(Regenerative) farming is a great metaphor and a shortcut into complexity theory. For instance, if farmers thought like schools, they’d head into the field each day to stretch slow growing plants.

What do stand up comedians and poker players have in common?

In 1891, in what remains the most badass move in history, the young and promising author Knut Hamsun had a lecture gig in Christiania (Oslo). An audience of 700 norwegian elites had shown up, and even Henrik Ibsen, recently returned from 27 years abroad, had shown up with his friend, the composer Edvard Grieg. Most people in Hamsun’s position would have used the opportunity to impress and charm his audience. Hamsun spent most of the lecture harshly criticizing Ibsen, sitting on the front row, for his lousy prose, the steretypical nature of his characters, and his idealized, unrealistic stories. Be like Hamsun.

What complexity theory can tell us about how to save civilization. There is a concept called "Chesterton's fence", which is often cited in relation to complex systems. It's a reference to a parable, in which someone comes across a fence, and says "I don't see a use for this fence, let's clear it away", whereupon Chesterton replies "If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it". The point here is that fiddling around with complex systems we don't understand, is likely to cause unknown harm. The reformers of the modern era would have done well to dwell on this insight, as they tore down everything that was old. And anyone who wants to fix their mistakes, should heed Chesterton's advice. I am one of those who think the West was on the right track in the Gilded era, and that much of what has happened since then have been steps in the wrong direction. But it would be foolish to think that there has been no progress made at all. A sensible reformer must sift through the changes wrought on society since the 1870's, and judge them according to sound principles. What have we lost, that we should seek to regain, and what have we gained, that we should seek to protect? Here are my suggestions. First of all, Chesterton admonishes us to be gradualists, not revolutionaries. I would add to this a point that is well known to nostr-users; that the solution probably lies in building decentralized parallell systems that can outcompete the lumbering centralized ones. But beware. Centralization is not evil, it has its functions, and a counter movement that abhors all kinds of centralization, even centralized authority that limits individual freedom, is likely to fail. What is needed is to understand how centralization works, so that it can be used wisely. We should seek to regain sound money. As bitcoiners know very well, there is perhaps no change that will do more to save civilization. By raising the cost of bad ideas and the rewards for good ones, we halt the engine of destruction that is the fiat economy. We should also seek to reestablish the natural social credit score known as honor. Most people today think of honor cultures as barbaric, but that is merely because only barbaric cultures have kept honor as a social currency. The west used to be an honor culture, and it greased the wheels of our societies. Closely related to this, we should not reinstate bigotry. One of the advantages of honor cultures is that they are exclusive. If honor requires honesty, courage, discipline and fairness, then anyone who possesses those virtues are accepted in the culture - no matter the colour of their skin, their sex or any other trait. Honor requires sacrifice, which is the price paid to acquire social currency. We should not reinstate the abuse of children, but recognize that many of the measures that supposedly protect and help children today are actually abusive. Children should be allowed to work, if they want to, and they should have the freedom to pursue their interests. They should not be subjected to arbitrary coercion, and that includes being forced to endure endless hours trying to learn what adults think is important. No resource today is more squandered than young teenagers. This phase is marked by incredible adaptability, speed of learning and courage, and today most of it is spent locked inside a box, being forced to endure lectures on things they won't remember, need or care about. Businesses would queue up to hire them, and the teenagers would queue up to get hired, if both parties were allowed to freely decide on contracts. Indeed, I hope to see universities crumble and die, and perhaps something worth preserving will emerge from the rubble. Most scientific advances in history happened outside universities. Newton's annus mirabilis was the year he was *not* at Cambridge. Einstein worked as a clerk at a patent's office when formulating his theory of relativity. Most of the great names in scientific history had little formal education, and even less need of it. We should seek to reinstate local communities, and thus we should seek to get rid of state welfare. The project of politically enforced independence has atomized societies. We want to be dependent on one another, because those dependencies is the glue that holds us together - for better or for worse. Caring for ones neighbours and relatives is a privilege and a duty, and we can't have more of that until we get the state out of the equation. And finally, fun should be taken seriously. Perhaps the most important gauge of a healthy society, is how much fun people have in it. I don't mean mindless entertainment, but banter, satire and true comedy. As the legendary Norm Macdonald pointed out in a rare serious moment (after memory): "The job of the stand up comic is to criticize culture, and make people laugh at their own stupidity. But they won't be willing to do that if you're a smart ass. So you have to play the dumb person who sorta stumbled upon something weird. You have to seem dumber than them, and only then are they willing to laugh". There's probably more stuff that needs to go on the list, but the important point I'd like to get across is that we must respect Chesterton's fence. We must respect complexity. What exactly that means, in practice and principle, is the topic of my next article.

