Contradiction much?

No. I dislike repeating myself:

I am fairly certain the reason creationism is still around as a political force in some US states is because creationism is not a serious threat to The Cathedral.

But the following part of your response amused me and further more provoked some thought on the topic of conspiracy theories so have a warm fuzzy.

Let's at least be consistent about our conspiracy theories ...

I am not quite sure what you mean with that phrase. Can you please clarify?

And finally it is a convenient tool to clearly and in vivid colours paint something as low status, it is a boo light applied to any explanation that has people acting in anything that can be described as self-interest and is a few inferential jumps away. One could argue this is the primary meaning of calling an argument a conspiracy theory in on-line debates.

I'm going to be generous and assume that this last meaning wasn't the primary intended one since you have since edited the line out of your reply.

Tying the content of the linked post back to our topic, I will admit Moldbug shows off his smarts and knowledge with silly, interesting and probably wrong ideas when he talks about his proposals for a neocameralist state. He can be a bit crankish talking about it, but hey show me a man who made a new ideology and wasn't a bit crankish about it! But no I think when he talks recent history, politics and sociology he is a most excellent map maker and not a "conspiracy nut" (though the pattern match is an understandable one to make in ignorance).

First there is a reason I talked about a "power machine" and not a sinister cabal. If you have a trusted authority to which people outsource their thinking from where they upload their favoured memeplexes, then allowing even for some very limited memetic evolution you will see the thing (all else being equal) try and settle. Those structures that aren't by happen-stance built so that the memeplexes they emit increase trust of the source will tend to be out-competed by those who do. Don't we have a working demonstration of this in organized religion? Notice how this does not require a centuries spanning conspiracy of Christian authorities consistently and consciously working to enhance their own status and nothing else while lying to the masses, nope I'm pretty sure most of them honestly believed in their stated map of reality. Yet the Church did end up working as such a belief pump and it even told us it was a belief pump that could be derived as true and necessary from pure reason. Funny how that worked out. Also recall the massive pay-offs in a system where the sillies in the brains of the public or experts directly matter in who the government allots resources to. Not much coordination needed for those peddling their particular wares to individually exploit this, or for them to realize which soap box is the best one to be standing on. If anything like a trusted soap box exists there will be great demand to stand on it, are we sure the winner of such a fight is actually someone who will not abuse the soap boxes truth providing credentials? Maybe the soap box comes equipped with some mechanisms to make it so, still they better be marvellously strong since they will probably be heavily strained. Secondly it is not a model that anthropomorphizes society or groups needlessly, indeed it might do well to incorporate more of it, since large chunks of our civilization where redecorated by the schemes of hundreds of petty and ambitious historically important figures that wanted to mess with ... eh I mean optimize power distribution.

On the story thing, well I do admit that component is present in biasing me and others on LW towards making it seem more plausible. MM is a good if verbose writer. Speaking of verbosity you should consider my current take as a incomplete and abridged version not the full argument, it is also possible I plain misremember some details so I hope other posters also familiar with MM will correct me. I have the impression you simply aren't familiar with his thinking since you so seem to attack a very weak and mangled form of his argument seemingly gleaned only from a ungenerous reading of the parent posts. I strongly recommend, even if you judge the value of additional information gained out of reading his writings low, to do a search on LW for other discussion of these ideas in various comment sections and so on, since a lot has been written on the subject. Browsing the comment history of people who often explicitly talk about such topics also seems like a good idea. Remember this is just some dude on the internet, but this is a dude on the internet that Robin Hanson considered worth debating and engaging and is someone who many LWers read and think about (note I didn't say agree with). Discussions debating his ideas are also often up voted. You will also see respected and much more formidable rationalists than myself occasionally name drop or reference him. If you have some trust in the LessWrong rationalist community, you probably need to update on how seriously you should take this particular on-line hobo distributing photocopied essays.

Note: This reply was written before edits of parent. I will respond to the added edited material in a separate post.

Edit: Abridged text by storing the analysis of conspiracy theory failure mode in a open discussion post.