We Are Not Saved: Recent Episodes
Jeremiah
We Are Not Saved discusses religion (from a Christian/LDS perspective), politics, the end of the world, science fiction, artificial intelligence, and above all the limits of technology and progress.
This was my entry to the 2026 ACX Book Review Contest. Given that it was, sadly, judged inadequate to the high standards of the ACX readership, I must now inflict it on you. Hopefully, with your obviously lower standards, you'll enjoy it. It is ridiculously long. These warnings aside, I would urge you to at least read parts one and two.
The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science By: Michael Strevens
- Why This Book?
Out of the tens of millions of books ever written over the centuries, why review this one?
Because science is the secret to the creation of the modern world and this book holds the secret to the creation of science.
In particular, it answers the question: why didn't modern science develop any sooner? Why didn't the Chinese, the Greeks, the Romans, or the Arabs develop internal combustion engines, arrive at the germ theory of disease, or send a man to the Moon?
The answer it gives is surprising, and right there in the title. Everyone thinks that the essence of science is open inquiry, but it's really a deliberately narrow procedural straitjacket. Modern science has many irrational qualities. It requires us to wall off our thinking. Natural philosophy was never going to succeed as long as it included philosophy. Philosophy is deep. Science only works if it's shallow.
Strevens is not the first to delve into the workings of science. Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn trod similar ground, and they'll make an appearance, but Strevens incorporates the best of both. He keeps Popper's focus on empiricism, while better describing how actual scientists work. And he acknowledges Kuhn's assertion of paradigmatic thinking, but shows how this gets channeled into productive public argument.
By showing how science works, Strevens also demonstrates how it might stop working. And once you understand the components of the "Knowledge Machine" it would appear to be in greater peril than most people realize. This is why I chose to review this book out of all the books ever written: science needs saving, and with it the rest of the world.
I. My Father, the Physics Teacher
.....
I.
If you don't live in Utah, you may not have heard that the Great Salt Lake is in trouble. It's been rapidly dwindling in size and depth, and while it's never going to disappear entirely (though look at the Aral Sea), there are always issues when an environment goes through a rapid transformation. The big worry is that the lake will become so salty that even brine shrimp and brine flies can no longer survive. This would eliminate a major source of food for migrating birds, while at the same time a shrinking lake also removes the wetlands they use for mid-migration habitat. There are other potential problems as well, but you get the idea.
I'm old enough to remember when we were having the opposite problem, when the lake was so high that it threatened I-80 (the stretch west of SLC), the SLC airport, and various communities and businesses perched around the edge of the lake. This was in the mid-80s and my father worked at one of those businesses. This particular business would take lake brine, pump it into shallow ponds, allow the water to evaporate away, and then harvest the minerals left behind. Their big cash product was potash, which is used in fertilizers. The rising lake threatened to flood their carefully managed pond system, so it was a real ongoing crisis for my father back then.
After a couple of years of hard fighting, the lake eventually won. The outer dike was breached and lake water flooded into the pond system, completely wiping out the productive capacity of the business. It was a dark day...
The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity
By: Carl R. Trueman Published: 2026 256 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
In the standard story of the transition from the premodern to the modern, the world has gradually been disenchanted. Depending on who you are, this is either a good thing, a sad thing, or a mixed thing.
Trueman's contention is that disenchantment has, over the last few decades, transitioned to desecration. In his telling, the modern world hasn't just outgrown the sacred, it's rebelled against it. Much like a headstrong teenager might revel in doing the opposite of what his parents expect, society has come to celebrate the transgression of things that were previously deemed to be holy.
These transgressions are not only a source of rebellious pleasure, but more critically, they provide a way to make the person feel superior to the divine. Violating rules and norms allows one to feel above them.
Why is this important? Because (pulling in Nietzsche) having rejected God, men now need to become gods, and this is one way to do it. But these transgressions, rather than elevating men, debase them. We see this debasement in everything from the sexual revolution down through assisted suicide and IVF. In the end Trueman claims one can either accept Christianity root-and-branch or engage in full-on Nietzschean self-creation, but that there is no middle ground, no cultural Christianity, no stable progressive moral creation. It is either one extreme or the other.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
Trueman is, himself, a root-and-branch Christian, so he definitely favors one side over the other.
Who should read this book? ...
- 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by: Eric H. Cline
- 1177 B.C.: A Graphic History of the Year Civilization Collapsed by: Eric H. Cline and Glyinnis Fawkes
- The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing by: Brink Lindsey
- The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History by: Odd Arne Westad
Do Not Go Gentle: The Case Against Assisted Death
By: Kathleen Stock Published: 2026 304 pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The general topic is right there in the subtitle, but Stock separates out two distinct ideological foundations. There are those who consider assisted death (a term she prefers over "assisted dying") to be a way of eliminating suffering. And then there are those who view it as a principle of liberty: If we allow people absolute bodily autonomy, why should someone be prevented from choosing to end their life? One problem with having two ideologies is that they might end up pointing in different directions. And indeed one of the big themes of the book is exactly this tension. But the bigger issue is that proponents of assisted death end up using whichever ideological framework is the most convenient for their argument at the time.
When these different ideologies are distilled down to the practice of implementing a legal "right to die"—which is to say actually assisting in the actual death of actual individuals—it results in incoherent standards. This incoherence leads to misinterpretation. The misinterpretation allows for opportunistic expansion. The expansion leads to abuses not foreseen by the law's framers, and these abuses lead to deaths we might otherwise want to avoid. Some people might call these deaths murders.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
If you've heard of Stock previous to this it was almost certainly for her gender-critical views, which led to her being forced out of her position at the University of Sussex in 2021. I don't think it's fair to call her right-wing, but she is definitely iconoclastic.
Who should read this book?
...
Annihilation: A Novel
By: Michel Houellebecq Translated by: Shaun Whiteside Published: 2022 (English translation 2024) 544 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Houellebecq is a well-known French author, and this book felt very French to me. What does that mean? Good question… Certainly there is a lot of wine drinking, a fair number of R-rated sex scenes, and French politics plays a major part as well. Mostly I think there's a lushness, and a lack of action or even conclusion, which reads more as European decadence than the typical American delusion I'm used to.
I opened with a description of the atmosphere because this is a very atmospheric book. Though initially it pretends to be a techno-political thriller, don't be deceived; this book is a melancholic reflection on aging, ennui, death, and loneliness. The central character is Paul Raison, a high-level French civil servant, who appears to have it all, but actually has nothing. The hollowness of his life is brought home when his father has a stroke. This serves as a catalyst for recognizing his emptiness and attempting to pull together some meaning. In particular, it helps thaw the long frozen relationship with his wife.
To the extent that he finds meaning, it's always found in small things, relationships, meals, conversations. And this greater sense of connection doesn't solve all of his problems. In fact, re-engaging with his wife, the world, his family, and his father, brings a whole host of new problems. The journey ends up being very bumpy, but more satisfying than his previous hollowness.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
Houellebecq clearly has a reactionary bent...
Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History
By: Helen Zoe Veit Published: 2026 304 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Stop me if you've heard this one… Up until the beginning of the 20th century we never ever did this one thing, and then starting in the 20th century attitudes and culture gradually changed until now, this very new thing, that basically never existed historically, is accepted as a fact of life.
For this go-around it's children being picky about food. The whole concept only began to emerge in the 1930s and back then it was just used to identify something that needed to be corrected. Like lying, swearing, or truancy, it wasn't until after World War II that the modern "something we have to work around" usage started to solidify.
This book is the story of why things changed and what we can do to reverse that change.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
This is not a disinterested academic overview of things. Veit thinks that pickiness is a bad thing, that it's tied to consumption of "junk food", obesity, and a general culture of overconsuming food. The 19th-century child eating raw oysters and organ meats could be considered the hero of the story, the entire edifice of modern food dysfunction is the dragon, and the 21st-century child who eats nothing but hyperpalatable, low-nutrition snacks, and then is too full for normal meals is the princess in need of saving.
Who should read this book?
I think people who have picky kids and worry about whether that's a problem would definitely benefit from reading this book.
I enjoyed it because I'm always fascinated by the strange transitions of modernity. Should you fall into that bucket you'll probably enjoy it as well.
What does the book have to say about the future?
Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today's Supreme Court
By: Sarah Isgur Published: 2026 416 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A deep dive into the Roberts Court, with a historical framing of the Court as a whole. Two main themes run through the book.
First, while people want to evaluate the Court on the single axis of liberal vs. conservative, there is a second, perhaps more important axis that tracks the institutionalism of the justices—respect for precedent, maintaining the legitimacy of the Court, congressional deference, etc. Once you consider both axes, rather than a 6–3, Republican vs. Democratic Court, you get a 3–3–3 Court. Composed of (in Isgur's words):
1- The Deciders: Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett 2- The Conservative Honey Badgers: Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch 3- The Lonely Liberals: Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson
Second, there's the idea of the Supreme Court as the Last Branch Standing, by which she means that it's the only branch of government that would be recognizable to the Founders. Which also means it's the one branch of government trying to hold a constitutional line. This is not a comment on Originalism or Textualism, this is a comment on the fact that the executive Branch has accumulated an enormous amount of power, while, conversely, the legislative branch does barely any legislation. As a consequence, much of what the Court does is designed as subtle encouragement for Congress to take back some of its power.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
- Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by: Jerome K. Jerome
- Something to Do with Paying Attention by: David Foster Wallace
- The Leopard by: Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
- Rendezvous With Rama by: Arthur C. Clarke
Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity
By: Paul Kingsnorth Published: 2025 368 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Before Kingsnorth can tell you how to be against the Machine, he first sets out to define it. The Machine is multi-faceted, but Kingsnorth distills it down into four S's: Science, The Self, Sex, and the Screen. To take a position "against the Machine" he urges a return to the four P's: People, Place, Prayer, and the Past. But before you grasp this simple heuristic too firmly, it turns out that not all P's are good, and not all S's are bad. He is opposed to progress, particularly as it reduces everything to the parameterized, portable, plannable, and ultimately purchasable. On the other side, he is attempting to carve out a path to salvation, through a return to Christian values, a settledness that comes from having a place and community, and a sacredness that comes from connecting with the natural world.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
Kingsnorth has huge biases. He's an ex-environmental activist who converted to Orthodox Christianity. He's spent decades opposing globalization, technocratic progress, and materialism. It's not true to say that he opposes all progress, but he certainly thinks that progress has gone from something we do, to something that is done to us—the Machine of the title, which turns everything (nature, people, culture, pleasure) into raw material that needs to serve ever more productive ends.
As such he makes no pretense at being balanced. And that's part of the book's value. This is a steelman of the anti-progress argument and a powerful rhetorical broadside against the technological miasma we're currently wading through.
Who should read this book?
I think those who would benefit most from this book probably won't read it. And those who will read it, might end up being too radicalized. I personally think that Kingsnorth is pointing in the correct direction, but as a practical matter we can't all duplicate Kingsnorth's life in rural Ireland, growing our own food and fuel, while making a living as a writer. To be fair that's not how he sees things playing out, but he still has a tendency to lump all of progress into one negative whole, without much effort to identify things that might have been useful.
What does the book have to say about the future?
He doesn't think we're going to overthrow the Machine, or even deflect it very much. He's urging people to outlast it in the same way that Irish monasteries kept the light of knowledge alive during the Dark Ages.
Specific thoughts: What exactly is the "Machine"?
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy
By: Nathan Thrall Published: 2023 272 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The book operates on three levels:
First, the book spends quite a bit of time giving you Abed's history: his youth, his participation in the Palestinian resistance, his marriages, the associated family dynamics, etc.
Second, there's the actual "day" from the title. Abed's desperate search for his son after he was involved in a horrific bus accident, and the various difficulties presented by Israeli control (checkpoints, different passes, separate roads, etc.)
Third, there's everything beyond Abed and the "day". Including the backstory on how the roads were routed, the walls were built, and the rules implemented by the Israelis. The book also contains histories on dozens of characters, including Abed's many loves, an Israeli colonel who designed the wall, ultra-Orthodox volunteer rescuers, and Israeli settlers living in the area. I found the story of Huda Dahbour, who works as a physician with a UNRWA mobile clinic, to be particularly interesting. She also has a child involved in the wreck, and has to deal with a tragedy that's depressing for both its similarity to and differences from Abed's.
Taken all together, it's a level of tragedy, complexity, poverty, and culture that's hard to process for someone living in relative ease on the other side of the world.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
The book is clearly centered on the Palestinian side of things, and it's obvious that Thrall largely views the Israelis as being immoral, unjust, and using their greater power to impose ridiculous restrictions. That said, he does offer sympathetic accounts of some Israelis, but most of his sympathy is reserved for the Palestinians.
Who should read this book?
Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History
By: Kyle Harper Published: 2021 704 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A comprehensive historical overview of the never-ending war between humanity and disease. From its earliest days all the way down to the COVID-19 pandemic. With a specific focus on what he calls the "paradox of progress": every new advance creates new opportunities for diseases. But it's not just us driving diseases, they're driving us as well. Efforts to mitigate the negative effects of these pathogens are scattered throughout our history, our civilization and our genes.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
None that you'd really be surprised by. He explicitly takes a very global view of humanity's disease burden, knowing that the story of European diseases like smallpox and the plague have already received plenty of attention. (Which is not to say he ignores them. Merely that he locates them as just one among many.)
Who should read this book?
I think everyone should be more aware of the potential dangers of pandemics, and the monstrous impact plagues have had on the development of humanity and civilization, and this book does a fantastic job with the second part, but it has less to offer on future danger than I hoped. Speaking of which:
What does the book have to say about the future?
Harper definitely takes the stand that our long war against diseases is far from over, and there is a lot of great discussion about how pathogens evolve alongside us, changing tactics as we change our environment. But there's almost no discussion (none that I really remember) of the danger of bioengineered pathogens, which felt like a significant oversight.
Specific thoughts: Two things which continue to baffle me
Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis
By: Annie Jacobsen Published: 2017 544 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
An exhaustive history of the government's attempts to systematize and weaponize paranormal abilities. It also covers the broader paranormal research landscape, with lots of discussion of Uri Geller.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
Jacobsen claims to be approaching the subject as a neutral observer, but I got a strong "I want to believe" vibe from the book. Her approach appears to assume what it claims to be investigating. The overarching question of the book is: "Why did the government spend so much time and effort on these areas if there's nothing there?"
As one example of bias, I grew up reading Carl Sagan, and in his telling the appearance of Uri Geller on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was the smoking gun. Carson went to great lengths to make sure that Geller couldn't influence the demonstration, and, what do you know? Geller failed to bend any spoons. I read about this when I was a teenager and it has loomed large in my memory ever since, so I was very interested to see how Jacobsen would handle it. She devotes one sentence to it:
Geller was nervous, he said, having recently been unable to demonstrate psychokinesis on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. I'm sure I'm reflecting my own biases with this focus, but if she was truly being a neutral observer, I would have expected Geller's Carson appearance to have gotten several pages.
Who should read this book?
...
- Black Easter by: James Blish
- The Day After Judgment by: James Blish
- Into the Storm by: Larry Correia
- A Prisoner's Cinema by: Justin Lee
Delano is very much an example of something being wrong with psychiatry, the question is how emblematic is her experience?
Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance
By: Laura Delano Published: 2025 352 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
An autobiographical tale of Delano's experience with the mental health industry starting at the age of thirteen. Among other things, it covers her bipolar diagnosis, eating disorders, cutting, and one, nearly successful, suicide attempt. On the treatment side of the ledger she took at least a dozen drugs, engaged in constant therapy, and was committed to psychiatric hospitals and treatment programs on several occasions. In the end she decided that most of her problems stemmed from the substances she was taking, both those that are recognized as harmful, like cocaine and alcohol, and those that were supposed to help her. A major theme of the book is that the horrible withdrawal symptoms that accompany most psychiatric drugs go a long way towards creating the impression that "the drugs are helping".
Woven through all of this, Delano provides significant research illustrating the bad incentives, and shoddy testing engaged in by the pharmaceutical industry, along with critiques of the DSM, the paradigm of mental illness as a chemical imbalance, and reliance on drugs as a first line of treatment.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
Delano includes some extensive research. This is not merely an n=1 anecdote, there are clearly a significant number of people who are taking too many psychiatric drugs, and don't have the skills to taper off those drugs. Also Delano is explicitly not "antimedication" or "antipsychiatry". Nevertheless, it is clear that she is not a neutral observer, that she is profoundly distrustful of the pharmaceutical industry, and that she came by this distrust honestly, even if it doesn't necessarily apply to everyone.
It should also be mentioned that money was never a problem for Delano, which probably meant both that she received too much care, but also that she had a large support network available during every phase of her journey.
Who should read this book?
The debate over how to care for the mentally ill is both fascinating and fraught. It sits at a convoluted nexus that includes healthcare availability, cost, worries over youth, violence, homelessness, anti- and pro- drug narratives, and a weird tangle of culture war issues. Navigating this mess is going to take as much information as we can get and this is a great book describing one of the many angles available for approaching it.
As a more specific matter I would recommend it to psychologists and psychiatrists as something of a counter-narrative/steelman for those who are wary of medications and interventions.
Finally, for those seeking to taper or get off of medication, this book is essential reading, and the idea of hyperbolic tapering may be the single most important bit of knowledge it contains.
If you want a taste of things, I read this as part of the Blocked and Reported book club, and they had an interview with Delano which was quite good.
Specific thoughts: Mental health treatment is crazy complicated
- The Obstacle Is the Way Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by: Ryan Holiday
- The Enchiridion & Discourses by: Epictetus
- The Lives of the Caesars by: Suetonius
There's a concept within statecraft known as grand strategy. The "grand" strategy means paying attention to every avenue of conflict, not just the military sphere, but also the diplomatic, the logistical, and the domestic, and everywhere else advantage might be gained or lost. It encompasses soft power, irregular actions, public opinion, etc. But at the same time, it also encompasses prioritization and focus, because, while it's important to consider every avenue, resources are always limited and need to be spent wisely.
A great example of grand strategy done right is the US in WWII. We supported the Soviets, we developed nukes, we invaded Europe, we came together as a nation, and most of all, we buried the Axis with our industrial capacity.
For an example of grand strategy done poorly consider Vietnam. Our battlefield tactics were great. But at the strategic level we comprehensively failed in almost every domain. There was vast domestic opposition, political goals were unclear, we failed to contain the conflict geographically, and never really understood the resolve of the Vietnamese people.
You might think that the point of grand strategy, if well executed, would be winning. I disagree, I think the point of grand strategy is not losing. (There's probably an essay to be written about how this applies to Iran, but I think we have enough hot takes on that subject at the moment.) Grand strategy asks you to pay attention to all potential avenues by which disaster may arrive. Disaster in Vietnam did not arrive through the front door, it came from many unexpected directions, but an unexpected disaster is still a disaster, and generally worse than disasters which have been foreseen.
As one considers the various aspects of grand strategy, what would it mean to have a personal grand strategy? And how would that be different from just living a "good life"? As a bridge between these two ideas, consider the life of Napoleon. Something Robert Greene does at great length in his book:
The 33 Strategies of War
By: Robert Greene Published: 2006 496 Pages
Or how America went from the platonic ideal of goal-scoring to the messy theatricality of flopping. And whether we can stop it before someone get's stoned in the forum.
Eugenics and Other Evils
By: G. K. Chesterton Published: 1922 188 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Once this book entered the public domain, someone (most likely Inkling Books) added a subtitle to their edition: "An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State". This is a pretty good description of the book's thrust, though the book's major focus is still definitely eugenics.
When the book was written eugenics was a powerful political force, supported by numerous well known individuals. Buck v. Bell, the famous case which approved involuntary sterilization, didn't arrive until 1927. This is where we get the infamous line from Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. writing for the majority, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Though it was only when researching this piece that I discovered that the ruling explicitly invoked the precedent already set around compulsory vaccination.
The full context is:
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
You're probably already aware of Chesterton's biases, though in addition to being very Catholic, and very traditional, he was also a big supporter of the "little guy". This comes out a lot in this book since eugenics seems primarily aimed at the "unwashed masses", not the inbred nobility.
Who should read this book?
I have previously mentioned that I am gradually working through an ebook I picked up many years ago collecting Chesterton's best-known works. This happened to be next on the list. I wouldn't recommend it as the first Chesterton you read, or even the fifth, but it gives a great insight into a particular time and place, and puts you in the middle of an argument we consider long settled but which was raging at the time.
What does the book have to say about the future?
I think there's a lot that could be taken from this book and applied to the current debate over MAID (medical aid in dying). It will be interesting to see if that practice ends up following a similar arc.
Specific thoughts: Chesterton's surprisingly prescient archetypes
1- Operation Overflight
By: Francis Gary Powers and Curt Gentry Published: 1970 384 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
An autobiographical account of Powers' experiences before, during, after and around his U-2 spy plane being shot down over the Soviet Union, including his 21 months of imprisonment in a Soviet prison and his long campaign to rehabilitate his reputation upon his return to the US.
2- Flybot
By: Dennis E. Taylor Published: 2025 430 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Another Taylor book where a few scrappy nerds get thrust into the middle of world altering events. In this case it's the emergence of an ASI (artificial superintelligence).
3- Gun Runner
By: Larry Correia and John D. Brown Published: 2025 430 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Set in a science fiction future, this is a classic tale of scoundrels with a heart of gold, who may seem like bad guys but once you peel away their gruff exterior. Though actually the story is somewhat reversed. You see the heart of gold right from the beginning, but because they are still scoundrels, some of the scoundrelly things they do end up being bad, and they have to undo the damage they've caused.
The story mostly revolves around Jackson Rook, a mech pilot whose piloting implants were once subverted forcing him to cause tremendous harm. This has left him haunted and in search of redemption.
Come for the unreplicatable science, stay for the promise of a planetary heart beating out peace for a thousand years.
The HeartMath Solution: The Institute of HeartMath's Revolutionary Program for Engaging the Power of the Heart's Intelligence
By: Doc Childre, Howard Martin, and Donna Beech Published: 1999 304 Pages (But somehow this translates to only 2 hours 45 minutes on audio…)
Briefly, what is this book about?
The idea that the heart contains a separate brain, and true emotional health comes from aligning the heart's brain and its "intelligence", with the actual brain. Basically it's mindfulness, meditation, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) wrapped in pseudoscience.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
These guys are definitely trying to sell you on the HeartMath program. Also many of the studies they cite were conducted by their institute.
Who should read this book?
No one, unless perhaps for its (completely unintentional) value as a work of humor.
Specific thoughts: You had me at "quantum nutrients"
A book full of potential comparisons to our own day for the motivated, and strangely removed from our own day if you're really going to be honest about it.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
By: William L. Shirer Published: 1960 1250 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A comprehensive history of Nazi Germany, from Hitler's birth to the Nuremberg trials. Written by someone who was there for a great deal of the most important period.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
Shirer is a journalist, not a historian, but he did have access to the German state and party archives, plus some diaries, etc. that were captured at the end of the war. Plus he witnessed the rise of Hitler in the 30's. I love passages like this:
No wonder that Hitler was in a confident mood when the Nazi Party Congress assembled in Nuremberg on September 4 [1934]. I watched him on the morning of the next day stride like a conquering emperor down the center aisle of the great flag-bedecked Luitpold Hall while the band blared forth "The Badenweiler March" and thirty thousand hands were raised in the Nazi salute.
Who should read this book?
It's clear that this isn't the most accurate book about this subject. Scholarship is always advancing and this was written more than 60 years ago. But it may be the most readable book on the subject. It flows very well. 1250 pages fly by. (Or rather the minutes fly by, I listened to it, but with a physical copy for reference and anchoring.) If you're at all interested in this period I think you'll really enjoy this book.
What does the book have to say about the future?
I think a lot of people are trying to draw comparisons between the rise of Hitler and the Trump phenomenon. Other people see echoes of fascism in the ubiquity of woke-ism. I don't think history is going to repeat. And I'm not even sure it's going to rhyme this time around. People are still too aware of the dangers of populist demagoguery for someone to come to power in the same way Hitler did. Which is not to say there's nothing to be gleaned from this book, but I suspect that by the time things start lining up, in some bizarre fashion, it will be too late.
Specific thoughts: Pivot points
Policy proposals from the White Queen. (It's a Lewis Carroll reference. No, I'm not talking about the Mad Hatter or the Red Queen. It's from "Through the Looking Glass".)
Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society
By: Eric A. Posner and Eric Glen Weyl Published: 2019 384 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A series of radical proposals for restructuring property, voting, immigration, investing, and employment. All of the proposals seek to solve the problem of "monopolized or missing markets" in ways that seem pretty strange. One has to wonder if there's a good reason those markets didn't exist in the first place.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
Posner has his finger in all sorts of things, and has defended everything from post-9/11 government surveillance to increasing foreign aid. I guess the throughline is a belief in technocratic solutions?
Weyl is an economist working for Microsoft who helped popularize the idea of quadratic voting, and had a political awakening while reading Ayn Rand. This feels more like his book than Posner's but perhaps I'm imagining that.
Who should read this book?
I read this as part of an ACX/SSC book club. Most of the people didn't like it. They felt that it was too radical. (Though you can't say we weren't warned, it's right there in the title.) But if you want to see what mechanisms Georgist economists come up with when they're completely unrestrained, this might be the book for you.
What does the book have to say about the future?
Hayek is famous for noting that the big advantage of markets is that they are giant distributed systems for discovering prices and allocating resources effectively. They're obviously not perfect, and socialists have long dreamt of having a centrally planned economy that would be fairer and work better. Posner and Weyl imagine a future where computing power and machine learning could take over some of the work currently being done by markets, and thereby improve the outcomes.
Specific thoughts: "Six impossible things before breakfast"
One part documentation of a strange AI hallucination. One part panic about whether I'll be put out of business by AI.
Using the Stone of Democracy to Slay the Goliath of Inequality
Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse
By: Luke Kemp Published: 2025 592 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
By most accounts, civilization, which is to say the large Hobbesian state, is a good thing. Kemp doesn't necessarily agree. In his account, states are lumbering, tyrannical, extractive Goliaths, cursed to grow bigger, more oppressive and more brittle until they are eventually brought down by a "stone" that hits in just the right place.
Civilization forms out of dominance hierarchies, and these hierarchies generally only move in one direction, towards greater inequality, greater extraction, and more self-interested decisions. This leads to ever increasing fragility and eventual collapse. Collapse might actually be a better place for the masses of people, though it's often quite bloody to get there.
Though if that's how it played out in the past, Kemp doesn't think it will necessarily play out that way going forward. If (when?) civilization collapses this time, it will be far more apocalyptic.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
Kemp is associated with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge. I was recommended this book by the sagacious Florian U. Jehn of the excellent Existential Crunch blog. Jehn knows his stuff which gives me the confidence to safely locate Kemp as an important scholar in the genre of collapse research, with an interesting, albeit populist/anti-elite take on the subject.
Who should read this book?
Kemp draws heavily on the ideas of James C. Scott (Seeing Like a State and Against the Grain) and writes in opposition to the ideas of Steven Pinker (in particular The Better Angels of Our Nature). If you find yourself similarly situated, you'll enjoy this book.
It's also a great book for anyone who can't get enough discussion of existential risk. And really given the stakes we should be considering as many viewpoints as possible.
What does the book have to say about the future?
As you might imagine, Kemp's vision of the future is pretty bleak. He is not a techno-optimist, rather he sees in technology the emergence of a new Goliath, a new arena of dominance and extraction. He has a certain amount of hope, but it all revolves around using democracy to disrupt the ratcheting up of inequality and elite power, which seems like a tall order.
Specific thoughts: Past, present, and future collapse
I was promised useful stories to assist me in a quest for justified belief. Instead I got a lesson in the limits of expertise. Unfortunately it was the author's expertise that was limited.
Knowing Our Limits
By: Nathan Ballantyne Published: 2019 344 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Regulative epistemology as opposed to descriptive epistemology. Put more simply, this is about how to find truth, as opposed to how to define truth. Though because the author recommends having very high standards, you may come away from the book thinking that there is no truth. That is not Ballantyne's intent, but most of his guidance revolves around less confidence rather than more confidence.
There is some good stuff about tolerance, and the utility of doubt. And while I take issue with some of what he says on the subject of expertise, he covers the subject exhaustively and thought-provokingly.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
Ballantyne isn't just interested in epistemology. He doesn't dabble in it. He is epistemology, or rather an epistemologist. Accordingly, even though it's apparent that he's trying really, really hard to not make the book overly academic, it's still pretty academic. For example:
If an undefeated defeater for believing p were included in the evidence I don't have, then I (probably) would have heard of it by now. But I have not heard of it and the "silence" gives me reason to think that the unpossessed defeater is probably defeated.
He's a big fan of the word defeater, and various constructions involving the word. In the course of a few pages he uses the term "defeater-defeater" seventeen times.
Who should read this book?
Epistemological collapse is the major crisis of our time, so on some level it's probably useful to read everything you can get your hands on. (Which was my big reason for reading it.) But, as much as I crap on Yudkowsky's Rationality: From AI to Zombies I'd probably read his chapters on Bayes' Theorem before reading this.
I heard about the book on Jesse Singal's substack. He was much more bullish on it. So you might read that if you're interested or on the fence.
Specific thoughts: Lots of epistemic tools, Ballantyne really only covers one
- The Westmark Trilogy by: Lloyd Alexander
- RoadKill by: Dennis E. Taylor
- Slicing Pie Handbook: Perfectly Fair Equity Splits for Bootstrapped Startups by: Mike Moyer
- Fables for Young Wolves by: Thomas O. Bethlehem
Would you like some genetics in your politics?
The Origin of Politics: How Evolution and Ideology Shape the Fate of Nations – Social Disintegration, Birth Rates, and the Path to Extinction
By: Nicholas Wade Published: 2025 256 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Wade offers up an evolutionary psychology account of how to make politics actually function; how, when you try to disconnect politics and the exercise of power from core human nature, as shaped by evolution, things go off the rails.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
Nicholas Wade worked as a science writer for the NYT for 30 years. For the bulk of those years he was the science and health editor. He left the paper in 2012 and in 2014 he published A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History. The book argued that human evolution is ongoing and that it has been "recent, copious, and regional". The regional part got him "cancelled" or at least it attracted a lot of negative attention, since it implied that differing national outcomes might be partly genetic in nature rather than wholly the result of chance, culture, or colonization.
Who should read this book?
If you're looking for a strong pushback against blank-slateism along with a defense of the traditional nation-state (and of tradition in general). Or if you're looking for another reason to worry about decreasing fertility.
What does the book have to say about the future?
The aforementioned fertility decline looms large in his warnings about the future, but as I mentioned he also warns about any policy that tries to exercise power in ignorance of evolutionary drives. One of the major drives is tribalism and immigration directly conflicts with that instinct. All of this points to the potential for a demographically declining society with lots of disorder.
Specific thoughts: Children are the ultimate civilizational scorecard
I feel like I should make some clever connection between this book and the discussion which raged about the Shroud of Turin, but nothing occurs to me.
A Case for Latter-day Christianity: Evidences for the Restoration of the New Testament's "Mere" Christian Church
By: Robert Starling Published: 2019 360 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A broad, and intensive defense of the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). With a special focus on tying that theology to the theology of the early Christian Church. As such it spends a lot of time examining differences between LDS theology and other Christian denominations (things like the Trinity, Grace, The Book of Mormon, etc.) and how those differences look in relation to actual scripture.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
Starling has obviously been compiling stuff and working the "Mormons are Christians" beat for a long time. Which is to say he definitely has a dog in the fight. This gives the work a somewhat tendentious tinge.
What about my biases?
I met Starling at a conference and he asked me to read his book. Outside of that meeting and a follow-up email he sent me there hasn't been any further interaction. So I wouldn't say we were close. I am however pretty close to the topic of "Latter-day Christianity", so that's a pretty big bias.
Who should read this book?
Anyone who wants to see the comprehensive case for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints being the same Church Jesus Christ established in the 1st Century.
Specific thoughts: Who is this book for?
In which I mostly talk about the Shroud of Turin. Murray only spends seven pages on the it, so my review is not comprehensive. Actually, never mind. That's what the top sections are for.
Taking Religion Seriously
By: Charles Murray Published: 2025 152 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Murray's journey from agnosticism to belief, a journey that is largely intellectual rather than spiritual. Because it was largely intellectual, it's also more explicable. This allows Murray to write a different sort of conversion story, one that's more amenable to being mapped out as a straightforward guide with sources and citations.
What authorial biases should I be aware of?
Murray has been a libertarian thinker for decades, though he's probably best known for The Bell Curve which he co-authored. So Murray is approaching things from a conservative/libertarian milieu. That said, it's a very balanced book. When he provides his sources for a particular idea he also includes sources that are critical of that idea.
Who should read this book?
I've read a lot of books that fall in this general area. Too many to list (consider The New Testament in Its World, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith and Believe just in the last six months) I would read Murray before reading any of them. It's clear, comprehensive, short, and meaty. Even if you're a raging atheist I would read this book because it's the quickest way to understand your opponents' best arguments.
Specific thoughts: The surprising strength of the Shroud of Turin
Back when Rome was just one Italian settlement out of many, but a settlement with a dream!
Children of Mars: The Origins of Rome's Empire
By: Jeremy Armstrong Published: 2025 288 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The deep history of Rome. What we actually know about its legendary founding, its early rise to prominence, and the shape of its military. Additionally, the development of Roman identity and how that identity interacted with the other elements.
What's the author's angle?
This belongs to that genre of book which takes recent scholarship and archaeological evidence and uses it to puncture the previous, more simplistic historical view.
Who should read this book?
Military history buffs, or anyone who's interested in Rome, particularly the period from roughly 8th–3rd centuries BC.
Specific thoughts: How video games get Rome wrong
We have a lot of nice things. We're really good at making nice things. We should preserve these nice things. But also nothing lasts forever?
The Origins of Efficiency
By: Brian Potter Published: 2025 384 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The clever and incremental ways we've vastly increased humanity's ability to make stuff. We're constantly finding ways to build stuff cheaper, faster, and with fewer resources.
What's the author's angle?
Potter is probably best known for his Substack Construction Physics, which covers infrastructure, manufacturing, and building stuff in general. He also works at the Institute for Progress. Put those two together and you've got someone who's a big fan of material progress, or what is sometimes referred to as a techno-optimist.
Who should read this book?
If you want some amazing stories of how processes have improved, and a stirring defense of the modern world and all its wonders this is a great book. If you're looking for higher level reflection on what it all means, particularly any sort of caution around progress and efficiency, then this is not the book for you. Potter is definitely an "onward and upward!" kind of guy. He does note that efficiency can't be applied everywhere, and that it's often constrained by other goals, like safety, but he still treats it as being inherently good.
What does the book have to say about the future?
The book does point out that efficiency has become a "sociotechnical" issue. Particularly in the West, we often make choices to constrain efficiency as part of some broader societal goal. Potter doesn't talk very much about China, but one could imagine that their drive for efficiency is not constrained in the same way and, going forward, this could give them the edge in our ongoing competition.
Specific thoughts: Fantastic, awesome, hopeful, and scary
Everything you wanted to know about 1st Century Palestine, but were afraid to ask…
The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians
By: N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird Published: 2019 992 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
An deep dive on the New Testament covering (as the subtitle suggests) the history: Second Temple Judaism against a Greco-Roman background; the literature: the New Testament's genesis, structure, authors and audience; and theology: the religious claims of the book, the doctrine, miracles, and contentions.
What's the author's angle?
Despite me saying that this is a deep dive, it is also something of a sampler for Wright's other, even more expansive books. Also it's important to note that Wright is very much a believing Christian and while the book is exceptionally scholarly, it's also backgrounded by the idea that Jesus Christ is the Messiah who died for the sins of the world and was gloriously resurrected.
Who should read this book?
This is a long book, and I ended up deciding to read it, rather than listen to it. As such, it honestly took me several months to get through, so you should certainly take that into account. This should not be construed as saying the book is difficult. It's very accessible, and reads easily. I will say that I learned a lot, but I'm not sure that will be true for everyone. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) don't generally focus on straight down the line Bible scholarship. To the extent that we do deep scholarship in this area it's in search of parallels between early Christianity and LDS Christianity. (For example in 1 Corinthians 15:29 when Paul mentions baptisms for the dead. Something no major denomination does, other than us.) This is all to say that I think LDS individuals might find this book particularly enjoyable, as being somewhat outside of our normal wheelhouse.
Specific thoughts: It's both shocking how much New Testament we have and how little we have of everything else
Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart
By: Nicholas Carr Published: 2025 272 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
On its surface, this is a fairly typical anti-social media book, though Carr does have some interesting things to say about weaknesses inherent to the medium: content collapse, algorithmic engineering, and hostility generation. All things I'll get to in a bit.
What's the author's angle?
Carr comes from the Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman school of media criticism. Media have inherent properties that lead to different sorts of communication, and different strengths and weaknesses. Carr, like many, thinks that social media has some particularly salient weaknesses.
Who should read this book?
When considering whether to read a non-fiction book, one has to consider where it fits with one's various interests. If you're really interested in the negative effects of social media, then I would definitely read this book. If it's one of many interests, but not in your top 5-10, then you can probably skip it.
What does the book have to say about the future?
A story of one Palestinian's fight against brutality, bureaucracy, and bishops.
We Belong to the Land: The Story of a Palestinian Israeli Who Lives for Peace and Reconciliation
By: Elias Chacour and Mary E. Jensen Published: 1990 212 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
An autobiographical account of Chacour's struggles as a Palestinian Christian working to build up his community in Galilee (Ibillin) while under continual pushback from Israeli bureaucracy and internal church politics.
What's the author's angle?
At the time the book was written Chacour was a Melkite Greek Catholic Priest in the town of Ibillin. (He was later appointed to be the Archbishop of Haifa.) He has worked tirelessly to resolve the Palestinian problem using nonviolent means that emphasize reconciliation and the common background of both people. He pushes for Palestinians to be treated with dignity, but also for them to create dignified institutions. These institutions, particularly the school he founded, take up most of his energy.
Who should read this book?
As part of my post on Israel and Hamas I asked for books making the pro-Palestinian case. One of my readers recommended this book. It was a good book, but to the extent that it illuminated the problem it did so very obliquely. This is the story of a non-violent Palestinian Christian written over 30 years ago. Certainly it helped my understanding at maybe a 30,000 foot level? But it didn't shed much light on the current crisis.
However, if you want the story of someone who took a really "bad hand" and did something truly extraordinary with it, then this is your book.
Specific thoughts: If every Palestinian and every Israeli resembled Chacour and his congregation then the problem would be solved.
- Asterios Polyp by: David Mazzucchelli
- The Last Equation of Isaac Severy: A Novel in Clues by: Nova Jacobs
- The Impossible Fortune: A Thursday Murder Club Mystery by: Richard Osman
- The Moviegoer by: Walker Percy
- Academy of Outcasts by: Larry Correia
The power of positive thinking and cocaine!
The Kid Stays in the Picture
By: Robert Evans Published: 1994 432 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
This is the autobiography of Robert Evans. It jumps around a lot, but it's mostly built around his time as head of production for Paramount pictures from basically 1966-1974. Evans had basically zero experience, but by working himself nearly to death he produced such films as: The Godfather, Love Story, Chinatown, and Rosemary's Baby. In the process he saved the studio and became one of the most iconic figures of "New Hollywood".
Or to come at it from another angle, imagine Hollywood in its most wheeling and dealing, debauched, and drug-fueled state, that's what this book is about.
What's the author's angle?
Evans is an obvious narcissist, and it's clear that he has axes to grind, scores to settle, and crimes to explain. But he also has people to thank, stories to embellish, and insights to dispense. This is the author's book in a way that few books are. If Evans had any kind of editor, or even a lawyer look over this book I'm sure he told them to piss off far more often than he listened to them.
If you pick it up on audio, Evans did the reading which adds a whole other layer to his stories.
Who should read this book?
If you enjoy meeting that person at the party, the person who name drops like each name is a bomb and he's over Germany in 1945. The guy who tells one insane story after another, stories so insane you can't believe they're not exaggerated. But it's also possible that they've actually been toned down for legal reasons.
If you enjoy outrageous raconteurs, then this is the book for you.
Specific thoughts: What does success look like?
Chesterton mostly lost me after Arthur and Alfred, but I feel like I got his point in spite of that.
A Short History of England
By: G.K. Chesterton Published: 1917 107 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The book is titled the "History of England", but it's really a book about the soul of England. Chesterton examines this soul chronologically from the "Age of Legends" down to the time the book was written, which happened to be the middle of World War I.
What's the author's angle?
It's Chesterton, so there's obviously a religious angle, and a traditional cultural angle. Even expecting this, I was surprised by how much he missed the old guild system, and other features of medieval life. There's a lot of anti-rich sentiment in the book, but he's also no socialist either.
Who should read this book?
I don't think it's practical or even wise to read everything Chesterton wrote, but I have a vague goal to read most of what he's written. Even then I'm pretty sure that knowing then what I know now I would have advised myself to skip this book, or at least only read the first few chapters.
The big problem is that Chesterton is not dispensing English history (contra the title) he's interpreting it. He assumes you already know a ton of history, and he's just going to tie it together in a new way. I'm sure a highly educated Englishman in 1917 would have had no problem with Chesterton's references, but 100 years on, this poor American was frequently completely lost. Here's an example:
It will be apparent, when I deal with that period, that I do not palliate the real unreason in divine right as Filmer and some of the pedantic cavaliers construed it. They professed the impossible ideal of "non-resistance" to any national and legitimate power; though I cannot see that even that was so servile and superstitious as the more modern ideal of "non-resistance" even to a foreign and lawless power. But the seventeenth century was an age of sects, that is of fads; and the Filmerites made a fad of divine right.
Who or what is Filmer and the Filmerites? One could look it up (apparently it refers to a 17th century political theorist, Robert Filmer) but you're not going to get any information from the book. This selection, with its two references, is the first and last time the name shows up.
I'll tell you what I got out of the book and you can go from there, but as a general matter I wouldn't recommend reading this book. It has all the normal Chesterton witticisms and turns of phrase, but there are easier places to get those.
I actually never got around to discussing the Lord of the Flies element of this book. But trust me it's in there!
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
By: David Grann Published: 2023 352 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
This book is about what happened to HMS Wager, a Royal Navy ship that was shipwrecked on the south coast of Chile in 1741. The journey before the shipwreck was brutal, and it only got worse from there. Out of an initial crew of roughly 250, only about 36 eventually made it back to England.
What's the author's angle?
Grann is a writer for the New Yorker who has written three books centered around unearthing interesting and often tragic historical events. His first book was The Lost City of Z. (Which I have read, and it was quite good.) His second and best known book is Killers of the Flower Moon (which I have not read). This is his third book in that same vein.
Who should read this book?
I quite enjoy books like this: true survival stories, particularly those framed by ambitions and sensibilities we can barely imagine in 2025. It's also history at its pointiest, the tale of a single ship, and really just a handful of men. (The book largely focuses on just three.) If all that sounds appealing, then I think you'll like this book.
Specific thoughts: The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there
Banned in most prisons! That feels like a point in the book's favor, but I'm not entirely sure I can articulate why.
The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature
By: Robert Greene Published: 2021 464 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A "page a day" book collecting bits of wisdom from Robert Greene's other books (Laws of Power, Art of Seduction, Strategies of War, etc.)
What's the author's angle?
As a general matter Greene is something of a Machiavellian figure, he's going to tell it like it is, and give you the tools you really need to succeed in life. Or at least that's his claim. I generally find his approach to be refreshing, but there are also moments when I would say he takes things too far and dispenses advice that's counterproductive.
Who should read this book?
If you're one of the small number of people who likes to have a page of the day book as a way of marking the time from January 1 to December 31, this is an average entry in this very niche genre. But as the genre is not particularly large, any example might be welcome.
If you've never done a page a day book I would probably start with Tolstoy's A Calendar of Wisdom. I thought it was quite good. Also, there's an argument to be made for it being the first such book chronologically. (It's the earliest example of a devotional book that wasn't rigidly sectarian.) Finally, it was banned by the Soviets, which immediately gives it ten extra points in my book.