What complexity theory can tell us about how to save civilization. There is a concept called "Chesterton's fence", which is often cited in relation to complex systems. It's a reference to a parable, in which someone comes across a fence, and says "I don't see a use for this fence, let's clear it away", whereupon Chesterton replies "If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it". The point here is that fiddling around with complex systems we don't understand, is likely to cause unknown harm. The reformers of the modern era would have done well to dwell on this insight, as they tore down everything that was old. And anyone who wants to fix their mistakes, should heed Chesterton's advice. I am one of those who think the West was on the right track in the Gilded era, and that much of what has happened since then have been steps in the wrong direction. But it would be foolish to think that there has been no progress made at all. A sensible reformer must sift through the changes wrought on society since the 1870's, and judge them according to sound principles. What have we lost, that we should seek to regain, and what have we gained, that we should seek to protect? Here are my suggestions. First of all, Chesterton admonishes us to be gradualists, not revolutionaries. I would add to this a point that is well known to nostr-users; that the solution probably lies in building decentralized parallell systems that can outcompete the lumbering centralized ones. But beware. Centralization is not evil, it has its functions, and a counter movement that abhors all kinds of centralization, even centralized authority that limits individual freedom, is likely to fail. What is needed is to understand how centralization works, so that it can be used wisely. We should seek to regain sound money. As bitcoiners know very well, there is perhaps no change that will do more to save civilization. By raising the cost of bad ideas and the rewards for good ones, we halt the engine of destruction that is the fiat economy. We should also seek to reestablish the natural social credit score known as honor. Most people today think of honor cultures as barbaric, but that is merely because only barbaric cultures have kept honor as a social currency. The west used to be an honor culture, and it greased the wheels of our societies. Closely related to this, we should not reinstate bigotry. One of the advantages of honor cultures is that they are exclusive. If honor requires honesty, courage, discipline and fairness, then anyone who possesses those virtues are accepted in the culture - no matter the colour of their skin, their sex or any other trait. Honor requires sacrifice, which is the price paid to acquire social currency. We should not reinstate the abuse of children, but recognize that many of the measures that supposedly protect and help children today are actually abusive. Children should be allowed to work, if they want to, and they should have the freedom to pursue their interests. They should not be subjected to arbitrary coercion, and that includes being forced to endure endless hours trying to learn what adults think is important. No resource today is more squandered than young teenagers. This phase is marked by incredible adaptability, speed of learning and courage, and today most of it is spent locked inside a box, being forced to endure lectures on things they won't remember, need or care about. Businesses would queue up to hire them, and the teenagers would queue up to get hired, if both parties were allowed to freely decide on contracts. Indeed, I hope to see universities crumble and die, and perhaps something worth preserving will emerge from the rubble. Most scientific advances in history happened outside universities. Newton's annus mirabilis was the year he was *not* at Cambridge. Einstein worked as a clerk at a patent's office when formulating his theory of relativity. Most of the great names in scientific history had little formal education, and even less need of it. We should seek to reinstate local communities, and thus we should seek to get rid of state welfare. The project of politically enforced independence has atomized societies. We want to be dependent on one another, because those dependencies is the glue that holds us together - for better or for worse. Caring for ones neighbours and relatives is a privilege and a duty, and we can't have more of that until we get the state out of the equation. And finally, fun should be taken seriously. Perhaps the most important gauge of a healthy society, is how much fun people have in it. I don't mean mindless entertainment, but banter, satire and true comedy. As the legendary Norm Macdonald pointed out in a rare serious moment (after memory): "The job of the stand up comic is to criticize culture, and make people laugh at their own stupidity. But they won't be willing to do that if you're a smart ass. So you have to play the dumb person who sorta stumbled upon something weird. You have to seem dumber than them, and only then are they willing to laugh". There's probably more stuff that needs to go on the list, but the important point I'd like to get across is that we must respect Chesterton's fence. We must respect complexity. What exactly that means, in practice and principle, is the topic of my next article.

