A brief explanation of the cathedral 

An oligarchy inherently converges on ideas that justify the use of power. 

 
I notice more people using this label, which I coined a l​ ong​ long time ago, and have 
always had ambivalent aesthetic feelings about. I used a capital C, but I see more of 
the miniscule and I think it’s better. 
 
“The cathedral” is just a short way to say “journalism plus academia”—in other 
words, the intellectual institutions at the center of modern society, just as the 
Church was the intellectual institution at the center of medieval society. 

But the label is making a point. The Catholic Church is o

​ ne​ institution—the 
cathedral is ​many​ institutions. Yet the label is singular. This transformation from 
many to one—literally, ​e pluribus unum​—is the heart of the mystery at the heart of 
the modern world. 

The mystery of the cathedral 

The mystery of the cathedral is that all the modern world’s legitimate and 
prestigious intellectual institutions, even though they have no central organizational 
connection, behave in many ways as if they were a s​ ingle​ organizational structure. 

Most notably, this pseudo-structure is s​ ynoptic​: it has one clear doctrine or 
perspective. ​It always agrees with itself​. Still more puzzlingly, its doctrine is not static; 
it evolves; this doctrine has a predictable direction of evolution, and the w
​ hole 
structure moves together​. 

For instance: in 2021, Harvard, Yale, the Times and the Post are on the same page. If 
there exists any doctrinal difference between any two of these prestigious American 
institutions, it is too ineffable for anyone but a Yale man to discern. (Though it may 
say something that G
​ ray Mirror​ is n
​ ot taught at Harvard​.) 
In 1951, Harvard, Yale, the Times and the Post were on the same page. But Yale in 
1951 was on nowhere near the same page as Yale in 2021. If you could teleport either 
Yale into the other’s time zone, they would see each other as a den of intellectual 
criminals​. 

So it’s not just that everyone—at least, everyone cool—is on the same page. It’s more 
like: everyone is reading the s​ ame book​—at the ​same speed​. No wonder all the 
peasants are seeing conspiracies in their motherfucking soup. If you saw a group of 
bright red dots move across the evening sky this way, what would you think they 
were? Pigeons? Remote-controlled pigeons, illuminated by lasers? Sometimes even 
Occam is baffled. 

Moreover, this mystery is critical to the nature, fate and epistemology of our society, 
because we regard the distributed nature of these prestigious and trusted 
institutions as an inviolable principle of of our intellectual ​security​. We would never 
concede this level of axiomatic infallibility to a ​single organization​, like the Catholic 
Church—that would be putting all our brains in ​one basket​. No egghead would make 
that​ mistake. 

While we are aware that individuals—even v​ ery smart​ individuals—can go extremely 

awry in their perception and analysis of reality, and while we have seen even groups 
do the same thing (hence “groupthink”), we are sure ​they cannot all go wrong together​. 
To err is human—but eliminating error is just a function of sufficient statistical 
power. 

But statistics only works ​if your samples are independent​. If some mysterious force is 
coordinating them—you are not measuring reality, you are just measuring ​that force​. 

And indeed, our samples seem only n

​ ominally​ independent. While we can detect no 
obvious organizational connection between them, they are highly correlated. And 
they retain these correlations even as they move across long periods of time. 
We can expect this form of coordinated progress in hard science and engineering. 
These fields are tightly constrained by two inexorable forces: physical reality and 
human ignorance. The latter relaxes its grip only by painfully-won millimeters. 

But the physical and human situation of the arts and humanities—of philosophy, 
ethics, literature, religion and politics—has been largely unchanged for millennia. 
We see no evidence of any extrinsic and unidirectional force that should be 
coordinating these fields. Yet these are just the fields that seem to be moving the 
fastest. 

Who are we? Where are we going? If we could understand the forces that are driving 
us, we could predict where we are going. Unfortunately, the answer may be: h
​ ell​. 

Darwin and the discourse 

Harvard is not a black box. We know how these organizations work. 

The institutions of the cathedral are not relevant as hierarchical command 

structures. They are not an army of ideas, like the Church. The dean of chemistry 
does not tell the chemistry professors what God thinks they should think about 
methylfluorocarbons. 