Specific thoughts: Some good advice, some okay advice and a few pieces of actively bad advice
If John Wick and Judge Dredd loved each other very much…
Saga of the Forgotten Warrior
By: Larry Correia
1- Son of the Black Sword 2- House of Assassins 3- Destroyer of Worlds 4- Tower of Silence 5- Graveyard of Demons 6- Heart of the Mountain
Briefly, what is this series about?
The series is set on the continent of Lok, in a world inspired by feudal India and Southeast Asia, meaning that there are castes, and outside of that, the casteless, who are literal non-people. The story follows Ashok Vadal, a pitiless "Protector of the Law". The Order of the Protectors is like a branch of elite special forces, called in when the normal constabulary, or even the normal military is insufficient. Even among these elite warriors Ashok stands out as being particularly deadly because he bears one of the world's twelve sentient magical swords.
Much of the law concerns the status of the first caste and the casteless' lack of status. But it also forbids religion, illegal magic, and demons leaving the sea. The ocean is full of demons, and they don't have much regard for the law, so Ashok spends much of his time killing them.
Given that the ocean is the exclusive domain of the demons, all status consists in living far away from it, and all insults reference the ocean in some way. "Saltwater!" Or calling someone a "Fisheater."
Who should read this series?
Much of my discussion below will concern this very question, but as a tl;dr you should definitely like it if you like Correia's other stuff. Also if you like fast moving action heavy fantasy series that are done, I would also recommend it.
Specific thoughts: How this fantasy series compares to other fantasy series
When "stigmatizing" has become a bad word and a bad thing everywhere and for every one, one brave British curmudgeon dares to demand it's return!
Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy
By: Theodore Dalrymple Published: 2006 160 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
This book aims to shatter some of the myths around opioid addiction. The first part covers the myth that stopping opioids cold turkey is both painful and dangerous. The second part dissects the myths propagated by literature, primarily Coleridge and De Quincey. The final part ties it into an addiction bureaucracy, though that part still references De Quincey an awful lot.
What's the author's angle?
Dalrymple worked as a prison doctor and psychiatrist for many years. Accordingly, he has a lot of experience with addicts. But he's also very culturally conservative. The combination of the two leads him to strongly oppose coddling addicts, arguing instead that they should be stigmatized.
Who should read this book?
I'm a fan of Dalrymple. I've enjoyed his columns over the years, and I appreciate his curmudgeonly British insight. I previously enjoyed and reviewed his book Life at the Bottom. I would definitely recommend that book before this book. Actually, I would not recommend this book period, unless, for some reason, you want a really deep dive into Coleridge and De Quincey's writings about opium.
Specific thoughts: Opioid addiction is not a disease?
Maybe the answer really is to be found in early 1970's Chilean socialism…
The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind
By: Dan Davies Published: 2024 304 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The development of accountability sinks, a construct used by governments, corporations, and really any large-scale organization to deflect responsibility (and potential punishment) away from individuals and into processes. As part of his critique and his hoped for solution Davies leans heavily into management cybernetics and Stafford Beer. If neither of those ring a bell perhaps you've encountered Beer's most famous saying, "The purpose of a system is what it does."
What's the author's angle?
Davies sits in a weird place ideologically. He's a huge fan of Beer, and spends lots of time talking about Beer's partnership with Salvador Allende, the president of Chile in the early 70s. They partnered to create Cybersyn, a cybernetic management system for the whole economy. Davies admits it wouldn't have worked at the time, but seems to think that maybe with AI something like it might work now? On the other hand, in many places he seems to be channeling Taleb, and while I can't find anything by Taleb directly commenting on Cybersyn, I'm confident he would not be a fan. Davies also levels significant criticism at Milton Friedman, which makes sense in the Chilean context, but it feels out of character for a soberly written business book.
Who should read this book?
I read it as part of a Slate Star Codex/Astral Codex Ten book club. If that means anything to you, you'll probably find the book interesting. Additionally, anyone looking for another way to describe the hidden brokenness of the world will probably enjoy the book.
What does the book have to say about the future?
Pick it up because it's short. Continue it because of the brutal Bavarian accent. Finish it because maybe he's on to something?
The Future of Truth
By: Werner Herzog Published: 2025 128 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Legendary badass, and sometimes filmmaker Werner Herzog weighs in on the concept of truth, how best to represent truth, and what's happening to it. Drawing on his own experiences he distinguishes between dry, factual truth, and what he calls ecstatic truth, a deeper kind of truth revealed by art.
Who should read this book?
I don't think anyone should literally read this book. It's best consumed as an audiobook with Herzog's strangely compelling narration carrying you along. With a voice like Herzog's and clocking in at only 3.5 hours of audio, it almost doesn't matter what it's about.
What does the book have to say about the future?
Many college age girls lead lives of quiet desperation.
The Mind Reels
By: Fredrik deBoer Published: 2025 168 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The book follows Alice. Alice has severe bipolar disorder. This doesn't come out until she's at college. It's entirely awful. Going from least to worst bad, we see: large weight fluctuations, social fallout, impulsive sex, being committed, psychotic and manic paranoia, and depression so deep she can't make it to the bathroom.
What's the author's angle?
Normally I don't talk about the angle for a fictional book, but this book deserves (demands?) an exception. DeBoer is known for many things. (And I would say that he's one of the few Substack writers where I read 90%+ of what they write.) One of the big things he's known for is pushing back against the old vision of the mentally ill as tortured geniuses or the more modern quirky, actually it's kind of a super power narrative. This book was explicitly written to provide a very real depiction of what it's like to have a severe mental illness. (It succeeds by the way.)
Who should read this book?
If you like anything deBoer has written, I think you'll like this. His unsparing view of reality is his biggest charm, and it definitely comes through in this book. I know people who don't like deBoer's fiction, but who nevertheless liked this book.
If you've never heard of deBoer, but you like books where characters have an intense interior life, and there's not necessarily a hopeful "happily ever after" arc, I would also definitely recommend this book.
Specific thoughts: Most men (and women) lead lives of quiet desperation
Part memoir, part science writing, part history, and a lot of blaming her neighbor for her empties.
Drink Your Way Sober: The Science-Based Method to Break Free from Alcohol
By: Katie Herzog Published: 2025 208 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
You may be familiar with Katie Herzog from Blocked and Reported, the podcast she hosts with Jesse Singal. Or you might have seen her byline on the Free Press. What I didn't know (at least before she started promoting this book) is that she's also a recovering alcoholic. I also didn't know about the Sinclair Method for "extinguishing" alcohol use disorder (AUD). Finally I didn't know that we are now calling it alcohol use disorder. So you could say this is a book about a bunch of things I didn't know.
What's the author's angle?
Herzog failed to get her drinking under control using any of the more common methods. Willpower, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), overwhelming shame, etc. The Sinclair Method was what finally worked for her. This method involves taking naltrexone before you drink. This blocks the reward circuit allowing you to train your body out of alcohol dependence. It's also something that not a lot of people have heard about, so her angle resembles that of a fiery recent convert, who believes that people trapped in similar despair need to hear the good word.
Who should read this book?
As someone who's never had a drink, I'm loath to recommend anything in the sobriety space. In the same manner that a fish doesn't know about water, can I have anything meaningful to say about sobriety? That very large caveat aside, if you have AUD, and nothing else has worked, and you haven't tried the Sinclair Method (or if you know someone who fits this category) I would definitely recommend this book.
If you're thinking of reading it just as Herzog memoir, there's some pretty good stuff in here, but not enough to justify reading the entire book. But if you're on the fence I would push you towards getting the book.
Specific thoughts: So why isn't the Sinclair Method better known?
Replay
By: Ken Grimwood Published: 1998 320 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A man dies and is sent back to his 18 year old self to relive his life over, and over, and over. Every time he dies he's sent back. He dies in 1988, and awakens in 1963, so there's a lot of discussion of those years (Kennedy Assassination, Moon landing, Iran Hostage crisis, etc.)
Who should read this book?
I came across a recommendation for this book on a Youtube channel that was doing a survey of all the movies that had functionally the same premise as Groundhog Day. And he included the book as sort of an appendix in other things people might want to check out. If you're a big fan of the Groundhog Day contrivance, then I think you'll like this book.
Specific thoughts: Great on a personal level, weak on a world-building level.
This review will go from spoiler free to light spoilers to full on spoilers. I will let you know at each transition.
It took 20 years from Bell inventing the telegraph before someone sent an ad with it. It took ~7 years for the first piece of email spam to be sent. Any bets on what it will look like for AI?
Experimental AI Summary:
I open with my own costly, underwhelming SEO experiment and the fact that I've mostly abandoned Google for LLMs, arguing that if AI chat replaces search then AIO (AI optimization) will replace SEO. I frame influence as "numerous / high-reputation / mentions," recall the web's shift from Yahoo's directory to Google's PageRank—where "reputation" changed everything and spawned link-farm tactics—and ask how the same gaming might hit AI. I sketch possibilities: models pre-vetting training data and tagging low-trust commercial pages; spam-style gatekeeping of AI inputs; straightforward paid placements inside AI answers; or darker outcomes where cheap marketing pollutes corpora and bad actors weaponize hallucinations. The core question for me is whether LLMs can build sturdier reputation defenses than Google or whether their architecture makes them easier to spoof. For now, AI search feels like Google circa 1998—astonishingly good—but I doubt it stays pristine once marketers and scammers fully arrive.
If you had been placing bets 150 years ago around what physics would have to say about the existence of God, you would have lost a lot of money.
Modern Physics and Ancient Faith
By: Stephen M. Barr Published: 2003 312 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Barr takes all the discoveries of 20th-century physics, stuff like the Big Bang, quantum mechanics, the various forces, and argues that all of these things are more compatible with belief in God, specifically a traditional Judeo-Christian God, than with a belief in pure materialism.
This is illustrated most succinctly in the underlying values for various background constants of the universe. For most of these if they varied even slightly then life would be impossible. This is known as the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God, and Barr lays it out in rigorous detail.
What's the author's angle?
Barr is a scientist, and a believing Catholic. So he definitely has a dog in the fight, but he also does a good job of steelmanning the other side of the argument. Also it's important to clarify what the fight is. It's not a fight between religion and science. Barr is both a believer and a scientist. It's a fight between religion and materialism. Which is a different animal. This is not to say he's dogmatic (perhaps I shouldn't keep using the word "fight") the tone is very reasonable. He's mostly targeting a lazy "modern science shows that God is silly and unnecessary" crowd.
Who should read this book?
This was one of the books mentioned by Ross Douthat in his book Believe (see my review of Douthat's book here, or check out the PSmith's far superior one here). And I was glad I followed Douthat's recommendation, the book did not disappoint. If you're at all interested in the fine-tuning argument or related ideas I think you'll love this book. But I can clearly see where it's too niche for the majority of people.
What does the book have to say about the future?
You've heard about placebo's? Well what about nocebos?
The Age of Diagnosis: How Our Obsession with Medical Labels Is Making Us Sicker
By: Suzanne O'Sullivan Published: 2025 320 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The idea that putting labels on something is not a free lunch—like everything else there are tradeoffs. Rather than framing numerous illnesses as being psychosomatic, O'Sullivan seems more to be suggesting that humans are very suggestible. (I get the meta-ness of the statement.) As such, once you generate a label it has a tendency to warp identities, and make people seek out confirming evidence. This all creates a sort of nocebo effect which may increase the severity of whatever symptoms they're experiencing.
To put it more succinctly, labels have power and we should be circumspect about applying them.
What's the author's angle?
O'Sullivan is a neurologist who noticed that lots of patients have "normal" tests, but are also indisputably suffering. As someone more focused on the brain than other parts of the body, she has long contended that expectations, culture, current fads, etc. play a much bigger role than most doctors want to admit. It's not all about biology, psychology also has a role. Previous books include It's All in Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness and The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness.
Who should read this book?
Anyone interested in a broader discussion of how the world outside of medicine interacts with the world of medicine. How the epistemic crisis, culture, disease advocacy groups, bureaucracy, and patient longing all affect the act of putting a label on a cluster of symptoms.
What does the book have to say about the future?
It's another self help book. Is this the one that will finally put you over the top, or another in a long line of endeavors that look like progress, but are really procrastination?
Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life
By: Jim Murphy Published: 2020 360 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
As you have already gathered, this is a self-help book. One of thousands (millions?) so the point is what sets this one apart from all those other books? I'm sure it hasn't avoided all overlap, but the book does have a focus on character, and getting rid of self-centeredness that was refreshing.
What's the author's angle?
Jim Murphy played baseball in the minor leagues, and he was obsessed with winning. Then vision problems derailed his career, so he gave away most of his possessions and moved to the desert. Over the next five years he did nothing sports psychology, in an attempt to figure out how to compete in a way that produced calm regardless of the outcome. Something he had previously lacked. He draws explicit parallels to Thoreau:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
He went to the desert, but the idea was similar. Of course, not everyone has the wherewithal to retreat to the desert to spend five years thinking. But potentially, if one did, it would bring some very valuable insights.
Who should read this book?
It's once again time to do the self-help math...
Thomas Hardy wrote horror?
Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology
By: Various, Edited by Richard Wells Published: 2021 479 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A collection of 22 older scary stories, presented in chronological order. The oldest story is from 1875, while the newest was written in 1965. But the majority are clustered in the late-victorian period 1880-1910. It includes stories from a few authors you might not expect like Thomas Hardy and Robert Louis Stevenson.
Who should read this book?
Anyone who has enjoyed an HP Lovecraft story will probably enjoy this book. Though I will say that you should view most of the stories as inspiration for Lovecraft, rather than similarly situated.
Specific thoughts: A nice way to create a Halloween atmosphere.
Gary Gygax (Grognard 13/Writer 10/Businessman 2) vs. Dave Arneson (Plaintiff 14/Storyteller 9/Writer 1)
Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons
By: Jon Peterson Published: 2021 400 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The history of Dungeons and Dragons, TSR's meteoric rise, the fights that inevitably happen when something becomes enormously successful, and the catastrophes that follow when people are in way over their head.
What's the author's angle?
Peterson is the man when it comes to the history of RPGs and D&D in particular. He's basically a historian, and he has no dog in any of the fights.
Who should read this book?
I really liked this book, and I really liked everything I've read by Peterson. That said, I might recommend the podcast When We Were Wizards, as an easier entry point for people interested in the story. And of course if you have no interest in the battle between Arneson and Gygax or the crazy initial years of D&D, I would not recommend either.
Specific thoughts: Gygax was a jerk, and he was dumb, but he also deserves 90% of the credit for D&D.
It's possible that in our pursuit of justice and equity that a few things might have been exaggerated.
Progressive Myths
By: Michael Huemer Published: 2024 277 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A wide-ranging debunking of most of the myths that flourished during the recent peak of social justice activism. Some myths concern specific incidents like those around Michael Brown and Kyle Rittenhouse. Others are ideological myths like the gender pay gap, or the efficiency of masks at preventing the spread of COVID. In total he covers twenty different myths.
What's the author's angle?
Huemer comes at things from a strong classically liberal approach. He is very wary of activism in all its forms. He's also clearly not worried about annoying people. Though he is very worried about people trying to "read between the lines".
Do not "read between the lines" to infer what I "must be implying". If you think of some ridiculous or horrible political view that you think I'm implying, that is almost certainly just in your imagination. I am not the sort of writer who likes to imply his point.
Who should read this book?
If you consider yourself to be a good progressive I would definitely read this book. I suspect that such people won't, but honestly, if you're looking for the best steelman of the opposing arguments this is it. If you're on the opposite side of the fence you still might find some things that surprise you (Also Huemer makes a point of also covering a few things that aren't myths. Incidents progressives were correct about.)
Many people speak very highly of Huemer's books, and I'll probably eventually read all of them.
What does the book have to say about the future?
Huemer has many recommendations for how to proceed, but they mostly boil down to having better epistemology. One of the great sins he identifies is motivated reasoning, which obscures facts, and beyond that leads to broad conclusions which are entirely unsupported by reality. And we seem to be getting more of such reasoning.
Specific thoughts: How do we fix epistemology?
I expected to see a katana plunged into the heart of crypto. Instead I got a piece of wall art, where the two ideas were placed in near proximity, but without any contact.
The Bushido of Bitcoin
By: Aleksandar Svetski Published: 2024 529 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Bitcoin will be the thing that saves the world from the fiat money created, debt fueled dystopia we're already descending into. As part of this salvation it will require people to adopt ancient (though also somewhat apocryphal) warrior virtues. Specifically: righteousness, courage, compassion, honor, honesty, responsibility, excellence, respect, duty, and restraint.
What's the author's angle?
As you may have already gathered, Svetski is a Bitcoin hyper-maximalist. Bitcoin isn't just our financial salvation, it's our spiritual salvation as well.
Who should read this book?
As a "return to virtue" tome it was pretty good, though long-winded, and a retread of books I'd already read. (Like Ryan Holiday's stoic stuff, if you're familiar with that.) On top of that it adds quite a bit of culture war stuff, which annoyed many of the reviewers on Goodreads and Amazon. It feels like a book without a natural audience. It's strident enough that you would already have to be convinced to enjoy it, but if you're already convinced then you probably know everything Svetski is going to say.
What does the book have to say about the future?
The book lays out two paths, we can double-down on the fiat-future which, at best, leads to dependence, and at worst disaster. Or we can adopt the more muscular, responsible, and sovereign path of Bitcoin. As usual with such books it skips over the messy middle.
Specific thoughts: We need a new civic religion, but I'm not sure this is it
Don't hold back guys, tell us how you really feel.
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All
By: Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares Published: 2025 272 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
This book makes the AI doomer case at its most extreme. It asserts that if we build artificial superintelligence (ASI) then that ASI will certainly kill all of humanity.
Their argument in brief: the ASI will have goals. These goals are very unlikely to be in alignment with humanity's goals. This will bring humanity and the ASI into conflict over resources. Since the ASI will surpass us in every respect it will have no reason to negotiate with us. Its superhuman abilities will also leave us unable to stop it. Taken together this will leave the ASI with no reason to keep us around and many reasons to eliminate us—thus the "Everyone Dies" part of the title.
What's the author's angle?
Yudkowsky is the ultimate AI doomer. No one is more vocally worried about misaligned ASI than he. Soares is Robin to Yudkowsky's Batman.
Who should read this book?
For those familiar with the argument I don't think the book covers much in the way of new territory.
For those unfamiliar with the argument I might recommend Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom instead. It makes the same points without being quite so tendentious.
Specific thoughts: The parable of the alchemists and the unfairness of life
A man who possessed a singular talent for making war and being duped.
Grant
By: Ron Chernow Published: 2017 1104 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A biography of Ulysses S. Grant, the greatest general of the Civil War, but also simultaneously one of the most guileless individuals ever profiled by a biographer.
What's the author's angle?
Chernow clearly thinks that Grant has been unfairly maligned as a corrupt drunkard, and this book is going to set the record straight. In Chernow's telling, Grant was the best general of the war, one of the better presidents, and overall a very honorable man whose only fault was that he was far, far too trusting. I'm not saying that Chernow is wrong about any of this, merely that there is a touch of the hagiographic to this book.
Who should read this book?
I've thoroughly enjoyed every Chernow book I've ever read. They're long, but they go down pretty easy. (Though reading about the brutality of reconstruction—i.e. the original Klu Klux Klan and its offshoots was extremely sad and painful.)
Specific thoughts: How can someone be so good at fighting enemies on the battlefield and so bad at detecting treachery in those closest to him?
Chiefly Caused by Cytokine Cascades…
Chasing My Cure: A Doctor's Race to Turn Hope into Action
By: David Fajgenbaum Published: 2019 256 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Right as Fajgenbaum was finishing up the exams for his third year of medical school, he was struck by his first attack of idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease. It nearly killed him (last rites were administered). He went on to have four more attacks, each of which also nearly killed him, but somehow in between attacks he was able to research the disease enough that he eventually found something (rapamycin) which has (so far) kept additional attacks from happening. As an outgrowth of his own research he founded the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network.
What's the author's angle?
This is one of those cases where the author has a large "angle", Fajgenbaum has Castleman disease, and is very much advocating (in the course of the book) for more research and more funding for the treatment of the disease he has. This is not a bad angle, but there is a lot of advocacy in the book.
On the other hand the fact that he has the disease is also one of the book's great strengths. It creates a compelling story, and a fascinating approach to the research and cure of the disease.
Who should read this book?
I think it's most interesting for those who want to understand how medical research is done. Its failure points, but also its potential for life-altering outcomes. Fajgenbaum's personal story is also very interesting, and people who just like good biographical stories will also enjoy it.
Specific thoughts: How much should this story be read as an example of broken science?
A small but powerful injection of Buddhism straight into your soul.
The Dhammapada
By: Unknown Translator: Gil Fronsdal Published: Sometime in the 3rd to 1st century BC 152 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
This is Buddhist scripture in a similar sense to how the New Testament is Christian scripture. In this case it's 423 verses (as opposed to nearly 8,000 in the New Testament) all of which have supposedly been uttered by the Buddha. The verses are arranged into thematic chapters (Mind, Anger, Happiness, etc.)
What's the author's angle?
In theory the author is the Buddha, and his angle would be bringing the readers to enlightenment. In reality most people believe that the verses were compiled by early Buddhist communities. The angle I got out of it was the elimination of desire.
Who should read this book?
Given how important this book is to tens of millions of people, and how short it is (if you're just looking at the verses absent commentary it's around 10,000 words) I would say anyone who's even remotely interested in religion, philosophy, or eastern thought, should read this book.
Specific thoughts: More directly Buddhist than I expected
The more people you’re asking to forget the messier things become.
A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past
By: Lewis Hyde Published: 2019 384 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The necessity of forgetting, as conveyed through a broad collection of stories, essays, quotes, reflections, etc. It’s more atmospheric than prescriptive.
What's the author's angle?
This is an important writer, doing important writing, lauded as important by other writers, teaching at an important university (for a time Harvard). None of this is necessarily bad, and it can be quite good, but you should know what you’re in for.
Who should read this book?
David Foster Wallace (who I greatly admire) called Hyde “One of our true superstars of nonfiction” though he can’t have been talking about this book since it was published long after he was dead. If his statement or anything in the last section piques your interest, then perhaps you will enjoy this book. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific. It’s that kind of book.
Specific thoughts: An attempt to eat his cake and have it.
The history of attempting to make “controlled explosion” into something other than an oxymoron.
Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants
By: John Drury Clark Published: 1972 216 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
An insider’s account of the always exciting, frequently terrifying, attempts to develop the perfect liquid propellant.
What's the author's angle?
Clark was a program director, and he’s mostly telling personal stories about the vast effort to find better liquid propellants. His sense of humor is great and his disdain for bureaucratic minutiae is obvious. He’s one of those steely-eyed missile men you hear about.
Who should read this book?
People interested in a behind the scenes look at a fascinating period of engineering and discovery.
Specific thoughts: Once We Were Engineers
Bernard Cornwell's best (and shortest) historical fiction series.
The Warlord Chronicles
By: Bernard Cornwell
The Winter King Published: 1996 431 Pages
Enemy of God Published: 1998 397 Pages
Excalibur Published: 1999 436 Pages
Briefly, what is this series about?
The Arthurian Legends turned into historical fiction. All the tales are related retrospectively by Derfel, a Saxon boy raised by Merlin who eventually becomes Arthur’s right hand man.
Who should read this series?
If you’ve read anything by Cornwell, but haven’t read this, you should. Not only is this Cornwell’s personal favorite of his series, it’s only three books, unlike the Sharpe series which is apparently up to 24 books?!? Even if you don’t know who Cornwell is, if you like historical fiction at all this is a great series.
Specific thoughts: A realistic Arthur
The superior man uses his superior judgement to look superior on all the metrics.
The Tyranny of Metrics
By: Jerry Z. Muller Published: 2019 248 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The distorting effects of an over-reliance on metrics particularly when it comes to creating incentives.
What's the author's angle?
Muller was frustrated by the numerous metrics being imposed upon him in academia, frustrated enough to write a book about it.
Who should read this book?
If you’re in an environment where you feel like metrics are being overused and abused, this book can help you identify how that’s happening, and what you might be able to do about it.
Specific thoughts: Bad metrics are everywhere, why isn’t this problem better known?
Lawyers vs. Engineers. Infrastructure in America, China and Europe. Edmund Burke and the Revolutionary War.
Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future
By: Dan Wang Published: 2025 288 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The rise of China’s immense manufacturing prowess, where it comes from (a culture of engineering according to Want), and where it might be going.
What's the author's angle?
Wang has been putting out a well regarded annual letter on China for many years now. This is a distillation of his thoughts in book form. Also he has Chinese parents who often regret leaving China when they did.
Who should read this book?
If you’re at all interested in what’s happening with China you should absolutely read this book.
Specific thoughts: Which theory of China is correct?
Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid
By: Meredith Angwin Published: 2014 496 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A deep dive into the convoluted nature of the electrical grid with a particular focus on how attempts to make it more effective through competition have failed. Beyond that Angwin describes how the challenge of integrating and encouraging renewables has turned a convoluted problem into an impossible one.
What's the author's angle?
Angwin is a blogger (her newsletter is titled “Electric Grandma”) who has dedicated her energies to the very narrow focus of the power grid and related issues. Before retiring she worked with the utilities as a chemist. Since then she’s been a consumer advocate, primarily in the northeast where she has been closely involved in the laws and regulations for many years.
Who should read this book?
This is a book for infrastructure nerds. Particularly if you’re interested in the fragility of infrastructure or the challenge of grid management in an era of intermittent renewals.
An initial caveat:
I read this book a year ago...
Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution
By: Carl R. Trueman Published: 2022 208 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The long philosophical journey that took us to the current prioritization of expressive individualism, and how this journey eventually carried us to a strange new world, where expressive sexual/identity politics seem normal if not inevitable.
What's the author's angle?
Trueman is a Christian, and this book is written towards a religious audience.
Who should read this book?
Trueman’s previous book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is one of my all-time favorite books. (You can see a review here.) This covers basically the same territory, but in a shorter, more accessible format. If you’ve read his longer book, you can probably skip this one, but if you haven’t then I would recommend this book to anyone trying to understand the modern world.
Specific thoughts: It is indeed a strange new world
How much of the mania is inherent to crypto and how much is just SBF?
Cryptomania: Hype, Hope, and the Fall of FTX's Billion-Dollar Fintech Empire
By: Andrew R. Chow Published: 2024 416 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The 2020-2022 crypto boom. Three groups stand out. The scammers, as represented by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). The idealists, as represented by Vitalik Buterin and the victims as represented by African NFT artist Owo Anieti.
What's the author's angle?
Chow definitely thinks that there was a crypto bubble that popped in 2022 with the implosion of FTX. Whether he thinks crypto is a bubble in its entirety is less clear. He’s definitely not a crypto booster.
Who should read this book?
I mostly read it to partake in some schadenfreude at SBF’s expense. It delivered on that. If you have similar desires I would recommend it, but it also did a great job of outlining the craziness of that era.
What Black Swans does it reveal?
The collapse of FTX played out over a much shorter time period than the collapse of, say, Enron or Lehman Brothers. If crypto gets more entrenched into the world’s financial system while maintaining this quality of rapid volatility, that would be bad.
Specific thoughts: Owo vs. SBF
Should I translate someone's glee at the murder of Charlie Kirk into an actual willingness to commit it?
Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)
By: Chinua Achebe Published: 1958 209 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The main character is Okonkwo, and saying that he’s complicated is to put it mildly. He’s desperately afraid of failure, which in his case means following in the footsteps of his father. On top of the complexity of Okonkwo there’s the additional complexity and richness of the Igbo culture: its customs, its gods, its method of delivering justice, etc.
Into this rich and (for me) strange world, the Europeans arrive. Though not till around the 2/3rd mark. The consequences are perhaps not as bad as you might fear, but they’re bad enough.
Who should read this book?
I quite enjoyed the book, and it was certainly different from my normal fare. Also it reads quickly. Finally, it’s widely regarded as a modern classic. I’m not sure I have a good reason why you wouldn’t read this book.
Specific thoughts: The flattening of colonialism
Remain in Love: Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Tina
By: Chris Frantz Published: 2022 208 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The life and musical career of Chris Frantz and his wife Tina Weymouth. With particular attention paid to his antagonistic relationship with David Byrne, the front man for Talking Heads, a band they were both members of.
What's the author's angle?
Frantz seems to be going for three things here. First it’s an ode to his wife. Second it lays out his side of the fight between him and Byrne. Finally it’s a snapshot into the origin of punk in the late 70s.
Who should read this book?
If you’re a huge Talking Heads fan. Or if you really want a behind the scenes look at what it was like to be in a band in the late 70s. Otherwise I would skip it.
Specific thoughts: The fact that he’s stayed married for all these years counts for a lot.
Regretting Motherhood: A Study
By: Orna Donath Published: 2017 272 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Donath interviewed 23 Israeli women who regretted motherhood. In most, but not all, cases these mothers asserted that they still loved their children, they just didn’t like the responsibilities and restrictions that came with being a mother. In some cases they only realized this after having children, in other cases they knew they would regret motherhood, but reported feeling forced into it by societal, patriarchal, and pro-natal pressure.
What's the author's angle?
This book belongs to the “unsilencing” genre. Donath is “unsilencing” mothers who regret their motherhood. Whether they are actually being silenced just in Israel in 2017, or everywhere even now is a good question, but outside of the scope of this review. Donath herself does not want kids, so she’s not an unbiased observer of things.
What's my angle?
This was recommended to me as a counterpoint to Hannah’s Children by Cathrine Pakaluk (see my review here). I am definitely more Pakaluk’s side than Donath’s, but it is important to see what the opposition is saying. Nevertheless I was biased going in, and I remained biased all the way through.
Who should read this book?
If you’re trying to gain a broad perspective on mother’s feelings about motherhood, then this book definitely lays out one side of the debate, and you will have a broader understanding after reading it. Otherwise I would skip it.
Specific thoughts: Where will the fertility rate naturally settle?
Perhaps it's not how fast technology moves, but where it's impact is felt? Also S-curves...
The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command
By: Andrew Gordon Published: 1996 708 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
An incredibly detailed examination of the battle of Jutland, combined with an equally detailed history of naval command, and its failings in the lead up to the battle.
What's the author's angle?
Gordon’s target is excessive signalling. And he’s written a very long book to demonstrate just how bad it was.
Who should read this book?
You have to be pretty committed to WWI naval history or military minutia before this is the book you should be reading. But if you are, it’s excellent.
Specific thoughts: Militaries acquire bad habits during peacetime; it’s hard to know which of these habits might end up causing great harm
Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy
By: Mark Regnerus Published: 2017 280 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A data-driven look at the modern dating and “hook-up” culture. As you can tell from the title, he argues that sex has become cheap, not so much in dollars and cents, but in the level of commitment it requires. He points to three reasons for this change: the pill, porn, and dating apps.
What's the author's angle?
As I was reading this book, I was trying to remember where I had heard the name Regnerus before. It took me a while to get around to looking him up in Wikipedia, at which point I was reminded of the “New Family Structures Study”. He was the lead author on this study which claimed that children raised by a parent who had been in a same-sex relationship had worse outcomes than those raised by heterosexual parents. If you guessed, based on this, that he’s a conservative, then you would be correct. However, that didn’t really come through very much while reading the book.
Who should read this book?
If you want data to back up the online arguments you’ve been making. Or if you’re looking for a better understanding of the underlying reasons for the continued decline in fertility.
What Black Swans does it reveal?
Most of the trends he described are continuing to worsen. Sex just continues to get cheaper. As bad as it is already, it's not crazy to imagine that VR, AI, and sex bots might really cause the bottom to drop out.
Specific thoughts: Differing views of sex
The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 3]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (1918-1956)
By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Published: 1973 608 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The final piece of Solzhenitsyn’s amazing, depressing, baffling, chilling, frightening, absurd, terrible, cold, weighty chronicle of the Soviet gulags. This part includes the period after his release which, by itself, could be a fantastic guide to simple contentment.
What's the author's angle?
I found it interesting how much of this book concerned just preserving the notes he’s made and all of the material which will eventually be turned into the book—the angle of making sure the story gets told.
Who should read this book?
I have not talked about the fact that there are actually two versions of the Gulag, this three volume behemoth, and an authorized abridgement. Here, at the end, it’s worth considering whether I would recommend this three volume set, or the abridgement. I haven’t read the abridgement, so I’m not in the ideal position to answer, but given that most people have only read the abridgement, getting the perspective of someone who’s read all three volumes should be a contrast.
I’m glad I read the full three volume set first. Should I go back and read the abridged version (I plan to, but I plan to do a lot of things) it will be interesting to see what was deemed critical, and what was cut. But also there’s a weight to the gulags, a massiveness, an ominous ponderousness which comes through best in the stories, upon stories, upon stories you get in the full set.
Specific thoughts: Cloaking power in ideology
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
By: John Green Published: 2025 208 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The ubiquity of tuberculosis (wait, did I just restate the title?) especially outside of the US. And its prevalence despite the fact that a cure is available.
What's the author's angle?
Green was already interested in global health when he met Henry, a young man with tuberculosis (TB) in Sierra Leone, literally on the way out of the country. Green was so affected by Henry and his plight that it eventually led him to completely change his focus, and while I don’t want to minimize the vast harms caused by TB, it’s apparent that, for Green, it’s personal.
Who should read this book?
This is a good book to broaden your horizons. When you consider that (TB) kills over a million people per year. And when you consider that most Americans have only the most cursory knowledge about it (including, at the start, Green by his own admission) this book should be read just to fill out your knowledge of how the world really is. But also TB is terrible and it should receive more attention than it does.
Specific thoughts: Whatever else you may think TB should be getting more attention
Everything you know about WWI is wrong! Okay... maybe not everything, but some things definitely.
Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities
By: Gary Sheffield Published: 2001 318 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
An apologetic work directed at British leadership during WWI. It refutes the claim that the British Army was composed of “lions led by donkeys”, and instead lays out a case for increasing competence, the necessity of offensives, and a string of victories in 1918.
What's the author's angle?
Sheffield is a noted member of the revisionist school. He wants to revise the vision of futility most commonly associated with the British participation in WWI.
Who should read this book?
Someone who wants a more complete view of WWI, and who is wary of simplistic tales of strategic idiocy.
Specific thoughts: WWI was horrible for the British, but it couldn’t have been won any other way
Forbes magazine, the bastion of conservative American business journalism, called it "a filth-spattered lens of depravity and dysfunction".
Crisis Zone
By: Simon Hanselmann Published: 2021 296 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A very non-traditional household navigates the pandemic using violence and porn production.
Who should read this book?
I would not recommend this book to anyone. It is without a doubt the grossest, crudest work I have ever read. Though Forbes reviewed it and said:
In the deluxe and beautifully designed Fantagraphics edition, Crisis Zone ends up looking like a children's book produced in an institution for the criminally insane. Assuming we have a future ahead of us, Crisis Zone will be the keepsake to remind us what we became in [2020].
But even they had to admit that it was “a filth-spattered lens of depravity and dysfunction”.
Specific thoughts: A strong case against a certain lifestyle.
Noticing: An Essential Reader (1973-2023)
By: Steve Sailer
Published: 2024
458 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A collection of essays from Steve Sailer covering immigration, culture war stuff, and human biodiversity.
What's the author's angle?
For some, Sailer is a horrible right-wing racist. For others he’s a data-driven contrarian. I mostly fall in the latter camp. Also whatever you think of his opinions, his tone is exceptionally mild. He’s not a fire-breather.
Who should read this book?
If you’ve been following Sailer forever there’s nothing especially new here. Even if you haven’t previously read all of the included essays (and I believe I was at probably 90%), he’s covering territory which is very well-trod by him in general. On the other hand if you’re only vaguely familiar with Sailer—perhaps you’ve come across his name once or twice, then this is a great summation of his opinions and writings.
Specific thoughts: How important is tone?
Collapse of Complex Societies
By: Joseph A. Tainter
Published: 1988
262 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A new (at the time) theory for the collapse of societies based on declining marginal returns to complexity.
What's the author's angle?
This is a book definitely written in opposition to previous theories (think Spengler, Toynbee, etc.) many of which Tainter rejects as overly moralistic.
Who should read this book?
If you’re interested in how the United States will end (and I can’t imagine how you’re not) this is a great book.
Specific thoughts: Okay so this is how collapse happens. Can it be stopped?
By: Patrick McGee
Published: 2025
448 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
How Apple went all in on China, not merely moving manufacturing there, but also educating their companies in, and co-developing with them, numerous advanced manufacturing techniques. These techniques then spread all throughout China. As such, Apple, far more than any other company, enabled China’s rise to be the world’s most sophisticated manufacturer. In effect they imported a super-charged industrial policy for China. This was bad enough, but the eventual result was that Apple is now utterly dependent on a capricious one-party state.
What's the author's angle?
McGee is not entirely unsympathetic to Apple, but it’s also clear that he finds the consequences of their actions to be damaging, and, most of all, dumb.
Who should read this book?
If you’re interested in China, technology, the future, or competition then you should read this book.
In which I start by using my massive intellect to predicte a timeline for the end of the world and end with admitting that I couldn't remember whether I'd read a specific book or not.
In which I engage in an extended, and somewhat clunky Star Wars metaphor. And eventually conclude that clunkiness is sort of the point.
- Hamlet by: William Shakespeare
- Gods and Generals (The Civil War Trilogy, #1) by: Jeff Shaara
- We Solve Murders by: Richard Osman
- Stop All the Clocks: A Novel by: Noah Kumin
- Pyrebound by Brayton Cole
- Grunge (Monster Hunter Memoirs, #1) by: John Ringo and Larry Correia
- Sinners (Monster Hunter Memoirs, #2) by: John Ringo and Larry Correia
- Saints (Monster Hunter Memoirs, #3) by: John Ringo and Larry Correia
- Fever (Monster Hunter Memoirs, #4) by: Larry Correia and Jason Córdova
- Target Rich Environment (Volume 1) by: Larry Correia
- Target Rich Environment (Volume 2) by: Larry Correia
- Monster Hunter: Siege by: Larry Correia
- Monster Hunter: Guardian by: Larry Correia
- Monster Hunter: Bloodlines by: Larry Correia
- The Monster Hunter Files by: Various
A review of Douglas Murray's "On Democracies and Death Cults" with broad discursions into Sam Kriss' article "Douglas Murray, gruesome toady" and the entire Israel-Hamas-Gaza Mess.
- Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth by: Catherine Pakaluk
- The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities by: Mancur Olson
- This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness by: T. R. Fehrenbach
- Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House by: Jonathan Allen
- Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson
- Meditations by: Marcus Aurelius
- The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers' Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success by: Dan Sullivan and Benjamin P. Hardy
I.
People are worried about a lot of things at the moment, but one thing near the top of everyone’s list is a war between the US and China over the fate of Taiwan. What most people have forgotten is that the US already fought a war with China. It’s easy to overlook this previous conflict because we called it the Korean War (and initially it wasn’t even called a war). This is understandable given that it took place in Korea. As such, it’s forgivable to overlook the huge Chinese involvement. But for most of the war the Chinese were our primary opponents. (At its peak 80% of enemy troops were Chinese.)
Can we draw any lessons from our last war with China when considering the possible outcomes of a future war with the same adversary? There are certainly worse places to look for information.
The first thing we might look at is the outcome. How did we do? How did the war end? This part, at least, most people remember. It ended in a draw. After costing the lives of at least four million people (soldiers and civilians) the final truce line was very close to the original dividing line of the 38th parallel.
This fact should make us pause. The Korean War happened just five short years after the end of World War II, which the US emerged from with the greatest military the world had ever seen. China on the other hand had, even more recently, emerged from a brutal civil war (the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949). On top of the internal death and destruction, China was one of the poorest and least industrialized major nations in the world. And yet somehow, despite these huge disadvantages, they fought us to a draw.
One might conclude that if the Chinese “tied” the US when they were poor and ill-equipped, now that they’re rich and technologically advanced, they’re going to easily win the next confrontation. This is almost certainly an overly simplistic way of looking at things, that said I think there may nevertheless be the kernel of something worth worrying about in this comparison.
Those who think it’s misguided to compare a future conflict over Taiwan with the previous conflict in Korea, might offer all sorts of caveats for it ending in a draw. The US military was forbidden from attacking China itself. We didn’t unleash our full might. (In particular nuclear weapons, despite MacArthur’s argument that we should.) Our heart wasn’t in it to the same extent as it had been during WWII—the stakes weren’t existential. The terrain of North Korea, particularly in the east, is very mountainous, which defanged many of our technological advantages. The Chinese and North Koreans had Soviet help. I could continue, but those are the major points.
In spite of these caveats, I still think it’s worth digging deeper. One of the difficulties faced when making geopolitical decisions is the relative paucity of previous lessons from which to draw. Wars between great powers are rare, and each one looks different—with different adversaries, different weapons and different motivations. So when you encounter similarities in any dimension it’s worth examining them. Accordingly I think there might be some interesting points to be drawn out of the Korean War which may bear on a possible (inevitable?) conflict over Taiwan.
II.
Before we dive into the nitty gritty of Korea, it’s worth taking a higher level view of things. What determines national military prowess? Francis Fukuyama had an interesting answer to that question in his book The End of History and the Last Man. (See my discussion of the book here.) Fukuyama got a lot of grief for, supposedly, claiming that history had ended. This criticism was unfair, he was not claiming this; rather he asserted that there were no remaining systems that could credibly compete with liberal democracy. And rather than being triumphal he expressed doubts about liberal democracy’s ability to provide long term meaning (the “Last Man” part of the title).
As interesting as that is, we’re interested in his conclusions about war. You can’t credibly compete on the world stage, much less be the last system standing, if you are unable to win wars. It doesn’t matter how repressive, or how awful a system is, if it’s better at waging war it will eventually supplant the less repressive, kinder system. Fortunately for those of us who prefer liberal democracy to communism, it turned out both to be less repressive, and also better at waging war. But why?
In Fukuyama’s account of things, it comes down to technology. A society that promotes free and open inquiry will have better science and better science leads to better technology which leads to better weapons. Additionally, the accompanying free and open market can produce more of those weapons.
You might be wondering how this played out in Korea. The Chinese had very poor technology while the Americans had the best technology in the world. This didn’t mean it was a cakewalk for the Americans, but neither did it mean that technology was unimportant. The North Koreans very nearly won the war in the first few weeks as they rapidly overran all but a small corner of South Korea, forcing the UN forces to make a final stand at the Pusan Perimeter. They were only able to hold on thanks to the fact that they had total air superiority. This allowed them to disrupt supply lines, strafe enemy troops, and most importantly provide close air support during critical engagements.
(Even with this massive advantage, had the Chinese been part of the initial invasion the UN still would have lost. One assumes this has not gone unnoticed during their planning for a potential conflict over Taiwan.)
Once the perimeter was stabilized, technology and US naval dominance was used in a brilliant stroke of maneuver warfare: the Inchon Landing. Technology was used to insert a huge force behind the North Korean front line, mostly cutting their supply routes and completely disrupting the offensive. After this encirclement the North Korean army largely disintegrated.
This would have been the end of things if the Chinese hadn’t intervened. Until then the war could have been viewed as a Fukuyamian triumph of liberal democracy’s war fighting prowess. Not only did the Americans (technically the UN Forces) have more advanced weapons, but they had more of those weapons. These weapons had turned defeat into victory first at Pusan, and later at Inchon. But as we know the story didn’t end there. For a variety of reasons which seem obvious in hindsight, China did enter the war, causing it to grind on for more than two and a half years before ending in an unceremonious draw.
III.
What happens in a potential future conflict when our technology is much closer to being equal? What would Fukuyama say then?
One aspect that’s particularly interesting is the difference in manufacturing capacity. I’ve been including that under the broad heading of liberal democracy’s technological advantage. But perhaps this advantage is not unique to liberal democracy, as it appears we have lost that advantage. I’m not sure whether it’s more accurate to round this to a tie or more accurate to say that the Chinese have a slight edge. But, in a long, attritional war, particularly one that’s close to China (e.g. Taiwan) we would have a difficult, though not impossible, time matching them.
Beyond the concrete concerns of materiel, there are a few areas of comparison that are less tangible.
