Well written essay - I realise what I've written below seems a little critical, but that's because I'd rather discuss the bits I dont agree with.

It doesn't matter. In principle, if we could rewire our reward circuits to give us pleasure/fun/novelty/happiness/sadness/tragedy/suffering/whatever we desire* in response to whatever Nature had the automatic (or modified) disposition to offer us, then those good feelings would be just as worthwhile as anything else. (This is why neoreactionaries perceive progressive values as "nihilistic.") According to this formulation, most LessWrongers, being averse to wireheading in principle, are not full-fledged progressives at this most fundamental level. (Perhaps this explains some of the counter-intuitive overlap between the LessWrong and neoreactionary thoughtsphere....)

Most people in general are averse to wireheading! I can see how this corrlates with progressive thought wrt sex and drugs, although it doesn't explain issues of race for instance, and I think its at best a partial explaination of the disagreement.

Most progressives presumably hold out hope that we can collectively coordinate to overcome Moloch. ... If humanity is threatened with dysgenic decline, perhaps a democratic world government organizes a eugenics program.

Very few progressives would condone eugenics. But more to the point, very few people on either side of the debate have thought about the issues to this level, or are even aware of these issues. Most of the political debate in the wider world is "my opponents are fasists!" vs "my opponents are dirty hippies!".

Descriptive assumption #2: On average, people have, or can be trained to have, far-sighted discount functions (progressivism), vs. people typically have short-sighted discount functions (neoreaction).

This is a question with an objective answer, and the second option is probably correct. However, I'm not sure that progs believe people have far-sighted discount functions, in fact I would think the distinction is between what long-term effects people are complaining about (progs: burning fossil fuels will destroy the planet in the long term! vs NRx sexual freedom will destroy families in the long term!).

"historical materialist" (AKA Marxist) view of society which argues that certain material conditions and material incentives tend to automatically generate certain cultural and social responses.

I would say this is partially true, but OTOH feudal Japan, Europe, China etc were all quite different cultureally dispite allmost identical technology. The lines are more blurred now as we can communicate faster.

To a progressive, the proposition that we could, even theoretically, run our modern technological society through an absolute monarchy would probably seem preposterous. It is not even an option. Our modern society is too complex, with too many conflicting interests to reconcile through any system that prohibits the peaceful discovery and negotiation of these varied interests through a democratic process involving "voice." In reality, people are not content with being able only to exercise the "right of exit" from institutions or governments that they don't like.

To my understanding, modern technology makes monarchy more palitible in many respects. The ubiquity of international travel makes exit easy, and closing boarders would presumably make trade difficult. The very fact that modern society is complex is an arguemnent against democracy, as the average voter cannot understand the issues on which they vote. I presume that a hypothetical monarch would have a councel of advisors which most of the running of the country would be deligated to, meaning that its not just one person handeling all this complexity.

Descriptive assumption #4: Western society is currently anabolic/ascendant (progressivism) vs. catabolic/decadent (neoreaction).

Again, I don't think progressives believe this. Environmental catastrophes/government corruption/corporatism are said to be serious dangers. And many NRx people believe that the wheel will turn again and NRx values will return in time to stave off absolute disaster.

Perhaps what worries neoreactionaries, though, is not so much the fear of a global planetary baby shortage, but rather a localized baby shortage among Westerners or Whites. Maybe they fear that all babies are not created equal....

This is definately what worries them. To be frank, the fact that fertility is inversly corrlated with education and positivly corrlated with religiousity would worry me a lot if I did not beleive that the singularity is probably reasonably near. Michel Anazimov tweeted that (not verbatum, but as close I can remember) "By 2040, when..." which I pattern matched to some Kurtzweilian statement about uploading with unrealistically precice timeframes "... white people are a minority, there will be hell to pay". My reaction was less "that's not politically correct" and more "But, you beleive in an imminent singularity. What is going on in your brain?"

At worst, Western cities will act as "IQ Shredders."

Given that that link is talking about Singapour, I think this extends beyone the west.

I've been thinking about politics too much, and this is what I see as the underpinnings of NRx:

Cognitive bias explanation of NRx:

There seems to be an inbuilt tendency for people to romanticise the past. This happens in Christianity (the garden of eden) in Hinduism, in myths of noble savages and everytime anyone says "In my day...". I would imagine this is probably more the justification for the less intellectual reactionaries.

Steelmanned 'tried and tested' explanation:

I used to think that progressivism was almost right by definition, after all, everyone wants to make progress! But while all progress is change, not all change is progress. Society is a complex machine designed by a long period of social evolution, and if you make random changes to complex machines it might improve but it will probably stop working. Traditional society is tried and tested. Changes may seem appealing for various reasons, but then a few generations down the line society collapses for unforeseen reasons. Note this doesn't really hold if society is adapting to technology - even if patriarchy were best for a medieval society where the superior physical strength of men is important, it doesn't necessarily hold for the modern world with a knowledge and machine based economy. Furthermore, some aspects of traditional society are almost universal, such as patriarchy, while others are not, such as attitudes to homosexuality. We know of functional civilisations e.g. ancient Greece where homosexualtiy was tolerated and AFAIK this did not cause social collapse, rendering the NRx argument invalid in this case.

Anti-egalitarianism

A general attitude that not everyone is equal, and it is necessary for the state to remedy this, seems to simultaneously explain almost all of neoreactionary thought - the different schools of NRx dependant upon which criterion is used (race/culture/religion/monarchs/gender/sexuality).

I would agree with the first part, some people/ways of life are better than others. But this is partly according to my own terminal goals which differ from others people's. Attempting to enforce whatever you believe to be superior seems like defecting to my libertarian instincts, although I concede that my instincts may be wrong. Understanding about temporal discounting has shifted my views on this matter - self-reported discounting rates are far too high, and I can see that perhaps economic regulation is necessary to prevent, for example, people becoming massively in debt. However, social decisions can be looked at in economic terms too. One can discuss trading the short term value of, say, risky sex, against both the long term possibility of STDs and the tragedy of the commons where no-one bothers to raise the next generation. However, while I can understand the NRx viewpoint if the population is fallible while the government is perfect, in practice this seems far too open to corruption. The aforementioned cost-benefit analysis of sexual norms is ickly enough IMO if done by a dispassionate computer, but if done by humans it seems almost certain to simply enforce the prejudices of whoever is in charge.

A third option.

I think what seems to be missing from many of these debates is even if NRx identifies problems are valid, there are less authoritarian ways to deal with them. Suppose, for sake of argument, that gays are a big threat because of underpopulation (or is it underpopulation only of white people? Which rather begs the question, don't other races have gay people too?). Now, one could try to stamp out homosexuality, and in the process force people to live a lie, fill prisons with victimless criminals, drive Turing to suicide etc., or one could e.g. instigate a policy of financial incentives for childrearing. Now, I'm not saying that would be an option without its own downsides, but the fact that policies like it are not even considered shows that arguments such as "gays are a threat because of underpopulation" are just attempts to rationalise homophobia.