Rather, the cathedral operates as a ​discourse​—not an army of ideas, a m

​ arket​ of ideas. 
The institutions are just ​brands​—marks of prestige. Ideas in this market ​evolve​; they 
reproduce by being taught, they mutate by being thought, and they are selected by— 

By what? If we want to know what a Darwinian system will evolve, we have to look 
at the selective pressures on its organisms. What is our cathedral selecting f​ or​? 

First, let’s look at the soundest part of the building: ​math​. In math, the marketplace 
of ideas is straightforward. Error is not tolerated. Priority is rigidly respected. Even 
the importance and quality of mathematical results is generally agreed on. In fact, 
even in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, pure mathematics did pretty well as a 
field. 

In math, the only selective advantage an idea can have is that it is good math. Good 
math beats bad math. Math is perfectly suited to the cathedral—and the Soviet 
Union. In fact, it is hard to imagine any form of government so dysfunctional and 
dystopian that it could not, given the raw autistic IQ talent, make progress in math. 

The hard sciences are supposed to work like math. In certain places, certain fields, 
and certain ways, they do. In few places are they completely broken, though this of 
course depends on your definition of “hard.” 

But in science already we sense that here are other forces; that the selective 
advantage of an idea may not be solely driven by the quality of that idea; that while 
some shared sense of quality does remain intact, it is starting to feel like an eroding 
legacy. 

And to the east of science—well, ​de gustibus non disputandum​. Obviously, in the 
debate between 1951 Yale and 2021 Yale—your mileage may vary. ​I​ feel that in 
general, while both score s​ ome​ points, the former is nowhere near harsh ​enough​. But 
that’s just ​me​. 

Suppose this is so, and Yale h

​ as​ declined. Yale is made of people and ideas. It is quite 
implausible that psychometric tests would show a great difference in the 
intelligence of its students and professors between 1951 and 2021—and they might 
well come out in favor of the latter. 

Which suggests that any problem is with the ​ideas​—that bad ideas in the humanities 
have in some way f​ lourished​ at Yale (and everywhere else)—like toxic green algae in a 
once-blue mountain lake. Now why would that happen? 
It must be related to the pattern of selective advantage in this marketplace of 
ecology. Maybe a nearby pig farm has unleashed a flood of sewage into the lake. Pig 
manure is a nutrient which alters the pattern of selective advantage in the lake, 
making it easier to exist as a stinking algal bloom and harder to flourish as a happy 
rainbow trout. 

A parable 
On the continent of Mu, there are two nations, Mundana and Mutopia. Like Burundi 
and Rwanda, they have very similar populations and very different governments. 

Mundana is a traditional absolute monarchy with an official state religion, like 

Tsarist Russia. Mutopia is a progressive liberal democracy, like here but more so. In 
Mundana you are beheaded for even ​acting​ gay; in Mutopia you are required to ​try​ it 
at least, like, o
​ nce​. 

Mundana has erected its so-called Titanium Curtain between itself and this u
​ tter 
filth​, preventing all social and intellectual contact. But in Mundana, too, there are 
liberal intellectuals—some people, it turns out, are born that way. These 
free-thinkers are of course ​hunted​ by the Tsar’s secret police and must use funky 
encrypted Internet stuff to live, breathe, think, shitpost and make gay bondage dates. 

Whereas Mutopia, of course, is ​run​ by liberal intellectuals. To be precise: Mutopia is 

governed by a permanent administrative state which implements policies designed 
by liberal professors at prestigious institutions, and supervised by liberal journalists 
at prestigious institutions. These are hard gigs to get, and great gigs to have. And n
​ o 
one​ need supervise the professors and journalists—they are s​ elf-watching​ watchmen. 
Nice! 

Now: which liberal intellectuals do you think will have better ideas, pound for 
pound? Remember that the Mundanan intellectuals can’t hear what the Mutopians 
are saying, or vice versa—these are two entirely separate marketplaces of ideas. 
Your intuitive answer is that you’ll get better, more premium content from 
Mundanan dissidents than Mutopian professors. Let’s look at why you’re right. 

Selective advantage of dominant ideas 

The sewage that is polluting the lake is s​ overeignty​. The dissidents have better ideas 
than the professors because the professors have sovereignty and the dissidents don’t. 