I'm not saying the global elites are pedophiles. But it should be mentioned that IF you wanted to build a criminal syndicate with absolute ingroup loyalty, and very low motivation for defecting, nothing would work better than making proof of pedophilia the entry ticket.

The centralization of the West. A story of a wonderful culture, and its ongoing childhood disease. There is a charming theory of why Northern Europe benefited more from the enlightenment than southern Europe. It starts with Martin Luther. Once his detachment from the catholic church was a fact, he got to work translating the bible. He even had to invent a complete german grammar to do it. Luther saw literacy as a religious duty, since it was the only way to get a personal connection to the word of God. He encouraged his followers to learn to read, and to teach their children. The theory says that protestant Europe would thus, 200 years later, have a pool of literate farmers from which they could build efficient bureaucracies. This is similar to Weber's theory of the protestant work ethic, though maybe more specific. (Alas, it's probably not true. If the farmers were literate, they had no books or apetite for them. Historical research seems to indicate literacy was marginally better than in catholic Europe, but not meaningfully so.) But Luther did set off a series of events that, be it indirectly, caused great harm. The 30 years war was pretty much a direct consequence of the protestant reformation, and it absolutely wrecked the german territories. Maybe none so much as Brandenburg-Prussia, where Frederick William came to power at the tail of the war. He got to work securing his borders. And both he and his successors did an admirable job. A standing, highly disciplined army, funded by the central authority's tax income. He established absolute rule, secured efficient lines of command and rationalized the entire system. Over time, the militaristic logic came to dominate all areas of policy. The industriousness of Prussia was impressive. Successive rulers were not afraid of reforms, and they kept fiddling around with laws and regulations, guided by a set of interconnected principles: Centralization, discipline, security, conservatism and duty (sound familiar?). By the time Frederick the great, who was a man of the enlightenment through and through, took the throne, it was said of Prussia that it was an army with a state. Military expenditure was around 70% of the budget. And now began the disaster of the west. Under Frederick the great, a great rationalization took place via a series of grand reforms, chief among which was the establishment of the prussian school system that we have all been exposed to. But his patronage of the arts made Prussia seem cultured in a way it had not before, boosting its standing among the educated elites. It was an unfortunate coincidence that at this period of time, being a reform-horny absolutist militaristic kingdom REALLY paid off. Prussia mustered its efficient system to industrialize more rapidly than any other territory. Enormous wealth and leverage ensued. One could say that while Britain explored, Prussia exploited, though that is probably a wild oversimplification. But in broad strokes, it captures the essence of it. Prussia reaped the rewards of britain's risky tinkering. Fast forward to 1871. The french long-standing strategy of keeping the german states fractured had finally failed, and the two great continental powers were at war. People expected the Franco-Prussian war to last for many years. It didn't even last one. Prussia was superior. And pretty soon, what had been called Prussian institutions and culture were German institutions and culture. And admired globally. Even Japan, who was in a hurry to modernize, had imported mainly British and French experts during the 1860's and 70's, but promptly switched to Prussian The world went Prussian. And so, the military logic of a traumatized and insignificant small German dutchy, became an indistinguishable part of the West. Today, people assume that the prussian system is the cause of western success, though it is more accurately described as a parasite on it. Had its story played out 200 years earlier, it would have fallen under its own weight. But because it had the opportunity to capitalize on the unprecedented innovation of its neighbors, it prospered and won. But at a cost. A huge one. The tradeoff is subtle, but recognizable all around us. Germany continued to excel in most areas - science, technology, culture - for many decades after unification. But the military logic at the heart of it exerted its own gravitational pull on the rest of the system. And still does. The importance of control meant that political choices tended to go in the direction of more centralization, more formalization, standardization... you know the drill by now. Turning around, opting for more freedom, less control, seemed like opposition to the entire system. There is a momentum to centralization; in the absence of a great opposing force, it begets more centralization. The abandonment of the gold standard in 1913, from this perspective, was just another domino falling. The irony is that Germany could have saved itself both world wars. They had already won the most important battle of all; the battle for the soul of the West. I think most of the trouble we're seeing today is a result of that very same Prussian militarism. Or call it exploitation mode. Or controlmaxxing. We need to exorcise that logic from Western culture, root and stem, and rediscover the value of decentralized playful discovery. Bitcoin may be an important part of forcing that shift. But what else is needed? That is the topic of my next thread, but for now: The first step in solving a problem is to formulate it, which I have done. Please help me spread the word.

