Ron Maimon, Luboš Motl and other Internet things I hear of today for the very first time

So, apparently there's this thing called Quora. On the face of it this would be yet another failed social platform, like those two or three hundred things that boldly went nowhereⁱ before, wis.dm and what have you. This superficial view would of course be wrong (says Quora) :

Quora is your best source for knowledge.

So now that's clarified, obviously Quora - being the best source of knowledge - would also know who the best source of knowledge is. As Mr. Dunning would put it, Metacognition for the win!

Moving on :

Ron Maimon: What does Ron Maimon think on Luboš Motl's conservative political beliefs?

Wikipedia states, that Luboš Motl is politically conservative. A quote from Wikipedia:

His political comments include comparing Islam to Nazism and expressing sympathy for Anders Breivik's idea of a necessary war to prevent Europe from "becoming a part of the Islamic civilization", though he disagreed with Breivik's methods and his respect for Al-Qaeda.

What does Ron Maimon think about this? Does he agree or disagree with these views, how would he comment on them?

Nice pasta dish I got going there, huh. Anyway, as best anyone can discern the Maimon dude is some twentysomething douche whose entire existence consists of and is reducible to social media profiles. Sort of a professionalⁱⁱ consumate redditor, if you will. So you know, he does a lot of useful stuff that principally consists of nothing at all.

On the other hand the Luboš Motl dude is some thirtysomething douche whose entire existence consists of. Shit. Well, he doesn't have a job, he has a blog, upon which he writes. So... ostensibly... there isn't really any difference to speak of.

Gaze upon it, dear aging generation, this is the brave new world. Food is plentiful, so kids don't need to worry about where and how they'll ensure their next meal, like prior to 1800. Mating has had all barriers lifted, and moreover it just isn't something they're much interested in anyway. There's nothing left for them to do all day other than play WoW and dork about on blogspot, twitter and stumbleupon. And imgur and popurls and tumblr. And wikipedia, uncyclopedia, theotheropedia, conservawiki, liberalowiki, starwarspedia, dorkopedia, dirkbogardepedia and so on. And so forth. And soforth.com. And soforth.moc. And sofor.th. Isn't that clever.net ?

Anyway, let's see the response :

Ron Maimon, trutherⁱⁱⁱ
Votes by Soubhik Bhattacharya, Mirzhan Irkegulov, Anonymous,^iv Hadayat Seddiqi, and 3 more.
I disagree with him completely, but I think I understand where the position is coming from. Lubos grew up under totalitarian communism, as did my mother, and only someone exposed to that kind of leftist tyranny can understand the right-wing ideas that come. You rebel and rebel against communism, and since communism, like theocracy, sounds kind of nice on paper, it makes you want to be a devil-worshipping illuminati. This is common in Eastern Europe and in Russia, you just have to wait for these people to come to their senses.

While the sentiment is certainly mutual, I do appreciate the funny that is some lazy kid with poor school results and no social life waiting for his parents to "come to their senses". Why don't these guys see that this is the real world ? Learning ? What, in school ?! What nonsense! And who needs learnin' when you got truthin' ? Who needs a girlfriend when you got Anonymous ?

Marxism wasn't a purposeful plot to enslave the world, it was an attempt to prevent the accumulation of market power and to shine a ray of light through the horrific boredom and drudgery and consumer-fetishism that defines bourgeoise life. It is an attempt to free people from money, which enslaves people and steals their souls under the threat of joblessness and homelessness. Marxism-Leninism failed only because it gave shitty small minded bureaucrats complete control over an entire economy. It is not clear that there isn't a more enlightened path.

Most rapists claim their abuse wasn't aimed at hurting the victim, it merely was intended to help her see the world with better eyes. After all fucking is great, what strange defect in her head is preventing her from appreciating it ? Definitely have to wait for her to come to her senses. Preferably in a basement somewhere, let's call it Go Lag for more unintentional comedy.