The professors and journalists have sovereignty because final decisions are 
entrusted to them and there is no power above them. Only professors can formulate 
policy—that is, set government strategy; only journalists can hold government 
accountable—that is, manage government tactics. Strategy plus tactics equals 
control. 

The dissidents do not have sovereignty because neither the Tsar nor the Church 
cares what they think. These powers do care t​ hat​ they think, and their only wish is 
for this thinking to ​cease​—furthermore, they know just where to make the i​ ncision​. 
Dissidents have no good reason to think a
​ t all​—so it doesn’t matter at all what 
they’re thinking. 

So in the furtive, candle-lit garrets of dissident Mundana, the ideas that win are just 
the best ideas; the intellectuals that win are just the best thinkers. In Mundana, the 
only selective advantage an idea can have is its mere truth and/or beauty. The life of 
a Mundanan dissident is terrible, but diamond-hard and extremely pure. 

Whereas in the lecture halls and newsrooms of Mutopia, there is a market for 
dominant​ ideas. A dominant idea is an idea that v​ alidates the use of power​. Such an 
idea will enjoy a selective tailwind in the Mutopian market. 

And there is no market for r​ ecessive​ ideas. A recessive idea is an idea that i​ nvalidates 
power or its use. Such an idea will fight a selective headwind in the Mutopian 
market. Neither of these distorting evolutionary effects appears among Mundanan 
dissidents. 

Consider the problem of climate change. There are two responses to this problem: 
action or inaction. Action requires power—and a lot of it, because it has to redirect 
about, like, 10^14 dollars worth of economic activity. Ain’t no thing! 

The idea of climate alarmism corresponds to action. The idea of climate denialism 
corresponds to inaction. Without knowing which side is right, we can observe that 
alarmism is a ​dominant​ idea, whereas denialism is a ​recessive​ idea. 

It is not hard to see why, in the lecture halls and newsrooms, dominant ideas tend to 
outcompete recessive ideas. A dominant idea is an idea that tends to benefit you and 
your friends. A dominant idea will be especially popular with your friends and 
former students in the civil service, because it gives them more work and more 
power. 

And a recessive idea, of course, is the opposite of all these things. A climate scientist 
who holds the recessive idea of climate denialism is saying to his colleagues and the 
whole world: ​climate science is not important​. Is it surprising—in the Bayesian sense— 
that a consensus of climate scientists would conclude that climate science ​matters​? 

None of this analysis tells us whether the dominant idea or the recessive idea is 
good. What it tells is that the Mutopian cathedral ​cannot tell us​—because its 
marketplace of ideas will always select for the dominant idea. 

When we remove pseudo-information that has obviously evolved in this way, we are 
not left with the ​opposite​ of the pseudo-information, but an a
​ bsence​ of information. 
Whatever the signal reality is sending us, we cannot hear it. All we know is that our 
institutions cannot hear, think, learn, know, understand or teach ​any​ recessive 
ideas—that is, ideas that would damage or delegitimate the powers that be. 
This mass brain-damage to the public mind is curiously replicated over in Mundana, 
whose Tsar is no less intolerant of seditious, heretical and subversive 
misinformation. Why would the Tsar let some gay, atheist ​newspaper​ editor curse 
God, the Church, and the whole Royal Family? What? Has Mundana somehow run 
short of prison cells? Are all the knout-makers on some, like, ​knout​ strike? By God, 
he will beat the man h
​ imself! 

The Tsar—whose public mind is a ​canon​, not a ​discourse​—gets almost exactly the 
same results as the cathedral, by the exact opposite methods. The Tsar ​punishes 
deviation from canonical thought. The cathedral r​ ewards​ conformity with dominant 
thought. 

Of course, stick and carrot are two great tastes that taste great together—but they 
are both p
​ ower​. It is easy to think that reward and punishment are different things; 
they are not; they are different ways of getting to the same place, that is, human 
dominion. 

The cathedral cannot be repaired 

The cathedral can’t be repaired for two reasons. The first is that it can’t be 
repaired—just look at it. The second is that it isn’t the problem. 

Go back to the lake and the sewage. How do you fix the lake? Not by skimming off 
the algae! Obviously, you need to stop the sewage leak and get rid of the pig farm. 
Then, you can either wait for the lake to purify itself naturally, or pump the polluted 
water out and let the clear blue mountain stream refill the basin. I recommend… the 
latter. 

