Astral Codex Ten

Moldbug

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Moldbug

Article

Moldbug is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between April 06, 2022 and May 12, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Moldbug’s claim that the pre-WWI system was good at preventing wars and atrocities is dubious”; “Moldbug’s answer is complicated and not very related to our topic”; “the one Moldbug holds his deepest vituperation for - is fake news”. It most often appears alongside Curtis Yarvin, Hitler, Trump.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: April 06, 2022
  • Last seen: May 12, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Highlights From The Comments On Self-Determination
April 06, 2022 · Original source
This ties into a lot of other UR assumptions I can’t argue with in the depth they deserve here. A poor and unfair summary might be: I actually don’t want countries doing as much genocide and repression as they want, and I think historic attempts to pressure them not to do these things have often been successful (though it’s hard to count since we don’t record atrocities that don’t happen). Rebels will absolutely rebel even in the absence of domestic and foreign aid, and have done so from the Zealots to the Taiping Rebellion through today. Moldbug’s claim that the pre-WWI system was good at preventing wars and atrocities is dubious given how many wars and atrocities there were before WWI (I would guess eg more conflict deaths per capita in the 19th century than the 21st, although I know this sort of thing is hard to quantify).
Moldbug Sold Out
May 07, 2025 · Original source
Cathy Young’s new hit piece on Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug) doesn’t mince words. Titled The Blogger Who Hates America, it describes him as an "inept", "not exactly coherent" "trollish, ill-informed pseudo-intellectual" notable for his "woefully superficial knowledge and utter ignorance".
Inline links: The Blogger Who Hates America
Both sides are right. The synthesis is that Moldbug sold out. In the late 2000s, Moldbug wrote some genuinely interesting speculations on novel sci-fi variants of autocracy. Admitting that the dictatorships of the 20th century were horrifying, he proposed creative ways to patch their vulnerabilities by combining 18th century monarchy with 22nd century cyberpunk to create something better than either. These ideas might not have been realistic. But they were cool, edgy, and had a certain intellectual appeal. Then in the late 2010s, as soon as his ideas started getting close to power he dropped it all like a hot potato. The MAGA movement was exactly what 2000s Moldbug feared most - a cancerous outgrowth of democracy riding the same wave of populist anger as the 20th century dictatorships he loathed. But in the hope of winning a temporary political victory, he let them wear him as a skinsuit - giving their normal, boring autocratic tendencies the mystique of the cool, edgy, all-vulnerabilities-patched autocracy he foretold in his manifestos. So, for example, Yarvin urges Trump to become more of a dictator, and Young accuses him of ignoring that fact that dictators can go crazy and do terrible things. The (anonymized) Twitter user above counters that Classic Moldbug includes a cleverly-designed procedure for an unremovable board of directors with well-aligned incentives who can remove a dictator if he screws up. That’s all true! Classic Moldbug does have that part! It’s great, at least as speculative fiction! But Trump hasn’t implemented it and never will, so who cares? The whole point of post-2015 Yarvin is to say “I, a cool person who has thought a lot about autocracy, conjecture that autocracies might go great if you do certain things, so don’t worry about Trump”, and hope you don’t notice that Trump isn’t doing any of the things. Props to the Architectonics blog for writing Curtis Yarvin Contra Mencius Moldbug (Part 2 here), which does a good job pointing this out in one limited domain: countries under international law vs. sovereign corporations under patchwork. But I think the problem is much broader. I’ll divide my argument into four parts: Classic Moldbug thought the default outcome of a modern populist dictatorship was disaster. To avert this, he proposed three mechanisms.
Inline links: Architectonics, Curtis Yarvin Contra Mencius Moldbug, Part 2 here
Classic Moldbug thought the default outcome of a modern populist dictatorship was disaster. To avert this, he proposed three mechanisms.
Open Thread 381
May 12, 2025 · Original source
3: Curtis Yarvin aka Moldbug has responded to my post accusing him of selling out:
Inline links: responded, post