Why is science broken? That it is broken is beyond doubt. Universities are selecting clever hacks who can publish 5 bad papers per year over polymaths. Most fields haven't seen meaningful progress in decades, and the pure inflationary bloat in just about everything spells doom. As I wrote about earlier, society is inundated with what I call controlmaxxing. Formalization, specialization, standardization, quantification, and so on. At a deeper level, this can be defined as "optimizing for exploitation". For those who are not familiar, the exploitation/exploration-dilemma is a universal problem that arises in complex adaptive systems for acquiring resources. It's a fundamental tradeoff problem, which presumably exists in all species and cultures, from bacteria to civilizations. Exploration is the open-ended, risky, playful, creative, neophilic, ADHD-like mode, optimized for *finding* resources. Bacteria's random walk algorithms, to the restless and impulsive behavior of children. It's what one does when the direction or goal is unclear. Chaotic. Exploitation is about what to do when the resources are found, and the goal is to *extract them* as efficiently as possible. It is in some ways what we mean by adulthood: Executive function, discipline, getting shit done efficiently. The dilemma arises from the fact that there is no way to know when it's time to switch from one mode to the other. You can never be sure that switching modes, or staying in the same mode, won't turn out to be a mistake. Eg. when do you stop researching and start writing? It's a fascinating topic. Alison Gopnik has written about extended childhood as a solution to the exploration/exploitation-dilemma as it pertains to humans: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article-abstract/375/1803/20190502/31298 But this dilemma is all around us, at every level. Most interestingly, it is ailing western civilization. I would claim that we have been stuck in exploitation mode for about 150 years, starting about 1871 (a topic for my next thread). To save western civilization, we need to get back into exploration mode. Science is stuck in exploitation mode. The supremacy of statistical modeling is a sure sign of it. The "gold standard" of research isn't really science at all, but a lemon squeezer that makes the paucity of good theories less of a problem. It's just engineering. Again, the signs of this are everywhere, if you look for it. Eg.

WTF Happened In 1971?

WTF Happened In 1971?

https://inflationdata.com/articles/2022/08/10/u-s-cumulative-inflation-since-1913/ "I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again befo...

No it wasn't Nixon and the gold standard; that was a symbolic gesture that confirmed that Bretton Woods had been a fiat standard all along. It *can't* be the reason things changed. It was about culture. First, it was a political shift. In 1971, 18 year olds got the vote, and in the coming years, catering to baby boomers became a winning strategy. It remained so until the late 2000's. And culturally, the self-perpetuating logic of controlmaxxing reached a phase shift. The hippie movement and the student rebellion got absorbed by the empire. The rebellion settled for money, leisure, status and surface accomodations. Thus, the cultural war that had been going on for 100 years was finally settled in favor of exploitation. Order would reign supreme. And nowhere was this more evident than in social science. If you show me a genuinely good article on leadership, education, psychology or economics, I will bet that it was written before 2000. If it's really good, before 1980. The structure of science became that of efficient production. That is why a master's degree in education, sociology or psychology, probably won't contain a single grand theory proposed by someone who is still alive. Because proposing grand theories are high risk and low reward. It is not what science is about anymore. It is also why, if you subtract digital appliances, you probably can't spot anything around you now that wasn't around in the 1970's. Science today is mostly about sucking dry the treasury of knowledge built up from 1870-1970. Exploitation. In my next post, I'll talk about how we ended up on this course, how it all began. It starts, like so much else, with Martin Luther.