In this case the pig farm is a form of government that l​ eaks power​—that inherently 
wants to outsource responsibility to outside actors. Whenever the government relies 
on university research for a strategy or policy decision, or makes a decision which is 
influenced by media reporting, or selectively releases information to the media, this 
trust is leaking sovereignty into the cathedral. Which, being outside the government, 
is about as “democratic” as ​Genghis Khan​. 

Why does the government—or more precisely, the civil service—leak power? 
Because it is a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies leak power. It’s like asking why a 
two-stroke engine burns oil—or at least why a diesel engine puffs out soot. 

In a bureaucracy, decisions at every level are not taken by individuals; they are taken 
by processes. All work is according to process. Managers in a bureaucracy are not 
bosses; they are exception handlers. 

The fundamental rule of success as a bureaucrat is that while it is important to get 

credit for things that go right (everyone in the process will get credit), it is ​essential 
to avoid blame for things that go ​wrong​. Fortunately, decision by process spreads and 
multiplies the thrill of success, while it diffuses and dilutes the sorrow of failure. 

But if he can export accountability and responsibility ​outside the government itself​, the 
bureaucrat feels like he is dumping this toxic waste in the deep ocean. Or in a blue 
mountain lake. What pig farmer wants a lagoon full of manure on his farm? Even the 
pigs​ hate that smell… and that’s why the Mutopian bureaucracy leaks power. As does 
every other bureaucracy, perhaps unless it’s brand-new. 

And this is why you can’t fix it. An organization which focuses responsibility toward 
the top, without leaking, is an organization structured like an army or a corporation. 
In this form of organization (used by almost everything that isn’t a government), 
your manager actually i​ s​ your boss. Final authority and responsibility lands on one 
person. 

This form of government—the form that doesn’t leak power—has a name. It is called 
am
​ onarchy​. The form of government currently used by Mutopia also has a name. It is 
a b​ ureaucracy​, which is one kind of o
​ ligarchy​. (“Deep State,” if you absolutely ​must​.) 
So the difference between o
​ ur​ government, and a government which is 
“power-tight,” is as ​basal​ as it could be—not like the difference between a goat and a 
gazelle, like the difference between a gazelle and a ​chanterelle​. There isn’t really, like, 
a kind of s​ urgery​ that will turn either of these things into the other. 

The future of Mu 

So Mutopia’s magic 8-ball is broken—and it can’t be fixed. Its government is making 
decisions that are not just random, but actively perverse and self-destructive, 
because its brain is the cathedral, which is structurally biased toward these d
​ ominant 
ideas, many but not all of which are just plain bad ideas. 

No wonder Mutopia is such a hot mess. But then again, Mundana is a hot mess too. 
Its government, which is also totally unaccountable, is also making perverse, 
destructive decisions—because the Tsar is getting s​ enile​. His syphilis is starting to 
kick in, too… 

Fortunately, just after the above parable was taken, things really turned around in 
Mu. In both countries, the peasants revolted. And as in (almost) no peasant rebellion 
ever, things miraculously turned out well. 

What happened in Mundana 

What happened in Mundana: the peasants revolted. With the collective rationality 
we often, or at least sometimes, see in peasants, they realized the following facts: 

First: their government sucked. The Tsar was creepy, incompetent and sadistic. His 
son, the Tsarevich, was a junkie, a rumored pedophile and a k​ nown​ hemophiliac. 

Second: there was a responsible elite which could staff a new form of government. 
This new form is a “constitutional” monarchy in which the monarch is actually a 
joke​—a stuffed shirt with a crown on top. The real power now belongs to the 
intellectual underground which survived the Tsar’s persecutions. 

Therefore, these rational peasants used the power of d

​ emocracy​—which is irresistible 
but unstable—to depose their old ​monarchy​ and install a new o
​ ligarchy​. This is the 
right way to use democracy—one political force which is never an ​end​, but always a 
means​. 

Real power in the new regime is held by the new civil service—staffed, of course, by 
the dissidents against the old regime. Any evidence of having been persecuted by the 
Tsarist secret police is now a badge of honor which entitles you to various 
distinctions, privileges and job opportunities. Save those hit-piece clippings, 
dissidents—one day, they may well become your ​receipts​. 

