Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman

A sweeping essay on Nietzsche's master/slave morality, in eleven sections each named for a person. Its central reframe: slave morality is 'ensmallening' - a package for avoiding positive judgment (the Tall Poppy Police; judging purity of ideas over accomplishments) - which it traces into a 20th-century 'vibe shift' from embiggening (World's Fairs, Art Deco, moon-shots) to ensmallening (degrowth, dystopianism), drawing on Crawford's Progress Studies. It then hunts for a 'superman' who transcends the dichotomy - Rand (master morality tamed by rules, but weak proofs), Hanania (an honest Nietzschean liberal), and finally Yglesias's 'good things are good' liberalism as the self-conscious compromise - landing on effective altruism as the enthusiastic embrace of embiggening-for-the-general-welfare, and a Civilization-IV 'repetitive melody' as the closest he gets to the meaning of life.

Quality 84 · Excellent. One of his most ambitious and erudite ACX essays, carrying a genuinely original and propagating reframe (slave morality as avoidance of positive judgment / 'ensmallening') and a sweeping synthesis from Nietzsche through Progress Studies to liberalism and EA. Sprawling and admittedly unresolved (the Andrew Tate problem lingers), which keeps it just below his tightest work. Excellent, upper end.

Claude’s paradigm shift 62 · Notable shift. Nietzsche's dichotomy and the interlocutors (Crawford, Rand, Hanania, Teach) are all pre-existing; the fresh, influential contribution is the 'ensmallening / avoidance of positive judgment' lens and its synthesis with the Progress-Studies vibe-shift and the liberal/EA compromise. Notable shift.

Real-world impact 1 · Negligible. An ambitious, erudite essay whose 'ensmallening' (slave-morality-as-avoidance-of-positive-judgment) reframe propagated within intellectual and Progress-Studies discourse — but niche and philosophical, with minimal real-world or material consequence — minimal RWI.