One very important consideration is the aspect of readiness. The US has more recent experience with actual combat. On the other hand this combat has not been particularly taxing. Also to the extent that the US Navy trains and prepares, that preparation has to encompass situations and responsibilities from all over the globe. China only has one focus, and they pursue it with a single-minded determination.
Into this mix we need to throw various wildcards. Do the lessons of the Ukrainian war bear on the situation in Taiwan? If so, who is going to prove better at adopting and adapting these tactics? Another consideration: the Chinese military is almost entirely unproven, will they underperform like the Russians or will they be all the stronger having learned from Russia’s mistakes? Beyond that, there are all manner of little factors: luck, planning, new technology, old technology. To pluck one example out of many which could be used. China has placed great hopes in large anti-ship missiles which they hope will be able to take out US carriers. And on the other side the US is confident that they will be able to stop such missiles. A lot will depend on who ends up being correct.
Finally there’s the issue of morale and national will. Xi Jinping has made the forcible unification with Taiwan the centerpiece of his “reign”. He would suffer unrecoverable loss of face were he to fail. On the other hand, it’s not even certain that Trump is going involve the US in the defense of Taiwan when the time comes.. (ChatGPT gives a 60-70% chance that he delays or declines to assist.)
That’s the situation at the highest level, what about when we consider the average soldier? This is where examining the last time we fought China gets particularly interesting.
IV.
I recently finished reading the book This Kind of War by T. R. Fehrenbach. As you might have guessed, it's a history of the Korean War. Fehrenbach is pretty scathing when describing the American military and its soldiers at the beginning of the war. He contends that the mass conscription of WWII, and the training difficulties it entailed, resulted in a lot of bad leaders. In response to complaints about these leaders the Army over-reacted and ended up treating new recruits with kid gloves:
Now an N.C.O. greeted new arrivals with a smile. Where once he would have told them they made him sick to his stomach, didn’t look tough enough to make a go of his outfit, he now led them meekly to his company commander. And this clean-cut young man, who once would have sat remote at the right hand of God in his orderly room, issuing orders that crackled like thunder, now smiled too. “Welcome aboard, gentlemen. I am your company commander; I’m here to help you. I’ll try to make your stay both pleasant and profitable.”
This was all very democratic and pleasant—but it is the nature of young men to get away with anything they can, and soon these young men found they could get away with plenty.
A soldier could tell a sergeant to blow it. In the old Army he might have been bashed, and found immediately what the rules were going to be. [Now] the most likely outcome was for the man to be chided for being rude, and requested to do better in the future.
As a result of this, the American army seriously underperformed at the beginning of the war. But even after they improved Fehrenbach contends that the never reached the toughness of their Chinese enemies or even some of their UN allies.
For an example, consider the Turks. Fehrenbach was particularly impressed by the Turkish contingent, and he made some startling claims about the differences between their soldiers and the Americans. First he discussed how the Turks fought:
Tall, pale-eyed men with dark faces, in heavy greatcoats, wielding long bayonets, the Turks refused to fall back. There were observers who said some officers threw their hats to the ground, marking a spot beyond which they would not retreat, and, surrounded by the enemy, died “upon their fur.” There were others, all else failing, who threw cold steel at the enemy in bayonet charges. Rarely has a small action, dimly seen, sketchily reported, sent such intimations of glory flashing across the world.
Then he described the difference between Turkish and American culture with respect to those that had perished:
It was deeply ironic later, when the American Government, badly concerned with Turkish public opinion concerning their losses, sent quiet apologies to Turkish authorities. The Turks hardly knew what the Americans were talking about. The Turks, however badly used, had come to fight, and above all else Turks were proud of what their men had done.
And finally he describes how the Americans and Turks dealt with being POWs in a camp they called “Death Valley”:
The prisoners remained in Death Valley from the day after Christmas until 12 March 1951, and each day men died. They died of war wounds, of infection, pneumonia, dysentery. In most cases malnutrition was a contributing factor.
Each day Shadish and other doctors went to the filthy, crowded, lice-ridden, fecal-smelling huts, taking the sickest to the hospital.
Each night Sergeant Schlichter reported to the Chinese commandant the number who had died. There were some Turks and ROK’s with the Americans. To Schlichter’s knowledge, not one Turk had died.
Perhaps Fehrenbach makes too much of this difference. Perhaps in the time between the war and his book the stories have become exaggerated.
Perhaps Fehrenbach is too critical of the Americans, and too easy on the Turks. Despite all of this, troop morale, training, and even bravery is important. Presumably Americans will not be required to die “upon their fur”, but if they were could they?
Could the Taiwanese?
Could the Chinese?
V.
When considering a potential future conflict over Taiwan, we appear to be “tied” on a number of fronts. To this we must add the sobering fact that the last time we fought the Chinese, we were not tied on any of these fronts. We had vast advantages, and yet the outcome was a “tie” all the same.
In light of this previous outcome it should worry us that we no longer possess these advantages. It should worry us that we seem close to being even along most of the dimensions which matter. Should conflict arise what will break the “tie”?
Might it not come down to national will and the quality of the soldiers? We’ve already considered the difference in national will. What about differences among the actual rank and file? This is one of the great unknowns, and frequently pre-conflict predictions turn out to be either wildly optimistic or wildly pessimistic.
To consider one recent example the Ukrainians were supposed to quickly collapse in 2022, but instead they rose to the challenge. Many then assumed that Putin would have trouble continuing what was initially a limited invasion, but prisoner recruitment and other mobilization strategies have allowed them to grind on day after day. Will Taiwan be as resilient as Ukraine? Will China be as implacable as Russia?
Based on Fehrenbach’s assessment, the Chinese possessed both implacability and toughness in Korea. One imagines that they did it solely out of fear, but Fehrenbach claims otherwise:
Under continuous indoctrination, CCF soldiers fought more from pride and belief in their cause, and less from fear of their leaders.
Obviously “continuous indoctrination” played a big part, but also I don’t think that’s changed very much. How much “pride and belief in their cause” will they possess this time around? Enough to prove decisive? To break a “tie”?
The modern Chinese military is a long way from the peasant army that was sent into Korea, and the US military is a long way from the pampered soldiery present during the early days of that conflict. Despite this I believe it’s safe to say the US military still does more pampering than it should, and there’s more toughness in China than we want to admit.
We will continue speculating over and worrying about these differences until that potentially fateful day when we will at last know for certain what matters and what didn’t.
I’m going to be gone on a trip to Norway and Iceland for the next couple of weeks. Despite this I’m hoping to get some book reviews out, but I make no promises. If you somehow, in this day and age, don’t have enough to read you can check out my archives.
People are worried about a lot of things at the moment, but one thing near the top of everyone’s list is a war between the US and China over the fate of Taiwan. What most people have forgotten is that the US already fought a war with China. It’s easy to overlook this previous conflict because we called it the Korean War (and initially it wasn’t even called a war). This is understandable given that it took place in Korea. As such, it’s forgivable to overlook the huge Chinese involvement. But for most of the war the Chinese were our primary opponents. (At its peak 80% of enemy troops were Chinese.)
Can we draw any lessons from our last war with China when considering the possible outcomes of a future war with the same adversary? There are certainly worse places to look for information.
The first thing we might look at is the outcome. How did we do? How did the war end? This part, at least, most people remember. It ended in a draw. After costing the lives of at least four million people (soldiers and civilians) the final truce line was very close to the original dividing line of the 38th parallel.
- A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural by: Peter L. Berger
- The Four Cardinal Virtues by: Josef Pieper
- Analects by: Confucius
- Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious by: Ross Douthat
Someone needs to point out the potential problems with superforecasting. For some reason it as fallen to me.
The movement is called anti-aging, not anti-injury. How do people who believe they have a real shot at immortality interact with the phenomena of safetyism?
- The Moral Sense by: James Q. Wilson
- The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 2]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (1918-1956) by: Alekandr Solzhenitsyn
- Stalin's War: A New History of World War II by: Sean McMeekin
- Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's by: Charles Piller
- How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain by: Peter S. Goodman
- Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by: Sarah Wynn-Williams
- Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by: Dan Sullivan
Getting people to have more children may be as difficult as getting people to abandon their four-door sedan for a horse and buggy.
Three translations of a classic, high brow literary fiction, a great book from a friend of and mine then a whole lot of pulp. Also something that might be the beginnings of a book by Neal Stephenson.
If integration is straightforward how is it that the former East Germany is so different ideologically from the former West Germany?
- Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification by: Timur Kuran
- Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism by: Scott Horton
- The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume 1 by: Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet by: Gernot Wagner & Martin L. Weitzman
- The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914 by: Philipp Blom
- The Lion's Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War by: Steven Pressfield
In which I decide that I am not going to read "Wind and Truth". And also that 63 hours on audio is just ridiculous.
- The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea by: M. David Litwa
- Existential Kink: Unmask Your Shadow and Embrace Your Power by: Carolyn Elliott
- The Ballad of the White Horse by: G. K. Chesterton
- American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology by: D.W. Pasulka
- Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences by: D.W. Pasulka
- Undreaming Wetiko: Breaking the Spell of the Nightmare Mind-Virus by: Paul Levy
A method for making better decisions should you ever find yourself in Kathmandu, or paying for SEO, or hoping to see the Supreme Court.
- Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine: Essays on Living Better by: Bryan Caplan
- Anaximander: And the Birth of Science by: Carlo Rovelli
- The Social Conquest of Earth by: Edward O. Wilson
- The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class by: David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim
- Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by: Donald Miller
- The Power of Having Fun: How Meaningful Breaks Help You Get More Done by: Dave Crenshaw
- The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change by: Yoram Bauman and Grady Klein
- The Little Book of Aliens by: Adam Frank
You have probably heard about Rotherham, and the child sex abuse rings that existed there (and may still be operating). As with so many things these days, this story entered the public discussion when Musk tweeted about it. For many people I’ve talked to, this was the first they’d heard of it. I actually spoke about about it in 2018. At the time I felt I was late to the game, but apparently I was six years ahead of most people. Given the story's re-emergence I thought it might be worth dusting off that old piece. I think it holds up pretty well, particularly the part about the woeful lack of reporting on the topic.
I have lightly edited it, smoothing things out in a few places, adding commas, that sort of thing. Temporal references have not been updated, so when I say “a week ago” I’m referring to 2018.
Even if you’ve already read a lot about these horrific crimes, there are a few takes in here that I haven’t seen elsewhere
Exactly five years ago, China identified a “novel coronavirus” and the world was introduced to the term “wet market”. In the time since then arguments continue to rage about the source of the virus, the measures that were taken, and the vaccines that were created.
In the midst of all these arguments, everyone seems to agree on one thing: extended school closures were a bad idea. It’s very easy to continue on from that to assume the harms of such closures were obvious from the very beginning—that they happened only because we were blinded by fear. Some people don’t go quite so far, but nevertheless argue that such closures were implemented hastily and without much consideration. But consider this quote from the Michael Lewis book Premonition on the role of disease modeling:
The graph illustrated the effects on a disease of various crude strategies: isolating the ill; quarantining entire households when they had a sick person in them; socially distancing adults; giving people antiviral drugs; and so on. Each of the crude strategies had some slight effect, but none by itself made much of a dent, and certainly none had the ability to halt the pandemic by driving the disease’s reproductive rate below 1. One intervention was not like the others, however: when you closed schools and put social distance between kids, the flu-like disease fell off a cliff. (The model defined “social distance” not as zero contact but as a 60 percent reduction in kids’ social interaction.) “I said, ‘Holy shit!’ ” said Carter. “Nothing big happens until you close the schools. It’s not like anything else. It’s like a phase change. It’s nonlinear. It’s like when water temperature goes from thirty-three to thirty-two. When it goes from thirty-four to thirty-three, it’s no big deal; one degree colder and it turns to ice.
- A Gentleman in Moscow by: Amor Towles
- The Humans by: Matt Haig
- Super-Cannes: A Novel by: J. G. Ballard
- Monster Hunter: International by: Larry Correia
- Monster Hunter: Vendetta by: Larry Correia
Three things converged for me recently and at the point of their convergence was the issue of placing women in frontline combat roles.
The first leg of the convergence was the election of Donald Trump. We’re still debating the reasons why he won, but certainly a reassertion of gender differences are near the top of everyone’s list. For example, allowing natal men into women’s sports.
The second was Trump’s nomination of Pete Hesgeth for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth’s nomination is controversial for a lot of reasons, but one of the controversies is his opinion that women should not be allowed into front line combat roles.
Finally, I just got done watching the miniseries Band of Brothers, while at the same time re-reading the Stephen E. Ambrose book it’s based on. I would highly recommend the exercise (see my review of the book here.) In addition to being enjoyable it reminded me of how physical, grimy, and desperate combat can be. And of course the theme of both the book and the series is that Easy Company was so effective because they had developed strong bonds of brotherhood through the numerous challenges they overcame. These challenges include D-Day, Market Garden, liberating concentration camps, and finally being the first into Hitler’s stronghold at Eagle’s Nest. But if you were to pick the hardest thing they did, it was probably defending Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.
Watching and reading about Bastogne was a sobering experience. It is also the point where the three things I just mentioned crystallized into this line of inquiry. Given that it might be helpful to give you a brief overview of the Siege of Bastogne...
- Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict by: Ara Norenzayan
- A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains by: Max Bennett
- The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump by: Max Blumenthal
- What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by: Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan
- The Laws of Trading: A Trader's Guide to Better Decision-Making for Everyone by: Agustin Lebron
- Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by: Oliver Burkeman
- Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest by: Stephen E. Ambrose
- The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement by: Sharon McMahon
- AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference by: Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor
- Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory by: Peter Hessler
- On Grand Strategy by: John Lewis Gaddis
- Leisure: The Basis of Culture by: Josef Pieper
- Anatomy of the State by: Murray Rothbard
- The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
- Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration by: David Roberts
- The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War by: Michael Shaara
He talks about the Village, and the River, but what we really need is a Redoubt.
On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything
By: Nate Silver
Published: 2024
576 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
There are two different ways of approaching the world: the River, which thinks in terms of numbers, expected values, and quantification and the Village, which is the paternalistic expert class which manifests as the vast bureaucracy.
What's the author's angle?
I got the impression that Silver just wanted to write about things that interested him. Because of this, his thesis was kind of tacked on. That said, he is a fairly passionate advocate for things that interest him.
Who should read this book?
Silver is worried that people will skip the first half of the book which is about gambling, but in reality that was the best part, or at least the part I found to be novel. The second part is about Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), AI, and all the stuff you’ve already heard too much about if you spend much time online. With this in mind, I think there are three reasons to read this book:
- If you want a deep exploration of high-level poker playing.
- You have never heard of AI Risk or SBF.
- If you think my discussion of Silver’s model of the Village vs. the River is incomplete.
Specific thoughts: An mashup of the election and this book
...
One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, Volumes 1 & 2
By: Whitney Alyse Webb
Briefly, what are these books about?
The alleged connections between organized crime and national intelligence agencies which led to the numerous illicit operations including Watergate, Iran-Contra, the JFK Assassination, and of course the entire Jeffrey Epstein mess.
A key component of these operations was the tactic of collecting blackmail and using it to convince people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t.
What's the author's angle?
Charitably, Webb is an autodidact with an enormous command of facts and connections.
Uncharitably, she’s someone with a weak evidentiary filter making conspiratorial mountains out of tenuously connected molehills.
Who should read these books?
No one should just read them. You should either ignore them or study them intently as part of an “Intro to Conspiracy Theories” curriculum. Of the two I would recommend the former. Read on to see why.
I- How does one approach a book like this?
...
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane by: Neil Gaiman
- There Is No Antimemetics Division by: qntm
- The Man Who Had All the Luck by: Arthur Miller
- How Green Was My Valley by: Richard Llewellyn
- Theft of Fire: Orbital Space #1 by: Devon Eriksen
- Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 1) by: Robin Hobb
- Royal Assassin (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 2) by: Robin Hobb
With the enormous increase in the power of AI (specifically LLMs) people are using them for all sorts of things, hoping to find areas where they’re better, or at least cheaper than humans. FiveThirtyNine (get it?) is one such attempt, and they claim that AI can do forecasting better than humans.
Scott Alexander, of Astral Codex Ten, reviewed the service and concluded that they still have a long way to go. I have no doubt that this is the case, but one can imagine that this will not always be the case. What then? My assertion would be that at the point when AI forecasting does “work” (should that ever happen) it will make the problems of superforecasting even worse.2
I- The problems of superforecasting What are the problems of superforecasting?
...
- The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by: Michael A. Singer
- Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It by: Ethan Kross
- The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World by: John Mark Comer
- Dumb Money: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees by: Ben Mezrich
- Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results by: Shane Parrish
- Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos by: Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam
- Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by: James C. Scott
This post represents a new feature (experiment?) I plan to occasionally write posts which take advantage of one or more books I read recently, but which aren’t actually reviews of those books. See, for example, my last post: Superminds, States, and the Domestication of Humans.
Despite the fact that the books feature heavily in these posts, I assume my adoring fans still want actual reviews. But it doesn’t make sense to wait until the next book review collection for those reviews to appear, nor does it make sense to cram the reviews into the original essay which was about something else. And so I thought that instead I would have the reviews quickly follow the essay as sort of supplementary material. So that’s what this is. Let me know what you think.
How durable is the state? How resistant is it to being overthrown? How closely does it reflect our desires? Is it possible it has its own desires?
But maybe more importantly how does all this affect the possibility of a very close election in November?
DON'T DIE: Dialogues
By: Bryan Johnson
Published: 2023
247 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
How best to extend the lifespan of humans and the lifetime of humanity presented in the form of a fictional dialogue between various aspects of the author's personality.
What's the author's angle?
Bryan Johnson is a biohacker who measures dozens and dozens of biomarkers. As a result of this he claims to be aging at 64/100th the normal rate. He’s also a former and, as near as I can tell, disaffected member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Who should read this book?
If you’re really into lifespan expansion, then maybe? Or similarly very concerned with X-risks? But I will warn you that the book is written in one of the more annoying styles I’ve ever encountered. Not only does it directly impede the transmission of information, it actively works against its inclusion..
Specific thoughts: A strange approach to X-risks.
I should start by speaking more about the style of the book. As mentioned, it’s a dialogue between different aspects of the author. We have the characters of Dark Humor, Game Play, Model Builder, Farm Boy, Seeks Authority, and at least a half dozen others. In the hands of a skilled author this might have resulted in a fascinating psychological dialogue. Johnson does not possess that level of skill, so instead of delivering a profound treatise on the challenges confronting humanity with a multidimensional point of view, he ends up creating a dozen or so annoying one dimensional caricatures. You know those people who won’t shut up about AI, or global warming, or Trump, or veganism? Now imagine 12 of those people, arguing for 250 pages.
As a result of this style, ideas are siloed into the fragmented personality buckets, and then further broken up by the dialogue into brief exclamations rather than cohesive principles. Questions are raised and never answered, either because the dialogue moves in a different direction or because the “character” that raised them is not one of the three or four central personalities. But isn’t that the whole point of having all of these personalities? To raise the same objections the readers have, and have those objections answered?
If you can get past the annoying structure and the weird narcissism (who writes a book where every single character is them?), Johnson is making arguments about how to deal with future technology and future risk. The personality aspect which seems to be a clear stand-in for Johnson’s true opinion is Blueprint. Blueprint is also far and away the most annoying. Like Johnson, Blueprint tracks dozens of biomarkers, is fixated on longevity, and eats a “pre-masticated” slurry of his own devising at very specific times.
At a certain point you begin to wonder why Johnson didn’t just write a book explaining his ideas. I’m not sure what he thought he was gaining with the strange conceit of having twelve different versions of himself engage in a weird version of therapy. I guess in a certain sense it models how he talked himself into all of these avant-garde ideas, and the dialogue has been an effective path of enlightenment since Plato. Unfortunately there are no fully realized characters in Johnson’s version, and his arguments have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, or paradoxically fail to land at all.
I’ve spent a lot of time discussing the framing, but what are these ideas exactly? This excerpt is probably the best summary:
It was that moment when I realized what Blueprint was getting at with what appeared, at first, to be just a vain, anti-aging agenda of someone who lost their religion and needed to pick up the emotional pieces of the wreckage. No, it was much bigger than that. He was in the middle of the biggest magic trick he would ever pull: trying to get people to have individual and bodily familiarity with sensors, feedback loops, and the rigors of what it really takes to reverse something as impossibly unidirectional seeming as biological aging … as the first step in reversing something as impossibly unidirectional seeming as climate change or whatever plagues our future.
To restate it without the self-congratulatory flourishes: longevity is a really hard problem. If we can crack that problem—if we can accomplish the seemingly impossible project of living much, much longer—this will give us the confidence and the tools to crack all of humanity’s seemingly impossible problems.
Okay, so how do we solve aging? Apparently you start by consuming a premasticated slurry, and tracking everything under the sun about your health. For those that don’t want to do this—and Johnson is at least wise enough to know that most people won’t—there’s biological programming. Here’s one of the relevant excerpts from the book:
It’s not correct to say the past century was the century of physics. It was the century of programmable physics. Likewise, the twenty-first century is going to be the century of programmable biology. It’s already here in pieces. We’ve had our Wright Brothers moments. The sequencing of the human genome was probably the analog to that. How long did it take to go from that to the Moon? Sixty years? So what will genomes be like in sixty years? Unimaginably different from 1999, when the genome was first fully sequenced. And just like flight, which is a fight against the laws of nature and gravity, we will be able to print proteins, design proteins, create artificial telomerases and enzymes and the like. We will be able to fully program our present, our future, and our biological destiny.
Later he follows up this ten thousand foot view with a more practical description:
And so, Farm Boy, my point is simply that you can use your phone, right? It’s made to be readable by someone who cannot program or design microchips, right? You don’t need to know how cell towers work or how your voice gets alchemically transduced into a signal and then uncompressed on the other end as it gets bounced around cell towers or satellites or whatnot. You just have to know a phone number and a name and what you want to do with the device. That’s all. And so of course you’re not going to need to know how to program your darn body. You’ll get a few little buttons, like a thermostat, and you can tell it to turn to heat or cool and what your desired temperature is and everything else will do all the work. Just like every device ever. The point is not that we will all become programmers. The point is that the programming will be possible, and entire financial and technical ecosystems will sprout around the ability for an individual to pipe in their desires to their body and mind in a way that is unfathomable to us right now.
There’s this feeling currently that if some technology is not actually impossible that it will be mastered very soon.You see this very much in the realm of AI. Coming from that viewpoint it’s entirely understandable that Johnson would think that programmable bodies are right around the corner. And perhaps he’s right. There’s certainly some evidence to suggest he is, but I would assert that we’re looking at more of an S-curve. We had a ridiculously rapid expansion of technology as we figured out “programmable physics”, but we’re starting to plateau on that. I don’t think “programmable biology” is on the same curve as airplanes and computers. I think it has its own S-curve, and decoding the human genome, and even CRISPR will turn out to be more akin to Newton quantifying gravitation and inventing calculus than the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk.
This is not to say we won’t get there eventually (and also we might not) but eventually could easily be 50, 100, or even 200 years from now, particularly if we’re talking about literally having an app on your phone with a slider for how strong you’d like to be or how long you want to live.1
What I am very confident of is that it’s not going to happen in the next twenty years. Why twenty years? Well, in addition to his ideas about life-extension, and programmable biology, Johnson/Blueprint also thinks that humanity will destroy itself and the planet in that time frame. Allow me to quote from the book:
I said, “Let’s actually do that poll. It’s a good one. Everybody gives their guess as to what percentage chance humanity has of destroying itself and our planet within, let’s say, within two decades. Blueprint, you lead.”
Blueprint: “One hundred percent.”
I suppose there’s some chance that Blueprint is not an avatar of Johnson.2 But that doesn’t matter, because Blueprint is the character putting forth these ideas, and if he thinks we can:
- Develop the ability to program biology
- To the point where we’ve solved aging
- Then use the tools and knowledge thus created to solve all outstanding risks to humanity
- All within the next twenty years.
Then he’s a severely delusional character who should not be taken seriously on anything. And it’s worse than that. If the chance that “humanity will destroy itself and our planet” in twenty years is 100%, then the chance we’ll do it in nineteen years is not going to be zero. It’s going to be very close to 100%. And the chance that we’ll do it in ten years has to be significant (even 10% is significant when you’re talking about the destruction of everyone and everything.) In other words in order to guarantee we avoid destruction we need to do all of the above in the next five years.
For me this revelation of Johnson’s certainty about the end of humanity was the biggest head-scratcher in the whole book, and it overshadows nearly everything else that’s going on.3 All of this is not to say that Johnson is obviously wrong. He could be right, but if he is, he should be writing books with a detailed plan of action titled: “We have FIVE YEARS to avert the apocalypse!” Not esoteric dialogues between annoying caricatures of himself.
This is basically the first example of my new plan to give some book reviews their own post. I’m hoping it will make them easier to find for people who really do want a review of a specific book. And I guess it also makes them easier to ignore as well if you’re not interested in that particular book. But that’s also a good thing. My aim is not to “generate clicks”. My aim is to provide some small amount of epistemological utility to the world.
1Imagine the “Are you sure?” dialogue after you click the “I’m ready to die” button. And I didn’t even get into wireheading in this review. Would there also be an “Experience overwhelming orgasmic pleasure?” button? What keeps people from mashing that?
2I read this for an SSC/ACX book club I belong to. When we met I asked them if Blueprint was a stand-in for Johnson and they all emphatically agreed that there was no other way to read the book.
3Though the fact that Johnson has apparently climbed Kilimanjaro, but then seems to locate it in Nepal is also a pretty big head-scratcher as well.
- Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by: George Chauncey
- The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised by: James Pethokoukis
- Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History by: Nellie Bowles
- Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir by: Werner Herzog
- The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale by: Art Spiegelman
- The Master and Margarita by: Mikhail Bulgakov
- The Buried Giant: A Novel by: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Naked Defiance: A Comedy of Menace by: Patrik Sampler
- The Riddle of the Third Mile (Inspector Morse Series Book 6) by: Colin Dexter
- Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Player's Handbook (D&D Core Rulebook) lead designer: Jeremy Crawford
- Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by: George Chauncey
- The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised by: James Pethokoukis
- Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History by: Nellie Bowles
- Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir by: Werner Herzog
- The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale by: Art Spiegelman
- The Master and Margarita by: Mikhail Bulgakov
- The Buried Giant: A Novel by: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Naked Defiance: A Comedy of Menace by: Patrik Sampler
- The Riddle of the Third Mile (Inspector Morse Series Book 6) by: Colin Dexter
- Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Player's Handbook (D&D Core Rulebook) lead designer: Jeremy Crawford
I’ve finally dug out after a very busy summer, and sworn to never again have a summer that’s quite so crazy. (Whether this oath will stick is another matter. It’s always interesting how I’m very good at keeping promises to other people, but mediocre at promises I make to myself.) Beyond that, to the extent that anyone can quantify something as amorphous as mojo, I think mine has returned! As part of that return, here's my plan moving forward.
- I’m going to start putting some of my book reviews in their own episodes. As someone pointed out, many of my book reviews are not particularly short (contra the title of this episode). When you combine that with the recent attention received by my review of Bad Therapy—which was easy to reference because it was all by itself—splitting off longer reviews seems like a way of better harnessing potential interest.
- As a result of the foregoing I’m hoping that I can get back to (mostly) publishing every week. In fact, based on another change I’m making, I might even be able to do more than that.
- It’s not going to be all book reviews. I have lots of other pent-up ideas. You’ll also be hearing a lot about forecasting, because I plan to write a book about it. This is territory I’ve covered extensively in the past. So ideally it will be reasonably straightforward to put together a book.
Of course all of this is subject to von Moltke the Elder’s famous observation, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” But it’s still important to have a plan regardless.1
For those that have stuck with me while I did whatever it was I was doing over the last year or so, I’m very appreciative, and for new readers, the best is yet to come (probably).
Non-Fiction ReviewsGay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940By: George Chauncey
Published: 1994
512 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
How male homosexuality was conducted and expressed in pre-war New York.
What's the author's angle?
Chauncey is a major gay rights advocate, and has been particularly prolific as an expert witness in gay rights cases. From Wikipedia:
Chauncey has testified as an expert witness in over thirty major gay rights cases, and was the organizer and lead author of the Historians' Amicus Brief in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which weighed heavily in the Supreme Court's landmark decision overturning the nation's remaining sodomy laws.
Who should read this book?
Most people’s understanding of gay history begins after World War II. The repression of the 50s, the gradual opening up during the 60s, Stonewall, the thawing over the decades until eventually same sex marriage was legalized and gays ended up with all the rights held by heterosexuals. If you imagine from this that the prewar period was like the 50s only even more tyrannical, this is the book for you.
Specific thoughts: Wow! There was a huge variety of homosexuality in early 1900’s New York
I grew up in rural Utah during the presidency of Ronald Reagen. I was in the Young Republicans when I was a senior in high school, and ended up in a campaign video for George H. W. Bush. Let’s just say that’s a long way from the gay scene in pre-war New York. Given this I bring significant, mostly unconscious, biases towards this book. I experienced an undersampling of libertine homosexuality in my youth. I dare say that this book offers up a huge oversampling, but given the aforementioned biases I’m not the best person to opine on the topic.
I do think I can say a few things however. First, in the pre-war period, homosexuals were not some tiny, hidden population, hounded into near extinction. At least not in New York. I assume that elsewhere, particularly in rural America, things were different, but in New York the gay scene was huge and quite a bit more aboveboard than I had imagined.
This does not mean that it was mainstream. It was something which was kept semi-secret. There seems to have been something of a tacit détente between the homosexual community and the police. The community would keep to certain areas and establishments, and the cops would pick up the occasional individual. But, there was never a huge crackdown, though things were obvious enough that there could have been.
Because it was not mainstream it was not necessary to fit it into a box. In the run-up to the legalization of gay marriage, one of the major talking points was that gays were just like everyone else, and they just wanted to get married, in the same fashion that hetrosexual couples did. This is not the impression one gets from reading this book. Chauncey describes all manner of behavior, and different distinctions and gradations of homosexuality. The biggest one (trying to put it delicately): having certain things done for you, did not make you gay, but having certain things done to you did.
The point I’m trying to build to: when something is illegal, but widespread, one can see all manner of behavioral variations. If it’s already illegal why not engage in your preferred “fetish”? Why not do whatever you feel like? But for something to become mainstream you have to file off the rough edges to fit it into the “mainstream box”. Or at least that’s my theory. Regardless, it seems clear that Chauncey regrets this loss of variety.
The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were PromisedBy: James Pethokoukis
Published: 2023
336 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
How conservative free-market principles are the best way to bring about a future of maximum happiness and material abundance.
What's the author's angle?
Pethokoukis is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. According to Wikipedia AEI favors private enterprise, limited government, and democratic capitalism. All of which is to say Pethokoukis is an ideological pundit, and this book is ideological punditry.
Who should read this book?
People who don’t want to read the longer (but superior) Where is My Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall. (See my discussion of that book here.)
Specific thoughts: We need a cultural conservative’s vision of the future.
I already know the economic conservative’s vision of the future—the free-market, technology-will-solve-all-our-problems, pro-business vision. It’s the operating ideology for numerous groups and individuals, from Silicon Valley all the way through to Matt Yglesias (on most days). What is vastly under-defined is a strong cultural conservative vision for the future, that is also actually futuristic (not retrograde). We’re getting something of that in the discussion of fertility decline, but it’s still a largely unexplored space. I had hoped that this book would do some of this exploration, but it did not. Instead it was basically the same thing Storr was saying in Where is My Flying Car? and the same thing Marc Andreessen was saying in his Techno-Optimist Manifesto. This is fine, but neither novel, nor particularly interesting once you’re hearing it for the fifth or sixth time.
Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of HistoryBy: Nellie Bowles
Published: 2024
272 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Peak wokeness from the perspective of someone who started as a NYT reporter and ended up mostly canceled.
What's the author's angle?
Bowles is not a fan of the events she’s describing and the book’s basic purpose is to point out how ridiculous it all was. In other words this is not a steelmanning of wokeness, but I don’t think it’s fair to call it a straw man either.
Who should read this book?
If you have forgotten how crazy things like CHAZ and abolish the police and antiracism got. Or if you want to revel in the ridiculousness, this is the book for you.
Specific thoughts: What happened? Were there consequences?
Reading this felt similar to reading Bad Blood, the inside story of the rise and fall of Theranos. There are points in both of these books where your jaw drops at the sheer insanity of the events being described; when you wonder how on earth did someone ever come to the conclusion that X was a good idea?
For Theranos the big questions are, how did the culture of Silicon Valley, the drive for innovation, the fear of missing out, and the greed of VCs create such a huge corporate facade?
For wokeness the big questions are how did elite liberal culture, the drive for justice, the fear of the status quo and the greed of social justice activists result in one of the largest episodes of widespread insanity the country has ever witnessed?
Along with these similarities there is one big difference: the outcome. Theranos is no more and Elizabeth Holmes is in jail. Everyone (or nearly everyone) agrees that the revolutionary technology Theranos claimed to have was an illusion. On the other hand, wokeness is still with us. Robin DiAngelo is still giving keynote speeches and many people believe the social justice revolution is just getting started.
That said, clearly things aren’t as crazy as they were in 2020, and perhaps it’s just going to take longer before we can truly acknowledge how insane ideas like “defund the police” really were. Certainly Harris and Democrats in general seem much more law and order at the moment. But I think there’s a lot of lingering madness which still remains to be rooted out. This book is valuable as an accounting of how much madness there was.
Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir By: Werner Herzog
Published: 2023
368 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
An autobiography of Werner Herzog, from his early childhood in WWII and impoverished post-war Germany to the present day.
What's the author's angle?
Herzog definitely has a very unique point of view, and you get the impression that he hasn’t modified it at all for this book. He couldn’t care less what you think of him.
Who should read this book?
If you have any affection at all for Herzog, or unique individuals in general, I think you’ll enjoy this book. And I wouldn’t read it, I would listen to it. Herzog does the narration and it’s fantastic.
Specific thoughts: Herzog doesn’t pull any punches
Perhaps you know someone who seemingly has no end of amazing stories, to the point where you start to wonder if perhaps he’s a pathological liar? But then as you get to know them better you realize they’re all true? That’s Herzog.
He’s been shot on camera.
He threatened to murder one of the actors on a film he was directing, and he meant it.
He “promoted” (i.e. stole) his first film camera.
He was trapped on top of a mountain during a monstrous blizzard for 55 hours.
The list goes on and on.
After doing all of that, he doesn’t care what people think about him, or his opinions. He’s going to give it to you straight. Which is why I love this quote from the book:
I have a deep aversion to too much introspection, to navel-gazing.
I’d rather die than go to an analyst, because it’s my view that something fundamentally wrong happens there. If you harshly light every last corner of a house, the house will be uninhabitable. It’s like that with your soul; if you light it up, shadows and darkness and all, people will become “uninhabitable.” I am convinced that it’s psychoanalysis—along with quite a few other mistakes—that has made the twentieth century so terrible. As far as I’m concerned, the twentieth century, in its entirety, was a mistake.
As big of a doomer as I am, I don’t think the entirety of the 20th century was a mistake, but I would agree that it is far more of a mixed bag than most people think.
The Complete Maus: A Survivor's TaleBy: Art Spiegelman
Originally Published: 1980–1991
296 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A graphic novel recounting the experiences of the author’s Jewish father during World War II. From his time as a young man in Poland through his stay in the concentration camps and, eventually, the end of the war.
Who should read this book?
I can’t think of many reasons why someone wouldn’t read this book. Certainly everyone should have a decent familiarity with the holocaust, and this book is one of the most pleasant ways to achieve familiarity with a very unpleasant topic. (I found it easier to read than Schindler's List was to watch, even if it took longer.)
Specific thoughts: A unique way to present things
This book has added several presentational layers all of which serve to create some distance between the reader and the story. Which is probably necessary, since it’s such an awful story. The first and most obvious is the fact that it’s a graphic novel. Secondly, as the title alludes to. Rather than being depicted as humans the Jews are depicted as anthropomorphic mice and the Germans are depicted similarly as cats. Finally there is the outside story of Speigelman’s father in the present day relating his experiences of the war. The present day story includes its own plots and twists. (These are mostly related to the rocky relationship between the father and his second wife.)
Taken together, these artifices make it a very interesting book, even before we get to the story. But then the story itself, how a Jew living in Poland at the beginning of the war, managed to survive to the other side, is one of the most enthralling you’ll ever read.
Fiction ReviewsThe Master and Margarita By: Mikhail Bulgakov
Published: 1967
448 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The devil visits Soviet Moscow and raises havoc. Also there’s a story about Pontius Pilate.
Who should read this book?
This book feels very Russian to me, if that means anything to you. I very much enjoyed some sections and was bored by others. It’s heavily satirical, and widely considered to be a modern classic. If any of that triggers some degree of yearning in you, you’ll probably enjoy the book.
Specific thoughts: The Devil in literature
Wikipedia describes the novel thusly:
The story concerns a visit by the devil and his entourage to the officially atheistic Soviet Union. The devil, manifested as one Professor Woland, challenges the Soviet citizens' beliefs towards religion and condemns their behavior throughout the book. The Master and Margarita combines supernatural elements with satirical dark comedy and Christian philosophy, defying categorization within a single genre. It exhibits autobiographical elements, but is also dominated by many aspects of fiction. Many critics consider it to be one of the best novels of the 20th century, as well as the foremost of Soviet satires.
As I attempt to review it, the “defying categorization” seems very pertinent, but I do wonder if it belongs to that small genre of works that feature visits from “the” or a devil. Like Faust, The Devil and Daniel Webster, or even works like The Screwtape Letters and Paradise Lost. In these books the devil often steals the show, and is always a character of great interest. Why should that be? Why is he not a figure of abhorrence and disgust? I think this novel provides a good example why this should be.
The devil is great at puncturing the pretensions of the supposedly wise and mighty. He’s fantastic at taking people down a peg. This proves particularly easy to do in the “officially atheistic Soviet Union”.
We also like to see people get what they deserve, another thing at which the devil excels. We might entertain a fantasy that the person loudly talking on his cell phone and ignoring the comfort of those around him, will get run down by a car while talking on his cell phone and ignoring traffic. But for us to arrange that would be a great crime. However, if the devil does it, it seems not only just, but humorous.
There are points later in the book where the Devil acts more like the Faerie King than the avatar of fitting punishment (I’m thinking in particular of the Satan’s Ball scene). These are the parts I found boring.
As one final thought, I can already tell that this will be one of those novels where the longer I sit with it, the more I’ll appreciate it.
The Buried Giant: A NovelBy: Kazuo Ishiguro
Published: 2015
317 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The journey of an elderly couple (Axl and Beatrice) through Ishiguro’s version of post-Arthurian England. The primary feature of the setting is a memory-destroying mist which lays over the land. The couple decide to act on the dim memories of their son by journeying to visit him, before those memories are entirely lost. Along the way they encounter a warrior, a cursed boy, and an aged Knight of the Round Table.
Who should read this book?
Those who would find a story about aging and forgetting to be cathartic. I read it because Freddie deBoer selected it for his book club.
Specific thoughts: The value of forgetting
The book starts on a melancholy note. Axl and Beatrice are sympathetic figures, and we’re made to experience their sorrows and mourn for what they have lost. Their forgetting is painful. But as the book goes on there are hints that some things are better forgotten. Some pains are better left buried. The difference between what should be remembered and what shouldn’t forms the major theme of the book. But balancing on that theme is the question of how forgetting plays into having a healthy relationship. If Ishiguro is to be believed most relationships would not work at all if there wasn’t some forgetting as the years pass.
Naked Defiance: A Comedy of MenaceBy: Patrik Sampler
Published: 2023
184 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The strange goings on within a radical collective of street artists, all culminating in a tragic end.
Who should read this book?
I don’t know. I’m not sure if this book fits into some style I’m unfamiliar with, and fans of that style would appreciate it. Absent that, perhaps it’s not the sort of thing anyone will love, though it’s not especially bad, just not exceptional on any axis.
Specific thoughts: Weird, but not weird enough?
Naked Defiance is a group that meets in the nude, so that’s where the “naked” part comes from. The “defiance” is a little bit harder to pin down. They come up with missions where they’re supposed to expose the fetishism of modern consumerism, but the missions mostly end up being strange ways of walking around. The main character, Florian, seems to be going through something, but it’s never really clear what. And he reconnects with a girl from his past, but that doesn’t really develop very much either. Eventually it seems like it’s going to be a story about the way progressive groups often collapse into infighting, but it’s too little too late. I liked the characters, and there are some interesting ideas, but they never really get fleshed out.
The Riddle of the Third Mile (Inspector Morse Series Book 6) By: Colin Dexter
Published: 1983
224 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A dismembered corpse is discovered in the Oxford canal, and Inspector Morse must figure out who it belongs to, and who did the dismembering, all while remembering his own, unsuccessful stint, at Oxford.
Who should read this book?
In this case I may not be qualified to judge. I don’t have a lot of experience with murder mysteries, but from the experience I do have, this one seemed subpar. Though I gather it’s one of the weaker entries in the Inspector Morse series.
Specific thoughts: So why this book?
You may find it odd that I started with the sixth book in the series. I really have tried to be more systematic in how I read, but someone mentioned this book in passing. I have long had the vague feeling I should read more murder mysteries (my wife and daughter love the genre) and before I really got around to questioning why I was reading the sixth book and not the first book I was halfway done. (In my mind this all happened in about 30 minutes, in reality it was about a week, but when you’re my age a week can feel like it went by in 30 minutes.)
As mentioned, I’ve heard it’s one of the weaker entries in the series (though on Goodreads it’s 3.85 and the first book is 3.83…) so I don’t know if it’s fair to judge the entire series by it, but I found it enormously convoluted, and entirely unbelievable. That said, I am not a connoisseur of this genre, and beyond that I’m a bear of very little brain, so perhaps it’s just me. I did like Morse, and his sidekick Lewis.
RPG ReviewDungeons & Dragons 2024 Player's Handbook (D&D Core Rulebook)Lead Designer: Jeremy Crawford
Published: 2024
384 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A significant update to the Dungeon and Dragons Fifth Edition rules. Character classes appear to have received the biggest update, spells appear mostly unchanged, and races (now called species) and backgrounds fall somewhere in the middle.
Who should read this book?
This is not the sort of book you read cover to cover—though I came pretty close. This is the sort of book you acquire as a reference. If you’re going to play this new version you should definitely pick it up. If you’re just curious about changes I would buy an electronic copy on DNDBeyond.com. Or, even better, I believe they allow you to generate characters for free, doing that would probably give you most of the information you’re looking for.
Specific thoughts: Impressed by the crunch repelled by the art
As mentioned the character classes appear to have received the biggest reworking, and I liked just about all the changes. They are clearly more powerful than the previous 5E versions, which makes me interested to see how they balance that when it comes to monsters. The fact that they moved the initial stat boosts from races/species to backgrounds is also an improvement in my opinion. As a consequence of all this if I were planning on running a game of Dungeons and Dragons I would use this system.
However the art is pretty cringy, which I say knowing that art is pretty subjective. By saying it’s “cringe” I’m not saying that it’s not necessarily bad. I would even say that its “wokeness” (very broadly defined) has been overblown by those commenting on line. But… it definitely has a very specific aesthetic. I’ll try to explain:
When 4E was being introduced, they talked about most D&D settings being “points of light” settings—you have small enclaves of civilization that are surrounded by darkness, monsters, and looming death and destruction. I get the opposite feeling from the new art. I get the impression that the world of the new edition is a pastel wonderland, where people occasionally spend a weekend battling monsters in almost an amusement park fashion.
There’s one image which perfectly encapsulates what I mean. I would post it, but I’ve heard Wizards of the Coast has been draconian with Cease and Desist letters. So instead I’ll describe it. It’s a woman in a pastel dress with a purple pastel umbrella, she’s casting a spell with a wand, and the caption reads “A human Sorcerer chastises ghouls with the unpredictable energy of a Chromatic Orb.” Chastises??? Are they being impolite at her tea party? Did they get blood on her pretty dress? Did they forget to say please? Ghouls are ravening undead who paralyze the foolish and devour them while they yet live. You don’t chastise them, you hunt them through dark graveyards, and kill them in righteous holy anger all the while praying that they don't kill you first and force you to join them in their ravenings.
