HWFO Reading List, January 2025

And a marginally subtle jab at Curtis Yarvin

One of my online spaces recently had a deep multi day argument about whether Curtis Yarvin was “objectionable in the extreme,” and whether therefore his apparent social connection to Peter Thiel makes Thiel similarly anathema, making Thiel’s influence on Trump’s 2024 cabinet an existential risk to democracy, freedom, and all things good and right in the universe. The discussion ranged from the reasonable limits to guilt by association, who you would or would not invite to a dinner party, and Yarvin and Thiel’s relative opinions about democracy.

While the discussion about the intersection of politics and general morality was terribly boring, we did eventually identify that one of us had attended a social event at Yarvin’s house, which chilled the “never invite Yarvin to a dinner party because of guilt by association” faction a bit.

In the course of the discussion, I found myself giving a soft defense of some of Yarvin’s positions.

The left position could be summarized as follows:

• Thiel outwardly believes that democracy is bad and we should be ruled by an oligarchy of technocrats. (I find this position possible but poorly supported by his public statements)

• Thiel is friends with Yarvin because Yarvin opposes democracy and wants us to be ruled by an unaccountable autocrat. (this position is closer to true but Yarvin does have some not fully baked ideas about how to keep an autocrat accountable)

• Defending either of these people means exchanging a tyranny you can vote out for a tyranny you can’t, and they should both be anathema because they will soon strip you and your descendants of their right of self determination forever.

This position seems relatively common among the modern left intelligentsia.

As usual, the HWFO hot take response was not to oppose the points but rather horseshoe them. In order to claim that Thiel and Yarvin are somehow going to strip me of self determination, you would have to first prove I ever had self determination in the first place. (narrator: I don’t and neither do you) So the discussion allowed me an opportunity to proof test HWFO political philosophy.

I think the main thing Yarvin doesn't realize, among many things he doesn't realize, is that you can’t have a fascist oligarchy that looks like a fascist oligarchy. Any appearance of fascist oligarchy begets violent revolution, and violent revolution kills a whole lot of people and breaks a whole lot of stuff. Dead people and broken stuff does not a good system make. I think Yarvin fails to realize that the primary feature of our current system of "democracy" is not that it gives control to the masses, but that it makes the masses think it does. The illusion of democracy is the most important and positive feature of our system because it suppresses revolt, leading to fewer dead people and less broken stuff.

I think if Yarvin were to understand that, and adjust his theories of governance commensurately, and envision a system where the protofascist oligarchy ran things while letting the proles think they ran things, then he would land smack dab on the system we already have today. He’s so close to the mark that he can’t see the target. And once he had that realization, he would realize that all his former anguished writings about monarchs and disenfranchisement and so forth are merely a result of not taking his analysis far enough. His overall frustration is not about the system at all, but rather about his lack of influence over the existing protofascist oligarchy.

And then he might maybe decide to have dinner with Peter Thiel, who may have already nailed the true nature of things earlier than Yarvin because Thiel is much smarter than Yarvin.

In truth, the probable thing in my mind is not that Yarvin is influencing Theil, but rather that Theil is educating, or perhaps manipulating, Yarvin.

I caution the reader against adopting this sort of admittedly cynical world view. It’s very explanatory, and might actually reduce your anxiety about politics once you realize nothing you do matters, but expressing it in public spaces will get you immediately ostracized by the swim team moms or the baseball dads. If you take this pill, you have to hide your opinions for the rest of your life.

There is only one place you can share them freely. The HWFO Slack Server, to which you can gain access by simply subscribing (with money) to this Substack.

Reading List

This article from Propublica on American Militias is a fascinating read, for two reasons. For one, it’s a detailed first hand account of a guy who infiltrated AP3 and the Proud Boys, and the facts relayed in it appear to be totally believable. The other reason it’s fascinating is to watch closely how it’s written. It is written to instill fear and panic in folks who are scared of the alt-right to make them click and share it among their social circles, but there’s nothing in it that’s actually illegal. While the writer intends you to walk away thinking that militias are a huge problem and a terrifying force in the USA, the facts of the article could be restated thusly:

A troubled antisocial man with a history of criminal violence infiltrated far-right groups looking for a vast and dangerous conspiracy. What he found was a bunch of larpers who sometimes talk big but have never actually did anything illegal, but his own priors and paranoia convinced him that he had found exactly what he was looking for. He infiltrated the very highest levels of some of these organizations including chief leadership, and gained direct access to some of their most closely-held secrets, but found no evidence they were actually doing anything. Even so, his paranoia eventually led him to go to ground, and now he fears for his life.

2025

When I found out that friend of HWFO Egalitarian Jackalope was doing a comprehensive post about Project 2025, I decided to scrap mine and just wait patiently for hers. It’s good, and from a skeptical position within the alt lifestyle left bubble.

Trans

This article from WaPo links to everything except the actual study, which I had to search to find. It calculates the rate of gender affirming medications, which would include both puberty blockers and hormones, to be a rate of about 1 per 2000 adolescents in the United States. That’s either high or low depending on your preferred culture war position, but the thing I find interesting about it is that it only accounts for approximately 10% of people who will end up being trans in adulthood. And if that’s the case, then it’s possible that most of the medical industry is in fact being somewhat cautious about proscribing these to children, as opposed to the red coded view that they’re not being cautious enough. Or, perhaps, there are a few problem doctors who are being not-cautious and a lot of doctors who are being relatively careful with their prescriptions. More on that topic here:

https://hwfo.substack.com/p/unnecessary-mastectomy-math

The ones who did seem to rush kids into transitions are starting to have to pay the piper.

More:

Birth Rate

I still haven’t wrapped my head around the HWFO Birth Rate article, but here’s yet more research that will eventually find its way into it.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13219175/underpopulation-graphs-countries-baby-busts.html

Of particular note, is that we had a similar dip around the time of the great depression.

Tokyo is moving to a nationwide four day work week to try and give people enough time to raise babies, and in theory possibly make them.

While Singapore’s solution appears to be.. ..robots?

Lead

I’ve always been cautiously interested in the “lead crime hypothesis,” and this article proved to be a relatively even-handed and fair critique of it.

Pendulum

The pendulum continues to swing back against the woke, and Amy Wax is taking advantage of the momentum to sue Penn over her censure.

Critical social justice philosophy was shown to be generally rejected, but much more popular among women than men, in a European study.

The pendulum is going to take a very long time to swing through academia, however, because it’s so far off the scale…..

…that the level of self-censorship that academics are forced to adopt is measurable by science.

Sex on Acid

Scientists finally got a grant from someone (who?) to study sex on LSD, and discovered unsurprisingly that it fn rules.

Dead CEOs

In the wake of the United Healthcare CEO assassination, this popped into my feed. Random Critical Analysis is some of the best stuff on the internet for stats nerds, and he generally debunks the idea that the USA is paying more for healthcare for any reason other than we have more available money to spend on it.

The more money you have, the more you spend on healthcare, so our expenditures in the USA are generally higher because we’re rich.