«If men must spare women the world, then women must spare men the truth - as though each forever remained alternate halves of the same defenseless child» - R. Scott Bakker

We’ve been here before guys. Knut Hamsun was crystal clear: he supported Hitler because he saw him as the only defense against communism. And why did he – along with hundreds of thousands of other Europeans in the 1920s and ’30s – believe that fascism was necessary to fight communism? Because the liberal elites lacked the backbone to defend Western civilization against the communists’ subversive tactics. This is established history: fascism arose as a reaction to communism. Orwell understood this in Spain, and he tried to warn people about it in Homage to Catalonia. Fascism and communism feed off one another, because both seek a political game whose currency is lies, subversion, and violence. The cure is honesty, and a clear understanding of Popper’s paradox of tolerance. A united civil society must say: “No, it is not acceptable to sabotage others, no matter how repulsive you find their opinions,” and: “Yes, we are not just willing, but positively thrilled to enforce this principle with force if necessary” That is what it entails to defens freedom. Anything less is a green light to escalation, which will end very, very badly. And I want to stress this, because it is EXTREMELY important: what we need is not moderation. What we need is a fierce, uncompromising, radical defense of liberal priciples. We need an unshakable, absolute zero tolerance for violence, sabotage, cancel culture, threats, and abuses of power. In that sense, it is deeply worrying to see how toothless and uninformed our leaders are. They are the ideological kin of those who watched, pathetically and impotently, as Hitler tore down the last remnants of democracy in 1933. It is also worrying to see conservatives gleefully try to get people fired for tasteless comments about Kirk.

To understand the way forward, there is nothing better than reading The Beginning Of Infinity by David Deutsch.

Become a radical, or watch society get destroyed by radicals.

Make no mistake: This has happened once before. Do not run. Become an extremist for tolerance and freedom.

The alternative to the European Union is not a Europe divided. It is a Europe with strength and confidence.

I wrote a bitcoin-pitch disguised as an article about technology.

Technology Makes You Ungovernable

By taking away tools of oppression and empowering individuals, technology forces people to adopt better norms. Moral progress is primarily caused b...

The most important misunderstanding about quantum computers IMO is the largely implicit idea that companies in 2025 are able to build sufficiently fault resistant systems. Google can’t build a non-racist image generator, or stop itself from ruining its own products, BUT they’ll build a 10 million qbit QC before 2035? Come on… If it were batteries, I might’ve been there with you. Better batteries will be incredibly profitable, there’s a real race there. But compare the hype and the results surrounding SS batteries since 2015, and ask yourself whether it makes sense to be more optimistic WRT a technology that is less useful, less profitable, more esoteric and edgy… I think not. Indeed, I don’t think Shor’s algorithm will be breaking anything in my lifetime, even though I think we’ll have fusion. It’s not pessimism, merely a proper respect for how hard it is to build quantum computers.

The absolute state of Euopean politics these days

Might as well start posting here right away. I mean who are we kidding… Europe’s totally gearing up to shut down X.

In Norway it is now faux pas not only to support Trump, but letting Trump-supporters go about their business. It’s taken on hysterical moralism in the blink of an eye.

I think there is no race. The internet is actually running laps around legacy institutions, and has been for years. It’s just not obvious to everyone because measurements are bad. It’s not about who makes the fewest errors, but who is learning fastest. It’s not about who is biggest, but who is growing fastest. It’s not about who is the most powerful, but who is most flexible. Bitcoin beats banks. Twitter beats universities. Youtube beats school. I think this will only get broad recognition after the fact, when people start sifting through the debree of collapsed fiat institutions. View quoted note →

I don’t care how nice you are, how otherwise ethical and productive and intelligent: If you support censorship, you’re my enemy.

There is nothing I hate more than having to deal with the condescending advice of academic supervisors, whose depthless confidense comes from a much honed ability to dissemble and confuse on basic questions of scientific inquiry. In reality, they’re merely enforcing faux rigour in a cargo cult that has nothing to do with truth seeking or genuine original argumentation. Being right, doing something new, or even just contributing to solving a problem, is frowned upon. You’re supposed to just do the thing, with no ambition at all, and prove that you’re a good boy - willing to spend endless hours doing something that’s pointless, boring and technical. Because that’s what employers like to see. Everyone knows that ideas can cause trouble.

Welcome, Brazilians 🥳

Few

Challenge: Go to r/phd, read some posts and discussions, come back here and tell me these people are in it for the learning and their love of knowledge. Or even that it’s not all just a status game. You can’t do it, because academia is utterly corrupted, root and stem.

What are the advantages of centralization? We see centralization naturally in times of crisis. Animals have group behaviour protocols for fight/flight situations, as do humans. The defining feature of such situations is that any coordinated action is better than no action, and there are often very few options to choose from. Centralization is wasteful, and often dangerous, in all other situations. When options are many, when inaction may be wisest, when creativity and more knowledge is needed to make good choices. Then you want a proliferation of guessing, testing, criticizing, creation. Now ask yourself: is it a coincidence that everything is constantly framed as a crisis?