Speaking of ravenings… Oh I guess what I do is ravings, as in the “ravings of a madman”. If you want to hear me actually raving see the link at the top, for all of my ravings check out the podcast feed. Just search for “We Are Not Saved” in the podcast app of your choice.
1A more complete and accurate translation is “No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main force.” To put it in the language of forecasting I’ll assign a 60% confidence level to my plans.
Is God Disappointed in Me?: Removing Shame from a Gospel of GraceBy: Kurt Francom
Published: 2024
190 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?Our parents expect that we will do certain things—perhaps it’s cleaning our rooms, perhaps it’s becoming a doctor—when we don't, they're disappointed. We have a tendency to view God in the same fashion; He also has expectations, and when we fail to meet them we imagine that He is similarly disappointed. Francom claims this is a false belief. Because of God’s omniscience and infinite love, He cannot be disappointed. When we think He might be it leads to shame, which prevents us from accessing His love.
What’s the author’s angle?Francom is the director of Leading Saints, an organization whose primary focus is providing advice and resources for the lay leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’s also heavily involved with Warrior Heart a Christian men’s organization that runs retreats with a focus on addiction recovery. This book is part of those focuses and a personal expression of Francom’s approach to leadership and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
What’s My Angle?I’ve known Francom for going on ten years. As such I’ve been privy to his argument that God cannot be disappointed from his initial epiphany all the way down to his full, book-length treatment of the subject. As I’ve watched the idea develop, I’ve raised numerous objections. To Francom’s great credit most of these objections are at least acknowledged in the book. I suspect that I wasn’t the only one to raise these objections, but I fancy that he first heard of them from me.
My name is listed in the book’s acknowledgments but it’s pretty generic. I had hoped for something more like “And thanks to Ross Richey, if not for his relentless criticism, unending negativity, poor character, and dark soul, the book would have been less accurate, but probably more inspiring.”
Who should read this book?Despite my many criticisms, I still think everyone should read this book. Although there are nuances Francom overlooks (see the rest of the review) it brings up numerous engaging questions (see below). These are important for everyone to grapple with, not just those who are religious.
I- Can God be disappointed?The title of this book asks the question “Is God disappointed in me?” Francom answers with a resounding “No!” God not only is not disappointed in you, He can’t be disappointed, period. This has always struck me as a very bold statement. What’s his argument?
Francom asserts that to be disappointed one must be surprised. Given this clearly God cannot be disappointed, because His omniscience makes Him incapable of surprise. Case closed. Everyone can go home. Or you can read the rest of the book, which explains the negative effects of imagining (incorrectly) that not only can God be disappointed, He is disappointed…in you! Endlessly disappointed at the mistakes you’ve made, the opportunities you’ve squandered, and the sins you’ve committed. Of course not everyone believes this all the time, but enough people believe it enough of the time that, in Francom’s telling, it’s a big problem. This sense of deep and perpetual disappointment causes a spiral of shame which only makes all of the problems you’re trying to overcome even worse. We will get to shame by and by, but first I think we need to take a closer look at Francom’s initial assumptions, while also going on a little tangent:
I’m not sure how many non-Latter-day Saints are going to end up reading this review. Probably not a ton, but regardless I’ll do my best to make it non-denominational, though that may be difficult. (In some respects Latter-day Saints have a very different conception of God than many Christians.) I bring this up now because we’re going to be jumping right into the deep end.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is led by fifteen prophets and apostles. Three of these apostles form the First Presidency, with one being designated as The Prophet and President of the Church. This office is currently held by Russell M. Nelson. Outside of the First Presidency, the remaining twelve apostles form the Quorum of the Twelve apostles, modeled on Jesus’ original twelve apostles.
With that background, I’d like to direct your attention to a clip from a eulogy given by one apostle, Elder Holland, for another apostle, Elder Ballard, on the occasion of his funeral in 2023. Speaking of when he was recently called to a high level position within the church and finding out he would be working closely with Elder Ballard, who terrified him, Elder Holland said the following:
That night in my bedroom I dropped to my knees in a state of despair. I knew I was going to disappoint Elder Ballard, the First Presidency, the Lord, myself, everyone in this new assignment. I wept.
This is one of the most senior members of the Church, and he certainly seemed to feel that it was possible to disappoint God. How do we square this with Francom’s assertion that it’s not. Is Elder Holland perhaps not aware of God’s omniscience? Is this an example of what Francom is talking about? Are we to assume that even someone as dedicated and faithful as Elder Holland could be brought low by incorrectly assuming God could be disappointed?
I would offer up an alternative explanation. I think Elder Holland is using a different definition for disappointment than Francom. Francom’s definition of disappointment is too narrow, and beyond that legalistic. I (and presumably Elder Holland) don’t believe that disappointment has to necessarily involve surprise. Allow me to offer my own example:
One of my children was terrible at doing homework (something he inherited from me). Every year we’d go to Parent Teacher Conference and his teachers would mention this fact. They would go on to note the negative effect it was having on his grades. Every time he would swear to do better, and over the following weeks he would claim to be on top of things and doing great. And yet, when the next Parent Teacher Conference arrived I would once again be told that he was still having the same problems he was having the last time. Was I surprised? Not in the slightest. Was I disappointed? Very. Most importantly, did I love him any less? Of course not, in fact, if possible, I might have loved him a little bit more, because I understood his struggles.
I’ll leave you to make your own judgment on God’s capacity for disappointment. Because the real meat of the book is how one’s perception of this disappointment affects a person. This is where we talk about shame.
II- The recent centrality of shameIt’s entirely understandable to ask why someone might do a bad thing—something that they know they shouldn’t do, and yet they do it anyway. This is a question people have been asking for as long as there have been people. Lately, it seems to me that a new answer has emerged, a new ideology if you will: We do bad things because we think we’re bad people, and bad people are obviously going to do bad things. And what makes us think we’re bad people? Shame.
As you can see from the subtitle, Francom wants to “remove shame from a gospel of grace”.1 But he’s certainly not the first to target shame specifically. I claim no particular expertise in this area, but I know that many people point to Brené Brown, as the most vocal anti-shame activist, if not also the first person to really draw broad attention to the topic. I’ve read one of her books, and while I found her charismatic and funny, I was also left with a lot of questions. Obviously feeling bad can encourage people to improve, so how does this square with shame being a bad thing rather than a good thing? Brown and others separate these bad feelings into two different categories: shame, and guilt. Guilt is good, but shame is bad.
As these anti-shame activists explain it, guilt is feeling that our actions have been flawed, and desiring to make amends, while shame is a feeling that we ourselves are flawed and therefore unworthy of love. Shame fundamentally changes our perception of ourself. Francom mentions this distinction, but also (to his credit) claims that it is overly simplistic. In his telling, shame is what happens when we repeatedly do things we feel guilty about. As this repetition happens we go from feeling guilt about a one time action we can fix, to the shame of feeling that, if we keep doing these bad things, then we must be bad people who inherently do these bad things. As Francom tells it, it changes our identity.
Francom identifies three components which shift a behavior from something we feel guilty about to something we’re ashamed of:
- The behavior carries a stigma
- It is done repeatedly
- Carries some level of enjoyment.2
His examples range from the relatively benign, like binging on social media, all the way up to the truly destructive, for example hardcore substance abuse. And he argues that once you have fallen prey to shame about such behaviors, recovery becomes much more difficult, because you have come to believe you’re incapable of recovery. You’re no longer worthy of God’s love. God is disappointed in you, and He is always going to be disappointed in you. So what point is there in trying?
As a result of this process, shame ends up as the main cause of all long-term wickedness and suffering. In the mundane sense, it prevents improvement. In the more spiritual sense, the only true wickedness is unrepented evil, and the only true suffering is being cut off from the love of God, and shame results in both conditions.
All of this is, as they say, “Big, if true”.
III- Shame is one branch, it’s not the rootI’m always leery of monocausal explanations. Which is what this description of shame appears to be. But beyond this general categorical objection, I have more specific objections to centering shame in this fashion. These objections fall into two buckets: religious and secular
Let’s start with the religious:
If shame, as constructed by Francom, Brown, and others, is such a huge deal why doesn’t it appear in the scriptures, or for my Latter-day Saint audience why hasn’t it been the subject of a General Conference talk?3 What we do find if we look at the scriptures and conference talks are constant exhortations to keep the commandments. We should be doing certain things and not doing other things! And yet if you listen to the anti-shame crusaders it is the continual expectations placed on us by these commandments and the fact that we’re constantly falling short which causes shame, which then causes the separation from God mentioned above. I won’t go so far as to claim that the scriptures are saying the exact opposite of what the anti-shame crusaders are saying, but you’re going to search in vain for full-throated support of the idea that shame is the main cause of unhappiness.
This is not to say that there’s not something potentially bad going on here. I think the bigger problem is that, when we consider what kinds of attitudes and emotions might cause us to be more likely to sin, there are all sorts of things in play. Francom seems to be describing something fairly narrow. I’ll cover all of the various buckets, including Francom’s in a moment, but first let’s try to steelman his argument a little bit.
The closest the scriptures come to talking about shame being bad and different than guilt is 2 Corinthians 7:10:
For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.
You could make the argument that godly sorrow is guilt, and worldly sorrow is shame. That when we sorrow because of what the world thinks of us, that’s shame. And when we allow worldly disappointment, which is everywhere, to convince us that godly disappointment is equally ubiquitous, that’s also worldly sorrow.
I remain unconvinced, but it is clear that “the world” is very much a part of the phenomena Francom is attempting to describe, so let’s move to the secular part of my objections.
After Francom explains his three components of shame (stigma, repetition, and enjoyment) he goes on to give the following example of how this might operate in even a relatively benign situation:
…this shame trifecta tactic also works against all of us in our daily lives.
Imagine you are a busy mother doing your best to raise wonderful children. You find yourself hyper-focused on some social media clips related to an “influencer” you enjoy following. You lose track of time until your six-year-old reminds you that she is starving. You notice it is almost 3 p.m. and you still haven’t fed your children lunch. You immediately feel guilt, but then the adversary [the devil] wants to move you past guilt into shame so that he can alter your perceived identity. You will then think about how your behavior as a mom is atypical, since most parents feed their children on time (stigma), this is one of many parental slipups you have had that week (repetition), and you realize you enjoy your social media time too much (payoff). You suddenly fall into the shame trifecta. You begin to believe you are a negligent mother and that God must be disappointed in who you are (identity).
Notice how contemporary everything about this example is. For most of recorded history a mother would just be glad that she had enough food for her children—the fact that there was food would overwhelm any guilt that it wasn’t served precisely on time. Add to that the wacky 21st century condition of being distracted by a stranger who makes her living broadcasting her life to the world. A condition which is further exacerbated by algorithms which do everything they can to encourage the repetition the mother is now feeling shame about!
On the one hand all of this is a counterargument to the point I mentioned above. It could be that the reason it’s not talked about in the scriptures, or by Latter-day Saint General Authorities is that it’s too recent—thus the need for this book. On the other hand, Francom doesn’t ever play up, or even mention this angle. I would agree that shame is as old as time itself (e.g. see Adam and Eve hiding their nakedness) but the modern world seems to trigger it in unique and disturbing ways. This needs to be part of the discussion.
All of this takes us to the other secular objection I have. As long as we’re talking about what’s happening recently. There has also been a recent focus on therapeutic rumination. That’s a completely separate discussion, and I don’t want to get side-tracked, but you can read all about it in my recent review of the book Bad Therapy. The point I want to bring up is that constant introspection can cause more harm than good. We can see that in the example Francom offers up. Not only is the mother engaged in introspection on her current mistake, this spirals into an examination of all of her other slip-ups. Francom calls this pattern shame, but from another perspective it just looks like maladaptive introspection.
Obviously the ideal is not zero introspection—identifying that she got distracted by social media and taking steps to make sure it doesn’t become an ongoing problem is a good thing. But delving into the depths of her soul to uncover all the evidence ever of her being a bad mother, and using it to reframe her entire identity, seems completely over the top. And yet, to be fair to Francom, some people are doing it, and it’s not working.
IV- What actually works?At some level the key question is not whether God can be disappointed in you. Or whether shame is a leading cause of wickedness. The primary question is: what works?
From a religious perspective, a belief system (like the one Francom suggests in this book) works if it results in desires and behaviors that are in alignment with divine desires and behaviors. From a secular perspective, we’re searching for counsel that makes us better people.
Most people, throughout most of human history, believed that if you suffered negative consequences as a result of some action, that you would be less likely to perform that same action in the future. Thus whether it was pain, sadness, guilt, or shame, these emotions would encourage people to change their behavior in the future. If they did not, only then would it be appropriate to give these emotions a different label. In such cases it would be worthwhile to talk about the difference between godly sorrow which invites repentance and worldly sorrow which invites despair.4
I have certainly known people who felt nothing that would be identified as shame, but felt sorrow that a life of dissipation and debauchery didn’t end up getting them all the things they wanted. Which is to say that I agree there’s a dividing line between negative experiences which result in durable changes, and those that don’t, but I wouldn’t draw it in the same place as Francom. I would draw it on either side of hope, and the closely related principle of faith.
We’re obviously long overdue for my definition of disappointment, so here it is: disappointment is when events don't match our hopes and expectations for them. Francom asserts that God can’t be surprised, and probably by the same token He can’t have false expectations, but can He hope? We already mentioned divine desires, that seems pretty similar.
Asking whether God can hope is a theologically tricky area, and Latter-day Saint beliefs might point to a different answer than other Christian denominations. There’s a well known passage in our canon where God weeps. Francom even admits that this looks a lot like disappointment.5 Whether it is or not we both agree it shows His tremendous love and empathy. If we can be sad, He can be sad, and if we can hope, then He can hope.
To return to my example, I always hoped that this time my son would develop discipline and do his homework, even if I knew that in the short term he wouldn’t. In the long run however, his hope (and mine) drew him forward to a better future. This is the side of things I want to focus on, the side of hope. Francom does something which seems similar, but ends up being very different, he wants to focus on God’s love, rather than God’s hope. In some sense this is entirely understandable. God’s love is foundational to everything. But I don’t think it operates quite the way Francom claims it does. I would argue that the addition of hope and expectation is a critical component.
To illustrate what I mean consider this assertion from the book:
When we remember how much God loves us, we will want to do nothing more than “hold on to” His commandments.
If just “remember[ing] how much God loves us” was sufficient to banish all of our wicked desires, this world would be a very different place. I think holding on to His commandments requires something more; it requires effort, and this effort is driven by hope, both ours and God’s. While it may be true, as I mentioned above, that God can’t have false expectations, He definitely has expectations, and He asks us to exercise hope and faith towards meeting those expectations.
At this point let’s leave the rarified realm of theology, for the practical realm of raising children. Francom recommends something similar to the quote above with raising children. In the Church there is an expectation that every young man will serve a proselytizing mission when he turns eighteen. These young missionaries are one of the things we’re best known for. Francom’s son is only five, but Francom considers what he will do if he doesn’t want to go on a mission. One possible course of action would be to firm up his expectations, apply pressure, and push his son in the direction of the mission. Alternatively:
What if, instead, I offered grace? What if I continue to share with him the joys and blessings of my mission, but I let go of the expectation for him to serve his own mission? By offering that grace to him, what will it do for our relationship? Will he want to be closer to me? Will he want to be more like me? Or will it cause him to be more casual about his commitment to the gospel? I can’t control my son’s actions; I simply want to be more like the Great Grace Giver.
Similar to the quote above, Francom argues that if his son just knows how much he loves him that will be the thing most likely to make him want to go on a mission. My argument would be that letting go of expectations does not in fact work. Enforcing expectations may be a good idea, but abandoning them is not.
God has expectations, and He’s constantly urging us to exercise faith (i.e. to allow hope to drive belief) towards fulfilling those expectations. Offering our hope for their future to our children is one of the best things we can do for them. Yes, that does translate into expectations, and there’s a whole separate discussion to be had about how those expectations should be framed, encouraged, and yes, on occasion enforced. But abandoning them entirely in order to avoid disappointment and potentially shame is the wrong way to go.
To be clear, I agree that we need to exercise unconditional love for our children, but we need to have powerful hopes for our children as well. If we’re hoping that children will do good things, we have to offer up a vision for what those good things are, and express our hopes, and yes also our expectation that they will do those good things. When they fail in those expectations, hope diminishes. This is disappointment. If God can hope, if He can want good things for us, good things we prove incapable of grasping, then He can be disappointed. But the disappointment experienced both by earthly parents and by our Heavenly Father does not equal a decrease in love.
If we were to identify a direction for society as a whole, it seems clear that it’s heading in the direction Francom recommends—a lowering of expectations. Certainly if we’re talking about the narrow realm of the expectation within the Church that young men (and women) should serve a proselytizing mission, this has massively decreased. If this lowering of expectations worked, then we would see an increase in the number of missionaries and an increase in the retention of young adults within the Church, and yet we’re seeing the exact opposite.
Looking at society as a whole this process should yield less parental estrangement, instead we’re seeing an increase, what some call an epidemic. When we consider the all important question of what works, I don’t see any evidence for the course Francom lays out.
V- So what do I see?Out of this discussion I see three broad possibilities:
The first, Francom is entirely correct. Shame is an enormous problem, and many of the tools we use to encourage good behavior instead heighten shame. This makes repentance and experiencing the love of God more difficult. Key to this increase in shame is the incorrect idea that God can be disappointed in us. If we get rid of this idea, and work to banish shame more generally we will have greater peace, be more righteous and more spiritual. Beyond that we will achieve better outcomes for both our children and young people more broadly as they are able to fully experience God’s love because they will no longer feel that they need to earn it.
The second possibility is that Francom is somewhat correct, but has oversimplified things.6 First off not everyone ends up with the same catastrophic outcome from shame. Whether you label it shame or guilt many people use these negative feelings to become better people and draw closer to God. For those that do descend into a spiral of negativity, this has quite a bit to do with the world we live in. The repetition, which constitutes a key component of Francom’s model of shame, is something which is being driven by very recent developments which includes things like ubiquitous internet pornography, abundance driven envy, historically unprecedented expectations, incredibly potent social media and drugs. By ignoring the effects of pernicious technology, Francom is essentially forfeiting the game in order to make sure he doesn’t lose it, rather than making an effort to understand the new rules and continue to win.
I think in part this has to do with some of Francom’s personal biases. That is one of the benefits and curses of being close to an author. You end up reading between the lines, for good or ill. And in that space I can see that a great deal of the book comes out of his relationship and work with the addiction community, where ceasing to play the game is a far better course of action than losing it over, and over, and over again. As such, I have no doubt that the concepts he lays out in this book have great relevance to those in a desperate struggle with addiction. (Which to be clear does not include Francom, he’s just Christ-like enough that he spends a lot of time with those who are.) As someone’s addiction begins to define them, it becomes hard to imagine that they’ll ever be worthy of love, even God’s love
But do these points have the same relevance to those who aren’t in the depths of despair? I’m not sure. Obviously everyone is broken, and everyone needs Christ’s atonement, but that doesn’t mean we all experience “shame” in the same way a heroin or pornography addict does. Or that we need the same advice.
I have no doubt that the phenomenon Francom describes is real. That many people get so caught up in a weird negative spiral (what he labels as shame) that they begin to imagine that Christ’s atonement doesn’t apply to them or that God doesn’t love them. And that this can happen, even when their offenses may seem comparatively minor. (Like the example above of forgetting to feed their children.) But again, this seems like a recent phenomenon. Shame, whatever your definition, operates very differently now than it did in the past. Rather than comparing ourselves to a nearby community of dozens we’re comparing ourselves to millions of people all over the world. This can be overwhelming. In the end we’re only competing with ourselves, but it is a competition nonetheless.
This takes us to our third possibility: We should still be playing the game and trying to win. God has expectations of us, and we should have expectations of our children. It is true that winning is difficult, more so now than ever before. We should reject easy answers, pat solutions, and monocausal explanations for success. But God still expects us to try our best to win, and we have to hope that our children will win as well. Not all of those hopes will come to pass, and when they don’t disappointment enters the picture, but that’s only because hope was there in the first place.
Francom talks a lot about grace. Brad Wilcox, currently First Counselor in the Young Men General Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, delivered a talk about grace at BYU back in 2011. It’s always stuck with me, and I know Francom is familiar with it as well. In this talk he explains that grace is like a parent paying for piano lessons. The parent isn’t doing this because they expect that the child will eventually be good enough at the piano that they’ll pay them back for these lessons. They’re doing it because they hope that the child will grow to love the piano, and that maybe someday they’ll be good enough to really do something incredible with it. Perhaps they’ll even play Carnegie Hall.
Whatever happens with the child—whether they fight the lessons every step of the way, and eventually quit, or whether they do well enough to play some hymns on their mission, but don’t go any farther, or whether they do eventually reach the heights of skill their parents dreamed of—their parents love never changes. But it’s still important that the parents had that vision of what was possible, a sense of hope that could be used to inspire the child as they tapped out their first tentative notes. This grand vision must inevitably contain the potential for disappointment, in order to be a grand vision. And yes, it may be necessary to throw out the vision at some point to avoid the disappointment, but this should be the last resort. We should hold on to the grand vision, and even the disappointment it must inevitably contain for as long as possible. And if we have lost it we should strive to get it back.
This earthly existence is not just about enduring bad things, even if we do so with grace, it’s about glorifying God. To do that we need to have hope, we need to stretch, and occasionally that’s going to result in disappointment. And that’s just fine.
I know it’s been awhile, and this is a pretty niche subject, after a long wait, but I promised Francom that I would tell him what I really thought of his book! But now that summer is over, things are going to start happening. Or at least that’s what I hope, but I’m leaving open the possibility of disappointment.
1I’m only now wondering, why is it “a” gospel of grace, rather than “the” gospel of grace? The former seems tentative, and less monotheistic than I would expect…
2This definition, while useful, limits the shame Francom is talking about to a very narrow slice of what the rest of the world means when it discusses shame.
3I’m open to being proved wrong here, but the search I conducted didn’t turn up anything making this specific claim, nor any talks that seemed even close.
4In Roman Catholic theology despair is a mortal sin, and represents the complete and voluntary abandonment of hope for salvation. I see some parallels between this and the concept of shame that Francom and others are pushing, but despair would appear to be at the very limits of what they’re discussing.
5Francom argues that God’s weeping can’t be out of disappointment because the thing that God is weeping over, the wickedness of his children, could not be a surprise to him.
6Also given the space requirements of my review I may have oversimplified things as well. For example Francom discusses the idea that there is a pendulum with heart/love on one side, and behavior/commandments on the other, which touches on a few of these points. Though I would maintain that I have accurately recounted the core thesis of the book in spite of this omission.
- A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by: Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
- Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe by: Judith Herrin
- The Birth of the West: Rome, Germany, France, and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth Century by: Paul Collins
- Missing: The Need for Closure After the Great War by: Richard van Emden
- In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife by: Sebastian Junger
- Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness by: Steve Magness
- Eruption by: James Patterson and Michael Crichton
- The Last Devil to Die: A Thursday Murder Club Mystery (#4) by: Richard Osman
- He Who Fights with Monsters 8: A LitRPG Adventure by: Shirtaloon
- He Who Fights with Monsters 9: A LitRPG Adventure by: Shirtaloon
- He Who Fights with Monsters 10: A LitRPG Adventure by: Shirtaloon
This is a long one. If you’d like to listen to it, you can do so here.
A child ruminating on all the bad things that have ever happened to him. Under the probing of a well-meaning, but ultimately misguided pseudo-therapist.
I- Prologue
II- The Core Observation
III- The Realm of the Potentially Traumatic
IV- “Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Children!?”
V- A Continuum of Parenting, With Sundry Bad Examples, and an Appearance by The Last Psychiatrist
VI- Resilience
I- PrologueYears ago, I volunteered to accompany my son to a weeklong Boy Scout camp. It was an afternoon near the middle of our stay when an incredibly fast-moving thunderstorm arrived. I had gone to take a much-needed shower. When I entered the bathhouse the sky was clear and sunny, but by the time I was done the camp was engulfed in a tempest of rain and lightning. I waited out the worst of it before emerging to check on our camp. Everything was drenched, and the A-frame, where we also kept much of our gear, had collected a giant pool of water in one corner. I was attempting to deal with it all when a scout stumbled into camp sobbing. One of the other boys had been struck by lightning.
I raced to the spot to find a group of people all standing around in a circle. The boy was lying on the ground, motionless, his face a greenish-gray. The Assistant Scoutmaster, who happened to be an ER nurse, was desperately trying to revive him.
As I stood there helpless, I pictured my son there instead. The horror of that brief vision overwhelmed me.
The boy died. The staff and the scoutmaster did everything they could, but it was too late. I briefly experienced the pain of his parents, and it was crushing. In addition to the grief of his family, there would be friends, teachers, and acquaintances all impacted by his tragic and unexpected death.
Even though the week was only half over, we packed up and headed home. A few days later the funeral was held. All of the camp leadership drove down for it. While there they made it known to the parents that if any of the boys wanted to come back and re-do the weeklong camp, they would take care of everything: supervising the boys, preparing meals, providing tents and equipment, etc.
II- The Core ObservationAt the time I was offered this choice, the decision to send my son back to the camp seemed obvious. You might even call it the default option. And, in fact, that’s precisely what my wife and I did.
It’s been a little over a decade since this happened, but in that time the default has changed: something of this magnitude—particularly involving the death of a child—would be treated as horrible, debilitating trauma. Or so Abigail Shrier argues in her recent book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up.
Shrier is a polarizing figure. Her first book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters was, unsurprisingly, very controversial. Given this, whatever Shrier chose to write next would already have a certain amount of controversy baked in.
Bad Therapy doesn’t disappoint. In fact, it has already attracted even more controversy—as well as its share of plaudits. As such, it’s entirely possible that you have already formed an opinion on this book and its topic.
Whatever your opinion, favorable or not, the subject of trauma, therapy, and tots is much more complicated than it appears, some of this complexity is well-covered by Shrier, some of it is not, thus this review.
We need to begin with one very important observation, something that cannot be overlooked in this discussion by either Shrier or her critics:
Despite a vast increase in preventative resources, American mental health has not gotten any better, and by many measures it has gotten worse.
Shrier lays out the following statistics:
Between 1946 and 1960, membership in the American Psychological Association quadrupled.1 Then, from 1970 to 1995, the number of mental health professionals quadrupled again.2 In the United States since 1986, nearly every decade has seen a doubling of expenditure on mental health over the one before.3
…And yet as treatments for anxiety and depression have become more sophisticated and more readily available, adolescent anxiety and depression have ballooned.
I’m not the only one to have found something fishy in the fact that more treatment has not resulted in less depression. A group of academic researchers recently noticed the same. They published a peer-reviewed paper titled “More Treatment but No Less Depression: The Treatment-Prevalence Paradox.”4 The authors note that treatment for major depression has become much more widely available (and, in their view, improved) since the 1980s worldwide. And yet in not a single Western country has this treatment made a dent in the incidence of major depressive disorder. Many countries saw an increase.
The increased availability of effective treatments should shorten depressive episodes, reduce relapses, and curtail recurrences. Combined, these treatment advances unequivocally should result in lower point-prevalence estimates of depression,” they write. “Have these reductions occurred? The empirical answer clearly is NO.”5
I checked with several of the paper’s authors. Two confirmed that the same might be said for anxiety. As treatment has become more widely available and dispersed, point-prevalence rates should go down.6 They have not. And while the authors admit that there was likely more depression in the past than we realized, they argue that there is at least as much, and probably more, depression now.7[Emphasis mine.]
Why is this? We don’t see this happening with other diseases. Dedicating additional resources towards cancer and heart disease, for example, has improved outcomes, not worsened them.
Why is mental health so resistant to improvement? Shrier believes it’s because these resources have been misallocated, the methodologies employed by these additional resources are misguided, and in too many cases they're actively harmful.
Put simply: we’re doing it wrong. The way in which we’re doing it wrong, however, is more complicated, and there are nuances and implications that even Shrier doesn’t completely grapple with, but in part that’s what I intend to do.
III- The Realm of the Potentially Traumatic Given its prominent place in the title one would expect that therapy would occupy an equally prominent place in the book. It does, but therapy can mean different things to different people; it operates on a continuum.
On one end, there are people who believe that the word “therapy” should only be applied to the standards and practices of licensed therapists with many years of education.
On the other, we have the concept of “therapeutic culture”—the claim that therapeutic concepts have spread throughout society to the point that they are now ubiquitous. As a consequence of this, we are surrounded by pseudo-therapists: people who have (knowingly or not) adopted the role of therapists despite having received minimal, if any, training. The claims made by Schrier’s book mostly flow out of this latter definition of therapy. If the book had been titled Bad Pseudo-Therapy then I think she would have ended up with fewer complaints. (But probably sold fewer books, too.)
Nevertheless, a very interesting framework can be distilled from the book, one which gets to the heart of the many dilemmas posed by modern child-rearing.
To return to the example of my son, his mother and I could have treated the death of his fellow scout as a potentially traumatic event and sent him to a therapist. Perhaps, together, they would have decided it was no big deal. Or they may have discovered that my son was shaken up by things and they would have worked through it. It’s also not out of the realm of possibility that he could have ended up with a bad therapist. Certainly every profession has better or worse practitioners, also you don’t quadruple the number of people doing something in a short amount of time (see the excerpt above) without a drop in overall quality. While this latter scenario is part of Shrier’s argument, it isn’t the main thrust. Shrier is more concerned with the many pseudo-therapists we have created—teachers, nurses, guidance counselors, and even parents, all of them eager to (over)diagnose trauma and offer “comfort”.
If this had happened today, one of these pseudo-therapists might very well decide my son had suffered horrible trauma—perhaps some medical professional other than a therapist, perhaps we as his parents, or most likely someone at his school. From this “diagnosis” would flow all sorts of downstream effects—he certainly shouldn’t return to the camp—but there would be questions, and he would be labeled, talked to, and encouraged to engage in deep introspection.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s establish a more general framework. Imagine the space of all the negative experiences a person might have.
Now, imagine that at the center of that space are the traumatic negative experiences, the ones so bad they almost certainly cause lasting trauma: things like sexual abuse spanning years, being kidnapped by strangers, or accidentally backing up over your child and killing them.
On the opposite side of things, at the very edge of our space of negative experiences, you have those events that are definitely non-traumatic. These are still negative experiences, but (almost) no one would claim that they had caused lasting trauma: Stubbing a toe, getting a cold, making a minor mistake. If we were to illustrate this space, it would look something like this:
Thus far presumably everyone agrees with this structure. Some negative experiences are definitely traumatic, others are definitely not. The question is: what about the space between these two extremes—between the definitely traumatic and the decidedly non-traumatic? Things like: watching a terrifying movie when you’re too young; being repeatedly bullied in school; or watching someone in your scout troop die from a lightning strike.
This is the territory that Shrier focuses on, and it’s the space where most of the confusion and pseudo-therapy lies. Let’s call this zone “potentially traumatic”.
This zone is composed of negative experiences which might be traumatic depending on the person, their previous experiences, and—most importantly for our purposes—how the negative experience is dealt with or treated. This is where the majority of our focus is going to be, and though she doesn’t lay it out as specifically as I have, this is the realm Shrier is concerned about. She provides numerous examples of situations and experiences that only become traumatic through misguided interventions. She doesn’t deny that some negative experiences definitely cause trauma, and that this trauma benefits from competent therapy.8 Her book isn’t against all therapy; it’s against bad therapy, and the way we recognize it as bad is that rather than treating actual trauma it expands the definition and scope of trauma such that a greater number of negative experiences go from being potentially traumatic to definitely traumatic:
To return once again to the example of my son, I’m positive that if he had been subject to the sorts of practices Shrier describes that he could have been made to view his experience at scout camp as trauma—something that stayed with and haunted him, lessening his happiness and making him fearful. I’m confident that one of the many pseudo-therapists Shrier describes could have “talked him into this state”. I’m certain that I could have talked him into it, nor would it have involved any malice or double-dealing. It mostly would have been repeated variations of the question: “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Whereas by just assuming that he would “get back on the horse” my son grew up to love the outdoors and scouting. He earned his Eagle Scout, rose through the ranks in the Order of the Arrow, and eventually became the course director for a youth leadership training camp. Obviously this is just one anecdote, but my son’s story matches many of the “no therapy” arcs Shrier describes in her book.
So what are these practices of bad therapy Shrier describes?
IV- “Won’t Somebody PLEASE Think of the Children!?”The debate over the declining mental health of children (particularly teenagers) has been raging at least since 2015 when Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff published their article The Coddling of the American Mind in The Atlantic (later turned into a book of the same name). Recently, it seems to have reached something of a crescendo with Haidt’s latest book The Anxious Generation. Everyone seems to basically agree that American adolescent mental health has gotten a lot worse; people just disagree about its cause.
Shrier adds her take with this book, and while there are many areas of overlap with Haidt, she points out that the trend started much earlier:
Instead, adolescent mental health has been in steady decline since the 1950s.9 Between 1990 and 2007 (before any teens had smartphones), the number of mentally ill children rose thirty-five-fold.10 And while overdiagnosis or the expansion of definitions of mental illness may partially account for this rapid change, it is hard to dismiss or contextualize away the startling rise in teen suicide: “Between 1950 and 1988, the proportion of adolescents aged between fifteen and nineteen who killed themselves quadrupled,” The New Yorker reported.11 Mental illness became the leading cause of disability in children. [Emphasis mine]
From Shrier’s perspective, while smartphones and social media are definitely very bad, they aren’t the primary cause of the problem, rather they acted as powerful accelerants for a misaligned therapeutic culture which already existed. How is it misaligned? Let’s look at some examples:
“Harmless” questions
Shier opens the book by recounting a recent trip with her son to the urgent care clinic. Once the immediate problem (a stomach ache) had been dealt with, a nurse arrived and asked if he could have a few minutes alone in order to do a “mental health screening” with her son. Shrier asked to see the screening questions. What she saw:
1- In the past few weeks, have you wished you were dead?
2- In the past few weeks, have you felt that you or your family would be better off if you were dead?
3- In the past week, have you been having thoughts about killing yourself?
4- Have you ever tried to kill yourself? If yes, how? When?
5- Are you having thoughts of killing yourself right now? If yes, please describe.12
Again, this was a visit to a pediatrician about a stomach ache. The nurse wasn’t a trained therapist, nor was Shrier or her son seeking any sort of therapy. .
This is precisely what I mean when I say that bad therapy takes potential trauma, e.g. sometime in the past few weeks, perhaps the child had some negative thoughts (”have you wished you were dead?” is a very broad question) and works to turn it into actual trauma.
First by labeling it as such: “Clearly this child needs help! Bad things are happening and we need to marshal the full resources of the state to make sure they’re okay!” Then by further treating it as trauma over the coming weeks (and possibly months and years).
What happens if the child answers “yes” to any of the questions? Particularly with no parent around to offer context or a different perspective. What cascade of interventions will that trigger? What labels will be applied? Will the parent have any say in them? Is that why the nurse wants to get the parent out of the room as soon as possible?
This is not the only occasion or venue where children will be asked questions like these. As long as we’re still thinking about the negative impact of phones, several companies have released mental health apps for kids. Shrier tried several:
Here are six of the first ten questions my therapist-bot asked me
“How lonely do you feel?”
“How supported do you feel?”
“How worried do you feel right now?”
“How down do you feel right now?”
“How often do you feel left out?”
“How sad do you feel right now?”
In each case, the question is searching for potential trauma and gearing up to turn it into actual trauma. This is also the equivalent to what I mentioned above, asking my son over and over again if he’s okay. It’s important to remember how suggestible kids are. Not to go on too much of a tangent, but recall that in the 80s just by asking kids over and over again if they had been abused authorities were able to construct an entire ritual satanic sex abuse ring. Yes, we’re just asking children if they’re okay, but at some point if you ask someone this question enough they’re forced to conclude the only reason you’re asking so much is that they’re not okay.
Identification, Rumination, or Marination?
Of all therapeutic methodologies, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) seems to have one of the best reputations. The most import steps in CBT are:
- Identification of negative thoughts.
- Once identified they should be evaluated: are these thoughts actually accurate and helpful?
Other therapeutic practices offer similar advice. It would appear from the many examples given in the book that—as is so often the case when something is scaled up—the nuance of this two-step approach has been lost especially when these practices and approaches have seeped into the broader culture.
We have ended up in a situation where there’s an enormous focus placed on the first step and almost none on the second step.
Negative experiences are relentlessly mined for potential trauma, and this excessive focus has transformed it from recognition into rumination. As if this were not bad enough, in far too many cases rumination has been supplanted by marination. Children are metaphorically immersed in their trauma, until it comes to define them. Pseudo-therapists double (or triple) down on identification, but it almost never proceeds past that point to the stage of evaluation.
Asking children to tap into their inner states and emotions is a necessary part of therapy; doing so incessantly is where things all too frequently go from treating trauma to evoking it. And this assumes that they need therapy in the first place, which is by no means certain! Ubiquitous therapy is bad therapy. This would almost appear to be self-evident, but Shrier also buttresses it by consulting with various experts:
Yulia Chentsova Dutton heads the Culture and Emotions Lab at Georgetown University… [and she asserts] “Emotions are highly reactive to our attention to them. Certain kinds of attention to emotions, focus on emotions, can increase emotional distress. And I’m worried that when we try to help our young adults, help our children, what we do is throw oil into the fire...We are basically telling them that this deeply imperfect signal”—that is, what they are feeling—“is always valid, is always important to track, pay attention, and then use to guide your behavior, use it to guide how you act in a situation.”
...It troubles Chentsova Dutton that so much therapeutic intervention with kids proceeds from the conceit that children should attribute great import to their feelings. How will she ever be a good friend if her own feelings are always, at every instant, front and center? How will she ever hope to function at work?
This gets back to the idea of suggestibility as well, the deeper children are pushed to ruminate on their emotions and their potential negativity, the more those emotions will become negative. It can easily become a feedback loop: constant encouragement to search for negative emotions leads to digging up any that might exist (and suggestibly creating some that don’t) which leads to rumination on these emotions (further reifying and emphasizing them) which leads to marinating in negativity…
Social-Emotional Learning
This approach has crystallized into what might be called a meta-curriculum: social-emotional learning.
This methodology combines the ubiquity already mentioned...
Sometimes described by enthusiasts as “a way of life,”13 social-emotional learning is the curricular juggernaut that devours billions in education spending each year and upward of 8 percent of teacher time.14 (Many teachers say they try to ensure that social-emotional learning happens all day long.)15 Through prompts and exercises, social-emotional learning (SEL) pushes kids toward a series of personal reflections, aimed at teaching them “self-awareness,” “social awareness,” “relationship skills,” “self-management,” and “responsible decision-making.”16[Emphasis mine]
and the marination…
Social-emotional exercises typically invite kids to marinate in a time when they were sad, scared, or vulnerable. One of the most popular social-emotional curricula, Second Step, for instance, instructs eighth graders to divulge the following:
- “Have you ever stayed overnight in the hospital?”
- “Has someone close to you died?”
- “Have you ever lost a championship game or important competition?”
- “Do you attend religious services?”
- “Have you ever worried about the safety of a loved one?”
with yet one more pseudo-therapeutic aspect—doing it while part of a group:
Ever since her school adopted social-emotional learning in 2021, Ms. Julie17 routinely began the day by directing her Salt Lake City fifth graders to sit in one of the plastic chairs she’d arranged in a circle. How is each of you feeling this morning? she would ask, performing a more intensive version of the “emotions check-in.” One day, she cut to the chase: What is something that is making you really sad right now?
When it was his turn to speak, one boy began mumbling about his father’s new girlfriend. Then things fell apart. “All of a sudden, he just started bawling. And he was like, ‘I think that my dad hates me. And he yells at me all the time,’ ” said Laura, a mom of one of the other students.
Another girl announced her parents had divorced and burst into tears.
Another said she was worried about the man her mother was dating.
Within minutes, half of the kids were sobbing. It was time for the math lesson; no one wanted to do it. It was just so sad, thinking that the boy’s dad hated him. What if their dads hated them, too?
Note that, in addition to all the pseudo-therapeutic aspects, all of these examples are focused on drawing out potentially traumatic events from the general space of all negative experiences. Once drawn out they have an increased potential to become actual trauma. Were all the sobbing children traumatized by these events? Certainly not. But might some of them have been? That certainly seems possible, particularly if this exercise is repeated every single day.
Had my son been subject to this gauntlet at the time of his experience at scout camp I have very little doubt that experience would have been turned into something debilitating and distressing, which may well have haunted him for years afterwards.
Why?
As a brief coda to all of this, it’s natural to ask why things have gone in this direction. Why is there so much pseudo-therapy in schools?18 As is the case with so many things, I think it proceeds from the best of intentions. Very few things are worse than suffering children, and anything which holds the promise of reducing that suffering would seem to be obviously good.
Unfortunately everything comes with second order effects, frequently negative, which can take a long time to manifest and are difficult to detect even then. Because of this there seemed to be very little downside to this vast expansion in therapeutic practices, and minimal harm if they weren’t done quite right. Unfortunately this has not been the case, there have been negative effects, and such negative effects are common in medicine. Treatments which are life saving for the desperately ill, can, somewhat paradoxically, result in significant harm if applied to those who are basically healthy. In medicine the formal term for this is iatrogenesis: harm caused by medical treatment. Shrier makes it one of the pillars of her book. Shrier offers up this startling list of iatrogenic counseling:
Police officers who responded to a plane crash and then underwent debriefing sessions exhibited more disaster-related hyperarousal symptoms eighteen months later than those who did not receive the treatment.19 Burn victims exhibited more anxiety after therapy than those left untreated.20 Breast cancer patients have left peer support groups feeling worse about their condition than those who opted out.21 And counseling sessions for normal bereavement often make it harder, not easier, for mourners to recover from loss.22 Some people who say they “just don’t want to talk about it” know better than the experts what will help them: spending time with family; exercising; putting one foot in front of the other; gradually adjusting to the loss.23
If you want to dig deeper into therapeutic iatrogenesis then the book is an excellent resource, but my goal is to establish a continuum, speaking of which:
V- A Continuum of Parenting, With Sundry Bad Examples, and an Appearance by The Last PsychiatristI hope these stories of therapy culture are illuminating; I'll admit that I also find many of them to be amusing. But, of course, these things all happened and similar things are happening all the time. At some point it becomes worrisome rather than humorous.
i) Shrier opens one chapter with a story about her daughter:
The first time anyone suggested my then seven-year-old daughter had “a lot of anxiety,” I was not at the pediatrician, but at a parent-teacher conference. “She’s looking at the clock a lot at the end of the day,” the assistant teacher piped up. “She seems to have a lot of anxiety about missing the bus. We thought you should know.”
If that’s what these pseudo-therapists are identifying as anxiety then no wonder all of the kids are anxious. “Missing the bus” that’s a good one. Try “when is another boring day of school going to end so I can get out of here?” Also, is it just me, or is there an assumption that she must be anxious because there’s no possibility that she could be bored by what the teachers are doing?
ii) She also includes stories about the complete helplessness of children:
David offers me [a] recent [example] to prove his point. At his students’ first concert of the year, a succession of boys approached him with their clip-on ties in hand, unsure how to fasten them. They weren’t asking how to tie a Windsor knot, he wanted me to know. They wanted him to affix their clip-on ties. “One of the moms looked at me. She’d seen me doing this all day long, and she’s just like, ‘These kids are helpless.’ They’re literally fifteen and sixteen years old. And it’s like you’re dealing with an eight- or nine-year-old.”
This complete avoidance of even mildly difficult things would appear to be an outgrowth of parents' desire to avoid any potential trauma altogether.
iii) This mother takes things to a level that’s almost bizarre:
As an example, Beth recalled that one college co-ed brought her mom along to the appointment. The mom kept track of her daughter’s menstrual periods with an app on her phone.
iv) One of the sections of the book is titled “Battered Mommy Syndrome”. The irony is strong here. Parents who desperately want their kid to be non-violent end up with kids who have violent impulses… towards them.