"The horrific boredom and drudgery and consumer-fetishism that defines bourgeoise life". Hear the thing go, will you! Apparently being a pointless, useless, uneducated and boring kid is somehow the fault of the "bourgeoisie", whatever that'd be. Likely it'd be his mom and pop, that eschewed beating the shit out of him every chance they got. The reason truther Joe can't entertain himself is, in his own estimation, neither that he's stupid nor that he's illiterate, nor that it's lazy. It's just insufficient marxism in the world. Here's a hint, junior : your soul being stolen'd be the best thing that could possibly happen to it. Certainly couldn't be worse than what you're doing to it as it is, ya know ?

And marxism didn't fail because it gave shitty small minded bureaucrats complete control of the economy. Marxism failed because the only people that think marxism is a thing are shitty, small minded fuckwits, such as for instance Anon Raimon. By the time marxism takes over a group, society or state it no longer matters if you do or don't give shitty, small minded fuckwits anything whatsoever : as they're the only thing you've got, they'll take control of everything by default. And you'll fail, but not because "they took control" of things. You'll fail because all the cool people left long, long ago. You'll fail because when I point and laugh at you, Anon Raimon, it's not the sound of one man's voice and laughter that you hear. It's everything good and beautiful and true and worthwhile in this world that's laughing, pointing and laughing, filling the heavens and the four winds with peals of snicker and tornadoes of lol. All of it directed at you - and miracle of miracles, all of it inaudible by you. Funny how that works.

But people living in communist states just didn't see bourgeoise life as a soul-crushing horror, they didn't live it. They wanted the blue jeans, rock and roll, the easy life of the manager. They didn't want a drab boring world of cookie-cutter government housing and government jobs. They couldn't understand the desperation of westerners, because they had their own worse problems.

Go take a stroll through the drab of Westerners today, that marxism has finally taken over. Admire the drab of London, the drab of Paris, the drab of Washington, Boston or New York. The boring cookie-cutter world of government housing and government jobs. And you want out of it ? Ha. Good luck getting out of it by even more marxism, it'll be fun to watch from afar.

There is also the issue that Motl is probably financially supported by right-wing interests now, as he has to make a living after having been booted out of Harvard.

Some people are independently wealthy. I have no idea of this guy, but anyway the observation begs the question : do social media nobodies also have to make a living ? Or does living on the welfarist dole not count as "being financially supported by left wing interests" ? How's the truther-o-meter going on this, dear Anon Maimon ? Are you on welfare ?

When he was there, he was making enemies left and right, by criticizing a certain powerful loop quantum gravity supporter correctly and bitingly, and also by criticizing what he perceived as the left-wing political correctness at Harvard.

This would happen to be not only the job of the scientist, and of the thinking man generally, but moreover the point of the marxist's life^v. Unfortunately shitty, small minded "truther"-fuckwits have no representation of anything, and actually are simpleminded enough to display their conformity- and uniformity-mindedness just like that, out of sheer boredom. As they say, all you need to do to extract a confession from the stupid is to give them enough ink and paper.

This cost him, and no matter what he did, research wise (and he had a killer classic publication the year he left), he was on his way out.

If this is true then Harvard left with him, leaving behind some empty warehouses and other irrelevant buildings. This is obvious, isn't it ? Why'd someone able to write a killer classic publication care whether he does it here or there or anywhere else ?

He's also a complete dick, and I admire that, but it doesn't make friends.

Depends. So far, your idiocy is the best recomendation he could have hoped for, in my eyes. And unlike what you are or ever will be, and unlike anyone you know or ever will know, I'm very very rich, and very very powerful.

Harvard, despite the pretense, is not a particularly left-wing institution. Harvard professors tend to be a bunch of right-wing folks who pay lip-service in a condescending way to sterile versions of left-wing ideas. Harvard humanities is Herrstein and Murray, and kicks out Cornel West. It's full of that condescending type of liberalism that thinks it knows better.

Cornel West was an illiterate fuckwit, to the degree a barn would have kicked him out. This is scarcely any sort of argument, it simply reads "the militant marxists have betrayed the revolution because while they're very good at pushing it, nevertheless they're acting according to what works and that makes them stinky elitists - why even last week they wouldn't promote some fuckwit who delivered no results at all!"

