Damn, hadn’t read this. This is basically C. S. Lewis 1944 edition of my Gervais principle, but with reco that you aspire to a sort of conscious cluelessness (“craftsman”) and avoid sociopathy because it a) tempts you into being a “scoundrel” and b) sucks you towards nihilism https://twitter.com/scholars_stage/status/1320449302129500160

The spin is basically a Christian spin on the idea along the lines of meek inherit the earth or something. Narniya edition.

It also lands roughly on something analogous yo what the postrat kids call “be good” or whatever (it’s their inner-ring ethics code, ironically).

To be clear, though the idea is structurally near identical (he’s conflated the loser and sociopath layers to some degree but out of disinterest in the distinction rather than unawareness), we draw very different conclusions from roughly the same phenomenology.

In particular, he is sensitive to the perils of the sociopath/inner ring layer, but not to its upside — what we’d call red-pill knowledge (general matrix sense, not mra). He thinks inner ring aspiration is entirely about simply wanting to be in the inner ring, not knowing more.

He is also a little too quick to present the craftsman/clueless state as some sort of blessed innocence state. Which is understandable for a Christian perspective. Do the right thing, let Jesus provide executive cover or something.

In practice, there are of course downsides to being the algorithmic robot that clueless/craftsman implies. The big one being you’re co-opted into sociopath crimes whether you want to or not. You may not be interested in the inner ring but the inner ring is interested in you.

If I were to tldr this in a Christian way it would probably be: “Don’t eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but recognize it for what it is. Stay in the Garden of Eden even after realizing there’s a world beyond. Nothing good comes of leaving it.”

Lewis was born in 1898 so was 46 when he delivered this commencement speech, same as me now. But the maturity and compactness of the formulation suggests he probably thought it through in his mid thirties like I did. So like 1934-35 when Hitler and Stalin were on the rise.

Which would explain his biases. I thought it through 2008-09... peak GFC but otherwise a pleasant late-neoliberal zeitgeist with no obvious big villains or dark clouds looming. That explains my biases. If I were thinking it through more recently I’d have landed darker too.

In case it isn’t obvious, Lewis’ version is *much* darker and more pessimistic about human nature than mine. He’s essentially advising you to skip an entire large zone of the human condition that plays out in inner rings out of fear of moral corruption.

My advice is to learn the game and how to play it. Don’t get addicted to it, but don’t sit it out either. It’s a kind of acting dead/waldenponding. Especially if fetishizing “craft” as an embodiment of “good” is the alternative. Inner rings are part of life.

This is well worth reading as a counterpoint in the genre. I was actually looking for it earlier to add to the thread but had forgotten the ref.

tldr of this: real inner circles (Ie informational) as a burden of being misunderstood you are not free to clear up. Much Straussian. https://twitter.com/calcsam/status/1320540431298502659