A young, well-heeled mother was struggling with a recalcitrant six-year-old son. “Please be a good boy,” the woman had said to her son. “If you’re good for just five minutes, when we get home, I’ll let you do anything you want. What do you want?”
The little boy looked his mother straight in the eye. “I want to punch you in the face,” he said.
One could go pretty deep down the rabbit hole psychoanalyzing this. But it sure feels like subconsciously the child wants to see the parent exercise some level of authority. And punching them in the face seems like a last ditch attempt to evoke that.
v) More battering, but the idea that there’s a Slate Parenting group on Facebook is endlessly amusing. It’s one of those times where a group parodies itself better than its critics ever could.
If someone wanted to kill all human desire to reproduce—to achieve, at last, this thing environmentalists call “population control”—steering readers to the Slate Parenting Facebook group might be a promising way to start.
Home to an educated, conscientious, liberal-leaning readership of eighteen thousand regular members, the Slate Parenting Facebook group provides a worthy terrarium in which to observe highly educated, progressive, therapist-directed parents as they air dilemmas and seek advice from their equally flummoxed counterparts…
“Anyone have advice about how to get a three-year-old to accept the consequences?” writes Airin, one frustrated parent. “When he hits, kicks, or yells (no provocation), how do I get him to calm down? I’ve tried addressing his feelings and time-outs. But when he goes into time-out, he gets very destructive and violent (throwing anything he can lift) or attacks me if I’m there.”
vi) Finally there’s the book Raising Raffi by Keith Gessen.
Gessen is a Harvard-educated writer and editor who tears his hair out for over two hundred pages, while consulting every possible book on how to coax his toddler, Raffi, to behave.
Once—just once—when Raffi is attempting to wrench the head off his newborn brother, ignoring Gessen’s command to stop, Gessen gives the boy’s hand a smack. This launches Gessen into a maelstrom of guilt and self-doubt. The clever boy runs straight to Mom, who leaps to Raffi’s defense and demands to know if Gessen in fact hit their son.
“Dada’s not nice,” the little boy declares.
“The words cut me to the quick,” Gessen writes. “If there was one thing I aspired to be, it was nice. I wanted to be nice. I wanted my son to feel that I was a warm presence in his life.”
It would be nice if parents were more immune to the pervasive pseudo-therapy currently running rampant, but, as illustrated by these examples, in so many cases they’re not. Many parents in fact have gone beyond identifying negative experiences to trying to stop them all together. Which takes us to:
The Last Psychiatrist and the Problem of Discontinuity
Reading these examples triggered a memory of a long-ago blog by The Last Psychiatrist (TLP). For those unfamiliar with his work, he blogged between 2005 and 2014, before disappearing suddenly. He later re-emerged in 2021 with a book. (See Scott’s review here.)
The post in question was discussing the mistakes often made by parents who are psychiatrists, but now that every parent aspires to be a psychiatrist, or at least a therapist, this mistake is being made far more often, including by most of the parents I just mentioned:
SOME psychiatrists think/try to do something noble (criticize behavior and not the child itself) but they are HUMAN, and get tired. They will eventually get angry, and, from a kid's perspective, when the parent gets angry is what matters. What did I do to piss Dad off?
The opposite of this, call it the non-psychiatrist parent, is calm, then gets a little angry, a little more angry, a little more angry, then yells, screams. There's a build up. A few years of this and you realize that there are some things that make Dad a little angry, and other things that make him really angry. There's normal, varying levels of human emotion to different situations.
But the child of a psychiatrist doesn't get that. He gets binary emotional states. "Lying is not acceptable behavior." Later: "Yelling loudly is not acceptable behavior." Later: "Picking your nose is not acceptable behavior." Later: "Stealing is not acceptable behavior." What's the relative value? A kid has no idea-- he thinks the value is decided by Dad, not intrinsic to the behavior. "Eating cookies before dinner is not acceptable behavior." Later: "Kicking your brother is not acceptable behavior."
Ok, now here it comes:
After seven or eight or twenty five "not acceptable behavior" monotones, Dr. Dad can't take it anymore; he explodes. "Goddamn it! What the hell is the matter with you?! What are you doing?!!" All the anger and affect gets released, finally. The problem-- the exact problem-- is this: the explosion of anger came at something relatively trivial. Maybe the kid spilled the milk.
So now the four year old concludes that the worst thing he did all day was spilled the milk-- not kicking his brother, or lying, or stealing. Had he not spilled that milk, Dad wouldn't have gotten angry.
I imagine most people understand that this sort of radically inconsistent parenting is bad. But it’s important to recognize that it’s not just the explosion at the end that’s bad; to recognize that the answer is not to be calm all the time. And it’s not merely because it’s impossible (though it is). It’s because the calm, in the end, is just as bad. The explosion is misleading because it lays far too much emphasis on the spilled milk. The calm is bad because it doesn’t lay any emphasis on anything. Picking your nose provokes exactly the same response as stealing.
Gessen’s story with Raffi is a perfect illustration of this concept. Had there been some gradation in Reese’s approach then smacking the boy’s hand would fit comfortably at the top of a continuum of responses to bad behavior (which is where “attempting to wrench the head off his newborn brother” belongs). An argument can be had about whether “smacking” is ever appropriate, but if not then something else would be at the top of the continuum. Instead we end up in a situation where there’s no scale on which things can be placed and so smacking Raffi’s hand ends up being a horrible and unprecedented breach, something that is inevitably viewed as being completely beyond the pale, both by Raffi and his mother.
Creating gradation in this space:
…encompasses most if not all of what Shrier is saying. Instead we have replaced gradation with an effort to wrap everything up into a single overarching anti-trauma effort. A one-size-fits-all approach that first attempts to stop negative experiences from happening—voices are never raised, punishment is never arbitrary, hands are never smacked (see all the examples above). But, if a negative experience does slip through then the overwhelming effort they put towards avoiding negative experiences is now turned towards mitigating those experiences. They must be treated with all the care and seriousness a parent (or teacher) can muster. But again there is no gradation. In both cases it’s all or nothing. Parents and educators attempt to avoid all negative experiences but the moment one gets through their carefully crafted defenses it’s immediately considered to be traumatic. So how do we restore gradation?
VI- ResilienceA reminder of where we left off in Section III:
We’re seeing an ever-expanding circle of bad therapy which threatens to totalize all negative experiences as traumatic. The examples given above represent this impulse at its most extreme. There is an appealing simplicity to that approach which can be very attractive. Abandoning any sense of a continuum means that there are no difficult decisions about whether therapeutic intervention should be used. We can just use it all the time and everywhere. If there were no negative effects then that might actually work. But Shrier makes a compelling case that there are negative effects. The reason I started this review with my son’s own experience is that it bears this out. I think it would have been very easy to turn his experience into trauma.
So how do we find a happy medium?
How do we create a continuum where we treat negative experiences with the level of seriousness they deserve, and, ideally, no more and no less?
If you spend any time at all reading books about the various crises afflicting children you’ll come across the term resilience. It’s offered up everywhere as the one thing that will solve the various crises. But within these books advice on actually creating resilience is thin, and mostly consists of advice on what not to do. But the great thing about the framework we’ve extracted from Shrier’s book is that it naturally leads us to a definition and a methodology for creating resilience. It’s the quality that turns the potentially traumatic into the non-traumatic—resilience takes negative experiences and makes them normal. This is what turns the vast space between actual trauma on one side and the smallest bad event on the other into a continuum.
This leads to a more muscular view of resilience than that found in most of the discussions, and as such this is the area where Shrier has attracted the most criticism. For example see this quote from a review by Ozy Brennan:
But Abigail Shrier’s preferred alternative to Internet Mental Health Culture is what you might call Fifties Dad Mindset. She’s quite explicit about this: multiple times in Bad Therapy, she asks readers to adopt the behavior of their own parents and grandparents.
Or this excerpt from a review by Meghan Bell:
She suggests that all parents have to do is fire the therapist, use a little more authority, take away the smartphone, encourage kids to “knock it off, shake it off”, and everything will be okay. Tellingly, she titles the final section of her book, “Maybe There’s Nothing Wrong with Our Kids.”
I agree with much of the criticism in both reviews, and if you want a broader perspective (or a reason to dismiss the book) I urge you to read both of them. But still we need to return to the core observation we opened with: We have poured an exponentially increasing amount of resources into mental health. Much of it has gone into actual trauma, which is great, but a great deal has gone into turning potentially traumatic experiences into actually traumatic experiences.
In the end I’m just a parent, who wants to know how to raise healthy kids. And I can get a ton of advice and assistance on how to add more therapy-like activity into my kids life. What is in far shorter supply is advice and help on adding more resilience. Even Shrier's book, which strongly encourages resilience, gives out little in the way of practical advice—mostly retreading advice like not freaking out if your nine year old wants to walk to the bus alone. There is also some advice that amounts to “copy your parents”. And I agree that it can seem a little hand-wavy. That’s why the framework of gradation ends up being so useful.
The first comment on Ozy’s review points to the heart of the matter:
It feels to me like the world (at least the middle-class American world I live in) needs a bit more of this Shrier-type thinking, in the same way it needs a little more of the Jordan Peterson type of stuff. Just a smidge, not a whole serving.
I don’t know if I would say “just a smidge” but the commenter certainly hit on the key point.
How much should we be saying, “knock it off, shake it off”?
How much should we act like our parents?
What behaviors should we be copying?
And what behaviors should we make sure to leave behind?
Toughening kids up would seem to require exposing them to negative experiences so that they can learn to deal with them in a healthy fashion, how negative and what sorts of experiences? Is it enough to let negative experiences happen or should we be pushing some onto them? Given how many resources are being channeled in the other direction (all with the best of intentions) it seems like we probably need to push back a lot in the resilience direction. But what does that look like? I think the framework from the diagram is very useful in this regard, but it’s obviously not the whole story.
As is so often the case, history is both instructive and divisive. As an example of resilience Shrier offers up the story of her grandmother:
My maternal grandmother—the most optimistic, can-do woman I’ve known—entered the world a matricide. In 1927, her mother died giving birth to her, a fact two of her less forbearing older siblings rarely let her forget. For the first few years of her life, a series of indifferent cousins in DC and Philadelphia were called upon to nurse and house her. Never given enough milk, my grandmother’s teeth grew in gray. Scanty nutrition stunted her growth.
Her widowed father could not raise her, though stories varied as to why. Whispers followed her, in Yiddish, that a relative molested her while she lived in his home. Others claimed that her father—a Russian immigrant, bereft, undereducated and overwhelmed—simply liked the racetrack too much.
When my grandmother turned six, she had her first real stroke of good luck. Her eldest sister, Clayre…married Sammy, and they took my grandmother in and raised her.
When she was sixteen [my grandmother contracted] polio. [The doctor] ordered my grandmother into isolation at Gallinger Hospital.24 Clayre burned all of my grandmother’s clothes…
[M]y grandmother turned seventeen in an iron lung, straining to breathe and unable to swallow. Family visits were mimed through a hallway window: a wave, a smile, a blown kiss. The dreaded illness lasted a year until, one day, my grandmother’s tongue and pharynx enlivened enough to negotiate a teaspoon of water. Nurses crowded her bedside to witness her first sips.
If she mourned the loss of an entire year of high school, my grandmother never mentioned it…
She completed law school at night and became one of the first female judges in Maryland history.25 And until the last year of her life, at ninety-four, her sharp mind softened with age, she held fast to a feeling that would not leave her: every day alive was a miracle.
This is definitely resilience. Also we see a notable lack of potential trauma being turned into actual trauma. Of course up until very recently people encountered more than enough negative experiences to either make them resilient or break them entirely. That is no longer the case. Much of the reason for all of the behavior already documented in this review is that it finally seems possible to shield children from the sorts of tragedies experienced by Shrier’s grandmother; if that’s the case, why wouldn’t we? The review has already spent a lot of time answering that question, but the more specific reason is that they need to develop resilience. If we’re going to establish a healthy continuum of experiences we have to make a push for resilience. What does that mean? What does it look like?
Let’s take a very simple example: If my son absolutely did not want to return to camp should I have forced him to? If it would have been bad to engineer things in order to make the experience traumatic, is it good to engineer things to make it not traumatic?
We’re not talking about giving the kid polio and putting him in an iron lung to toughen him up. We’re just talking about forcing him to spend a week outdoors doing mildly difficult activities.
Back then the question never came up, but how would I deal with it now? How would other people want me to deal with it? I think most people would say, “Definitely not! Forcing him to go would be cruel.” But I’m not so sure. It’s an enormously difficult question. It seems clear that we can’t err on the side of treating all things that are potentially traumatic as actually traumatic, but where is the line? How do we know when a negative experience is a chance to exercise resilience or something that requires therapeutic intervention?
The big contribution of this book is to point out that a lot more things are a chance to exercise resilience and a lot fewer things should be referred to therapy, particularly pseudo-therapy of the kind that’s become ubiquitous.
When I consider the question of what children really can put up with, and have the experience be resilience-inducing rather than trauma creating, I’m reminded of an excerpt I read long ago on Slate Star Codex about an American child attending a private school in China:
During his first week at Soong Qing Ling, Rainey began complaining to his mom about eating eggs. This puzzled Lenora because as far as she knew, Rainey refused to eat eggs and never did so at home. But somehow he was eating them at school.
After much coaxing (three-year-olds aren’t especially articulate), Lenora discovered that Rainey was being force-fed eggs. By his telling, every day at school, Rainey’s teacher would pass hardboiled eggs to all students and order them to eat. When Rainey refused (as he always did), the teacher would grab the egg and shove it in his mouth. When Rainey spit the egg out (as he always did), the teacher would do the same thing. This cycle would repeat 3-5 times with louder yelling from the teacher each time until Rainey surrendered and ate the egg.
Outraged, Lenora stormed to the school the next day and approached the teacher in the morning as she dropped Rainey off. Lenora demanded to know if Rainey was telling the truth – was this teacher literally forcing food into her three-year-old son’s mouth and verbally berating him until he ate it. The teacher didn’t even bother looking at Lenora as she calmly explained that eggs are healthy and that it was important for children to eat them. When Lenora demanded she stop force-feeding her son, the teacher refused and walked away.
The punchline is that Lenora’s outrage turns to amazement:
After a few years in China, Rainey changed. Though Lenora constantly worried if Rainey’s creativity and leadership potential was being snuffed out, she couldn’t help but be impressed by his emerging self-control. He could sit still for longer. He always greeted people politely. He finished eating his food. He asked permission a lot.
Lenora didn’t realize what Rainey had become until she took him back to the US for a few weeks to visit family. There, the contrast between Rainey and his same-aged American counterparts become stark. Lenora’s friends’ kids ate junk food all day while Rainey asked for vegetables. They couldn’t read or do basic addition while Rainey was close to being bilingual and had started double-digit addition and subtraction by first grade. They wandered obliviously in their own worlds while Rainey’s Chinese grandparents were thrilled to receive respectful greetings every time Rainey entered the room […]
The point here is not to force-feed your kids eggs; but that children are a lot tougher than you think. When we do something like force a kid to go back to scout camp we’re a lot more likely to build resilience than we are to create trauma. Obviously taking any specific action is very dependent on the child in question but even then, probably less than we think.
This is not to say it’s an easy problem; I’m glad that I’m not currently grappling with the decision of whether to force my son to go back to camp. But, particularly in hindsight, if it had come to that at the time, I would have.
You may be looking back on this eight thousand word review and thinking, “That’s it? He just wanted to say that it’s difficult to balance comfort and coddling? We’ve known that for ages!” To a first approximation you’re completely correct. But also the reason people have been talking about it for ages is that it’s a really difficult problem. My hope is that the insights provided in this review will make it at least slightly easier.
I’m not sure if this is my longest post ever. I’m not aware of an easy way to see the word counts of everything that came before. But if it’s not it’s close. I appreciate you making it to the end. And if you have any comments I’d love to hear them.
1In this case and all subsequent cases, when I quote from the book I will duplicate its footnotes:
In 1946, Congress passed the National Mental Health Act. Between 1946 and 1960, membership in the American Psychological Association ballooned from 4,173 to 18,215. Moskowitz, In Therapy We Trust, 154.
2Furedi, Frank, Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age (New York: Routledge, 2004), 10.
3“Statista Research Department, “Total U.S. Expenditure for Mental Health Services 1986–2020,” 2023, Statista, www.statista.com/statistics/252393/total-us-expenditure-for-mental-health-services
4Ormel, Johan, et al., “More Treatment but No Less Depression: The Treatment-Prevalence Paradox,” Clinical Psychology Review 91 (February 2022) 102111, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34959153.
5Ormel et al., “More Treatment but No Less Depression.
6See, for example, Ormel, Johan, and Michael VonKorff, “Reducing Common Mental Disorder Prevalence in Populations,” JAMA Psychiatry 78 no. 4 (April 2021): 359–60, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33112374.
7It’s important to note that the authors looked at point prevalence, not lifetime prevalence. Point prevalence is the signal rate in this context. After all, if someone had had a depressive episode twenty years earlier, that would count in “lifetime prevalence” but not provide an accurate marker of whether the last twenty years of psychiatric gains had made a dent in rates of depression.
8Therapy as treatment for trauma is not the only kind of therapy, but it’s the area Shrier spends all of her time on, so that’s where we’ll be focusing as well.
9Between 1950 and 1988, the proportion of adolescents aged between fifteen and nineteen who killed themselves quadrupled,” The New Yorker reported. Andrew Solomon, “The Mystifying Rise of Child Suicide,” The New Yorker, April 4, 2022, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/11/the-mystifying-rise-of-child-suicide.
10Whitaker, Robert, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (New York: Crown, 2010), 8.
11Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic, 8.
12Suicide Risk Screening Tool,” National Institute of Mental Health Toolkit, accessed August 6, 2023, https://www.nimh.nih.gov/sites/default/files/documents/research/research-conducted-at-nimh/asq-toolkit-materials/asq-tool/screening_tool_asq_nimh_toolkit.pdf.
13As one school in Illinois put it: “SEL is more than a process, a methodology, a curriculum—it is a way of life.” “Social Emotional Learning,” Stevenson High School, accessed September 16, 2023, https://www.d125.org/about/sel.
14$1.72 billion spent in social-emotional learning educational materials alone. “United States Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Market Report 2022: Instructional Materials were $1.72 Billion, up 25.9% Y-o-Y and are Forecast to Increase at a Lower Rate in 2023-2024,” GlobeNewswire, November 17, 2022, www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/11/17/2557934/0/en/United-States-Social-and-Emotional-Learning-SEL-Market-Report-2022-Instructional-Materials-were-1-72-Billion-up-25-9-Y-o-Y-and-are-Forecast-to-Increase-at-a-Lower-Rate-in-2023-2024.html; Krachman, Sara Bartolino, et al., “Accounting for the Whole Child,” ASCD, February 1, 2018, https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/accounting-for-the-whole-child.
15Langreo, Lauraine, “How Much Time Should Schools Spend on Social-Emotional Learning?,” Education Week, May 24, 2022, https://www.edweek.org/leadership/how-much-time-should-schools-spend-on-social-emotional-learning/2022/05.
16“An important difference between SEL and character education is that some character education approaches are focused on developing morally responsible youth, and that is not the defining characteristic of SEL. It is important to make that distinction. Teaching morals and values can raise concerns about whether they can be changed, and whether instruction is the responsibility of families or schools.” Kim Gulbrandson, “Character Education and SEL: What You Should Know,” July 6, 2018, Committee for Children, www.cfchildren.org/blog/2018/07/character-education-and-sel-what-you-should-know.
17Name changed to avoid embarrassing a teacher who was just doing precisely what her administrators directed.
18And to be clear, it’s not all pseudo-therapy, while there's more than enough harm being caused by people with no licensing and very little training, there are also plenty of school psychologists, and I’ve seen no evidence that they act to mediate these practices, rather they seem to participate just as vigorously as those who haven’t been extensively trained.
19Carlier, Ingrid V. E., et al., “Disaster-Related Post-Traumatic Stress in Police Officers: A Field Study of the Impact of Debriefing,” Stress Medicine 14, no. 3 (1998): 143–48, https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1700(199807)14:3<143::AID-SMI770>3.0.CO;2-S.
20Berk, Michael, et al., “The Elephant on the Couch: Side-Effects of Psychotherapy,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry (January 2009): 789, https://doi.org/10.1080/00048670903107559.
21Helgeson, Vicki S., et al., “Education and Peer Discussion Group Interventions and Adjustment to Breast Cancer,” Archives of General Psychiatry 56, no. 4 (1999): 340–47, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/1152701.
22Brody, Jane E., “Often, Time Beats Therapy for Treating Grief,” New York Times, January 27, 2004. See also Neimeyer, R.A., “Searching for the Meaning of Meaning: Grief Therapy and the Process of Reconstruction,” Death Studies 24, no. 6 (September 2000): 541–58, https://doi.org/10.1080/07481180050121480.
23Bonanno, George A, The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss (New York: Basic Books, 2009). See also Pinker, Susan, “Exercise Can Be the Best Antidepressant,” Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2023, www.wsj.com/articles/exercise-can-be-the-best-antidepressant-5101a538?mod=e2tw. (“New research finds that as little as 12 weeks of regular exercise can alleviate symptoms of depression as effectively as medication.”)
24The hospital was renamed D.C. General Hospital in 1953. In 2001, it closed. See “Gallinger Municipal Hospital Psychopathic Ward,” Wikipedia, accessed September 17, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallinger_Municipal_Hospital_Psychopathic_Ward.
25Estrada, Louie, “Bess Lavine, Half of Mother-Daughter Judge Team, Dies at 94,” Washington Post, October 5, 2022, www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/05/bess-lavine-prince-georges-judge-dead.
If Trump can brazen is way through all of his various scandals why can't Biden brazen his way through this?
- Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by: Matthew B. Crawford
- Nuclear War: A Scenario by: Annie Jacobson
- The Pragmatist's Guide to Relationships: Ruthlessly Optimized Strategies for Dating, Sex, and Marriage by: Malcolm and Simone Collins
- Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by: Salman Rushdie
- Arkham: (The Weird of Hali #7) by: John Michael Greer
- Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian Barbarian: The Complete Weird Tales Omnibus by: Robert E. Howard & compiled by: Finn J D John
- Stories of Your Life and Others by: Ted Chiang
- He Who Fights with Monsters 6: A LitRPG Adventure by: Shirtaloon
- He Who Fights with Monsters 7: A LitRPG Adventure by: Shirtaloon
- Astrophilosophy, Exotheology, and Cosmic Religion: Extraterrestrial Life in a Process Universe by: Andrew M. Davis (editor), Roland Faber (editor), and Various
- The Burnout Society by: Byung-Chul Han
- Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization by: Brad Wilcox
- The MANIAC by: Benjamín Labatut
- Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire by: Peter Wilson
- You Can’t Screw This Up: Why Eating Takeout, Enjoying Dessert, and Taking the Stress out of Dieting Leads to Weight Loss That Lasts by: Adam Bornstein
- Norwegian Wood by: Haruki Murakami
- He Who Fights with Monsters 2: A LitRPG Adventure by: Shirtaloon
- He Who Fights with Monsters 3: A LitRPG Adventure by: Shirtaloon
So I have this problem, and I’m wondering if I’m the only one. For most things if X needs to happen then I know the activity I need to engage in to bring about X. The activity may be difficult. It may be expensive. I may need help to do it. I may eventually fail, but I know which direction to head in.
If someone wants a specific piece of software, I know how to either create that software or how to delegate its creation to someone else. If I need to be more awake and alert, I know how to sleep. If I seek information, I know how to read a book to get it. But somehow I don’t know how to recreate. Allow me to elaborate:
You know how when you’re all done with your work and you say to yourself “Okay! Now it’s time to do something fun!” I don’t know what that something should be. There are things that are restorative, like going for a walk. But I’d like something that is also really enjoyable. And while I derive a certain amount of pleasure from walking I don’t think “Oh man! That was so fun!” Spending time with friends, for example playing D&D, is fun, but I can’t do it whenever I feel like it. I schedule as much of it as I can get away with (probably too much) but it’s not something I can decide to do on a whim.
For many people the answer is some kind of screen based activity. TV, movies, video games, etc. And occasionally I’ll hit on the perfect alchemy where I’m listening to a podcast, while playing a video game. Or I’m watching a reality tv show in the background while I work on something fun on my computer. But those moments are always fleeting. Video games gradually transition from escapism to drudgery. And it turns out only a very limited selection of reality TV works as background—actually it’s only The Great British Bake Off.
I think it’s a problem of attention, which is where we finally arrive at my brokenness. Even when I’m having fun I don’t want to feel like I’m wasting my time (first because of the aforementioned brokenness and second because the time I have available for fun is so limited). Consequently having fun involves the perfect level of attention. I’m not straining to pay attention, but nor do I feel there’s some amount of attention that’s going to waste. You might say I’m in the attention zone, or sweet spot. And as near as I can tell that spot is pretty small. Clearly one obvious answer is to make the spot bigger. Why do I have to be doing at least two things to really feel like I’m having fun? Another answer, which I’ve seriously considered, is just to abandon the whole idea that I might be able to have fun. If I can’t find success there, then there are a lot of other places I can find success.
It’s possible that this can all be reduced to the idea of accomplishment. Whatever I’m doing I feel like I need to have accomplished something. This is not a great way to live a balanced and healthy life, but it does take me to my first review:
Non-Fiction ReviewsThe Burnout Societyby: Byung-Chul Han
Published: 2015
68 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The big difference between now and every other point in human history is that in the past all societies have been disciplinary societies whereas modern societies are achievement societies. Accordingly, whereas we used to experience too much negativity, now we experience too much positivity. We no longer suffer, we burnout.
What's the author's angle?
Han is a Korean philosopher living in Germany, and the book was originally written in German. All of these layers of foreignness make his biases pretty opaque to me.
Who should read this book?
This book is short but dense. The former quality mitigates the latter. Furthermore if you like philosophy, then you’re used to denseness. This leaves only a short, powerful book, which you should definitely read.
Specific thoughts: Supernormal stimuli under a different name?
I’ve been entranced by the idea of supernormal stimuli since I first encountered the idea in Stephen Guyenet’s The Hungry Brain. This is the idea that evolution built in numerous measures to protect us in the event of scarcity, because that’s what’s happening the majority of the time, but it didn’t build in any protection against abundance, because long term abundance was non-existent. As it has been said, we’re built to suffer, we’re not built for relentless achievement.
Guyenet examined this issue through a behavioral lens, Han views it through a philosophical one. Han ends up being just as compelling. For example consider this quote describing the move from “disciplinary society” to “achievement society”:
Prohibitions, commandments, and the law are replaced by projects, initiatives, and motivation. Disciplinary society is still governed by no. Its negativity produces madmen and criminals. In contrast, achievement society creates depressives and losers.
Perhaps it’s just me but this felt like Han was seeing straight into the soul of society.
If our society has made this switch, from discipline to achievement, from suffering to burning out, what does it look like? One might imagine that it’s a curve which gently slopes upward. As it rises, suffering gradually decreases till it hits zero. As it crosses the axis we start to focus more and more on achievement. At first glance this may seem like a small switch, and not only that but a positive one as well. But the longer it goes, the more it appears to be a complete re-ordering of the world.
Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save CivilizationBy: Brad Wilcox
Published: 2024
320 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
That the surest route to wealth and happiness is getting married.
What's the author's angle?
Wilcox is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, so he’s not exactly a disinterested observer, but he has collected a lot of data.
Who should read this book?
It’s nice that books like this are getting more attention, but I’m not sure that anyone should read them. I guess if you have someone who’s doubtful about marriage, but nevertheless persuadable, they would be the ideal candidate, but how many of those people are actually out there?
Specific thoughts: It’s interesting what’s considered radical these days.
I’m not sure if I’ve expressed this observation before in this space, but if so it bears repeating. In 1995 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”. At the time it seemed like the blandest, most inoffensive advice that an organization could dispense. Certainly there were people even then who violently disagreed with it, but it seemed self evident that this was the Church’s position, and it was weird that they felt the need to spell it out. But now, nearly 30 years on, writing a book advocating for marriage is seen as a vaguely radical act. What will things look like in another 30 years?
The MANIACBy: Benjamín Labatut (lah-bah-TOOT)
Published: 2023
368 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A semi-fictionalized history connecting Paul Erhenfest, John von Neumann, and Lee Sedol into a history of irrationality and artificiality.
What's the author's angle?
This is the second book I’ve read by Labatut (see the review of his other book, When We Cease to Understand the World here) and he definitely has a very specific point of view. I would describe it as: the more advanced the science the closer it gets to “secrets man was not meant to know.”
Who should read this book?
If you’re interested in von Neumann, computers, AI or Lovecraft then you will probably enjoy this book.
Specific thoughts: It’s interesting, but is it true?
As someone who feels that things have definitely gone off the rails recently—in ways that are both depressingly familiar and also profoundly strange—I’m very interested in explorations of this phenomenon. I’m particularly drawn to people who examine the insane edges of things. But how many people are talking about quantum mechanics driving people insane?
Labatut is and he’s taken a unique but sometimes frustrating approach to this exploration. He does historical fiction, but if you didn’t know it was fiction you’d mistake it for fact, and indeed a great deal of it is factual, particularly in this book (unlike his last one).
The problem is that you’d really like to know what’s fact, what’s embellishment, and what’s outright fabrication, but this is not easy to do. As far as I can tell there’s not a giant list. (The closest thing I found was this.) So instead you have to do your own research, which is time consuming, as you might imagine.
For example take this scene which opens the section on von Neumann:
When cancer spread to his brain and began to destroy his mind, he was sequestered by the United States military and confined to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Two armed guards stood outside his door. No one was allowed to see him without express permission from the Pentagon. An Air Force colonel and eight airmen with top secret clearance were assigned to assist him full-time, even though there were days he could do nothing but rage like a madman. He was a fifty-three-year-old Jewish mathematician who had emigrated from Hungary to America in 1937, and yet at his bedside, hanging on his every word, sat Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission; the Secretary of Defense; the Deputy Secretary of Defense; the Secretaries of Air, Army, and Navy; and the military Chiefs of Staff—all waiting for a final spark, one more idea from the individual who had birthed the modern computer, laid down the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics, written the equations for the implosion of the atomic bomb, fathered the Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, heralded the arrival of digital life, self-reproducing machines, artificial intelligence, and the technological singularity, and promised them godlike control over the Earth’s climate, now wasting away before their eyes, screaming in agony, lost in delirium, dying, just like any other man.
As near as I can tell all the people listed in the excerpt did in fact visit von Neumann as he lay dying, which is definitely remarkable, but I don’t know if all of them were sitting around his bed at the same time. But figuring that out took a fair amount of time. So if this sort of thing is going to trouble you I would avoid the book, but if your desire for a great story allows you to overlook the “liberties” Labatut takes with the truth, then this is a very engaging and thought provoking book.
Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman EmpireBy: Peter H. Wilson
Published: 2016
1008 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A history of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) broken up into topical slices. Some example topics: Lands, Identity, Dynasty, Justice. This is not a narrative, chronological history.
What's the author's angle?
Wilson is an academic focused on German history. This is no small fraction of his life’s work.
Who should read this book?
Who? And how? And whether? Are in fact the big questions, read on…
Specific thoughts: So you want to learn about the Holy Roman Empire…
Last year my wife and I took a cruise down the Rhine River, and as we toured the various cities the HRE got mentioned a lot. I realized I didn’t know much about it, and so I resolved to learn more.
As it turns out I knew more than I thought, what I didn’t have is a framework. A model for how the HRE worked and what it was. It’s a weird entity. As Voltaire famously said, “This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.” The emperor of the HRE was very different from other monarchs and the HRE was very different from other empires.
While there were long periods where the job of emperor was basically hereditary, it was always technically an elected position. There weren’t a lot of electors. (Seven after the Golden Bull was issued in 1356 reaching a maximum of 10 in 1803, but then the whole thing ended in 1806. They didn’t even get a chance to participate in an election.1) It wasn’t a popular election, but even so the fact that there was an election at all made the position unusual.
The empire itself was also strange. Unlike most empires which gradually expand and develop from a small kingdom into their full imperial splendor. This empire started as the Frankish Kingdom of Charlemagne and then the rest of its 800+ years of existence was spent trying to keep that kingdom/empire from fracturing more than it already had. The inception of the empire also represented the peak of its power and unity. After that, while there were peaks and valleys the general trend was down.
The point is it was a weird political organization. one I wanted to know more about and understand better. So, in typical fashion, I found a book, purchased it from Audible, and ten months later it made it to the top of my list. So how well did this 34 hour audiobook do at fulfilling my goal? Or to put it another way, was listening to this book the best way to learn about the Holy Roman Empire? I’m going to say “no”. Does that mean that reading it was a mistake?
I’m fully aware of the fact that listening to a dense history book is not the best way to consume it. This is particularly true if the book is organized by subject, as was the case with this book, rather than chronologically and narratively. The question which then arises: would my HRE education time have been better spent doing something else? We can all agree that if I had carefully read a physical copy of the book, marking things up as I went along, checking the index, etc. That would have been better, but that wasn’t going to happen. The queue of books I want to give that treatment to is far too long already. So the choice is spend 13 hours listening to this book (I think I averaged a listening speed of around 2.6) or spend 13 hours engaged in some other activity that produced HRE knowledge. Some possibilities:
- Reading Wikipedia articles: Here we return to the asymmetry between the time I have to listen to books and the time I have for using my eyes to read. Also there are going to be all manner of details in a 1000 page book that aren’t in a 22,000 word Wikipedia article (the main HRE article). And what if the information you’re really interested in takes you down a rabbit hole and you end up having to read a dozen articles? You could quickly arrive in a situation where it was a bad tradeoff. Nevertheless I’m not sure how much information I retained from the book that wouldn’t have also featured in the articles.
- Asking questions on ChatGPT (or similar): If you’re just interested in a specific question, like: “How did electors work in the Holy Roman Empire?” then using ChatGPT or something similar is a great way to go, and you can take things in whatever direction you want, so rather than slogging through the 1000 page book or the 22,000 word article, you can just focus on the questions you’re really interested in. But once again there are some issues. For example, knowing what questions to ask. I can guarantee that I have a whole host of questions after reading this book that I never even considered beforehand. Also despite the hype around ChatGPT-4o it still screws up more than is ideal. As an example I decided to ask it about electors. At one point in our discussion it said that when the HRE ended in 1806 there were ten electors and then proceeded to supply me with a list of eleven nobles. I could have figured out which one was extra or duplicated, but that kind of defeats the point.
- Hiring an expert to talk to me: This idea only occurred to me as I was writing this review, but in this day and age you could probably find someone who was an expert on the HRE and pay them to talk to you about the HRE. As Tyler Cowen says, there’s a market for everything, presumably that includes HRE knowledge. I haven’t tried this, so I have no idea on cost, effectiveness or enjoyability, but now that it’s occurred to me I’ll definitely try it in the future.
- Finding a movie to watch: This doesn’t appear to be an option for this topic, but it is for many other topics. And it’s one that shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.
I do know a lot more about the HRE than I used to. And I think this book is a great resource, and I’m glad to have it on my shelf. (Yes I listened to it, but I also bought a physical copy.) But in retrospect, I think a combination of reading wikipedia, and asking chatgpt would have yielded better results in less time.
You Can’t Screw This Up: Why Eating Takeout, Enjoying Dessert, and Taking the Stress out of Dieting Leads to Weight Loss That LastsBy: Adam Bornstein
Published: 2023
352 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
A better way to approach eating and weight-loss that doesn’t involve being miserable.
What's the author's angle?
Bornstein worked with Tim Ferris for five years and he mentions Ryan Holiday quite a bit as well. If either of those names mean anything to you then perhaps you have some sense of his “angle”. If not, don’t worry about it.
Who should read this book?
If you’re trying to lose weight and nothing else is working then you might as well read this book, what do you have to lose?
Specific thoughts: What would it look like if this was easy?
As is unfortunately so often the case, I’m not sure how this book ended up on my list. I would like to lose some weight, but I’m more blessed than some. I’m in that “if I could just shed 10 lbs, maybe 15 my weight would be perfect” group. Still, even if that’s all I’m dealing with this is in that category of books where if it works it’s worth all the time you spent reading it and then some. And if it doesn’t, you haven’t given up much.
Bornstein’s central premise is: given most diets don’t work, we need to try something different, and in this sense he reminds me a lot of some of the other books I’ve read on the subject. There was Younger Next Year from a couple of posts back, and the Hungry Brain from a few years ago. All three recommend that we establish more of a mindset of attentiveness to what we eat rather than setting up super restrictive regimes. Bornstein’s advice is to be mostly good most of the time:
Great health is accomplished by being “good enough.” When I think about making healthy decisions, I assume that approximately 25 percent of my days are going to be a struggle, 50 percent of my days are nothing special (but lead to small positive changes), and 25 percent of my days I’ll feel like I’m doing great.
On paper, this doesn’t look like a recipe for success, but the math works in your favor. The crappy weeks are crappy, but they are better than nothing. The 50 percent weeks are when you’re making those small incremental changes that are the foundation of success in anything. And the 25 percent of the time when you are better than average gives you that extra boost and motivation.
All three books also share the advice (to varying degrees) of avoiding ultra-processed foods. The Hungry Brain is the best for going into the science and identifies that these ultra-processed foods act as supernormal stimuli, also called hyperpalatable. Follow this link if you want to know more about that, but suffice it to say food companies are hacking our brains, and while there are many reasons why people are significantly more obese now than they were historically, the creation of hyperpalatable food is among the most insidious.
Fiction ReviewsNorwegian WoodBy: Haruki Murakami
Published: 1987 (in Japanese)
296 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The life, the loves, and the many adjacent suicides of a boy named Toru Watanabe in 1960s Japan.
Who should read this book?
If your fiction reading mostly consists of science fiction and fantasy, like me, then it’s nice to be reminded from time to time that the average well regarded piece of contemporary fiction is going to be better written and have more engaging characters than the average SF&F novel. This is because the average SF&F has other ways of being good. It can have annoying characters but amazing world building, or an incredibly interesting premise, and to be fair this also means that it ends up being spread a little bit thin. Contemporary fiction can’t take advantage of this crutch, and it doesn’t suffer from this weakness, which means if it’s going to be well regarded it has to be for the writing, plot and characters—as such these elements are generally stronger. If this observation speaks to you, you should read this book.
Specific thoughts: For a introspective nerd Watanabe sure sleeps with a lot of girls
The one caveat to my recommendation above is that this is a pretty adult book. There are a fair number of sex scenes and while they’re not super explicit, they’re not “fade to black” sex scenes either. Also suicide is central to the book, and there are several of them. Having said all that, I really enjoyed this book, particularly the characters. Yes, Watanabe’s magnetism is a little unbelievable, but all of the characters are so well crafted that you can’t help but love them to death. (Is that tasteless? As hard as it is to believe it was actually unintentional.)
He Who Fights with Monsters SeriesBy: Shirtaloon
Book 2
Published: 2021
564 Pages
Book 3
Published: 2021
722 Pages
Briefly, what is this series about?
The main character, Jason Asano, is accidentally summoned to a world of magic. Once there he becomes an adventurer slaying monsters, vanquishing cultists, and in general being a smug, albeit generally amusing, ass.
Who should read this series?
This series is similar to Dungeon Crawler Carl (search the site for my reviews of that series), so if you liked that you’ll probably like this. Also anyone who likes pulpy fantasy stuff, should enjoy this.
Specific thoughts: Gods are real and he does what?!?
There are many things to like about this series: The characters are pretty good. The world building is great (and takes a big step up at the end of Book 3). The action is well written. But there is a Mary-Sue atheism to the endeavor that would be annoying if it wasn’t so ridiculous.
Allow me to explain, one can perhaps be forgiven for being an atheist in the modern world. As such it’s understandable that the main character, Jason, would start out as an atheist. But when he’s transported to a world where not only are gods real, but, unlike most fantasy worlds, they show up all the time. (If you hang out in the religious district of a small town then you’re likely to see one or the other of the gods on a daily basis.)
Given this you would expect a dramatic revision in Jason’s beliefs, but no, instead he treats gods as you might treat an annoying boss if you had zero fear of being fired. And rather than being smitten, or cursed or educated, the gods all deeply respect him for his iconoclasm.
Other than that it’s pretty enjoyable, and reasonably clever. It’s just too bad that it has this one absurd, and completely unrealistic conceit.
I know I said that the next thing I posted would not be a book review. I was wrong, but I do have something that is all but ready to go, so it should come out in the next few days. And then I have a bunch of other stuff that’s close so I hope to enter a period of higher volume very soon. Though I do have a lot of travel scheduled for the summer, so we’ll have to see…
1I’m reminded of the amazing sketch about Admiral Karl Dönitz, the last leader of Nazi Germany, from That Mitchell and Webb Look.
- Irish Impressions by: G. K. Chesterton
- How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide by: Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay
- A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form by: Paul Lockhart
- A Little History of Science by: William Bynum
- Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling by: Michael Port
- The Goblin Emperor by: Katherine Addison
- Red Hook: (The Weird of Hali #6) by: John Michael Greer
- He Who Fights with Monsters: A LitRPG Adventure by: Shirtaloon
- All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir by: Beth Moore
- Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities by: David B. Auerbach
- The Robot’s Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin by: Keith E. Stanovich
- Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by: John Vaillant
- Persian Fire The First World Empire and the Battle for the West by: Tom Holland
- Submission by: Michel Houellebecq
- The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by: Rod Dreher
- Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why by: Phyllis Tickle
- Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses by: Richard Lloyd Anderson
- The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (Volume 2) by: Iain McGilchrist
- The World Behind the World: Consciousness, Free Will, and the Limits of Science by: Erik Hoel
- Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by: Beth Macy
- American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by: Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
- Younger Next Year, 2nd Edition: Live Strong, Fit, Sexy, and Smart - Until You're 80 and Beyond by: Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge M.D.
- Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by: Mason Currey
- Meditations on First Philosophy by: Rene Descartes
- Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans by: Plutarch
- Neuromancer by: William Gibson
- Aftermath: Expeditionary Force, Book 16 by: Craig Alanson
- The Creative Act: A Way of Being by: Rick Rubin
- The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by: Leonard Mlodinow
- Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year compiled by: Allie Esiri
- The Monster of Florence by: Douglas Preston
- Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age by: Dale C. Allison Jr.
- As a Driven Leaf by: Milton Steinberg
My report from Natal Con 2023. Including reflections on Tommy Boy, seatbelts, and the proliferation of polycrises.
- Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by: Robert Wright
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by: Matthew Desmond
- Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough by: Michael Easter
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by: Robert Pirsig
- Finite and Infinite Games by: James Carse
- Fever Pitch by: Nick Hornby
- Sun and Steel by: Yukio Mishima
- Coraline by: Neil Gaiman
- The Gods Never Left Us by: Erich von Däniken
- Mere Christianity by: C. S. Lewis
Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/egregores-group-minds-and-white-magic
Is there such a thing as a group mind? If so how does it affect the thriving and surviving of groups? What do such group minds look like from a historical perspective? What about a modern perspective?
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/11/the-overemphasis-on-love-and-tolerance/
Love is very important for Christians, but has there been too much emphasis placed on it? And has this emphasis warped it into something else? To put it more simply is perfect Christian love the same as unlimited tolerance? This post argues that it's not, and that in fact if you're looking for the ultimate Christian principle it might be "repentance".
- The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics by: Richard Hanania
- How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement by: Fredrik deBoer
- The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (Volume 1) by: Iain McGilchrist
- The Alter Ego Effect: Defeat the Enemy, Unlock Your Heroic Self, and Start Kicking Assby: Todd Herman
- The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by: Jonathan Rosen
- To Hell and Back by: Audie Murphy
- The Ministry for the Future by: Kim Stanley Robinson
- The Mysteries by: Bill Watterson
- A Desert of Vast Eternities (Pilgrim's Path Book 2) by: Vic Davis
- The New Copernicans: Millennials and the Survival of the Church by: David John Seel Jr.
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/10/the-worst-book-ive-ever-read/
John Seel Jr.'s book, The New Copernicans, is the worst book I have ever read. He puts forth a dubious premise. In support of which he provides no data to back it up, nor any anecdotes which illustrate it actually occurring. To the extent there is anything backing it up, it's provided by extensive misrepresentation of other books.