I think Lubos needs to grow up a little regarding this right wing crap. He is objectively wrong regarding certain things. Global warming is not made up,

By now there's little difference between claiming "global warming is not made up" and claiming the earth is round. It's not even ignorance anymore, it's a certain brand of quite willing suspension of thought coupled with a particular livresque approach to reality. Yes, if the world we live in were in fact a play someone wrote, and if that play was predicated on the notion that some dorks taking twenty years of data, extrapolating it into two hundred years worth of history and then taking that result and extrapolating it into the future is perfectly fine, valid science because that's just how that particular fictitious universe works then you could perhaps say - in character! - that it's not made up. Seems a little contrived.

religious people are not stupid and delusional for the most part

This sounds like a fine candidate for the "least convincing strawman of the year" award.

Religious belief does require stupidity, at least of the thought-suspension type discussed above, and it does require delusion. While it's true that many religious people, and even more people with religious beliefs^vi manage to isolate this insanity from the rest of their social, economical, political and intellectual life and in so doing manage to live reasonably fulfilled, normal lives does not mean that it's not stupidity and delusion. It just means some people are better at encapsulation than others.

That aside, it is generally amusing to notice that your average libertard takes nutty Islamist religious beliefs a lot more in stride than equally nutty Christian religious beliefs. Apparently there is such a thing as a right-wing, white supremacist, religious nutjob yet there is no such thing as a right-wing, olive supremacist, religious nutjob. Now how could this be ?

They have a fragile insight regarding human collectives and history.

Derp. Nobody understands collectives nao. It's a holy word!

Marxism contains a lot of valuable lessons, although you need to pick and choose.

So does my toilet bowl.

The capitalist world is not dominated by deserving people who acquired wealth through innovation, although there are a few.

This is nonsense. Capitalism is always and everywhere dominated by deserving people. The proof they're deserving is that they're dominating it. If they're undeserving, they'll go away. If you're more deserving than them, kick them out or push them away. The one thing you don't get to do is create some imaginary (and thus "better") system of measuring deservingness, and then whine and bitch that the actual system measuring actual deservingness in actual reality couldn't care less. By that token you might as well dream one night that all the houses on your street were floating, and then spend the rest of the day complaining to people that houses aren't floating irl. Such undeserving houses, seriously nao.

Capitalism as it is understood in the west today is a system that rips off innovation to concentrate wealth among innovation-destroyers.

This nonsense could perhaps use some fleshing out, for great amusement.

Capitalism only functions when it is close to its theoretical equilibirum, which today means a massive amount of redistribution and anti-trust action, but perhaps people can get together to make it work better with new ideas.

No, capitalism actually always functions just fine. Government intervention in the market can only be borne by very stable markets, that happen to be very close to equilibrium, in the sense that it will take longer for such intervention to wreck the entire thing in that particular circumstance. But otherwise, in all situations markets work just fine. It is incumbent upon Anon Maimon and all his friends to adjust their expectations to whatever is coming out of the market, because the market sure as hell isn't going to adjust itself to whatever is coming out of Anon whoever. Things just don't work that way.

But these are political things, economic things, and it is hard to do experiments to test, so you can't be 100% certain. I think of Lubos as a modern day Pacqual Jordan, somewhat misguided politically, although nowhere near as terribly as Jordan, but a technical powerhouse, and it's a shame he doesn't get a chance to do as much original work in the company of peers, as he could.

Maybe he's just not found any peers yet. With jerkoffs like you everywhere, it's not particularly surprising.

1. The theory that there's value in user generated content is not much unlike the theory that there's cooked food in the air. To some concentrations this holds true, especially if you're around a restaurant with a good cook. The problems only start when you try to feed anyone by some sort of food-from-the-air extraction process. [↩]
2. There's nothing professional about it. [↩]
3. I guess saying fucker'd have been too much of a stretch. [↩]
4. "Appreciated by X, Y, some dork and Z.", a characterisation trick invented by Moliere. Used here unintentionally, of course. [↩]
5. As defined by... you know, Marx. [↩]
6. "People with religious beliefs", said as if you said "people with bunions". Obviously people get bunions, and obviously most manage to still walk. Nevertheless, bunions are still pathological, even if very mildly so in most cases, and even if generally unworthy of clinical attention. [↩]