This new system of government works extremely well, because the new ruling class 
is extremely well-selected. It consists of people who were ready to sacrifice 
everything to preserve both their sanity and their dignity. Such types make the best 
statesmen—and the ​ideas​ of the Mundanan dissident, we know, are evolved for 
nothing but ​cold truth​. 

So the new, ​free​ Mundana is run by its unbiased liberal intellectuals. Things are 
looking up in Mundana! And they’ll keep getting better—for a while… 

What happened in Mutopia 

What happened in Mutopia: the peasants revolted. With the collective rationality we 
often, or at least sometimes, see in peasants, they realized the following facts: 

First: their government sucked. Both the cathedral and the civil service were 
insanely obsessed with ​race—​because race war is a dominant idea. Crime grew 
rampant— because tolerating crime is a dominant idea. And when the civil service 
actually had to solve a real, unanticipated, significant problem, it turned out to be 
almost useless. And there was an army, too—which could not win a war, not even an 
irrelevant​ war. 

Moreover, as the cathedral’s worldview diverged from reality, Mutopia had more and 
more trouble in enforcing this worldview by carrots alone. Eventually it turned to 
the other kind of mind control—and started developing almost ​Mundanan 
techniques of stick-based intellectual punishment. There were censors, informers, 
the whole deal. 

Second: there was a responsible elite which could staff a new form of government. In 
the so-called “private sector,” the art of monarchy had been perfected. Some of these 
monarchies had even assembled staffs as big as any government that Mutopia could 
need, with an average human quality (or at least IQ) perhaps never equalled, 
executing with relentless perfection to— 

Executing with relentless perfection to bring you toys, conveniences, luxuries, games 
and entertainment, porn and drugs, and all the “service economy” money could buy. 
But—nothing that was actually i​ mportant​, of course. Lol. 

Therefore, these rational peasants used the power of d

​ emocracy​—which is irresistible 
but unstable—to depose their old ​oligarchy​ and install a new m
​ onarchy​. This is the 
right way to use democracy—one political force which is never an ​end​, but always a 
means​. 

The new monarch—a man recognized by all as the outstanding visionary leader of 
the Mutopian “private sector,” a master of not one but two groundbreaking 
companies—staffed his new regime, a s​ tartup state,​ with veterans of Mutopia’s 
technology wars. 

These hardcore West Coast thugs knew nothing at all of government—though they 
sometimes would hire some grizzled old front-line GS man, as a contractor, just for 
the transitional assistance—no Gordian knot ever stopped t​ hese​ hotshot punks. 
As for the old oligarchy, the cathedral and civil service—they were simply 
liquidated​—rounded up, shot, dumped in a ditch, soaked with gas and b​ urned…​ No! 
What am I saying? That was a totally different timeline. Bad dream. Sorry. That 
would be a major bummer. Please definitely ​don’t​ do that. 

The Mutopian bureaucrats were some of the best people in the country, of course. 
Some were even rehired in new, entry-level positions. The rest were paid a generous 
severance and helped to find new, fulfilling work that lived up to their real talents. If 
they were math or science professors—they might even wind up with the same jobs. 

Obviously, by serving the old regime, none of them did anything even slightly 
wrong. Normal people would be Nazis in Nazi Germany and Stalinists in the USSR, 
too. It’s time to get over blaming citizens or even government officials for the crimes 
of their regimes. This is just one of those bad 20th-century ideas that needs to be 
forgotten. 

Within months, or at least years, Mutopia was a clean, humming, gleaming paradise, 
where everyone had not only the toys and conveniences they deserved, but also the 
genuinely meaningful and fulfilling work they deserved. And no one—no one ​at 
all​—was still obsessed with r​ ace​. 

The peasants’ gratitude toward their new monarch—also a highly ​progenitive​ man, 
with redundant budding heirs—is impossible to express. This new, f​ unctional 
Mutopia is run not by incompetent time-servers and eggheads with their heads in 
the clouds, but by its most capable and visionary ​doers​—under the leadership not 
just of a new king, but of a new ​dynasty​ whose family mission is to make Mutopia 
great, not just on the scale of years, but on the scale of c​ enturies​— 

So things are looking up in Mutopia! And they’ll keep getting better—for a while…