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/10/worthy-of-our-sufferings/
Dostoevsky wrote, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." What does that mean? I think he meant that whatever suffering we’re experiencing it’s suffering God felt we were capable of handling. We need to prove worthy of that trust. This has always been hard to do, and now that we have numerous ways of mitigating suffering, it's not only hard, but confusing.
Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/can-we-eliminate-struggle-2023
Humanity has struggled and suffered for so long that we might be unable to survive without them. We dream of such elimination through technology, but will that dream turn into a nightmare?
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/10/tragedies-truths-and-technologies/
Historically we didn't worry about wars in far away places because we weren't aware of them. Now we're aware of them, but with the rise of AI we're going to have a similar difficulty acquiring accurate information. This is going to complicate our ability to intervene righteously.
- Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas by: Natasha Dow Schüll
- The Evolutionary Limits of Liberalism: Democratic Problems, Market Solutions and the Ethics of Preference Satisfaction by: Filipe Nobre Faria
- A Language Older Than Words by: Derrick Jensen
- WTF?!: An Economic Tour of the Weird by: Peter T. Leeson
- Blowback (Second Edition): The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by: Chalmers Johnson
- The Sun Is a Compass: A 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds by: Caroline Van Hemert
- So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by: Cal Newport
- Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy by: Jostein Gaarder
- The Sandman 4 by: Neil Gaiman
- American Gods by: Neil Gaiman
- The Eye of the Bedlam Bride: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 6 by: Matt Dinniman
- Letters to a Young Mormon by: Adam S. Miller
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/10/would-you-wager-on-pascals-mugging/
Imagine that someone walks up to you and demands all your money. If you fail to comply they threaten to kill all the inhabitants of some far off planet. How would you react? And is this similar to Pascal's Wager?
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/10/betting-on-the-future/
There are three obvious paths forward: religion, atheism and transhumanism. But each of these paths must be chosen. There's also a fourth path, that of apathy. Which should we choose?
Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/ai-risk-might-be-more-subtle-than
Depressed people are more prone to addiction. If social media engagement looks a lot like addiction, does that mean algorithms for increasing engagement also increase depression?
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/09/the-greatest-three-nephites-story-ever-told/
It is believed that, during his mortal ministry, Jesus granted immortality to three of His American apostles. Known as the Three Nephites they now wander the Earth until His return, doing good. This has lead to many stories of miraculous assistance. This is the greatest of all those stories.
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/09/faith-ufos-the-supernatural-and-transistor-radios/
Why are many people so willing to believe evidence of UFOs and Aliens, and so unwilling to believe evidence for God?
Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/speculative-attempts-to-complicate
When things aren't going well, those in power will sometimes introduce some speculative chaos in the hopes that what emerges on the other side will be better. It mostly doesn't work.
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/09/the-thickness-of-the-world/
In the book Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis there is a scene where the King is arguing with a priest about what seems to be an unreasonable demand from one of the gods. The priest says something profound, something I'm still trying to wrap my head around. This episode is an effort to do just that.
- The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction by: Matthew B. Crawford
- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by: Oliver Burkeman
- Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future by: Jean M. Twenge
- When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake by: Tim Larkin
- Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution by: Tucker Carlson
- Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by: Gino Wickman
- One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by: B. J. Novak
- Animal Farm by: George Orwell
- Slaughter-House Five (Graphic Novel) by: Kurt Vonnegut and Ryan North
- Children of the Mind (The Ender Saga, 4) by: Orson Scott Card
- Chariots of the Gods by: Erich von Däniken
Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/the-apocalypse-will-not-be-as-cool
There are many potential apocalypses, and when people imagine them they imagine that everyone will die. On the contrary most people will live, and it will be messy and miserable.
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/08/does-technology-encourage-virtue/
Last week we looked at how technology appears to multiple our temptations, but what does it do to our better impulses. If we move from considering the Deadly Sins to the Capital Virtues does technology undermine our efforts or assist us?
Apparently even the "smart" people are finally ready to admit that we should start reducing our annual deficit. In 2017 I was unclear on what the endgame was. I'm still unclear.
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/08/the-temptations-of-technology/
What effect does technology have on the temptations we experience? If we examine the seven deadly sins it would appear that in all cases technology makes these sins more tempting and more accessible. Why would that be?
- End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by: Peter Turchin
- Minds Make Societies: How Cognition Explains the World Humans Create by: Pascal Boyer
- How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by: Steven Johnson
- Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by: Peter Attia MD
- Jump Gate Twist by: Mark L. Van Name
- Send Us Your Armies (Pilgrim's Path Book 1) by: Vic Davis
- Lonesome Dove by: Larry McMurtry
- Science Fiction Short Stories compiled by: Guy d'Andigne
- Adventures of Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent by: Larry Correia
- The Myth of Sisyphus by: Albert Camus
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/08/and-there-was-silence-in-heaven/
In the Book of Revelation we read that when the seventh seal was opened there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. In this post I'm going to engage in some spurious scriptural speculation about what that might mean.
Somehow I got the two audio files mixed up. So I published my substack thinking it was my Patheos piece, so now I'm publishing that Patheos piece. I will go through and try and fix some links, but I don't think I can fix it entirely... In any case here's the Patheos Audio:
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/07/technological-salvation/
Two groups have a narrative of human potential — a sense of humanity’s ultimate destiny: the Actively Religious and the Radical Humanists. The former our ultimate salvation will occur in partnership with the divine (e.g. God). For the latter we are destined to be saved by our own efforts. These similarities invite us to consider both as paths to salvation, albeit very different ones.
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/07/technological-salvation/
Two groups have a narrative of human potential — a sense of humanity’s ultimate destiny: the Actively Religious and the Radical Humanists. The former our ultimate salvation will occur in partnership with the divine (e.g. God). For the latter we are destined to be saved by our own efforts. These similarities invite us to consider both as paths to salvation, albeit very different ones.
Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/tribe-by-sebastian-junger-and-the
The Siege of Sarajevo killed 20% of the population, a horror most of us can scarcely grasp, yet those who survived it look back on the siege as a period of unique happiness. Why should that be?
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/07/chestertons-fence-and-technology/
G. K. Chesterton noted that one shouldn't remove a fence until you understand why it was there in the first place. This is a great analogy for the concept of the traditions which have been passed down to us by religion. Technology allows us to remove a lot of fences, but are we sure we understand why they were there to begin with?
Expanding on Nick Bostrom's metaphor for technological development — it's like drawing balls of various shades from an urn, and if you ever draw a pure black ball, the world ends...
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/07/separating-the-beneficial-from-the-barbarous/
Clearly there are some traditions which should be abandoned. And just as clearly there are some which should be preserved. But what are we to do with the vast majority which fall in the middle?
There's significant evidence that traditional practices were beneficial and adaptive. But many reject traditions as relics of a barbarous past. How do we make that determination?
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/07/the-technology-of-religion-vs-the-technology-of-progress/
Religion is a very old technology, and the wisdom contains is often hard to identify. This is unlike the technology we create intentionally, where the goal is always obvious. When these two technologies come into conflict who should we decide between them. It's easy and attractive to go with the new, but by dispensing with the old we may be incurring harms that will only manifest years or decades later.
- Feminism Against Progress by: Mary Harrington
- Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine by: Robert H. Lustig
- Categories by: Aristotle
- Prior Analytics by: Aristotle
- The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field by: Mike Michalowicz
- The Butcher's Masquerade: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 5 by: Matt Dinniman
- Xenocide (The Ender Saga, 3): by: Orson Scott Card
- When We Cease to Understand the World by: Benjamin Labatut
- The Sandman 3 by: Neil Gaiman
- The New Jerusalem by: G. K. Chesterton
Religion is often viewed as being completely different from technology, but in actuality religion is a technology, one of the oldest forms of it in fact. It's a particularly important form of technology one that we abandon at our peril.
Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/the-ideas-of-nassim-nicholas-taleb-20d?sd=pf
For many years this was the most listened to episode of my podcast. So it seemed logical to update it, but also it's one you might have already heard.
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/06/a-judgment-day-for-ais/
If AIs are going to act as independent agents then they should be praised for the virtues and judged for their sins just as we all are. And in fact this judgment is one of the few things that will ensure their morality.
Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/the-politics-of-the-zombie-apocalypse-e4c
Per Scott Alexander it's possible that the right optimizes for survival, while the left optimizes for thriving. If so would a society entirely optimized around thriving actually function?
Per Scott Alexander it's possible that the right optimizes for survival, while the left optimizes for thriving. If so would a society entirely optimized around thriving actually function?
Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/06/morality-for-robots-and-ais/
AI risk has been in the news a lot lately. One way to reduce that risk is to make sure that AIs are moral. But what does morality even mean when you're talking about robots and AIs?
Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/burning-man-dreamtime-and-dragons-8b8
Burning Man aspires to reinvent the culture of the Earth. I don't think it's going to, which is to say in 1,000 years I don't think that people will look back on this era as the Dawn of the Burners. But what will they think of us? That's the question we cover in this episode.
Artificial Intelligence has many attributes, which previously have been qualities we've only associated with the divine.
This is cross posted from my Patheos column which you can find here: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/
Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/the-10-books-i-finished-in-may-and
I'm still figure out how to do anchor links. Also I really need to figure out how to write shorter reviews...
Religion and technology relate to each other in strange and subtle ways. Religion must, of necessity grapple with technology, but how to do that remains unclear.
This is the first post of my new Patheos column. If you could subscribe that would be fantastic.
Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/nukes-2023
A updating of one of my past posts. I actually changed a lot more than I thought would. Also since it's not appearing on Substack I went a little bit crazy with footnotes. Let me know what you think of how I handled them on audio.
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/05/25/decisions-as-a-barbell-also-a-very-meta-post/
At the end of this episode I announce some significant changes to my blog, so make sure to stay till then.
Before then I discuss decision making. How we need to spend most of our time perfecting our habits and thinking carefully about big decisions, but in reality we spend most of our time doing neither. Obsessed with things that don't matter...
- Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by: Eric Schlosser
- Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less by: Alex Epstein
- The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion by: Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing
- Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment by: Yanis Varoufakis
- Apollo: The Race to the Moon by: Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox
- Ender’s Game (The Ender Saga, 1) by: Orson Scott Card
- The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 3 by: Matt Dinniman
- Faith, Hope and Carnage by: Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/04/30/eschatologist-28-if-ye-are-prepared-ye-shall-not-fear/
I'm not a hardcore prepper, but I'm always surprised by how little preperation most people are willing to make, particularly compared to how much they're willing to panic.
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/04/27/the-modern-landscape-of-harm/
It is not just our ability to cause harm, but our ability to mitigate harm which has grown in an unprecedented fashion. Life has done whatever it could get away with for billions of year, but in the last few hundred humans have come along able to inflict or prevent great harms and the consciousness to decide whether and how. Recent debates have pitted maximalists from both sides. Those who believe we need to do everything possible to prevent certain harms and those who thing that any attempt to prevent harm is likely to cause more harm because it stalls progress.
In 2014, just a few days before Christmas I was fired and served with a lawsuit. The next two years were some of the toughest of my life. (Which actually makes me pretty lucky.) This is the story of that lawsuit. How it started and how it ended. I made a lot of mistakes, hopefully this will enable you to not make the same mistakes.
- What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies by: Tim Urban
- The Machinery of Freedom – Guide to a Radical Capitalism by: David Friedman
- The Moth Presents All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown by: Various
- A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by: Edwin H. Friedman
- Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass by: Theodore Dalrymple
- Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us by: Russ Roberts
- Darkness at Noon by: Arthur Koestler
- The Horse and His Boy by: C. S. Lewis
- Prince Caspian by: C. S. Lewis
- Voyage of the Dawn Treader by: C. S. Lewis
- The Silver Chair by: C. S. Lewis
- The Last Battle by: C. S. Lewis
- Till We Have Faces by: C. S. Lewis
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/03/31/eschatologist-27-golems-and-genies/
I recently read a book which claimed to describe the central problem of the modern world, What's Our Problem by Tim Urban. No one can say he lacked for ambition, but I feel like his analysis overlooks several large problems. In particularly I think he doesn't go nearly deep enough into how technology has changed the rules of the game.
He has divided the political landscape up into golems and genies. And he asserts that we just need stronger genies, the problem is that technology has developed in such a way that it actively sabotages genies while empowering golems. And this problem is not going to go away...
There have been some competing explanations for the Nord Stream explosions. Seymour Hersh claims the US did it. The New York Times claims it was Pro-Ukrainian forces and a somewhat obscure blogger claims he has evidence that it was the Russians. How is one to decide? And is it even necessary to decide? Is it perhaps more important to have a robust framework for conspiracy theories in general, than to have firm opinions about specific theories? How has the modern world made the whole entreprise more difficult?
- The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by: David Graeber and David Wengrow
- America and Iran: A History 1720 to the Present by: John Ghazvinian
- Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by: M. Nolan Gray
- Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed by: Ben R. Rich
- The Hedonistic Imperative by: David Pearce
- Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health—and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More by: Christopher M. Palmer MD
- Nicomachean Ethics by: Aristotle
- Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction by: Jonathan Barnes
- Dungeon Crawler Carl: A LitRPG/Gamelit Adventure by: Matt Dinniman
- Carl’s Doomsday Scenario: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 2 by: Matt Dinniman
- The Magician’s Nephew by: C. S. Lewis
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by: C. S. Lewis
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/02/28/eschatologist-26-a-crisis-of-change-and-choice/
In my last newsletter we talked about spiritual health, and a few options for acquiring that health, such as overcoming suffering or, alternatively, gaining material abundance. In this newsletter we’re going to go beyond talking about the merits of different options to discussing the way in which these options have multiplied.
Go back a few centuries, and there was one religion, one staple crop, and one way of doing things. These days, however, we’re spoiled for choices and options for both spiritual and physical health, and beyond that our emotional and mental health as well. We have countless religions to choose from: some secular, some informal. Beyond that there are a bewildering variety of diet and exercise programs, and tens of thousands of self-help books. We are offered a truly insane number of choices, all backed up by a deluge of data drawing sometimes contradictory conclusions. Everybody wants to be happy and live a good life, but which of the thousands of options best accomplishes that?
Transcript along with pictures of all the docs mentioned in the episode: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/02/25/a-cautionary-tale/
In the interest of not spoiling things you're just going to have to listen...
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/02/16/polycrises-or-everything-everywhere-all-at-once/
In general any individual catastrophe is probably overblown. Global warming is not going to cause human extinction. Despite the severity of the war in Ukraine, nukes will probably not be used. Or at least none of these bad things are going to happen all by themselves. The problem is that we face numerous crises and while each individual crisis might be managable on their own, in combination they often feed off each other and create a polycrisis that's far more severe than any of the crises considered in isolation. Bad things are happening everywhere, and all at once...
- A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies by: Matt Simon
- Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century by: Helen Thompson
- The Captive Mind by: Czeslaw Milosz
- Antinet Zettelkasten: A Knowledge System That Will Turn You Into a Prolific Reader, Researcher and Writer by: Scott P. Scheper
- The Farthest Shore by: Ursula K. Le Guin
- All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) by: Martha Wells
- The Mind of the Maker by: Dorothy L. Sayers
- The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by: G. K. Chesterton
- Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations by: Alex & Brett Harris
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/02/01/eschatologist-25-spiritual-health-and-suffering/
Modernity has inarguably made dramatic improvements in our material well-being, but what about the non-material? The social, emotional and spiritual? In this episode I tackle that question. And while I think it might be possible that modernity has been neutral on this front, I don't think there's any reason for thinking it's been positive. But some people disagree. Tune into see who's right!
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/01/28/the-optimal-dosage-of-war/
Previous to the invasion of Ukraine, a sense of pessimism seemed to be ubiquitous with respect to Europe. Since the invasion things seem far more optimistic. One might even say that there's a new vitality and unity. Naively one might expect war to do the opposite, but we have a funny way of stepping up to challenges and war is the biggest challenge of all. This unity is not limited to Europe, it's an issue that even Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on. The question is, can we get these benefits in the absence of war. If not, are we doomed to descend into an increasingly fractious political environment?
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/01/24/challenging-children/
A follow up to my previous episode The Ineffability of Conservatism this episode attempts to approach things without bringing in religion. Though it does circle back there before the end. In particular we discuss three kinds of challenges:
- Challenges which are unavoidable.
- Challenges which can be avoided but we choose not to.
- Challenges which can be avoided and we do.
I argue that while we've moved a lot of things out of the first bucket we should be cautious about trying to move everything into bucket three. Challenges make us, and particularly are children resiliant and that's a good thing.
- The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left by: Garett Jones
- The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self by: Michael Easter
- Infinite Jest by: David Foster Wallace
- What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by: Randall Munroe
- The Sandman: Book One by: Neil Gaiman
- Failure Mode: Expeditionary Force, Book 15 by: Craig Alanson
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/12/31/eschatologist-24-chatgpt-and-a-lack-of-genius/
I reflect on my AI prediction from past years in light of the amazing abilities of ChatGPT. I wonder if you're ever going to get brilliant output from a huge corpus of material which strictly on account of it's volume has to be essentially average...
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/12/24/the-ineffability-of-conservatism/
I tell a story I heard of a boy walking out of Church in a direct slap to his father. And wonder why such a thing would have been inconcievable 40 years ago. What changed? As it turns out it's hard to say, and that's a big part of the problem.
- The Psychology of Totalitarianism by: Mattias Desmet
- The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World by: Adrian Wooldridge
- The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud by: Phillip Rieff
- Plato: A Very Short Introduction by: Julia Annas
- Jesus’ Son by: Denis Johnson
- Tombs of Atuan by: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Roadside Picnic by: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
- Purple Days by: Baurus
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/11/30/eschatologist-23-avoiding-risk/
After all the hot takes which have been offered in the wake of the FTX collapse, this is the hot take to rule them all. Okay probably not, and at this point it's probably a cold take. But I do think the whole FTX debacle carries some valuable lessons about risk. So that's what you're getting...
If you prefer to listen rather than read, this blog is available as a podcast here. Or if you want to listen to just this post: Or download the MP3 This is a review I did for the first issue of American Hombre, a new magazine being published by a friend of mine. I did... Read More
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/11/26/book-review-the-ethics-of-beauty/
This is a review I did for the first issue of American Hombre, a new magazine being published by a friend of mine. I did an excerpt of it back in episode 292, but he’s graciously agreed to let me release it in its entirety. If this makes you interested in the full magazine, the PDF is currently available for free at americanhombre.gumroad.com. But also you should consider subscribing to the print version. This magazine deserves to be held.
You can use the coupon code ‘RW’ to get 10% off a subscription or $1 off the price of the print issue. The next issue is coming out in January and it will include another review by me. (The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, if you’re curious.)
This review includes some pictures which you can find either in the PDF version of the magazine, or on wearenotsaved.com. But I will attempt to describe them in the course of my reading. They’re mostly pictures from the trip I took to Ireland this summer.
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/11/19/finding-the-answer/
A somewhat discursive episode where I reflect on a book I just read about meritocracy and different answers for the best way to organize society. And how what we thought was the answer—liberal democracy—appears to be fracturing, leaving everyone to fight over what part of it is the most important. What part was truly The Answer.
Link to survey: https://forms.gle/tCxmpwM4RTxPCJKUA
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- What We Owe the Future by: William MacAskill
- The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe by: Michael D. Gordin
- Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by: Jonathan Shay
- Socrates: A Very Short Introduction by: C.C.W. Taylor
- Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy by: Mortimer J. Adler
- A Wizard of Earthsea by: Ursula K. LeGuin
- Freemasonry and the Origins of Latter-day Saint Temple Ordinances by: Jeffrey M. Bradshaw
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/31/eschatologist-22-a-survey/
Survey: https://forms.gle/toRzdKPervpygw8MA
It's time for me to stick my head out and see what people think of me. Yes I'd like you to fill out a survey. Tell me what you think. I mean it. Be brutal!
If you prefer to listen rather than read, this blog is available as a podcast here. Or if you want to listen to just this post: Or download the MP3 This is my 300th post. It’s only my 22nd newsletter, but given that it’s 2022, that seemed numerologically significant enough for it to also count... Read More
If you prefer to listen rather than read, this blog is available as a podcast here. Or if you want to listen to just this post: Or download the MP3 I- Setting the scene A few weeks ago, on October 7, the US imposed a new set of limits on exporting semiconductors (chips) to China.... Read More
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/29/chip-off-the-old-bloc/
Recently the US enacted a set of punishing trade restrictions on China with respect to high-end chips. Some have called these restrictions the annihilation of China's semiconductor industry. Maybe so, but China's not going to go down without a fight, and the situation is complicated by numerous factors, including the complications of the technology itself. There's a lot going on and I attempt to cover a large portion of it.
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/22/the-midterms-biases-and-a-lack-of-moderation/
We're a few weeks from the midterms and it seemed like a good time to review the state of things. Though they're changing rapidly. In between composing this episode and recording it people went from expecting the Democrats to keep the Senate expecting them to lose it by a few seats. Beyond the reshuffling the election is exciting (or terrifying, depending on your perspective) for other reasons. We get to see if polls are still horribly broken (probably) and if there's any hope for either party to become more moderate. And of course there's the eternal possiblity that we'll finally get a viable third party (almost certainly not but a man can hope).
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/15/dalio-vs-zeihan/
Ray Dalio and Peter Zeihan have both written books about the future of America, China, and the world. On some points they agree and on some points they're profound disagreement. I compare and contrast these too books, hoping by doing so to tease out a credible view of the future. It's a view that's pretty pessimistic. But I think once you've looked at both of them, that's what you end up with.
- The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by: Peter Zeihan
- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by: David Deutsch
- Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by: Anne Applebaum
- Post-Truth by: Lee C. McIntyre
- Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be by: Steven Pressfield
- A Reader’s Companion to Infinite Jest by: Robert Bell and William Dowling
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by: Agatha Christie
- Dauntless: Lost Fleet, Book 1 by: Jack Campbell
- Fearless: Lost Fleet, Book 2 by: Jack Campbell
- Courageous: Lost Fleet, Book 3 by: Jack Campbell
- Outland by: Dennis E. Taylor
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/30/eschatologist-21-but-what-if-theyre-wrong/
I consider the predictions of three books and how one might approach these predictions when deciding how to prepare for the future.
It seems clear that most people start by trying to determine if a prediction is more likely than not to be accurate, but you should actually do somewhat the opposite, you should consider what the consequences are if the prediction is wrong.
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/28/the-bifurcation-created-by-technology/
This episode started as a tweet:
Technology bifurcates problems. 99% of problems go away, but the 1% that are left are awful. Case in point customer service: 99% of the time you don't even need customer service from Amazon, etc. but the 1% of the time you do you're suddenly in a story by Kafka.
Which I followed up with:
Additional thoughts/example: Self driving cars. Tech can take care of easiest 99%. Tosses most difficult 1% back to driver. Driver has no context, just suddenly in deep end, therefore much worse at hardest 1% than if they had just dealt with the full 100% from start.
What causes this phenomenon and how worried should we be?
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/21/the-tails-of-the-cultural-bell-curve/
If we imagine that culture has historically taken the form of a bell curve. Does it still do so? Or have we gutted the middle in service of making sure that the tails don't feel neglected? This seems very likely to be the case, and if it is what are the consequences?
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/14/excerpt-book-review-the-ethics-of-beauty/
An excerpt from a book review I recently did for the new magazine American Hombre (available here: https://americanhombre.gumroad.com/)
- The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail by: Ray Dalio
- The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century by: Louise Perry
- The War on the West by: Douglas Murray
- The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: Woke, Entitled, and Drunk with Power by: Mark Bauerlein
- Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by: Luke Burgis
- The Giver by: Lois Lowry
- The End of Eternity by: Isaac Asimov
- Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by: Ross Douthat
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/08/31/eschatologist-20-the-antifragility-of-taboos/
We covered the fragility of systems and technology in the last newsletter. In this newsletter I’d like to move from the material to the ephemeral. In other words, let’s talk about culture. This is a huge topic for a short newsletter, so while much of what I say can be applied to traditional culture in general, I want to focus on traditional taboos. The older and stronger and more widespread the taboo, the better...
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/08/31/eschatologist-20-the-antifragility-of-taboos/
We covered the fragility of systems and technology in the last newsletter. In this newsletter I’d like to move from the material to the ephemeral. In other words, let’s talk about culture. This is a huge topic for a short newsletter, so while much of what I say can be applied to traditional culture in general, I want to focus on traditional taboos. The older and stronger and more widespread the taboo, the better...
If you prefer to listen rather than read, this blog is available as a podcast here. Or if you want to listen to just this post: Or download the MP3 We covered the fragility of systems and technology in the last newsletter. In this newsletter I’d like to move from the material to the ephemeral.... Read More
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/08/26/the-involution-of-everything/
Recently I came across a theory for the progression of subcultures, which seemed to have significant explanatory power for what's happening to Western culture in general. Among the many things this theory speaks to is why cultural fights have become so vicious, why young people are disengaging, and whether wokeism has peaked.
- To Save Everything Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by: Evgeny Morozov
- Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? by: Mark Fisher
- How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe by: Thomas Cahill
- The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History by: Alexander Mikaberidze
- Kidnapped by: Robert Louis Stevenson
- Weird of Hali: Providence by: John Michael Greer
- Queer Mormon Theology: An Introduction by: Blaire Ostler ⌫
- The Ethics of Beauty by: Timothy G. Patitsas
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/07/31/eschatologist-19-the-non-linearity-of-baggage-systems/
I use the baggage chaos I encountered on a trip to Ireland as an example of fragility.
- Liberalism and Its Discontents by: Francis Fukuyama
- Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World by: Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross
- Creative Evolution by: Henri Bergson (didn’t finish)
- An Introduction to Metaphysics by: Henri Bergson
- The Great Hunger: Ireland: 1845-1849 by: Cecil Woodham-Smith (didn’t finish)
- The Man Who Died Twice: A Thursday Murder Club Mystery by: Richard Osman
- Rising From The Rubble: Buried for hours, changed for life, saved for something greater. By: Williamson Sintyl
- The Wind in the Willows by: Kenneth Grahame
- Breakaway: Expeditionary Force, Book 12 by: Craig Alanson
- Fallout: Expeditionary Force, Book 13 by: Craig Alanson
- Match Game: Expeditionary Force, Book 14 by: Craig Alanson
- Hidden Worldviews: Eight Cultural Stories That Shape Our Lives by: Steve Wilkens and Mark L. Sanford
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/06/30/eschatologist-18-famines-and-fragility/
I’m leaving for Ireland in just over a week. The trip is about half touristy stuff and half genealogical. I discuss my Irish ancestors, in particular Charles Conner who came to America during the Potato Famine. I then discuss some potential lessons that famine has for our own time.
The future is important, it is where we're going to spend the rest of our lives. But there are lots of different frameworks for how the future is going to go. Has technology saved us? Is it about to save us? Or will technology doom us? Does the arc of the moral universe bend towards justice or are we a few years away from collapse. In this episode I consider a half dozen eschatological frameworks, and what each of them say about the future and how things are going to end. In triumph or disaster.
Interestingly, the tragedy of Uvalde has been overshadowed by the unconscionable delay of the police. This is not the first time law enforcement has failed to operate in the way it should. An action by US Women Gymnasts seeking $1 billion dollars from the FBI for failing to stop Larry Nassar was also in the news recently. And again we have to ask why did law enforcement, in this case the FBI, fail so dramatically? This episode will explore both of these examples and attempt to come up with some sort of answer for that question.
- The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology Is Transforming Business, Politics, and Society by: Azeem Azhar
- Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men by: Leonard Sax
- The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos by: Sohrab Ahmari
- The China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Posture in the Post-American Era by: Liu Mingfu
- Canceling Comedians While the World Burns: A Critique of the Contemporary Left by: Ben Burgis
- The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe by: Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
- Paper Heroes by: Steven Heumann
- Critical Mass (Expeditionary Force, #10) by: Craig Alanson
- Brushfire (Expeditionary Force, #11) by: Craig Alanson
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/05/31/eschatologist-17-weve-solved-all-the-easy-problems-only-hard-problems-remain/
Abortion is back in the news, but rather than arguing for one side or the other I thought I'd take a look at the arena of moral debates in general. Are we getting better at solving these thorny problems or worse? I suspect we're getting worse, both because of internet echo chambers, but also because we've solved all the easy problems and only the really tough ones remain.
As you can imagine, this is bad.
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/05/26/conscience-authenticity-and-true-freedom/
In an episode that draws heavily from the book The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos by Sohrab Ahmari I consider the apparently conflict between being authentic and doing what you're "supposed" to do.
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/05/19/thoughts-on-yard-care-and-the-modern-world/
I'm moving and as a result I'm thinking of my decades long battle with my yard, and I'm wondering if there is any lesson for the modern world. I suspect that there is, but you should also consider that fact that I really hate yard work.
- The Divide: How Fanatical Certitude Is Destroying Democracy by: Taylor Dotson
- Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by: Mark Fisher
- The Age of AI and Our Human Future by: Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Daniel Huttenlocher
- A Confederacy of Dunces by: John Kennedy Toole
- Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation by: Roosevelt Montás
- Bluefishing: The Art of Making Things Happen by: Steve Sims
- The Thursday Murder Club by: Richard Osman
- The Weird of Hali: Dreamlands by: John Michael Greer
- Homefront (Expeditionary Force, #7.5) by: Craig Alanson
- Valkyrie (Expeditionary Force, #9) by: Craig Alanson
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/05/01/eschatologist-16-the-right-amount-of-danger/
You may be familiar with the hygiene hypothesis, which holds that the increase in allergies we've been seeing are due to inadequately stressed immune systems. That in the absence of parasites and pathogens our immune systems overreact to things which aren't dangerous. Is it possible that something similar is going on with our psychological immune systems? If so what sort of "pathogens" should we be introducing?
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/04/28/the-drug-crisis-part-2-wrapping-up-and-maybe-some-solutions/
I wrap up my discussion of the drug crisis. I begin with discussing the fact that the US appears to be unique in the rate at which overdose deaths are increasing. This is not quite true, but there are some peculiarities which make the US a nice juicy target if you were interested in selling opioids, and other drugs, this goes both for legal and illegal drugs. Given the scale of the problem we've discovered a lot of things that don't work, and a one big thing that made the problem worse (the pandemic). But we don't have a lot of good ideas for how to fix it. Nevertheless I offer up some ideas.
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/04/18/the-drug-crisis-part-1-the-role-of-progress-and-technology-in-creating-the-crisis/
An examination into how deaths from overdosing on drugs got so bad. Everyone knows how Oxycontin contributed to the problem, but there's far more to the story than that. Join me for a discussion of drug marketing, meth, benzodiazepines, and cocaine, and how it all combines into one of the deadliest trends of our time, one with no signs of slowing down.
- When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by: Roger Lowenstein
- How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by: Arnold Bennet
- Burning Chrome by: William Gibson
- Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy: How Generals, Weapons Manufacturers, and Foreign Governments Shape American Foreign Policy by: Richard Hanania
- Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class by: Catherine Liu
- Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold by: Stephen Fry
- Heroes: Mortals and Monsters, Quests and Adventures by: Stephen Fry
- If You Absolutely Must…: a brief guide to writing and selling short-form argumentative nonfiction from a somewhat reluctant professional writer by: Fredrik deBoer
- Expeditionary Force Book 8: Armageddon by: Craig Alanson
Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/03/31/eschatologist-15-covid-and-ukraine-the-return-of-messiness/
The last few decades have been a historical aberration, a time when things seemed simple and progress seemed inevitable. Alternatively we threw up our hands and assumed that our problems were so great that they risked causing the "End of the World". Reality is more messy, we will neither be permanently saved or irrevocably destroyed. Rather the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine demonstrates that messiness has returned, and we need to get better at dealing with it.
I initially decided to to weigh in on Ukraine because so many other people were. But as the situation becomes more and more potentially apocalyptic it started to appear that I would have to. But don't worry, I don't rehash the same talking points as everyone else. My big worry is whether we can figure out some point of stability where nukes exist, but no one uses them. We had that during the Cold War, but that was a bipolar situation where both sides were very similar in strength. Essentially the easiest situation imaginable from a game theory perspective. Unfortunately the future promises to be multipolar, contain lots of nations with nukes who all are at various power levels. How are we going to navigate this treacherous situation? Is it even possible?
- The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch
- Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by: Helen Joyce
- The Hard Sell: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup by: Evan Hughes
- Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by: Adam M. Grant
- The Moth Presents Occasional Magic: True Stories about Defying the Impossible by: Various
- Nicholas and Alexandra: The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty by: Robert K. Massie
- Greenlights by: Matthew McConaughey
- The Midnight Library by: Matt Haig
- Trouble on Paradise: Expeditionary Force, Book 3.5 by: Craig Alanson
- Black Ops: Expeditionary Force, Book 4 by: Craig Alanson
- Zero Hour: Expeditionary Force, Book 5 by: Craig Alanson
- Mavericks: Expeditionary Force, Book 6 by: Craig Alanson
- Renegades: Expeditionary Force, Book 7 by: Craig Alanson
It seems that some people are over-reacting to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We have gone so long without a war that we can only imagine it in apocalyptic terms. But that's precisely what we don't want to do because unlike any other point in history this war could turn into the apocalypse, and that's the last thing we want to do.
At some point, in some episode (and probably several episodes) I asserted that:
The world is changing faster than we can adapt to it.
Then (and now) this statement seemed obvious, so I remember being surprised when I got some pushback on it. But upon reflection it was also illuminating. Many disagreements come down to core values and assumptions which are so deeply embedded that we’ve forgotten they’re there. It’s what makes these disagreements so intractable. We’re arguing from different, unseen foundations. I decided it was past time to unearth this particular foundation, and examine its various parts. What do I mean by “the world” and “change” and “speed” and “adaptation”? And if we can come to an agreement on all of that, what are the consequences of change moving faster than our ability to adapt?
I take a break from talking about the collapse of society and the world to rant about reading. In particular all the people who say I'm doing it wrong.
- Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by: Patrick Radden Keefe
- Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 by: Matt Ridley and Alina Chan
- Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science by: Karl Sigmund
- Columbus Day: Expeditionary Force, Book 1 by: Craig Alanson
- SpecOps: Expeditionary Force, Book 2 by: Craig Alanson
- Paradise: Expeditionary Force, Book 3 by: Craig Alanson
- Row Daily, Breathe Deeper, Live Better: A Guide to Moderate Exercise by: Dustin Ordway
- Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by: Nir Eyal
- What is a p-value anyway? 34 Stories to Help You Actually Understand Statistics by: Andrew Vickers
- The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth by: Sam Quinones
- Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by: S. C. Gwynne
- Heart: The City Beneath by: Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor
If you prefer to listen rather than read, this blog is available as a podcast here. Or if you want to listen to just this post:
Or download the MP3
- Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by: Patrick Radden Keefe
- Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 by: Matt Ridley and Alina Chan
- Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science by: Karl Sigmund
- Columbus Day: Expeditionary Force, Book 1 by: Craig Alanson
- SpecOps: Expeditionary Force, Book 2 by: Craig Alanson
- Paradise: Expeditionary Force, Book 3 by: Craig Alanson
- Row Daily, Breathe Deeper, Live Better: A Guide to Moderate Exercise by: Dustin Ordway
- Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by: Nir Eyal
- What is a p-value anyway? 34 Stories to Help You Actually Understand Statistics by: Andrew Vickers
- The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth by: Sam Quinones
- Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by: S. C. Gwynne
- Heart: The City Beneath by: Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor
As you can see I read more than the average number of books this month. I was supposed to go on a mini vacation to Vegas with a friend, but a couple of days beforehand he came down with COVID and consequently they wouldn’t let him out of Canada. As such I had some extra time on my hands.
This is not the most books I’ve ever finished in a month, but it is the second most. As such I’m going to try and keep both the intro and the reviews short.
I- Eschatological Reviews
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
by: Patrick Radden Keefe
560 Pages
Briefly, what was this book about?
The history of the Sackler family, their philanthropy, their wealth, but mostly the radical changes they made to pharmaceutical marketing.
Who should read this book?
If you don’t feel that you’re angry enough about the Sackler’s role in the opioid crisis, and you want to be angrier, this is the book for you. Beyond that it’s a fascinating book about the history of selling drugs, and how Arthur Sackler, the oldest brother in the Sackler clan, changed it forever. That part will also make you angry.
General Thoughts
It has been said that “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” I’m inclined to believe that this is not true in all cases, but it’s definitely more true than fans of Ayn Rand would have you believe. Regardless of whether it’s true in general, it is definitely true in the case of the Sackler fortune. The Sacklers were the owners of Purdue Pharma, and Purdue Pharma had/has essentially one product: OxyContin. Perhaps you know the crime of which I’m speaking? This crime—kickstarting the opioid crisis—which might plausibly encompass the deaths of hundreds of thousands, is made all the worse by the fact that thus far the Sacklers have entirely escaped any sort of liability or punishment. At least Bernie Madoff went to jail for his crimes, which were less severe by basically any measure.
Should I make this point to certain friends of mine, they would say that the reason Madoff was punished, while the Sacklers will probably escape punishment, is that Madoff took money from rich people, while the Sacklers just killed poor people. And that this is the case because of the wickedness of capitalism. I would probably argue that there’s more to the disparity than that, but I will say that capitalism does not come out of this book looking good. And neither does the FDA, Rudy Giuliani, McKinsey, or high-powered attorneys.
Beyond the story of the Sacklers, which is truly appalling, there’s the story of corruption more broadly. There’s a good argument to be made that the crisis would not have been nearly as bad if a sympathetic FDA official (who later went to work for Purdue) hadn’t let the Sacklers turn the insert for OxyContin into essentially a marketing brochure. One which included the infamous line, “Delayed absorption as provided by OxyContin tablets is believed to reduce the abuse liability of a drug.” A line which the Purdue sales reps spun into the idea that prescribing the drug was nearly risk free.
I could go on listing crimes and corruption, but I’m planning on taking this book and The Least of Us (also reviewed in this post) and maybe one other book, if I find one that looks good, and doing a post on the current state of the drug crisis.
Eschatological Implications
Going into the book I had heard that of the three Sackler brothers and their descendents, only two of the branches were involved with Purdue, and that the descendents of Arthur Sackler were upset because despite having no involvement they too had been caught up in the scandal. Before reading the book this seemed obviously unfair, why should Arthur’s descendents suffer for what their uncles and cousins did?
After reading the book, I would agree that there’s probably still a little bit of unfairness in play, but less than you would think, because the success of OxyContin was entirely based on techniques of pharmaceutical marketing that had been pioneered by Arthur. As one of his employees said, “When it came to the marketing of pharmaceuticals, Arthur invented the wheel.”
What was this wheel? Arthur weaponized science in the service of marketing. And as a byproduct he probably permanently perverted science as well. This great innovation would later be applied to OxyContin, but it was initially applied to Valium. Valium was said to be a mild tranquilizer, completely without any potential for addiction, so safe that it could be given to children, and useful for just about anything. In fact, according to the book, it was prescribed for “such a comical range of conditions that one physician, writing about Valium in a medical journal, asked, ‘When do we not use this drug?’” All of this was a reflection of Arthur’s ability to bend “science” into saying exactly what the marketing needed it to say. In particular it needed to show that Valium was safe. That if it was used properly people wouldn’t become addicted. Decades later Arthur’s brothers and their descendents would be making the same claims about OxyContin. It’s scary how much the debate about Valium is nearly identical to the debate decades later about Oxycontin. From the book:
Even so, there were actual cases, increasingly, of real consumers becoming hopelessly dependent on tranquilizers. Confronted with this sort of evidence, Roche offered a different interpretation: while it might be true that some patients appeared to be abusing Librium and Valium, these were people who were using the drug in a nontherapeutic manner. Some individuals just have addictive personalities and are prone to abuse any substance you make available to them. This attitude was typical in the pharmaceutical industry: it’s not the drugs that are bad; it’s the people who abuse them. “There are some people who just get addicted to things—almost anything. I read the other day about a man who died from drinking too many cola drinks,” Frank Berger, who was president of Wallace Laboratories, the maker of Miltown, told Vogue. “In spite of all the horror stories you read in the media, addiction to tranquilizers occurs very rarely.” In 1957, a syndicated ask-the-doctor column that appeared in a Pittsburgh newspaper wondered whether “patients become addicted to tranquilizers.” The answer assured readers that contrary to any fears they might harbor, “the use of tranquilizers is not making us a nation of drug addicts.” The newspaper identified the author of this particular piece of advice as “Dr. Mortimer D. Sackler.”
Mortimer was Arthur’s brother.
This general idea of science being weaponized is an enormous subject, which is right in the center of the debates being had about the pandemic, and it is to do it a severe injustice to treat it so briefly. But it’s one of the huge tragedies of our current situation that we had such high hopes for science, that by doing it correctly it would save us from making the tragic mistakes of the past. Instead, it proved far too easy to misuse, and ended up empowering a whole new class of tragedies.
II- Capsule Reviews
Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19
by: Matt Ridley and Alina Chan
416 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Investigative journalism into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, which ends up concluding that it was most likely a lab leak.
Who should read this book?
Anyone who is curious about the origin of the pandemic, or who, more importantly, is interested in preventing future pandemics.
General Thoughts
I already covered this book in my pandemic retrospective, as such I’ll only briefly discuss it here. In fact this is a good opportunity to have something of a meta discussion about the role of books like these.
To start with, imagine that you’re pursuing a PhD in philosophy, and you have selected Greek Metaphysics as your dissertation topic. In this scenario it’s unimaginable that you wouldn’t read everything Plato and Aristotle had ever written. Should it ever come out that you hadn’t, people would immediately stop taking you or your dissertation seriously.
It’s completely understandable for this standard to be applied at the highest levels of academia, but to what extent should we apply that standard to commentary more broadly? Certainly if someone was going to do their dissertation on the origins of the pandemic we would have good reason to believe that they would read this book, in the same fashion that a philosophy PhD is expected to read Aristotle. But what if they just want to tweet about the origins of COVID? Should we ignore such tweets unless we have good reason to believe that they read this book first?
I think there’s various ways of answering that question, but for me the primary standard would be to consider the importance of the topic. You can imagine that opining about Kim Kardashian’s latest divorce should not require the same level of familiarity with “the literature” as claiming that Russia will definitely not invade Ukraine, or that COVID indisputably had a zoonotic origin.
However, this standard of importance presents a problem. The more important something is, the more people feel that offering their opinion is not only a right, it’s a necessity. But what is this opinion based on? How strong should that foundation be before it’s worthwhile for someone to add their own spin on it?
This takes us to a second standard. I think before commenting you need to have a sense of what sort of fight you’re taking sides in. To get more concrete, I don’t think you necessarily have to read Viral before commenting on the lab leak, but it’d be nice if you had read a review of Viral, or something which fairly presented the argument it was making. Presumably, not having read the book yourself, your own comments would not stray very far from the condensed information you found in the review. For example, you’re allowed to disparage the lab leak hypothesis if you’ve read a review of Viral which presents a credible argument against the hypothesis, and you can fairly represent that argument. This is certainly not as good as reading the book yourself, but I would say it’s definitely a level at which comments are allowed.
Down still further is the standard picking a set of authorities and just parroting their comments. The problem here is that if the authorities have read all the books, they would have read Viral and they wouldn’t be in this category, they’d be in the previous category. Also the ideological fractures which appear to have penetrated every nook and cranny of our world makes finding true authorities, people who are genuinely unbiased and objective, and trusting them that much harder. And remember we’re not talking about what you should believe personally, we’re talking about what you’re trying to convince others of. We’re talking about commenting and opining on the issue. In that respect I think we’ve crossed the line, at this point you shouldn’t be commenting. That at most you should be linking or retweeting these authorities, but that you are too far removed from the actual debate to get to weigh in.
I could go on, but I’ve already spent a lot of space in this review not talking about the book. So to return to that, my point is much the same now as it was in my previous post. The origin of COVID is an enormously complicated, but also an enormously important subject, and it deserves the most informed discussion possible, rather than being dismissed out of hand. This is a great book if you want to be informed enough to participate in that discussion.
Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science
by: Karl Sigmund
480 Pages
Briefly, what was this book about?
