A brief history of this blog

Hi. I'm Jacob. I've been writing on the internet for a long time. I started on Livejournal sometime around 2002, where I wrote angsty diary articles.

In college I read Ayn Rand and become a libertarian. I wrote for the school paper and started a number of blogs.  In the late oughts I joined the libertarian group blog Distributed Republic, formerly known as Catallarchy. You can read my author archives here.

During this time, I drifted from being a libertarian to something else. I had a brief period of inventing bespoke political labels for myself. Blame Moldbug, the tricksy bastard.

I started this blog in 2010 when Distributed Republic was on its last legs. It began with mostly political content. Within a few years, the climate of political correctness in this country became more extreme and I felt it was dangerous to have open political debates on the internet. People were fired at the behest of activists (Brendan Eich) and I kept my head down.

Years passed and my interests shifted. This place got weird. I started writing sermon-like things,  short stories and poetry. I became interested in how people find meaning.

Now I am writing about experiments with my personal life, and my stuckness. I am trying to learn how to live a fulfilling human life in a world where all seems to be in flux. In a way I have returned to writing angsty diary articles. This is a much more personal blog than it used to be.

I haven't left politics behind completely. But I now prefer meta-politics to politics. I am far more interested in how political societies actually work than in how people feel they ought to work. I believe that human society needs to increase the sophistication of its self-model in order to create stable, adaptable, and pleasant places for human habitation. Oh, and it turns out that crypto systems may obsolete political power anyway.

For my dime, the best thinking on the internet nowadays is being done by the post-rationalists (e.g. David Chapman, Sarah Perry, Kevin Simler). If I continue to write, they will have a big influence on what I say.