural amount of intellectual honesty. I am unsure that humanity has that. I am more sure that coherent political philosophies can not.
If you think Reaction is unfalsifiable, then you think it is meaningless, which is like falsification in every way that matters.
Nonsense. Until we invent a time machine it will be impossible to conduct a truly proper test of any political proposal. We can use past data as the best possible proxy, but the past is an uncontrolled experiment. Someone can always look at the result and claim there is some confounding variable that invalidates the result.
That does not mean that all political theories are meaningless. That is a ridiculous statement at the same level as denying that race exists because variation within a race is bigger than between races.
The real problem with Alexander’s work is that he started with the thesis the Progressivism is correct, and then went out and found data that supported his views. Which is not hard to do at all. But, as numerous reactionaries have demonstrated, it’s equally easy to find data that indicates that things are getting worse. If you let me select the data, I can prove that cigarette smoking is correlated with increasing lifespans in the Third World, that Hitler would have saved more lives than he took, had he only been given adequate time, and that Bhutan is the best country in the world. Alexander’s article should have simply been entitled ‘Confirmation Bias” and been left at that. He actually did a lot better laying out the case for Reaction in his previous articles, because he was forced to go against his preconceptions.
Neoreaction is a collection of theories which can be tested individually.
For example, crime. The neoreactionary argument is two-fold. 1. Crime reached its historic low around 1880-1910, and is much higher now. 2. Crime could be returned to this historic low.
1. “developments in medical technology and related medical support services that have suppressed the homicide rate compared to what it would be had such progress not been made.” Anthony R Harris et al: “Murder and Medicine: The Lethality of Criminal Assault 1960-1999″, Homicide Studies, May 2002.
“Murder rates would be up to five times higher than they are but for medical developments over the past 40 years.”
“Without this technology, we estimate there would be no less than 50,000 and as many as 115,000 homicides annually instead of an actual 15,000 to 20,000″
“They found that while the murder rate had changed little from a 1931 baseline figure, assaults had increased. The aggravated assault rate was, by 1997, almost 750% higher than the baseline figure.”
“Medical advances mask epidemic of violence by cutting murder rate” Roger Dobson, British Medical Journal, 21st September 2002.
Alexander’s response that other forms of crime are also lower now than they were twenty or forty years ago is very weak: it doesn’t address Moldbug’s original argument that crime reached historic lows in Victorian Britain.
So here we have a scientific problem where both sides are using data. I think the ball is in the anti-reactionaries’ court here.
2. Once you admit that crime levels are much higher than they could be, then the interesting question is how to lower them. This shouldn’t be difficult — just copy the Victorians. But it’s not all about anti-crime technology: the genetics and culture of the population makes a difference too. That’s another solution.
It’s the second question that really deserves a more thorough analysis.
The pathology of progressivism becomes clear when you wonder why they are so keen to argue that crime levels are not high. A normal person would have thought that whether crime levels are historically high or low is irrelevant: if you have a technique that would cut crime you should use it. It’s because they don’t want to implement the solutions that they are forced to argue that the solutions aren’t necessary.
The empirical question is an interesting one, and one that divides Traditionalist Reaction as well (see here). While I am happy to take any data I can get, and I believe, as a Traditionalist, that Tradition will win out empirically because God made it so, I would admit that there are big chunks of the overall reactionary platform that cannot be tested.
No amount of data can say whether some art or building or city is “Ugly”, no amount of data that can tell us whether some popular behavior is “Slutty”, no amount of data that can tell us some behavior is “Unmanly”. Yet it is this, the subjective, visceral critique that so well resonates with the thoughtful and beleaguered denizens of modern life. It unites devoted advocates of diverse particularities to hate and seek the overthrow of Modernity’s Monster.