Most (social) sciences are split into a quantitative and qualitative camp. It's not just about methodology. These camps are so different that they're almost unable to talk to each other. In economics: Neoclassical vs. austrian In education: School effectiveness research vs. pedagogy In general: Statistical plug-and-play research vs. eclectic ad hoc mumbo jumbo. (OK, it's not all bad, but the vast majority of published science now seems to be garbage) Hilariously, in organization theory, the meaning of the word 'organization' is disputed. Quantitative researchers do not consider voluntary, religious or political organizations to be.. well, organizations. They want comparability, clean datasets and tight definitions. They also want formalisation, standardization, generalizability, objectivity (as in, no human sentiments), predictability, precision, control, efficiency, quantification and replicability. I probably could go on, but I refer to this set of... processes, as 'controlmaxxing'. I've come across two other areas where people are keen on controlmaxxing: The army and industry. What is going on here? It has to do with optimization in simple systems. Linear, designed systems are more efficient when you control everything. (But dynamic, adaptive systems break down, more on that in another post) Interestingly, the best factories strike a balance between control of the production process, and careful stewardship of the much more complex social layer. This is known as "lean", "TPS", "scrum", "ToC" and so on in organization theory, but it all boils down to the same. So why does science look and feel like a factory floor? One reason is that it is designed as a factory floor. Many researchers literally have to meet publishing quotas to keep their job, and statistics turns out to provide a neat plug-and-play template for the "production" of science. But it also has to do with centralization. Controlmaxxing solves the principal agent-problem, and so any central authority will be attracted to it. And the agents who adapt most efficiently, are rewarded. Goodhart's law, and a destructive cycle of fakery is set in motion. So the question is: How did we get here, and how do we get out? Or maybe your question is "Martin, what the hell are you talking about?". In any case, I will strive to make it clear in the coming posts.

Human civilization has always been, and is to this day, shaped by a series of compromises between culture and technology - both in the broadest sense possible. This is not bad, we want it to happen. Because we’re utterly dependent not just on technology, but continued technological growth. And not just because we need better technical capabilities, but also because it forces culture to improve (printing press is a case in point). The monster we’re fighting now is a parasite that in one sense has always been there - the cluster of centralization, optimization, quantification, formalization, standardization, as well as short-sighted risk analysis and top-down linear thinking that lends itself to all resource exploitation. It’s not always bad, and indeed often necessary. But it is self-reinforcing, and can quickly get out of hand. It came into our culture after 1871, when the Germans offered the world final proof of the superiority of their militarized model of society (by sweeping the french armies off the map in a matter of months), and every western power promptly copied their school system, as well as their bureaucratic logic. The elimination of the gold standard then became a matter of time - an unavoidable victim in the modern project. A centralizing beast had been implanted into western civilization, which is kinda ironic since its success in the first place came of decentralization. Another irony (or paradox) of the past 100 years is that while unity was sought in politics and statecraft, art and culture faced utter fragmentation and relativism. Dunno what’s going on there, to be honest. Anyway, what is needed is to abandon the exploitation mode, and get back into exploration mode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration%E2%80%93exploitation_dilemma). Civilization thrives when it has frontiers, opportunities and freedom - all fruits on the tree of technology. So I say: Embrace technology, but repudiate the idea that we should control it. We can’t, and shouldn’t try to. It affects us as much as the other way around, and for most of human history, that has been a very good thing indeed. (This is not a comment on Core vs. Knots, btw.)

I’m hopeful that complexity theory offers a way forward in social science. That would provide a major ipgrade in the way we speak about politics, economics, society, even ethics and relationships. Once you understand the fundamental difference between simple, linear, designed systems, that can be tweaked and optimized, and complex adaptive systems, that can only be gently nudged at best, on the other, a lot of the scientific journal literature looks like geocentric astronomy. And once you realize that these are two *worlds*, drawing a sharp line through all of reality, between that which can and cannot be quantified, optimized, formalized, standardized and generally tinkered with, solutions to old problems, large and small, seem obvious. But perhaps the most amazing thing about complexity theory, is that it provides the most forceful arguments for freedom. From its many insights, spanning all the sciences from history and art to physics and economics, a common thread of emergent order and efficiency speaks to the importance of letting systems adapt. And the irony is that those who constantly tell us that gender, ecosystems and sexuality is complex, do so to justify far more dangerous interventions into far more complex, and far more important systems, such as the market, civilization and the scientific enterprise.

«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.