Regarding Szabo and Moldbug (I haven’t read much Land, as I find his style indigestible), my impression is that they discuss facts, separate from morality, and avoid injecting their morality into their discussions — essentially the same as yours. Moldbug mentioned several times that his morals are essentially Brahmin, e.g. he supports gay marriage. I retract (without prejudice) my comments with regard to moral nihilism, though, because after some reading I find my command of the subject insufficient.

James G was an extremely valuable contributer to neoreaction, much missed. I wonder what non-intellectual-junk-food thing he is working on now. I’m not sure whether James G was a moral nihilist, but he said he was a hedonic utilitarian. I personally find it bizarre to choose tiling the universe with hedons as your personal goal.

For Nick Szabo (Szabo is not a neoreactionary but is required reading), Nick Land, and Moldbug (does any neoreactionary writer rank higher than these four?), even if they are not moral nihilists, morality is so irrelevant and uninteresting that it might as well not exist, even if it does. James G’s interest in morality appeared to be solely meta.

Moldbug’s concern for the poor (“But suppose its roads are paved in brick? A man with an IQ of 80 can lay brick, do it well, and obtain dignity from the task” and “two forms of semi-skilled labor well-known to be good for the human soul are (a) craftsmanship and (b) farming.”) might mislead one to think he is a moralist. Prof Charlton thinks he will convert to Christianity! Nonetheless he appears to be a moral nihilist: his values are entirely personal. “Does scenery mean too much to me?”

I am not James G, though I did read his blogs.

I’m very skeptical of the many who think the existing evidence is a reason to stop looking, rather than to look harder.

Neoreactionaries are “moral nihilists”, meaning that they don’t believe moral facts exist.

I am sure I will not be speaking only for myself when I ask you to refrain from making incorrect statements about the NR community (TL;DR: STFU). I want to be able to discuss any facts freely and fully, whether they jibe with prevailing morality or not. This is emphatically not equivalent to being a moral nihilist. I know the standard LessWrong position which you represent (and I remember your schtick about morality and deontology and hedonic utilitarianism and stuff from the time you wrote at james-g) but to put this position over as the position of the NR community is at best wishful thinking. In fact, in Scharlach’s famous diagram, only Heartiste and company can be labeled moral nihilists; as for the rest, I doubt even Spandrell is one. Cynical, sure, but moral nihilist? It is questionable whether a moral nihilist can be cynical at all.

Some clarification. Neoreactionaries are “moral nihilists”, meaning that they don’t believe moral facts exist. That doesn’t mean we are relativists or believe in “nothing”. We believe in facts, just not moral facts. Moral relativists believe all moral claims are equally true. Moral nihilists believe all moral claims are equally false. Very different.

Leftists are not necessarily moral nihilists. Some are relativists, therefore moral nihilists. But more intelligent leftists reject relativism, and are simply deontologists, or consequentialists with deontological terminal goals (e.g. utilitarians).

The main problem is that his epistemology is terrible. It’s not his fault: he couldn’t have been expected to be aware of Bayesian epistemology. He believes in a distinction between “Absolute truth” and “truth”: “the only position that involves no logical contradictions is the affirmation of an absolute truth which underlies and secures all lesser truths”. He believes certain knowledge can only come from revelation, and all other knowledge is useless: “if there is no Revealed Truth, there is no truth at all”. No: all knowledge comes in degrees of certainty and uncertain knowledge is still pretty useful.

He never explains clearly exactly what he means by nihilism. He uses the word in a variety of ways and some of his arguments involve equivocation. He acknowledges this and says that he will show that they are all really the same, but he doesn’t.

He uses fictional evidence, relying a bit too heavily on Dostoyevsky characters.

He confuses skepticism with relativism. According to Rose, scientists believe that “all truth is empirical, all truth is relative”. He confuses moral nihilism with relativism (he doesn’t distinguish between moral relativism and relativism about other things).

I would go on, but I think instead some quotes will help people to decide whether to read it or not.

“illegitimately attempts to extend scientific criteria beyond their proper bounds”

“‘determinism’ [renders] all philosophy invalid; since it must insist that philosophy, like everything else, is ‘determined,’ its advocates can only claim that their philosophy, since it exists, is ‘inevitable,’ but not at all that it is ‘true’.”

“modern man has clearly revealed his resolve to live henceforth without God–that is to say, in a void, in nothingness”

“The fact this phrase expresses is that Nihilism, being negative in essence even if positive in aspiration, owing its whole energy to its passion to destroy Christian Truth”

There’s also a hilarious screed again Giacometti, though I do confess that I see his point about some of the other artists he attacks.

I do agree with some of his conclusions (“The Revolution has captured the ‘spirit of the age’”), but that is not praise for the book. He argues that some people in science and academia have lost interest in the pursuit of truth (““truth, despite certain appearances, no longer occupied the center of attention”), and this is a problem. But Prof Charlton has argued this much better in “Not Even Trying: The Corruption of Real Science”. Rose briefly wonders if disaster will result when the masses stop believing in Christianity, but doesn’t explore this idea further.

Like Nietzsche, the book dates. Both are focussed on Christianity because it still held force then. Now that it doesn’t, Christianity seems irrelevant. Materialists nowadays are not reacting against Christianity. At least, I’m not.

By all means dismiss this as logic-chopping of the sort that Deogolwulf skewers so wonderfully here (http://curmudgeonjoy.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/thermippos-complete-dialogue.html) but the book really doesn’t work.

I’ve converted it to a Word document, for anyone who wants to read it on their Kindle, etc.

On the other hand, you could actually read what I have written about Nihilism. Or what John C Wright, or Eugene (Seraphim) Rose have written — because it is Eugene Rose’s book Nihilism upon whom both myself and JCW are depending (also Jim Kalb). Why not read it?

Like a Catholic who dismisses all his opponents as relativists even if they aren’t, Charlton dismisses reactionaries as “nihilists” even if they aren’t. Do reactionaries really believe in “nothing”? Do they believe truth is relative? No.