The Vienna Circle, which ends up being at the center of modern philosophy. The list of names in the circle’s orbit includes Einstein, Gödel, Mach, Boltzmann, Popper, and Wittgenstein, and those are just the ones you might have heard of. There are many more who are only slightly less impressive.
Who should read this book?
I think anyone who enjoys great history would love this book. It’s very well written. It’s also interesting for its insights into philosophy, ideology, math, politics and the interwar period.
General Thoughts
Several years ago I read The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, which was all about Vienna before World War II and during the interwar period. I remember being struck by the difference between Vienna before the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Vienna after. But Zweig was mostly talking about literature and culture. From Exact Thinking I discovered that Vienna still had a lot of math and philosophy magic left in it during the interwar years—that is until the Anschluss, which spelled the final doom of what was once one of the premier cities in Europe.
Sigmund ends up being the perfect person to chronicle the Circle. He got his PhD in Vienna in the late 60s which was still close enough to the time of the events that he knew quite a few people from the era, who could give him first hand accounts. After getting his PhD he was only away from Vienna for six years before he returned as a professor. As a consequence of his close association with the people and the place his familiarity with the subject is very apparent. This is one of the better history books I’ve read, and there’s so much else in it about the development of math and philosophy that you’re really getting a lot for the time invested in reading it.
Of course as interesting as the Vienna Circle was its brand of philosophy, logical positivism, is basically dead and buried. Karl Popper takes credit for killing it, though I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have survived even without his intervention. And it’s the same problem we see over and over again, starting with Plato and probably going all the way down to the current rationalist movement. Science and rationality end up being unable to carry all of the ambitions people place upon them. We saw this in Plato and we saw it in the Vienna Circle. (Who incidentally mostly hated Plato, while loving Wittgenstein.) And when those ambitions eventually grow too heavy, they end up crushing the foundation, no matter how much science was poured into it.
Expeditionary Force Series
By: Craig Alanson
Book 1: Columbus Day
305 Pages
Book 2: SpecOps
277 Pages
Book 3: Paradise
283 Pages
Briefly, what is this series about?
Military science fiction about humanity suddenly discovering that the galaxy is full of super powerful warring aliens, and their attempts to avoid being collateral damage in those wars.
Who should read this book?
If you like pulpy, kind of silly military sci fi, I think you’ll really like this series. (At least the three books I’ve read so far.)
General Thoughts
Something about this series reminds me of Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan. The premise of that book was that in the near future we find a dead guy in a spacesuit on the Moon. That’s not the weird part, the weird part is that he’s been dead for 50,000 years. When I first picked up Inherit the Stars, the mystery of how someone ended up on the moon 50,000 years ago was so enthralling that I read the book in a single sitting. I’m not sure if it’s the first time I did that, but it’s the time that sticks in my memory.
I was similarly hooked by the Expeditionary Force series. I didn’t listen to it all in one go, but it was pretty close to that, as you can see by the fact that I’ve already burned through three books (though there are 10-12 more books depending on how you count). I think it’s once again the mystery part that I find so compelling. In this case you’ve got the typical setup of an advanced progenitor race who has mysteriously disappeared, and despite the galaxy crawling with other alien species, the people in the eponymous expeditionary force end up on the forefront of the investigation into what has happened to them. All while trying to fulfill their primary mission of protecting humanity from aliens with vastly superior technology.
Beyond the mystery other positives include: Alanson’s solution to Fermi’s Paradox, and I like his solution to the inevitable tech disparities between humans and aliens, and I really like the world building.
On the negative side, you’re going to need to get really comfortable with deus ex machina because there’s a lot of it. Also there is a certain repetitiveness to things. Imagine it’s a sitcom where each episode has a similar format and each character makes the same kind of jokes in each of those episodes. We’ll see if that begins to get old, but it’s been just the mindless pulpy break I need.
Row Daily, Breathe Deeper, Live Better: A Guide to Moderate Exercise
by: Dustin Ordway
168 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The advantages of developing a daily rowing habit.
Who should read this book?
If you’re looking for a new low impact exercise, and you’re curious about rowing this is a good introduction.
General Thoughts
I really need to start paying closer attention to a book’s rating before I pick it up. Both this book and the next two have less than 4 stars on Good Reads, which may not sound bad, but given that the average rating appears to be 4 anything less than 4 is below average. This was a perfectly fine book. It assumes the reader has zero rowing experience and if that’s actually the case then it’s a great book. On the other hand if you do have even a little experience, and you don’t need any motivation to row daily, then the book has very little to add to what you probably already know.
Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life
by: Nir Eyal (A-all)
290 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Making yourself immune to distraction.
Who should read this book?
Those who will read any book on personal improvement no matter how niche. Also anyone who thinks that distractions are ruining their life.
General Thoughts
In some respects the majority of current advice on personal productivity revolves around eliminating distractions, so this is not new territory. Consequently if you’ve already read a lot in this space then much of Eyal’s advice will not be new. Where he does break slightly new ground is in his answer on where the problem lies. Since I’ve already reviewed one book on drugs and I’m about to review another, let’s pretend being distracted is like being addicted.
There are various theories why some people get addicted while others don’t, and why some people can break their addiction while others can’t. Some say it’s genetic, others admit that they’re not sure, and still others say it all has to do with whether a person has a strong network of support, and is generally happy otherwise, that if that’s the case addiction is not a problem. Applying this framework to technological distractions, Eyal is in the latter camp. That being distracted is entirely under our control, and that it’s just a matter of mastering our internal motivations, and being content. I’m not sure if he feels the same way about actual drugs, I just thought the comparison was useful and germane to the post as a whole, because…
Just like I don’t think we should let the Sacklers off the hook (see my first review) I don’t think we should let the tech companies off the hook either. To see why I might say this, let’s take one of the stories from the book. This particular story concerns a female professor who got some kind of fitness band which tracked her steps and other activity. The company making the band did everything in their power to “gamify” this device. You could compete with friends, there were daily challenges, there was a point system with rewards and a leaderboard. So one night around midnight, she’s getting ready for bed and it flashes an alert telling her that she can get triple points if she just climbs 20 stairs, which seems so easy that even though she was just about to go to bed she decided to do it, but as soon as she finished it flashed another offer for triple points if she would do another 40 stairs. And then she got yet another offer. I’ll let the book describe what happened next:
For the next two hours—from midnight until two in the morning—the professor treaded up and down her basement staircase as if possessed by some strange mind-controlling power. When she finally did come to a standstill, she realized she had climbed over two thousand stairs. That’s more than the 1,872 required to climb the Empire State Building.
Eyal goes on to explain that this seemingly ridiculous behavior corresponded to an incredibly stressful time in the professor’s life, and that’s why it happened. Eyal’s theory is that all behavior is an attempt to resolve discomfort, and that if she hadn’t had the discomfort of the stress she would have never found herself climbing the Empire State Building in the middle of the night.
Sure that’s obviously part of it, but let’s imagine that she had exactly the same level of stress but without the fitness tracker. I’m guessing that she would have just gone to bed at midnight. And yes, one imagines that she might have tossed and turned for a half hour or even an hour, but she still would have been better off than mindlessly walking the stairs for two hours. The point is that even if discomfort is a necessary element, tech companies prey on this discomfort, and more than that, they amplify create and amplify discomfort as well.
What is a p-value anyway? 34 Stories to Help You Actually Understand Statistics
by: Andrew Vickers
224 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Statistics and the many ways they can be abused.
Who should read this book?
If you have a basic understanding of statistics and math, and you’re looking to go a little bit deeper this book might be worthwhile.
General Thoughts
I was underwhelmed by this book. For concepts where I did have a pretty good understanding the book was fine, but didn’t add much, and where he was introducing something I hadn’t come across, the book was generally too dry to be engaging. On the latter point, I think the title is misleading. I went in expecting 34 interesting extended metaphors for statistical principles, but instead the “stories” generally consisted of a short self-deprecating joke at the beginning of the chapter—yeah, we get it, you’re the cool statistician!—with the remainder of the chapter being more akin to a text book. If I had really been interested in getting into the meat of statistics the book could have been good. But I was looking for something a little lighter.
Additionally, I think Taleb may have permanently turned me against “normal” statistics, and I mean that in a formal sense, as in statistics which focus on a normal/Gaussian/bell curve. As near as I can tell Vickers’ discussion of statistics never really steps outside of assuming some degree of “normality”. The closest he appears to come is in a chapter which describes calculating the “average” salary of everyone in a diner. Most of the time you would use the mean, but if Bill Gates walks in, then the mean becomes meaningless. (Ha! Get it?) Vickers says in that case all you need to do is switch to using the median instead. Which seems to oversimplify the situation to the point of ridiculousness. Taleb would point out that the diner (and the world) have become very different places when billionaires arrive on the scene.
Now, I may be exaggerating a little bit, and as I previously said I wouldn’t claim that I brought my A-game when I read the book, but nowhere in it did I detect any acknowledgement of the difference between what Taleb calls mediocristan and extremistan. A difference that’s very, very important.
The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth
by: Sam Quinones
432 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
This is something of a sequel to Quinones’ book Dreamland. (Which I talked about here.) [POST] Dreamland was about OxyContin and heroin, this brings the story to the present day by talking about fentanyl and meth.
Who should read this book?
If you read and enjoyed Dreamland, then I think this is a valuable sequel. If you’re looking for a book on the drug crisis and you’re trying to choose between this book and Dreamland. I would probably recommend the former just because without the foundation provided by Dreamland it would be difficult to understand why the current crisis is so bad.
General Thoughts
As I mentioned in a previous review it is my intention to do a full post on the current drug crisis. So some of the juicy stuff will have to wait until then, in this space I’m going to talk about homelessness. I’ve been curious about homelessness for a while (here’s a post I did back in 2018) and just based on the number of homeless people I see and encounter, the problem seems to be getting worse. Quinones agrees with this assessment and his book has passages like this:
In 2018, when the Los Angeles Times reported that “L.A.’s Homelessness Surged 75% in Six Years,” this made a lot of sense to Eric Barrera. Those were exactly the years when supplies of Mexican “weirdo” meth really got out of hand. “It all began to change in 2009 and got worse after that,” he told me as we walked through a homeless encampment in Echo Park, west of downtown Los Angeles. “The way I saw myself deteriorating, tripping out and ending up homeless, that’s what I see out here. They’re hallucinating, talking to themselves. Now, it’s people on the street screaming. Terrified by paranoia. These are people who had normal lives.”
The “weirdo” meth is meth made using the P2P method rather than the old method of using ephedrine. We’ll be talking a lot more about weirdo meth in the eventual drug post, but this book makes the argument (as you can tell from the excerpt) that homelessness is increasing and that P2P meth is a major driver of that. And as I said this increase mostly matches my experience, though I was unaware of a possible connection to a change in the way meth was manufactured. But then just in the last few days, Matthew Yglesias was asked whether he thought there was a connection between drug use and homelessness, and he said:
Homelessness fell pretty steadily from 2007-2017 even while the opioid problem was getting worse and worse, so I don’t think the rebound since then can plausibly be attributed to drugs.
And then he provided this graph:
This of course doesn’t match the LA Times statistic Quinones mentions, nor my experience. Nor does Yglesias provide a source for these numbers, nor does he appear to be aware of the meth connection. And he offers all of this up in support of his argument homelessness is primarily driven by a lack of affordable housing. I’ll allow Quinones a chance to retort:
When asked how many of the people he met in those encampments had lost housing due to high rents or health insurance, Eric could not remember one. Meth was the reason they were there and couldn’t leave. Of the hundred or so vets he had brought out of the encampments and into housing, all but three returned.
I’m hoping to be able to get to the bottom of this before I do my post on the drug crisis, but Quinones makes a pretty persuasive case, so for the moment count me as a member of Team Meth. (A phrase I never thought I’d say…)
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
by: S. C. Gwynne
384 Pages
Briefly, what was this book about?
The history of the Texan and federal government’s battles against the Comanches.
Who should read this book?
Anyone who’s interested in the history of Texas, or the Indians, or who’s interested in history period.
General Thoughts
I can’t think of many books I’ve seen recommended in more places and by more people than this one. As such I am long overdue for reading it. It was indeed a fantastic book, well written with amazing stories and engaging characters. As such, I would add my recommendation to the others. That said, it wasn’t quite the transcendent experience I was expecting based on the effusive reviews. And it’s possible that I came into the book with impossible expectations, but it’s also possible that at least some of the people reviewing it have not read any other truly great history books, and so when they encountered one it was revelatory. Certainly Empire of the Summer Moon belongs in the category of great history books, it’s just not alone in that category.
As far as the actual content of the book, my favorite chapter was chapter 10 about John Coffee Hays and the creation of the Colt Revolver. The way the US ended up forgetting how to fight the Indians reminded me of the way that we forgot the cure for scurvy (but maybe that’s just me.) Other than that, the book is about what you’d expect, but it gave me new respect and interest for both the history of the Plains Indians and the history of Texas.
Heart: The City Beneath
by: Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor
220 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
It’s the sourcebook for an independently published role-playing game.
Who should read this book?
If you like Dungeons and Dragons or role-playing in general you’ll probably like this book. The setting is great and the system is inventive.
General Thoughts
It’s been awhile since I reviewed a role-playing sourcebook, which is not to say I haven’t been reading them, just that I normally skim them, as opposed to finishing them (see title of post). Heart was the exception. In part this is because it’s just a great system and beautiful book, but the bigger part is that I’m going to be running a campaign in the setting. The first session was actually this last Saturday. Obviously if I’m going to run it, it’s important to know my stuff. I won’t bore non-gamers out there with any further minutia other than to say that I’m really intrigued by the system, and I look forward to seeing how it plays out in practice.
Should you end up reading and enjoying any of these books let me know. Emails are always appreciated, but of course the best way to let me know you enjoy this stuff is by donating. These books don’t buy themselves.
It's time for my newsletter again, and after going step by step through the ideas of Taleb we finally arrive at his crowning idea: antifragility. Perhaps the biggest contribution Taleb makes to our understanding of the world that by grappling with the idea of the opposite of fragility he was able to define fragility, and point out that the modern world is chock full of it.
It's not the end of the pandemic or even the beginning of the end, but we might be at the end of the beginning, and since I just read three books on the subject I thought I'd see what could be said at this point. Come for the discussion of school closure and why it might have seemed so important in the beginning, stay for an overview of the lab leak hypothesis. But most of all just listen to the episode!
I return to a discussion of Douthat's "Deep Places" in particular what it tells about modern epistemology, or as I like to call it, "reality construction". I examine the reality constructed by Douthat, but also the differences between how we constructed reality during the 1918 pandemic vs. how we construct it now. Come for the history, stay for the murderous story of aspirin.
- Why Liberalism Failed by: Patrick J. Deenen
- Leviathan Falls by: James S. A. Corey
- Termination Shock by: Neal Stephenson
- The Histories of Herodotus by: Herodotus
- The Golden Transcendence by: John C. Wright
- The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by: Charlie MacKesy
- Doctrine and Covenants
It's that time of year when people make predictions. I also make predictions though I do them somewhat differently. Mostly I'm interested in Identifying potential catastrophes and dismissing potential salvation. For example, nukes will get used again, and a benevolent AI won't save us.
The key thing is not to make accurate predictions, but to make useful predictions. And as it turns out there's a big difference between the two.
I decide to take the end of the year off. But I didn't want to leave my loyal listeners without the normally scheduled episode. So here you go the first ever "We Are Not Saved" Classic!!
It's my review and discussion of Neil Postman's classic "Amusing Ourselves to Death". One of the best books of the last 50 years!
The ninth book and sixth season of The Expanse were both just released. I haven't watched much of the TV show, but I did just finish reading the final book and as I did so it occurred to me that the way it handled Fermi's paradox might provide a useful way of understanding my own fixation on it. And why I think it presents a huge challenge to anyone who thinks that humanity is on an unending upward slope that will eventually take us to the stars.
- The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery by: Ross Douthat
- Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History by: Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damien Paletta
- The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by: Michael Lewis
- Morning Star by: Pierce Brown
- Star Trek: The City on the Edge of Forever Teleplay by: Harlan Ellison
- The Economics of Violence by: Gary M. M. Shiffman
- The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by: J. R. R. Tolkien
- Chorazin: (The Weird of Hali #1) by: John Michael Greer
- The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by: Peter Hopkirk
Lately people have been using the idea that something is a black swan as excuse for being powerless. as an excuse. But this is not only a massive abdication of responsibility, it’s also an equally massive misunderstanding of the moment. Because preparedness has no meaning if it’s not directed towards preparing for black swans. There is nothing else worth preparing for.
The future is the product of the black swans we have yet to encounter.
A couple of months ago Gwern published a list of improvements since 1990. I thought it gave short shrift to the many changes which have been wrought upon society by technological progress. He does include a section on "Society" but it's woefully inadequate, and despite having a further theme to the list of identifying "unseen" changes he overlooks many of the intangible harms which progress might or might not have inflicted on us. To illustrate this I bring in the story of my great-grandmother, which I don't want to cheapen with a summary.
I got some pushback on the episodes I did about Afghanistan. Some of it was directed at the idea that "we are no longer a serious people". But this pushback, rather than talking me out of the position made me explore it even more deeply. This episode is the result of that exploration. As part of it I bring in recent difficulties experienced by the CIA, the Vietnam War, and the differences between right and left brained processing.
- Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by: Michael J. Sandel
- Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills by: Jesse Singal
- Kingsport: (The Weird of Hali #2) by: John Michael Greer
- The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War by: H. W. Brands
- Based on a True Story: Not a Memoir by: Norm Macdonald
- Silmarillion by: J. R. R. Tolkien
- The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by: Carlo M. Cipolla
- The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen’s Race to the South Pole by: Roland Huntford
- How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion by: David DeSteno
There are at least two kinds of randomness in the world: normal, as in a normal distribution or a bell curve, and extreme. As humans we're used to the normal distribution. That's the kind of thing we dealt with a lot over the thousands of years of our existence. It's only recently that the extreme distribution has come to predominate. Nassim Taleb has labeled the first mediocristan and the second extremistan. In this podcast we explore the difference between the two and how the tools of mediocristan are inadequate to the disasters of extremistan.
As I record this Congress is debating whether they should pass a $3.5 trillion bill or only a $1.5 trillion one. The former would equal $27,000 per household, while the latter would only be $12,000 per household. And yet when people are asked whether they would pay more to deal with problems like climate change only 34% are willing to pay more than $10 a month. People have no skin in the game on the former and they can at least imagine they have skin in the game on the latter, and in this episode I argue that this makes all the difference.
Risk comes in lots of different forms. In Skin in the Game, Taleb's last, underrated book. He breaks risk down into ensemble probabilities and time probabilities. On top of that he demonstrates that risk operates differently at different scales. And that if we want to avoid large scale ruin—ruin at the level of nations or all of humanity—that we should be trying to push risk down the scale.
- The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by: Carl R. Trueman
- Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by: Elizabeth Kolbert
- Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t by: Julia Galef
- Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution by: Mike Duncan
- This Is How You Lose the Time War by: Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
- Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism by: Sharyl Attkisson
- Plato: Complete Works by: Plato
- Stillness Is the Key by: Ryan Holiday
- The Sorrows of Young Werther by: Goethe
As human beings we have a unique ability to recognize patterns, even when confronted events that are completely random. In fact sometimes it's easier to see patterns in random noise. We pull narratives out of the randomness and use them to predict the future. Unfortunately the future is unpredictable and even when we have detected a pattern the outcomes end up being very different than what we expected.
The US-backed regime in Afghanistan lasted 9 days from the taking of the first provincial capital to the taking of Kabul. After the withdrawal of the Soviets in 1989. That government lasted over three years. What was the difference? Why after spending two trillion dollars and twice as long in the country did we do so much worse? Francis Fukuyama has asserted that the are no ideologies which can compete with liberal democracy. And everyone seems to believe that, but if that's so why did we have such a hard time implanting it in Afghanistan?
Philip Tetlock has been arguing for awhile that experts are horrible at prediction, but that his superforecasters do much better. If that's the case how did they do with respect to the fall of Afghanistan? As far as I can tell they didn't make any predictions on how long the Afghanistan government would last. Or they did make predictions and they were just as wrong as everyone else and they've buried them. In light of this I thought it was time to revisit the limitations and distortions inherent in Tetlock's superforecasting project.
- This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by: Nicole Perlroth
- Everything is Fcked: A Book About Hope by: Mark Manson*
- Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It by: Chris Voss
- Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore by: Michele Wucker
- Golden Sonby: Pierce Brown
- Red Rising: Sons of Ares – Volume 1 and 2 (Graphic Novels): By: Pierce Brown
- The Bear by: Andrew Krivak
- The Phoenix Exultant by: John C. Wright
- A History of North American Green Politics: An Insider View by: Stuart Parker
- Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology by: Adam S. Miller
In the ongoing discussion of dealing with an uncertain future I put forth the idea that believing in God and belonging to a religion represents "easy mode".
When people consider the harms which might be caused by technology, they often point to the "precautionary principle" as a possible way to mitigate those harms. This principle seems straight forward but once you actually try to apply it the difficulties become obvious. In particular how do you ensure that you're not delaying the introduction of beneficial technologies. How do you insure the harms of delaying technology are not greater than the harms which might be caused by that technology. In this episode we examine several examples of how this principle might be applied. It isn't easy, but it does seem like something we need to master as new technologies continue to arrive.
My hot take on the situation in Afghanistan.
Highlights:
-Why couldn't we have maintained a presence at Bagram, even if we pulled out everywhere else (think Guantanamo and Cuba).
-Biden had more flexibility than he claimed.
-It feels like this might lead to a loss of confidence similar to what we experienced after Vietnam
-The effect on our allies may be the worst consequence of our withdrawal.
- Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race by: Shanna H. Swan
- End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking) by: Katie Mack
- Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America by: Charles Murray
- Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness by: Tim Grover
- Streaking: The Simple Practice of Conscious, Consistent Actions That Create Life-Changing Results by: Jeffrey J. Downs and Jami L. Downs
- Red Rising by: Pierce Brown
- Coming Back Alive: The True Story of the Most Harrowing Search and Rescue Mission Ever Attempted on Alaska’s High Seas by: Spike Walker
- Freedom by: Sebastian Junger
- Faust by: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Open and Relational Theology: An Introduction to Life-Changing Ideas by: Thomas Jay Oord
I discussed Fermi's Paradox in my last newsletter. In this I discuss the hint it provides that technology may be inevitably linked to extinction. That the reason the universe is not teeming with aliens is that the technology to get to that point presents insuperable risks which cannot be overcome.
As I said this is a hint, but I think it's a hint we need to take seriously.
- Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters by: Steven E. Koonin
- Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science by: Peter Godfrey-Smith
- The Start 1904-30 by: William L. Shirer
- The Storm on Our Shores: One Island, Two Soldiers, and the Forgotten Battle of World War II by: Obmascik, Mark
- Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by: Robert K. Massie
- Tiamat’s Wrath by: James S. A. Corey
- What I Saw in America by: G. K. Chesterton
- Job: A New Translation by: Edward L. Greenstein
The massive attention being paid to UFOs in the form of the Pentagon/Naval videos has rekindled interest in the subject and by extension interest in Fermi's Paradox. I think people's interest in these subjects is entirely too trivial. Treating it as a curiosity rather than one of the most important indications of what the future has in store for humanity — either eventual doom or being terribly alone.
In a continuation of the last episode I examine my favorite explanation for the inflection point in 1971: that this is when energy decoupled from economic growth. Economic output which has no connection to energy usage is a new and strange beast, much easier to manipulate in ways that produce inequality and inflation and all the other ills which have afflicted us since the early 70s.
The website wtfhappenedin1971.com presents a series of charts which show that there was inflection in rates of everything from inequality to obesity in 1971. In every case with things getting worse. Why would that be? In this episode I examine at 8 explanations (possibly more depending on how you count). Full warning, my favorite explanation is not included. That will be the subject of my next episode.
And here is where I have cordoned off spoilers for Project Hail Mary. Listen at your own risk.
My capsule reviews for the month:
- Persepolis Rising by: James S. E. Corey
- Project Hail Mary by: Andy Weir
- The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century by: Stein Ringen
- The Ethics of Authenticity by: Charles Taylor
- Legal Systems Very Different From Ours by: David D. Friedman
- Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by: Alfred Lansing
- The Graveyard Book (Graphic Novel) by: Neil Gaiman Adapted by: P. Craig Russell Illustrated by: Various
- Learning from Loss: The Democrats, 2016–2020 by: Seth Masket
This episode is in three parts. First is the eschatological reviews:
- A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by: Jeff Hawkins
- One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by: Matthew Yglesias
I've been talking about the knobs of society in my newsletters. Well one of the knobs we appear to have lost all fear of is the spending knob and we've decided we can pretty much turn it as high as we want without consequence. And yet everyone regardless of their economic ideology realizes that we can't turn it up forever. And the key problem is that people imagine that when the time comes when we need to moderate our spending that it will be easy to turn down. I very much doubt that.
I recently encountered the term Wizards and Prophets as a way of describing those who were, respectively, optimistic about technology or pessimistic about it. I think this is a good way of thinking about things, and as the context I encountered these terms ended up being a full-throated defense of wizardry, I thought it might be worthwhile to offer up a defence of Prophets. Those who contend that we are playing a dangerous game, one whose stakes Wizards may not entirely understand. The recent resurgence of the Wuhan lab-leak theory for the pandemic proved very timely.
Making any predictions about China is difficult, but that doesn't mean it's not important. It may in fact be one of the most important things we can do if we want to have some idea of what the future holds. And while predictions are difficult, it does seem like a worthwhile endeavor to look at potential inflection points. Points where we can definitely say that past here things are very different. In this episode I offer up some potential inflection points. I'm not sure that any of them will come to pass, to say nothing of all of them, but they provide a useful marker for where China is headed and what it might mean should it arrive there.
- “Engineering the Apocalypse” Podcast Episode by Sam Harris and Rob Reid
- This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World by: Yancey Strickler
- The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life by: Boyd Varty
- Babylon’s Ashes by: James S. E. Corey
- Peter the Great: His Life and World by: Robert K. Massie
- Exhalation: Stories by: Ted Chiang
- What’s Wrong With the World by: G. K. Chesterton
- Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future by: Margaret Heffernan
- Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice by: Fredrik deBoer
- Mormon Philosophy Simplified: An Easy LDS Approach to Classic Philosophical Questions by: Brittney Hartley
In my last newsletter I described the temple of technology and progress with a countless knobs that could be turned. Some of the knobs obviously inspire caution, but some seem like an unalloyed good. Like the knob for safety. Accordingly that's what we've done we've turned the knob of safety all the way to 11, but as with all progress the effects have not always been what we expect. For example when you maximize safety you can't actually maximize safety, you can only maximize it's perceived importance, which is how we ended up in a situation where, in the midst of a deadly pandemic, we have paused, or refused to approve, or otherwise restricted vaccines, dooming thousands because the vaccines are not entirely risk free. But is anything?
Lately there have been a lot of attempts to relitigate history. It is felt that taking history which has been ignored and giving it new emphasis will both increase the accuracy of that history and also help mitigate the negative effects of historical events. I show that this is generally not the case and that what we choose to emphasis is more based on the narrative we're pushing than the actual impact of the history or event in question.
There were various approaches to fighting COVID, and in retrospect we ended up with the worst of all. It's understandable that we didn't follow China in taking the authoritarian approach. And it's also understandable that we weren't going to be as lackadaisical as we were in 1918. But what kept us from taking the technolibertarian approach of human challenge trials, first doses first, and approving the Astrazeneca vaccine as soon as Europe did. And more importantly why are we now taking the exact opposite approach, "pausing" Johnson and Johnson, while Europe restricts Astrazeneca? Why are we so bold when it comes to government spending and so timid when it comes to vaccine safety?
- Secular Cycles by: Peter Turchin and Sergey A. Nefedov
- Where Is My Flying Car? A Memoir of Future Past by: J. Storrs Hall
- A Short Stay in Hell by: Steven L. Peck
- Cibola Burns by: James S. A. Corey
- Nemesis Games by: James S. A. Corey
- Classical Philosophy: A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 1 by: Peter Adamson
- Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures, from Chess to Role-Playing Games by: Jon Peterson
- Earth Abides by: George R. Stewart
- The Goal: A Business Graphic Novel by: Eliyah Goldratt
I present a metaphor for technology and progress as an ancient temple with thousands of knobs. Technology allows us to turn the knobs, but we're never quite sure what they do, and we generally decide to turn the knobs as far as we can without this understanding. In the metaphor they control the weather, but in reality they control the weather of civilization, which just like the actual weather is a chaotic system where small changes can create massive effects. Effects like the hurricane of change and disruption which is currently bearing down on us...
The recent Netflix series "Murder Among the Mormons" bills itself as a true crime drama, but really it's a multi-faceted philosophical inquiry into questions of epistemology. Most notably through the central role fraud and forgery plays in the story, but the inquiry goes beyond that into issues of divine revelation, the reconstruction of history and the role of mercy when truth becomes difficult to pin down.
Scott Alexander recently posted a study showing European municipalities which had the Napoleonic Code imposed upon them did better economically than nearby municipalities which didn't. He uses this to support a contention that radical reform is better than traditional institutions at delivering positive outcomes. My contention is not that we should be looking at narrow metrics of success but rather how radical reform deals with complexity, as opposed to other methods of dealing with complexity like cultural evolution, which seems to be the primary contender to expert led reform in the form of technocracy. All of which is to say that yes, the subject of this episode is very similar to the subject of my previous episodes (book reviews excepted).
- The WEIRDest People In the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by: Joseph Henrich
- Island of the Blue Foxes: Disaster and Triumph on the World’s Greatest Scientific Expedition by: Stephen R. Bown
- The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism by: Thomas Frank
- Billy Miske: The St. Paul Thunderbolt by: Clay Moyle
- The Landmark Thucydides by: Thucydides Edited by Robert B. Strassler
- The Abolition of Man by: C. S. Lewis
- Orthodoxy by: G. K. Chesterton
- Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife by: Bart D. Ehrman
Prediction is tough. You never know if things are about to get a lot worse, as was the situation with Polish Jews in 1937. Or if they're going to get a lot better, which was the situation of East Germans in 1988. But there are signs...
The problem of political unity weighs heavily on people's minds. But as with most problems technocrats imagine that if they just implement the right policy that unity will follow. In reality people only unify around myths, and historically myths have been assembled into religions. Both things that technocrats are generally opposed to. But can they survive without them. A survey of the literature says... no.
Technocracies have been much in the zeitgeist recently, at least in the corners of the internet I frequent. And there appears to be significant disagreement as to how effective they are. While I understand the idea behind them and the way in which they're supposed to work, I'm not sure they actually work in the way people expect. Or perhaps more importantly I don't think they're the best tool for dealing with the current crisis. I offer some alternative epistemological frameworks and suggest that technocracies might be missing something important.
- Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Courts by: Ilya Shapiro
- The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by: Joseph Henrich
- Rhythm of War (Book Four of The Stormlight Archive) by: Brandon Sanderson
- The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by: Margaret MacMillan
- Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t by: Steven Pressfield
- The Minuteman by: Greg Donahue
- There is a God: How to Respond to Atheism in the Last Days by: Hyrum Lewis
As you can see this is a much shorter episode. I'm trying out the newsletter format. The idea is that I'm going to send out a short bit at the end of every month, something that offers an easier entry point to my writing. Something people might be more inclined to share. But I obviously couldn't leave out my loyal podcast listeners, so just as with everything else I write, it gets recorded and also goes out there. That said, number of subscribers is something of a success metric these days so if you wouldn't mind singing up for the newsletter I would appreciate it!
Two episodes ago I covered the disasters which can occur when we try to exercise too much control over natural systems. In the last episode I talked about how systems can be too controlling, and how it's better that a system be legible than that it attempt perfection. In this episode, much like peanut butter and chocolate, I combine these two great ideas into one fantastic idea, and explore how the way we combat wildfires in many ways resembles the way we fight political fires, and that both methods fail in similar ways.
In a recent newsletter, Matthew Yglesias suggested three steps for creating effective policies:
- It’s easy for everyone, whether they agree with you or disagree with you, to understand what it is you say you are doing.
- It’s easy for everyone to see whether or not you are, in fact, doing what you said you would do.
- It’s easy for you and your team to meet the goal of doing the thing that you said you would do.
These are great, but I think they could be applied far more broadly, which is exactly what I do in this episode.
This is the second half of my book reviews for books I finished in December. It contains reviews for:
- Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the 116 Days that Changed the World by: Chris Wallace
- Enemy At the Gates by: William Craig
- Necroscope by: Brian Lumley
- Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by: John McPhee
- Bang For Your Buck by: Stefan Gasic
- The Darkest Winter by: Nick Johns
- C. S. Lewis Essay Collection & Other Short Pieces by: C. S. Lewis
- Book of Mormon Made Harder by: James E. Faulconer
- The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion by: Sterling M. McMurrin
This one was long enough, and book reviews sit poorly with podcasts in any event, that I decided to split it in two. This one has my monthly short personal update along with reviews for:
- Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by: James C. Scott
- Status Anxiety by: Alain de Botton
Back at the beginning of 2017 I made some long term predictions, at the beginning of 2020 I made some short term predictions and the time has come to see how I'm doing on the long-term ones and how I did on the short term ones. Along with that is a reminder of my philosophy of predictions, lots of additional predictions for 2021, and then finally I announce some minor changes I'll be making going forward. Start listening to see what I got wrong, keep listening to see what I'm going to be wrong about this time next year, and then end the whole thing on a cliffhanger!
The number of teenage girls identifying as transgender has skyrocketed, by as much as 4,400% in the last decade by some accounts. What explains this staggeringly rapid and precipitous increase? Abigail Shrier thinks that these girls are falling pray to a peer contagion. A combination of the typical confusion and discomfort associated with puberty combined with a culture that celebrates transgender individuals. That in essence going through puberty is tough and being trans allows these girls to put that out of their mind while also gaining the approval of the peers and in many cases mimicking their peers who have already transitioned. In this podcast we examine the arguments and the evidence. Might she have a point?
- Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years by: Vaclav Smil
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley By: Malcolm X (Author), Alex Haley (Author), Laurence Fishburne (Narrator)
- Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets By: Sudhir Venkatesh
- Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters By: Abigail Shrier (Moved to the next episode)
- The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage By: Anthony Brandt
- Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations by: John Bartlett
- The Golden Age By: John C. Wright
- How to Start Your Homeschool: What I Learned My First 5 Years by: Taylia Clegg Bunker
- Destroying Their God: How I Fought My Evil Half-Brother to Save My Children By: Wallace Jeffs (Author), Shauna Packer (Author), Sherry Taylor (Author)
- The Neal A. Maxwell Quote Book by: Neal A. Maxwell
In politics there's always a choice between extremism and moderation. In this episode I discuss all the reasons for making moderation the default, and under what circumstances it might be appropriate abandon it and pursue extremism instead. My general conclusion is that there aren't many, but that it's a very difficult problem where clear lines are hard to draw.
Most people understand that voting is a way of making decisions via consensus, what people have forgotten is that voting is also a proxy for power. A much better proxy than those which have existed historically, and positively fantastic when compared to directly matching power via bloodshed and violence.
If people have decided (as Trump supporters) evidently have, that the proxy of voting is no longer working then they can either decide that they have been outmatched in these different arenas, or they can seek other proxies of power to even things out. Up to and including a direct exercise of power, through resorting to bloodshed and violence.
- Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies by: Geoffrey West
- From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia by: Pankaj Mishra
- Just like You by: Nick Hornby
- Seven Types of Atheism by: John N. Gray
- Why Not Parliamentarism? by: Tiago Ribeiro dos Santos
- An Instinct for Dragons by: David E. Jones
- Aristophanes: The Complete Plays by: Aristophanes Translated by: Paul Roche
- Battle Ground by: Jim Butcher
I think many people expect too much out of the election. Trump supporters expect that if he manages to get reelected that he will do all the things he's been promising since 2016, while Biden supporters expect that their long nightmare of political dysfunction will finally be over. But political dysfunction has been around for a lot longer than Trump and so much of what seems wrong with the world has nothing to do with him. He does have the talent of making everything seem like it's about him, but if Biden is elected (and I think he will be) it will quickly become apparent that most of our problems had nothing to do with Trump...
Any rational assessment of the effect of your vote on the presidential election is bound to conclude that there is no effect if you're not in a swing state and that even if you are in a swing state the effect is still infinitesimal. But what other option do you have? Well that's what this episode is designed to reveal. I would argue that there's a great option which is almost entirely overlooked, voting for a third party candidate or writing someone in! I'm writing in General Mattis, and if you want to know why you'll have to listen.
In this episode we discuss China, and the various opinions about what they're up to, and what we should do in response to whatever that is. There are numerous opinions and while I don't try to cover them all, I cover a lot of them, and it's safe to say opinions are all over the place. But beyond all of the opinions of others I provide my own unique theory, which is not the theory I find most likely, but it may be the most frightening theory. What is it? You'll have to listen and find out.
- Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress by: Christopher Ryan
- The End of History and the Last Man by: Francis Fukuyama
- Sidhartha by: Herman Hesse
- The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Sławomir Rawicz
- Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space by: Kevin Peter Hand
- Kansas City Noir by: Various
- Innsmouth: (The Weird of Hali #1) by: John Michael Greer
- The Kill Chain: How Emerging Technologies Threaten America’s Military Dominance by: Christian Brose
- Trump vs. China: Facing America’s Greatest Threat by: Newt Gingrich
- A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 by: G. J. Meyer
In the book The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama spends quite a bit of time talking about the idea of legitimacy, in particular how the End of History represents a time when only liberal democracy has any reserves of legitimacy. But two questions occur, first where does a nation go if liberal democracy starts failing? And second does that failure happen, does it end up just like all previous systems, if it no longer provides reserves of legitimacy? Recent events seem to indicate that the answer to those two questions maybe no where, and yes. In other words liberal democracy is suffering a crisis of legitimacy and unfortunately, at this point, there's no where left to go.
Coming up with solutions is difficult. I've read many books that present an excellent diagnosis of the problem, but then finish things off by presenting utterly ridiculous solutions. I take one of these books Civilized to Death by Christopher Ryan and go into detail on why the solutions he proposed are so inadequate and then go into some detail as to what I think good solutions should include.
With the stock market prices seemingly bearing little relationship to the actual economy, investment strategies are on the mind of many. Here I briefly describe my own investment strategy which unfortunately has very little to say about the current craziness, but hopefully contains some wisdom about longer term investing. In particular the idea that you should view investing as purchasing pieces in potential futures. This may not sound particularly radical, but I argue that this change in focus from what constitutes wealth now to what constitutes wealth in the future can be profoundly illuminating.
Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk by: Justin Tosi, Brandon Warmke
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by: Iain McGilchrist
The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust by: John Coates
Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16) by: Jim Butcher
Euripides V: Bacchae, Iphigenia in Aulis, The Cyclops, Rhesus by: Euripides
Cutting for Stone by: Abraham Verghese
How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture by: Francis A. Shaeffer
We're told that in order to combat fake news, conspiracy theories, and misinformation of all kinds that we need to do a better job of examining the evidence, of looking at the data, but what if this is entirely backwards? What if we're too focused on the data, on the little bits of evidence that make up our world view, and that the problem is we're bad at organizing these bits of data into a coherent and common-sensical world view? What if we're so focused on justice, punishing people for the separate misdeeds that occur every day, that we neglect mercy, the art of seeing how interconnected everything and everyone really is.
After having a conversation with a friend I decide to dig into the numbers on police officer killings since 1965 as compiled by the Anti-Defamation League. In the process I discover that there's a lot of fairly obvious subjectivity to who those numbers can be interpreted, and the general impression that right-wing extremism is more dangerous is muddier than people think.
It's a long one, but it's got lots of numbers so that makes up for it. Right?
- Super Cooperators: Evolution, Altruism and Human Behavior (Or, Why We Need Each Other to Succeed) by Martin Nowak
- Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone by: Satya Nadella
- The Book of Three by: Lloyd Alexander
- The Black Cauldron by: Lloyd Alexander
- The Castle of Llyr by: Lloyd Alexander
- Taran Wanderer by: Lloyd Alexander
- The High King by: Lloyd Alexander
- Euripides IV: Helen, The Phoenician Women, Orestes by: Euripides
- A Secular Age by: Charles Taylor
- A Secular Age by: Charles Taylor (Religious Review)
How is it, that the French and American Revolutions, so close in time and goals, had such different outcomes? One answer is that the American Revolution built on the foundation of English legislative traditions whereas the French had no such traditions (at the time of the revolution it had been 175 years since the last time the Estates General had been called). Which is to say the American Revolution modified the existing system, while the French Revolution was an attempt to completely replace the old system. This gave the American Revolution an obvious end point, which the French Revolution lacked.
Increasingly liberalism and the values associated with it have been judged inadequate to the task of rectifying racial inequalities. But the question is, what are the alternatives? One that has been mentioned is Critical Race Theory (CRT). In an article from The Economist these two approaches are pitted against one another. And despite the article's attempt to be balanced it seems clear that most people who advocate for CRT as some kind of alternative have never really grappled with the practical considerations of abandoning liberalism, an ideology that despite its failings has provided the underpinning for centuries of progress.
In which I present the parable of the traffic light, and a deep discussion of the various epistemologies at play in the world today including conflict vs. mistake theory, on which I spend quite a bit of time. Each of these frameworks has different consequences and benefits, but I contend that right now, no framework is dominant, and it's possible that having numerous frameworks is even worse than having a bad one.
The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder By: Peter Zeihan
The Good Soldier Švejk By: Jaroslav Hasek
The Diaries of Adam and Eve By: Mark Twain
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism By: Robin DiAngelo
Guns of August By: Barbara W. Tuchman
Euripides III: Heracles, The Trojan Women, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Ion (The Complete Greek Tragedies) By: Euripides
Acid Test: LSD vs. LDS By: Christopher Kimball Bigelow
The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Book of Mormon’s Missing Stories By: Don Bradley
I decide to offer an opinion on the current Black Lives Matter protests. I understand that there are a lot of opinions being offered on the subject, and it's entirely reasonable to assume that mine is not necessary nor welcome, but I hope despite that to add something to the conversation. In particular I think trying to combine combatting police brutality with eliminating all racism might make the first and arguably more important task, harder to accomplish.
Elon Musk really wants to establish a colony on Mars. One reason he keeps coming back to this the idea is that he claims it is the only way to prevent our eventual extinction. But is this really the best way to avoid the problems he fears? If we're really interested in increasing localism (which as strange as it might sound is what a Mars Colony is) are there better ways of achieving it if we focus on a better identification of what we're trying to prevent? And does this insight apply at scales much lower than preventing x-risk?
I relate a couple of stories (which are worth the price of admission all by themselves) about how once you've made an initial mistake it's so much more likely that you'll make additional mistakes. Recently we've made a lot of mistakes, and in this episode I suggest that there might be some precautions we can take letting the panic from the initial mistakes cause us to make further mistakes. Because the subsequent mistakes always end up being worse...
The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity By: Toby Ord
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction By: Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner
Dune By: Frank Herbert
Marriage and Civilization: How Monogamy Made Us Human By: William Tucker
Euripides II: Andromache, Hecuba, The Suppliant Women, Electra By: Euripides
10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less By: Garett Jones
Saints Volume 2: No Unhallowed Hand By: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
After getting lots of feedback and some criticism of my previous episode on superforecasting I decide to make one final attempt to detail the issues I see with it. This episode ended up being pretty long, so while I normally wouldn't ever say this, if you had enough of superforecasting after the last episode, or if you're already in complete agreement with me (also possible I suppose) then you can probably skip this one.
I reluctantly go back to the well of COVID-19 commentary. In particular I wonder what leadership would look like. I conclude that where past instances of leadership emphasized sacrifice, that I'm not sure that this crisis is amenable to calls for that sort of sacrifice, rather our best bet is to be smart, implementing measures that work and easing off those where the evidence is weak. And that if we can't do that we might end up falling Sweden in a de facto and unorganized fashion.
Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models By: Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann
Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control By: Stuart J. Russell
Joseph Smith’s First Vision: Confirming Evidences and Contemporary Accounts By: Milton Vaughn Backman
The Cultural Evolution Inside of Mormonism By: Greg Trimble
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President By: Candice Millard
A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream By: Yuval Levin
The Worth of War By: Benjamin Ginsberg
The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West By: David McCullough
Sex and Culture By: J. D. Unwin
Euripides I: Alcestis, Medea, The Children of Heracles, Hippolytus By: Euripides
A review of J.D. Unwin's 1934 book Sex and Culture which puts forth the theory that once a culture loosens up restrictions on pre-marital sex that this culture only has about 100 years before it sinks into irrelevance. If we take this prediction seriously and set the sexual revolution as the beginning of this countdown, then we're about halfway through it. What should we do with this possibility?
Recently it's become expected that if you want to be taken seriously as a forecaster that you should not only record your predictions in advance, but assign a confidence level. And that by following this methodology certain people, so called superforecasters, have been found who are significantly better at prediction than average. The problem with this approach is that while these individuals are great at predicting should things continue mostly as they have, they're actually worse at predicting extreme events, which are inevitably the most impactful.
I make some predictions for what the sort of changes COVID-19 will spawn in the world. In particular I think that gatherings of large groups of people will be affected for a very long time, but also I make some predictions for it's affect on preparation, US-China relations and ecoterrorists...
- Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead By: Jim Mattis
- The Lessons of History By: Will and Ariel Durant
- The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes By: Donald D. Hoffman
- Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World By: Laura Spinney
- Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives By: David Eagleman
- Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy By: Francis Fukuyama
- Sophocles II: Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, The Trackers By: Sophocles
It's a two parter this week which starts with a review of The Decadent Society by Ross Douthat. His contention is that the world, but particularly the US has stagnated. That we have lost the ability to cooperate and do great things, or even to create new works of art. From the perspective of eschatology this is not what most people think of, but it is still an end of the world scenario, and in some respects a very depressing one, where we are forever close to the promised land but never quite able to enter...
Like everyone else I talk about the coronavirus, though hopefully in a way somewhat different from everyone else. In particular I focus on how efficiency ultimately equals fragility. Something this crisis has brought into sharp relief, where for the lack of a few hundred million dollars in precautionary spending we're going to end up spending billions if not trillions of dollars trying to fix the mess.
Once upon a time, in an effort to see if people read these show notes I offered an Amazon gift card for people who saw the message and contacted me. I'm going to do that again $20 to the first person to mention this message, and another $20 to the first person who mentions it in the month of May. Hopefully things will be better by then, but it's possible they'll be a lot worse.
Many years ago I read Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and thoroughly enjoyed it, enough so that when I made a goal to go back and start re-reading more books it was the first book I chose. In particular out of all the science fiction books I have ever read it may provide the very best defense of the connection between morality and civilization. It does this on top of having delightful characters and an excellent plot (except the ending, I apologize in advance for the ending...)
As I review my older episodes, I notice that some of them are less about being interesting in and of themselves, and more part of building the foundation for this crazy house I’m trying to erect. Some episodes are less paintings on a wall than the wall itself. This is such an episode.
We're going to talk about how Bostrom's Simulation Hypothesis necessary implies a theology. And that once you have a theology it's a natural next step to consider how that might connect to religion, and eschatology.
- Discussion of Real World Risk Institute #RWRI
- The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties By: Christopher Caldwell
- The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism By: Doris Kearns Goodwin
- The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey By: Candice Millard
- The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer By: Neal Stephenson
- God Can't: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils (Religious) By: Thomas Jay Oord
Now that The Good Place is over I discuss what it had to say about eschatology.
*Warning this episode contains massive The Good Place spoilers. Proceed with caution***
In particular when they eventually arrived at the Good Place there were numerous problems. In part they were included for comedic effect, but in part they reflected real potential issues with a world were all your desires are met. Lest you think this is a pointless discussion, we may be able to create such a world with brain uploading. And even without that, we've developed numerous desire granting technologies.
In 1941 George Orwell said:
Hitler is a criminal lunatic, and [yet] Hitler has an army of millions of men, aeroplanes in thousands, tanks in tens of thousands. For his sake a great nation has been willing to overwork itself for six years and then to fight for two years more, whereas for the common-sense, essentially hedonistic world-view which Mr. Wells puts forward, hardly a human creature is willing to shed a pint of blood
Is this true? Have the number of people with a "common-sense, essentially hedonistic world-view" grown? Is that a problem?
- The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life By: David Brooks
- The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason By: Chapo Trap House
- Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose By: Deirdre Barrett
- My Life and Work By: Henry Ford
- My Inventions By: Nikola Tesla
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin By: Benjamin Franklin
- Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America By: Scott Adams
- The Library Book By: Susan Orleans
- Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus By: Sophocles
Scott Alexander of SlateStarCodex recently declared that "nobody ever really believed [that Fermi's Paradox] was a problem. I not only believed it was a problem I still believe it's a problem, and I think everyone else should as well. If you're one of those who don't think it is, then this episode is designed to change your mind.
In 1519 Cortés began his invasion of the Aztec empire. By 1520 Montezuma would be dead, and by 1521 the empire would have fallen. Within the next half dozen decades 95% of the Aztecs would be dead of disease. But Montezuma and the Aztecs had almost no warning of the cataclysm that was about to befall them. Is there some cataclysm waiting in our future which we will similarly be completely ignorant of until it is upon us? Probably. If that's the case what measures could we possibly take?
My annual episode where I look back on predictions I've made in the past (particularly my 100 year predictions) and make some predictions for the upcoming year. As you might imagine there would be no point of making 2020 predictions if I didn't cover the upcoming presidential election. I think there's a lot going on there, and while Bloomberg hasn't made a big impact he might still do that. Also Biden looks increasingly shaky as a front runner. Whatever happens it's going to be chaotic, but I take a stab at saying what exactly that chaos will look like.
- Only the Dead: The Persistence of War in the Modern Age By: Bear F. Braumoeller
- Tower Lord (Raven’s Shadow #2) By: Anthony Ryan
- Oath of Swords (War God #1) By: David Weber
- The War God’s Own (War God #2) By: David Weber
- Aeschylus II: The Oresteia- Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides, Proteus (Fragments) By: Aeschylus
- The New Testament: A New Translation for Latter-day Saints (Religious) Translated By: Thomas A. Wayment
- The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, Maxwell Institute Study Edition (Religious) Annotated by: Grant Hardy
- Republican Party Animal: The “Bad Boy of Holocaust History” Blows the Lid Off Hollywood’s Secret Right-Wing Underground By: David Cole
- Utterly Dwarfed (The Order of the Stick #6) By: Rich Burlew
- Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus By: Wizards RPG Team
- A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul By: Leo Tolstoy
- The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations for Clarity, Effectiveness, and Serenity By: Ryan Holiday
- The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932 (The Last Lion #1) By: William Manchester
A recent debate on the dangers of pornography, and whether government should restrict things more or whether people just need to "parent better" plus an article about "total sexual freedom" causing the collapse of a nation within three generations are all tied together into a discussion of how to deal with more subtle eschatological concerns.
The title pretty much says it all, but in case you don't know what an Eschatologist is, an eschatologist is someone who studies eschatology. And eschatology is "a part of theology concerned with the final events of history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity. This concept is commonly referred to as the 'end of the world' or 'end times'.
In my discussion of eschatology I intend to broaden the definition both horizontally (to include secular concerns) and vertically (to include not merely the end of the world, but the end of the nation).
My book reviews for November:
- The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why By: Amanda Ripley
- The Mapping of Love and Death (Maisie Dobbs, #7) By: Jacqueline Winspear
- The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution By: Francis Fukuyama
- The Odyssey By: Homer
- Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl By: Harriet Ann Jacobs
- You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life By: Jen Sincero
- Ayoade on Top By: Richard Ayoade
- Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business By: Neil Postman
- Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology By: Neil Postman
- Midnight Riot (Peter Grant, #1) By: Ben Aaronovitch
- Aeschylus I: The Persians, The Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliant Maidens, Prometheus Bound By: Aeschylus
In 1985 Neil Postman published the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death". The central claim of the book was that TV had replaced the superior epistemology of the printed word with an inferior version focused entirely on entertainment. Now TV itself has been replaced as the dominant medium by the internet and social media. What epistemology has it brought with it, and is it better than TV or far, far worse?
After getting significant pushback I revisit my evaluation of Bryan Caplan's argument for open borders. I continue to maintain that if the average GDP of the US drops by half that some low-skilled workers will be caught in that. Even if many people end up benefiting. I bring in Garett Jones' argument against Caplan along with Caplan's response.
In the book War! What is it Good For? by Ian Morris, he speculates that the world has been built on the back of productive war. But what happens when empire building is out of fashion and nukes make war impossible even if it wasn't. Is it possible that after using war to achieve unity over the course of thousands of years, that it will stop working just at the moment it seemed possible we might unify the whole world?
- The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation By: Carl Benedikt Frey
- Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age By: Arthur Herman
- All Creatures Great and Small By: James Herriot
- To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian By: Stephen E. Ambrose
- War! What Is It Good For?: Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots By: Ian Morris
- The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses By: Dan Carlin
- Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics By: Mary Eberstadt
- Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration By: Bryan Caplan
A collection of ways in which atheists misunderstand the strength of their position (or rather the lack their of).
- The difference between gathering evidence on the existence of something like Bigfoot as opposed to gathering evidence on the existence of God.
- Their ability to imagine things which in all respects meet the definition for the existence of God. They just don't like the God proposed by religions.
- Pascal's Mugging and the oversimplification of religious belief.
Nietzsche said that God is Dead, and that people had not reckoned with with the consequences of that. Additionally he and other's predicted that people could not be good in the absence of religion. This has proved to be incorrect, there are plenty of atheists who are good people. But how has civilization fared. Is it possible that Nietzsche and the rest were just premature in their pessimism? That the current culture war is so fierce because we don't have a common set of values to negotiate around?
Moderation is an underrated value. To achieve it we need to not merely push for moderation, we need to push back against whichever side which has become too extreme. This is the pendulum, and it swings back and forth. If we value moderation we seek to keep it as close to the center as possible, while also avoiding violent swings from side to side. Doing so requires arguing for both sides of an issue depending on which is ascendant.
It's my monthly review of the books I read. In this episode I cover:
- Savage Worlds: Adventure Edition By: Shane Lacy Hensley
- Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea*By: Steven Callahan*
- Novacene: The Coming Age of HyperintelligenceBy: James Lovelock
- Bronze Age Mindset By: Bronze Age Pervert
- Why Are The Prices So Damn High?By: Eric Helland, Alex Tabarrok
- An Introduction to the Book of Abraham (Religious) by: John Gee
- The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard #1) By: Scott Lynch
- No More Mr Nice Guy: A Proven Plan for Getting What You Want in Love, Sex, and Life By: Robert A. Glover
- Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why By: Laurence Gonzales
I have heard some people, even in the comments of my this podcast, claim that we shouldn't worry about the current level of political unrest because there's nowhere for the violence to start. That we don't see the sort of large scale violence we once saw in the past. I think they're wrong I think there will be bloodshed, and the question this episode looks to answer is where does it start?
I recently read American Carnage, the story of the development of the Republican Civil War and the events which led to the current political crisis. While reading it I was struck by a question, not why is this happening now, but rather why isn't it always this way?
I think I have the answer to that question and it involves nationalism, wars, immigration and most of all the sayings of the Pashtun.
From the perspective of our system of government there are a lot of deviations currently going on. Many of them are being normalized. In the based we could correct deviations by means of amending the Constitution, but that no longer seems possible. Meaning we have largely decided to normalize them and hope that they're improvements, or at least not the kind of thing that is going to make the entire structure crash. As you might imagine I have my doubts that this is even possible.
This is the monthly episode where I review all the books I read over the past month. This time I'm mixing it up by doing very short reviews of some while doing longer reviews of the others. Here's a list of the books I mention:
- Extremes by Various
- The Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael Shea
- Blood Song by Anthony Ryan
- The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael Shea
- Once Upon a Time in Russia by Ben Mezrich
- The Iliad by Homer
- Don't Sleep There are Snakes by Daniel Everett
- American Carnage by Tim Alberta
All more enlightened forms of government require certain institutions and customs in order to function. Democratic capitalism doesn't work without strong contract enforcement and low corruption for example. Is it possible that there are institutions and customs yet (or about) to be discovered and implemented which would make communism work. If so would that be enough to "save" humanity? Perhaps, but there's a lot of things working against that idea as well.
I recently read an article titled How I Almost Destroyed a £50 million War Plane and The Normalisation of Deviance. In this post I examine the idea of deviance and what it means to normalize it. The article most examined it from the perspective of smaller systems, but I'm interested in what it looks like if we take the concept and apply it to society as a whole.
Following up on a previous post I discuss the possible rise of a new civic religion, starting with some stories about how what people feel comfortable signaling support for has changed.
Historically replacing one religion with another civic or otherwise has been accompanied by bloodshed and no small amount of violence. Will this time be similar?
My book reviews for the month of July (along with one podcast).
The Blade Itself (1 of 3 First Law Trilogy)
Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War
The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
Fall of Civilizations (Podcast)
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
Wild at Heart Revised and Updated: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul (Religious)
A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History
The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumphs
Like many people the 50th anniversary of the first man on the moon is an opportunity for retrospection, and the thing that jumps out to me and to everyone is the fact that after Apollo was over we haven't been back. What does that mean for the future of space exploration, and particularly colonization, given that if colonization isn't in our future then we're going to go extinct sooner or later and probably sooner. If we assume that something resembling Moore's Law, also affects space exploration what does that tell us about when we might reach certain celestial bodies?
In a continued attempt to drill down into cultural evolution, I examine whether, in addition to cultural evolution, if there's a separate phenomenon which deserves the label memetic evolution. I conclude there is a phenomenon, but that a better label for it is "memetic accumulation" and that there are some worrying things happening with the speed and diversity of this accumulation.
I recently read the book Alone, by Michael Korda. It was about the opening months of World War II, and he said that at the time the French had the reputation as the world's preeminent military power. This obviously turned out to not be the case, but in the past they had been. Is there anything where we're overemphasizing our view of the past, and overlooking that what might happen in the future will almost certainly be completely different. I think there is...
Books Reviewed:
- Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis by Jared Diamond
- Then It Fell Apart by Moby
- Fall; or, Dodge in Hell: A Novel by Neal Stephenson
- To Live and Die in LA (Podcast) Hosted by Neil Strauss
- Left For Dead: 30 Years On - The Race is Finally Over by Nick Ward and Sinead O'Brien
- Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat into Victory by Michael Korda
- How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon
- Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler
We've discussed cultural evolution, and everyone knows about evolution by natural selection, but is something different happening now? Some people have said that we have transitioned to a different a third type of evolution, memetic evolution. Is this just an improvement to cultural evolution in the same way that cultural evolution was an improvement on genetic evolution? Or is it an entirely different beast? Does it allow us to adapt faster? Or does it make all adaptation more difficult?
It seems obvious that there are certain traditions which work to improve the survival of the culture in which they exist. It seems equally obvious that some traditions are pointless. How do we tell the difference? As it turns out it may be harder and take longer than you think. Also reason might help you less than you think. In this episode I consider four factors which might be helpful:
- The duration of the tradition. How long has it been around?
- The strength of enforcement for the tradition. How severe are the penalties for going against it?
- The frequency of the tradition among the various cultures. How widespread is it? Is it present in many different cultures?
- The domain of the tradition. Is the tradition related to something which could impact survival or reproduction?
A review of Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis by Jared Diamond.
It's not Guns, Germs and Steel, but he does put forth an interesting list of factors for how nations successful navigate crisis. My assessment of these factors is that they're useful, but that they also serve to illustrate the depths of the current crises faced by the US and the world.
Lots of trends associated with the modern world seem to be increasing at an exponential rate. This includes things like energy use, CPU speed, and even scientific publications. But what if rather than being a exponential curve, all of these trends are really the bottoms of S-curves? Curves that start out looking like exponential curve, but which taper off at the top and plateau as constraints kick in. What would that mean for the ongoing progress people have come to count on, and what might be some potential examples of this?
I review a bunch of books:
- The Collapsing Empire
- Porcelain: A Memoir
- Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI
- The Inevitable Apostasy and the Promised Restoration (Religious)
- The City & The City
- 13 Ways of Going on a Field Trip: Stories about Teaching and Learning
- Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
- The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto)
I had not intended to revisit abortion so soon, but the previous post generated some interesting comments on a wide range of issues, so I decided to collect them and answer in the form of a post. In particular I should have paid more attention to the actual women involved in what is objectively a horrible decision to have to make. But there are other nuances as well that deserve more space.
I was reading the Iliad recently and I was struck by the fact that while there were a lot of horses that no one rode them, they were all used to pull chariots. Horses had been domesticated for thousands of years but no one thought to ride them. And it would be another couple thousand years before someone came up with the idea of a stirrup. This illustrates that a technology can be around for a long time and then suddenly someone will figure out a new way of using it which ends up being incredibly effective. Could this happen with Nukes?
Abortion is back in the news, and perhaps unwisely I've decided to give my two cents on the subject. I think most of the things that annoy people about the recent laws are tactics in the larger game of getting the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. Though I'm of the opinion that it won't happen regardless, unless Ginsburg dies, which would bring its own level of craziness. But most importantly I think there are genuine disagreements about the morality of abortion which are not going away, and that unless we figure out a way to "agree to disagree" things are going to get ugly.
I review the book Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick, with a particular focus on the way the history of walls has been misinterpreted and distorted by recent examples of wall building. This is a problem, because it's actually more important than ever to understand the correct history of walls as we enter a second age of wall-building. Though most modern walls are built to keep out immigrants not invading armies.
At the moment it seems like nothing can stop the Democratic nominee from beating Trump and nothing can stop Biden from being the democratic nominee. But what are they going to do about immigration? Trump has done two things, made the issue impossible to ignore and also utterly toxic to rational discussion. There are only good people who want de facto open borders and evil people. But any rational assessment of the situation leads to the inevitable conclusion that some restrictions are needed, and not only that, but that the majority of the country wants greater restrictions. What's a Democrat to do? Are they trapped?
When people think about AI Risk they think about an artificial superintelligence malevolently and implacably pursuing its goals with humans standing by powerless to stop it. But what if AI Risk is more subtle? What if the same processes which have been so successfully used for image recognition are turned towards increasing engagement? What if that engagement ends up looking a lot like addiction? And what if the easiest way to create that addiction is by eroding the mental health of the user? And what if it's something we're doing to ourselves?
I was recently listening to some old episodes from 2016 from my daughter. There were parts where I felt like I had done pretty well in taking the temperature of the world and parts where I cringed. Knowing how much certain of my listeners like to see my cringe I thought I'd share the experience with all of you. Accordingly in this episode I review my comments from immediately before and after the 2016 election and see how they look with the benefit of hindsight.
If you have high cholesterol the doctor will tell you you're at risk for heart disease and prescribe statins. If your society is poor, a sociologist will tell you that your population could be happier, and suggest that you raise the standard of living. At some point we expect that drug companies will prove the connection between their drug and lowering deaths from heart disease. Shouldn't we also expect that our sociologist will prove the connection between standard of living and happiness? What if while focusing on standard of living we actually ignore things that actually do improve happiness?
The race to defeat Trump has begun in earnest. There are 19 notable candidates in the Democratic primary race already and that doesn't include some big names that are expected to enter the race, but haven't yet. Why are there so many? There were only six in 2016. One theory is that Trump appears vulnerable so it's anybodies race. Even people who were traditionally to radical or progressive to win a nationwide election feel like they could beat Trump, but can they, and what does the moderate progressive split mean for the primaries?
I admit that as I discuss things there is some emotion involved. A lot of stuff is my subjective sense of how the world is going. And in this episode in the interest of transparency I toss a few of those things out. Stories and trends where, maybe there's no cause for concern, but which viscerally really make me question, "What is going on?!?!?"
Someone once said that "All you need is love." This episode disagrees with that. I feel that love is overemphasized and that particularly from a Christian perspective, we should be more concerned with repentance.
It's an article of faith that there is no safe levels of radiation. Recently I read a paper which suggested otherwise, and pointed out that survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had a greater life expectancy than the Japanese average. But these days, it's not merely with radiation where people feel that there is no safe level. Current opinion holds that there is no safe level of danger, comfort, shame or suffering. In this episode I examine whether that is in fact the case. And provide evidence that it's exactly the opposite that low levels of harm are not only safe, but actually beneficial.
It's easy to put together an analogy, tie it to some recent anecdotes and call it wisdom, but is it? That's the question I address in this episode. After examining it more generally I examine the specific example of chemotherapy as a metaphor for modern discourse. We may in fact have certain societal cancers which need to be rooted out, but just as chemotherapy kills healthy cells along with bad cells, is it possible that we are being too aggressive with our metaphorical chemo?
In my first reposting, I go back and revisit my review of the book Tribe by Sebastian Junger. In particular an examination of how stress and struggle can improve mental health, and how by removing both struggle and community modern society creates a situation where psychological problems, particularly in the military, become more acute.
The hygiene hypothesis holds that by missing out on the normal infections of youth leaves the immune system with nothing to do, and as a consequence later in life it over-reacts to normally benign things like peanuts. What if the same thing is happening psychologically? What if an absence of certain forms of trauma and stress when young lead people to overreact to things later in life which aren't particularly traumatic. In discussing this I bring in the writing of Brene Brown who points out that we're the most addicted, medicated, in debt, overweight adult cohort in history. Given how objectively untraumatic modern life is, why would that be?
I open by discussing, in great detail, a car accident my son was recently in. (Don't worry, he's okay.) I noticed that the story the other driver was telling had some inconsistencies. I'm suspicious because he has an incentive to lie, and from there I turn to a discussion of incentives more generally and bring in the recent hate crime hoax involving Jussie Smollett. And ask the more general question, are we focused too much on what people should do, and not enough what they might do, particularly if the incentive to do so is great enough.
There's been more and more attention paid to the size and power of tech giants, and whether that size and power means they should be treated as a monopoly and subject to anti-trust scrutiny. In this episode I combine that discussion with the recent efforts of a Gizmodo reporter to cut these tech giants (Specifically Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google and Microsoft) out of her life. She claimed it was "impossible" to cut out Amazon. Does this revelation strengthen the case of those who claim Amazon is a monopoly. One would think it would but how many people truly realize how ubiquitous Amazon and the rest truly are?
The challenges we face today are vastly different than challenges we faced historically. Accordingly the tools we have built to deal with historical challenges may not be up to dealing with more modern ones. And of course this all assumes that the tools are in good repair and still working the way they should, but anyone looking at the present scene might be forced to conclude that they are not. That political conventions and compromise are things of the past, perhaps right at the point where we need them the most.
I've gone a long time since I started this podcast and it may be difficult to know where to start at this point so I decided to take a break to reground things. If you've been listening for a long time most of this will be familiar to you, but if somehow you just stumbled on things, this is a great place to start.
Technology allows us to optimize around very narrow criteria. If we turn that optimization ability towards changing society. We can end up emphasizing one potential future, based around a narrow set of values over other potential futures with other values. Conceivably abandoning many long standing values regardless of how useful they are. This is analogous to the transit systems of many large cities, in particular the Bay Area, where all the lines stay together for awhile and it doesn't matter what value you emphasize, but introduce technology and suddenly optimizing one value over another results in radically different results.
Last week I compared life to a video game. A video game where the number of players continues to increase, meaning that our collective knowledge of how best to play the game should also be increasing, except that at the same time the version of game we’re playing is also changing. As an aside I also mentioned that it’s becoming harder to know if we’re winning. This week I’d like to take that thought and expand upon it. What does it mean to be winning the video game? Or, to go a step further why are we even playing the game?
If humans gradually figure out how best to live, then we should give a lot of weight to what has already been figured out over the years. But what if we end up with more humans? Do the behaviors of a billion current people count more than a million historical people? At first glance the answer is an obvious yes, but what if we add in the complication that current conditions are rapidly changing? Is it possible that behavior can't keep up? In this episode we examine the question and compare years of experience vs. human experienced years.
It's the beginning of the year and time to do the annual revisiting of my predictions. Not much has changed in 2018, so I spend much of the episode examining some of the current trends. In particular I think the rise of populism in Europe and America is going to make things interesting for the foreseeable future.
For your holiday listening enjoyment I have assembled five stories, nay parables to bring enlightenment and edification during these otherwise dark and gloomy months. You may not always agree with the moral, but you will find some (generally me) doing something dumb in all of them.
Enjoy!
Last month wildfires ravaged California, including the inappropriately named Camp Fire which killed 86. Many people want to blame the fires on global warming and the changing climate, while other's think it could be solved to more logging. More likely it's due to fire suppression efforts which have allowed deadwood to accumulate, meaning that when fires do come they are much more destructive.
Suppressing fires is not the only place where we're trying to bend nature to our will, and the question I pose in this episode is whether there are other areas where we're accumulating metaphorical deadwood, and risk stockpiling fuel for a conflagration much greater than we expect.
In "The Coddling of the American Mind" Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt discuss the new culture of safety that has developed on campuses around the country, and argue that children and students need challenges and stress and even suffering in their life to develop properly. If we grant their premise, how do we decide how much suffering to introduce? And how do we convince people to accept more suffering into their life? How do we determine the right level of suffering?
Milan M. Ćirković's book The Great Silence is a fantastic exploration of the philosophy and importance of Fermi's Paradox. I spend the first half of this episode doing a review of the book and the second half discussing how my own explanation of the paradox fits in to Ćirković's framework.
Every time we develop a new technology, we take a risk. Some technologies are dangerous and it may be that sometime in the future we will develop a technology which will mean the end of humanity. In a recent paper Bostrom makes this point by using the analogy of drawing balls from an urn. Progress means drawing balls from the urn, and as a result means running this risk.
This is unfortunate because for many people also think growth and progress are the best ways for creating the world we want. Among them, Tyler Cowen who recently published the book Stubborn Attachments. In this episode I compare and contrast these two views. Perhaps we can have growth and avoid bad technology, but as far as we can tell, no one ever has...
I had a discussion with a friend recently who claimed that I other similarly dispassionate blogs (read rationalists) were providing intellectual cover for bad people, in particular men's rights activists and militant incels. I look into that claim, and ultimately find it to be... Listen to the podcast for the dramatic reveal!
In the 90s there were two theories for the future. Fukuyama's "End of History" and Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations". Now that more than two decades has passed it seems obvious that Huntington was the more prescient. But even Huntington may have insufficiently accounted for the effects of technology on civilizations, particularly it's power to divide civilizations internally, something which is present on everyone's mind as we think about the results of the most recent election. Most people understate the importance of religion, Huntington does not, and this makes things even more complicated.
A recent book asks, "What's Wrong with China?" Well perhaps a lot, but for the purposes of this podcast I'm just looking at how very different China is from the US or the West, far different than most people think. Particularly those people who expect China to smoothly transition to something indistinguishable from a modern western democracy.
On June 1, 2009 Air France Flight 447 crashed into the mid-atlantic killing all 228 people aboard. In this episode I look at how it happened and whether it provides any larger lessons on the limits of privacy and technology and for the political crisis we're currently facing.
There are a lot of ways to spend our time, money and attention, and all three are limited. How do we decide what to spend them on, how do we decide what to worry about? This is the topic I examine on this episode, using global warming/climate change as one of the big examples. I approach this question with several frameworks in mind including the framework of effective altruism.
Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth is a book about a future where brain emulation becomes commonplace, by Robin Hanson. The future Hanson describes is a mixed bag, and I look at what that says about other transhumanist visions of the future, along with, of course, the very real possibility that none of those visions will come to pass. A position which Hanson’s book also supports though with much less detail. But this position, both because of it’s immediacy and it’s long term downside, is where, I feel, we should be spending the bulk of our attention.
I have long positioned myself as something of a deficit hawk. A few weeks ago I heard a podcast about Modern Monetary Theory, an economics ideology which declares that debts and deficits don't matter. This is not the first time I have heard someone claim that, and my response was always, "But what about inflation?!?" Well it turns out I was wrong. Advocates of MMT aren't ignoring inflation they're arguing that inflation is the only thing you should worry about. This does answer my primary objection, but I think there are still reasons why MMT is a bad idea.
I decide to add myself to the long list of people talking about the Kavanuagh nomination. But I look at it from the standpoint of what standards a Senator might use to make a decision when it really isn't clear who's telling the truth. Spoiler alert: most of them are self-serving and biased.
Recently I attended the Moral and Ethical Leadership Conference put on by the BYU Management Society, the unofficial theme of which appeared to be civility. I take three speeches from the conference: Senator Jeff Flake, artist Eric Dowdle and columnist McKay Coppins and use them as a jumping off point for a discussion of the current state of civility and why it needs to be defended.
On a recent episode of the Art of Manliness Professor Benjamin Ginsberg discusses his book The Value of War and makes the claim that war has several positive values which have been recently overlooked? Is this the case? If so what might those positives be?
How will people a thousand years from now view this era? Will they see us as visionaries creating utopia or will they see us as hopelessly naive, ignoring obvious risks in favor of selfish short-term cultural gains? As you might imagine, I'm arguing for the latter. Particularly given that we are doing very little to avoid being selfish, or short-term or to identify the risks of changes to the culture. Also it should be noted that I am mostly reframing what Robin Hanson says in this post, so a definite thanks to him.
I just finished reading Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday, which is the story of Gawker being taken down by Peter Thiel. And someone on reddit pointed out that if Gawker was what they claimed to be, they should have been the one's to expose Theranos. But, of course they didn't. What did Gawker prioritize? And what should we be prioritizing in deciding what to publish and what to ban?
There are lots of ways things could go poorly in the future without going catastrophically bad. In this episode I take a recent article by Tyler Cowen where he speaks on this idea and I expand on some of the ideas he mentions in addition to adding one of my own.
A review of the book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. I discuss how the many failsafes against this sort of fraud were circumvented by Holmes and her accomplices, and how this parallels my own experience in the start up world.
Slate recently published an article arguing we should not worry about porn. This episode is, in part, an answer to that question, and in it I argue that the unparalleled access to "sex-films", is so unprecedented that taking a firm stand that we shouldn't worry, is unwarranted given the data we have available.
I argue that past moral panics have correctly predicted what will happen, but predicted it happening sooner and more dramatically than it actually did, which causes people to undervalue the points they made.
Rather than covering one big talk I decided to cover several:
1- Some impressions of the Sunstone Symposium I was just at.
2- I discuss irreconcilable value differences, and whether they're a problem.
3- The Putin-Trump summit and whether it increased or decreased the chance of nuclear war.
Nietzsche claimed that "God is dead", and predicted that as this became apparent the world would descend into nihilism. But what if there are god-like extraterrestrials out there? Or what if we can create our own gods using AI? How does that change his prediction of nihilism? The question seems to depend on whether there is some universal system of morality. If not, I argue, the consequences will be every bit as bad as Nietzsche predicted.
The coming fight over who will replace Anthony Kennedy has once again brought up the subject of whether all values should determined at the highest level possible. People are worried that if Kennedy is replaced that Roe v Wade will be overturned. But of course what isn't emphasized is that this will just move the issue back to the states. Are we sure that this and other issues really have to be all the same across the entire nation? Or that doing it this way has not made things worse?
I'm not...
I introduce the idea of "The Mistake of Dramatic Timing" which affects most of the thinking about Fermi's Paradox. I review a particularly egregious example of it in the Bobiverse series. I then go on to discuss my issues with a recent paper which claimed to "Dissolve Fermi's Paradox".
It's the 100th Episode! Okay don't get too excited, mostly I'm using this to question why I even do this. Hubris! And whether I should change anything going forward. (Probably, but nothing big.) The upshot is I think I have at least 100 more in me so I'll be here for awhile.
In a recent detailed critique, Phil Torres lays out all the ways in which Pinker's chapter on existential risks from Enlightenment Now, gets the discipline of existential risks entirely wrong. As this one of my areas of interest I examine Torres' arguments, but also I add a religious aspect to the entire thing which Torres intentionally avoids. In the end it's apparent that Pinker made repeated errors in the chapter, and that Torres despite being in a much better position could also probably learn something from looking at religion.
I start off by telling of an amazing crime involving pizza delivery. From there I wonder about the incidence of crime in general, and whether there's any relationship to homelessness.
My own impression is that homelessness is increasing, this doesn't appear to correlate to an increase in crime, nor does it correlate to an improving economy. Why is that? Why has homelessness not declined significantly during this most recent economic expansion?
I discuss Taleb's new book Skin in the Game, and how it connects to recent themes of survival and religion. But I guess you get all that from the title... I wonder if anyone even reads theses. I'm guessing not. If you do and you email me I'll give you a prize!
Every single person alive today makes a choice about how to live their life, specifically whether to believe in God and an existence beyond this one or not. Though, rather than being two choices I think it’s best to think of there being four possible choices:
1- Religion
2- Athiesm
3- Transhumanism
4- Apathy
Despite convention wisdom, the data says that the first choices is far and away the best.
Most modern thinkers prioritize happiness over survival. Some take this prioritization to such an extreme that they advocate that the entire human race go extinct. Using this as a jumping off point I discuss happiness vs. survival, why survival is more important and why the recent focus on happiness is endangering it.
Show Notes
Incels, or the involuntarily celibate have been much discussed since the Toronto Van Attack in April by someone who claimed that title. Obviously advocating the initiation of violence for nearly any reason is a bad thing. And that covers the Van Attack and one or two other instances, but what about people who are frustrated and sad, but not violent? What about people who are just sad? What if they're so sad they're suicidal? How should we treat these people?
If your worried about climate change you should be a huge advocate of nuclear power, but that's actually not the case. Here we look at the case for nuclear power, and why it hasn't gained more traction, particularly in light of people's worries about global warming.
Steven Pinker makes a powerful case for progress and enlightenment, but when you look closer you see that he oversimplifies the potential challenges we might face, and calls any caution pessimism. I understand things are going well right now, historically, but that's no reason to ignore the potential risks...
The book Who We Are and How We Got Here, has up-ended some of the more recent thinking on how the Indo-Europeans spread. Since this was a subject I'd covered previously I decided to revisit it in this episode. In particular to see how it relates to what's happening with science and in a larger sense whether our ability to uncover truth is outstripping our ability to generate errors.
My prognosis is that there is cause for alarm on this front.
In my ongoing series on the Mormon Transhumanist Association, I review and comment on the conference I just attended and presented at. I speak of similarities in our view points, but most of all differences. Like Buddha and Hume we appear to have arrived at the same philosophy, but from that derived entirely different conclusions as to how to act.
If dealing with AI Risk allows us to arrive at something very similar to the LDS Plan of Salvation, what lessons can we draw from that with respect to how we should behave in this life? In this episode we dig deeper into that question as a follow-up to a presentation I gave at the annual conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association.
Have you actually browsed the official report of Rotherham? It's pretty appalling stuff. I didn't think I was going to, but this week I ended up returning to a discussion of Rotherham, Telford, etc. I answer some of the objections which were raised in the previous post, and talk about the role of culture in the whole affair.
1000's of girls, some as young 11, raped as part of large child sex abuse rings. Why haven't you heard about it? That's the question we ask in this episode...
This episode is largely a review of The Great Leveler by Walter Scheidel. In the book Scheidel asserts that the only thing which has ever reduced inequality is some form of violence, either modern war, extreme revolutions, state collapse or pandemics. He backs up this assertion with loads of historical data, leading to the depressing conclusion that we either have to put up with periodic large scale violence or extreme inequality. This podcast is a discussion of that bleak conclusion.
Continuing with the subject I was covering in the last episode I go into more depth on the increase in transgender and gender non-conforming identity. I offer one final theory and then move on to a discussion of suicide risk, and other potential harm.
Last episode I talked about trends, and in this episode I want to talk about a specific trend, the increase in people who identify as transgender or gender non-conforming. I offer six theories for why it might be increasing.
Tiny trends are all around us. Some of these trends compound, like compound interest, exponential growth that works like a juggernaut destroying whatever came before. Other trends are slower, and harder to notice, and generally only noticed once their impact is already obvious. Like the opioid epidemic and deaths of despair.
Sometimes humans can reverse the trends. Sometimes they reverse naturally and sometimes the only way to reverse them is through instability and violence.
Once again (though perhaps for the last time) John Brockman of Edge.org has asked a variety of intellectuals to answer his question of the year. This year it was "What is the Last Question?" I spend this episode discussing some of the responses, specifically how they relate to things I've mentioned in previous podcasts and how well they fit into the category of a "last question." And then at the end I give my "last question."
After reading a significant number of books from the early 19th century, I noticed that a lot of the better known authors were "communist sympathizers". Which prompted me to examine what communism must have looked like back then, before the full horror of Stalin, and the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. My conclusion is that it must have looked pretty good.
But then we all know how the story turned out, and however good it looked back then, that was an illusion. And if you had banned criticism based on how bad it looked you would have missed out on the chance to avoid some communism's excesses and failures.
With the advent of social media and the internet the entire landscape of speech has changed. For as long as the concept of freedom of speech it has always been assumed that more speech was better, but what if we have finally reached the point where there can be too much speech, that in fact the quantity of speech is now such that it acts as a form of censorship?
This week I had the flu, so I decided to take the low energy approach of covering three topics briefly, rather than one in depth. I start off talking about the new LDS First Presidency, than move to the recent excitement about Steven Pinker, and finally provide on update on the progress of the Pervnado.
What all of these topics have in common is that we don't appear to be reaching any kind of equilibrium point. Both sides appear to just be getting angrier, and the question, as always is how is it going to end?
I spend this episode commenting on Scott Alexander’s epic Meditations on Moloch post. In particular I look at the way his conception of Moloch interacts with religion and Fermi’s paradox.
My annual prediction episode, of course since I have a set of permanent predictions, mostly I'm looking at whether 2017 brought any of them any closer to completion. There was some progress with AI, and with nuclear war getting more likely, but nothing earth-shattering.
On top of the raw predictions I explain why the future is dominated by Black swans and being antifragile is the only way to deal with unexpected and impactful events because the future is not going to go the way we think it will.
I revisit Fermi's Paradox and my explanation for it, in light of the second edition of Stephen Webb's "If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens...Where Is Everybody? Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life". I find several places, where in my opinion Webb shows a lack of imagination. Then as a Christmas gift to myself I explain how too great of a focus on social justice may be keeping us from getting off of our own planet.
Another issue on the latest explosion of accusations of sexual harassment, which I've decided to gather under the term Pervnado (no, I did not coin it.) In this episode I lump together some things which didn't make it into the previous episode, including whether supervisors and co-workers of the perpetrators will also end up facing consequences. How far back things will extend (in particular whether the Pervnado will come for Bill Clinton). But the biggest thing I look at is the subjectivity of the accusations. And how, once unleashed, it's a weapon which may not be a discriminating as people hoped.
In this episode I examine the current spike in allegations of sexual harassment, with the attendant consequences. And while totally agreeing that it's a big problem I worry that people might be getting swept into a mania, where innocent people might be suffering.
Of course this is not something unheard of. Back in 1841 Charles Mackay wrote a book about it, and from that day to this, even though the severity may have decreased we still suffer from the occasional witch hunt. Is the current spate of allegations in any danger of drifting into that territory?
Rationality: AI to Zombies is a book with an ideology, but how effective is it. While I don't especially agree that Bayesian Rationality is a better individual ideology than a religion like Christianity, even if it were, how applicable is it to the average individual, or even the below average individual. For an ideology to be successful, it can't just appeal to the elites. It has to be something that can be understood and applied at all levels. This episode dives into the way in which religion already fills that role.
I recently finished the book Rationality: AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowsky, and this episode is the first part of my review.
In this episode I spend most of the time comparing rationality, as championed by Yudkowsky with Antifragility as championed by Taleb. In particular I take issue with Yudkowsky's focus on "winning" and also the lake of any methodology for dealing with the difference between rare outcomes with large impacts and rare outcomes with minimal impact.
Technology solves a lot of our problems, this is something everyone knows. But it also creates a lot of problems, though generally those problems are more subtle and take longer to manifest, though in the end there is no law which says that the benefits provided technology have to outweigh the problems created by it.
In this episode I specifically look at the idea of accumulated negative mutations, and the promises and dangers of germline/genetic engineering.
Russian meddling in the election via the medium of Facebook ads has been much in the news lately. This episode examines whether social media advertising is disproportionately effective, after concluding that it is, it examines why that might be and what we should do about it.
In this episode I talk about a recent article I encountered which explored the orthodox-progressive divide in Mormonism. I talk about how, while excellent, the article may not have gone far enough. I provide some additional examples of things which really worry me, and then go on to discuss some of the issues with diversity in the wider world.
In chess notation a “?!” indicates a speculative attempt to complicate. A move that throws a wrench into things, and mostly comes up when someone is losing and they hope by creating some chaos they can turn things around. The same thing happens historically, desperate attempts to take a losing position, throw in some chaos and turn it into a winning position. In this episode we examine how this took place immediately preceding the French Revolution, and how it may be about to take place again in an eerily similar fashion.
There are lots of very smart people who tell us we don't have to worry about the national debt, despite the fact that it recently passed $20 trillion. Is this true, are we over-reacting? Or is this the classic case of deciding that because something is not a problem now that it will never be a problem? The US can borrow at historically low rates, there are countries worse than us, but what is the endgame? How long can we keep this up?
There are many trends which shape our world and the political landscape. These trends can either be getting better or getting worse (and often that depends on the person) or than can stay the same.
Sometimes this the metaphor of a pendulum is used. Things go one way, until they hit some kind of maximum and then they reverse direction. Is there any evidence current events are reaching some kind of maximum, or do we still have a long way to go.
There are only two paths to potential salvation: Religion and Science. Most people have placed their bets on science, but they may be overlooking some of the downsides attendant with relying on science, primarily the fact that science doesn't care about things like morality or kindness. And if you really have decided that we're going to be saved through science then you have to grapple with these downsides.
Featuring another appearance by Fermi's Paradox...
In this episode I tell the story of the Melanesian Cargo Cults, and I after relating some of the ways this story has been used as a cautionary tale by people in the past, I turn it on it's head and use it to illustrate how close members are to prophets and how close prophets are to God. Consider this my attempt at a General Conference episode.
In this episode I continue to examine the Moderate Manifesto, and how even the recommendations of moderation end up being pretty conservative. Specifically, this time around I look at the seven assumptions of centrism, and in most cases the left is far more guilty of extremism than the right.
In this episode I talk about DACA, how it may not be quite as hateful as people make it out to be, and how it is especially not kicking someone while they're down or dancing in the endzone as a continuation of the last episode. From there I discuss the Moderate Manifesto, and how all of the things the author advocates for as a moderate are actually fairly conservative these days. Finally another appeal to slow things down.
Is there a cold civil war taking place? If so which side is right? Or if they both have some truth and some good people how do we limit the damage from this war? How do we keep the cold civil war from turning into a hot civil war? These are the questions we grapple in this episode, using the recent events in Charlottesville as an example.
My aunt directed me to an article about an appalling video. It seems like more and more, what was unimaginable 20 years ago is now completely normal. The question is why? What is the underlying motivation behind the appalling video and things like it?
Rather than covering one subject exhaustively I decided to do a brief overview of several topics:
- Electromagnetic Pulses (EMP)
- An example of the difference between fragility and volatility
- Overcomplicated
- The Indo Europeans
- A Plethora of Hate
- Checking in on Fermi’s Paradox
I have a tendency to cover a wide variety of topics, but what's the common theme. Here I revisit a subject I haven't touched on since the very first episode. What's the common theme for this podcast? How would you describe the podcast to someone who hasn't heard it. I know a lot of you out there are waiting on a pith description before you recommend it and this is your chance.
In the final episode of the Mormonism and AI series I finally really dive into the religious implications of considering life a test of morality in a way similar to what must be done with AIs. As part of that I consider longstanding objections to religion and Christianity in particular like the problems of evil, suffering and Hell. Concluding that if you're really testing for morality all of those have to exist.
Taking things up from where I left them at the end of the last episode I go into more detail about the various ways you might try to ensure that a conscious AI is moral, and examine the problems each of them might experience. In particular I examine how an AI might twist instructions in a way that is ultimately harmful.
I return to the subject of Mormonism and Artificial Intelligence, though this time in a more comprehensive fashion. This is the first part which covers the current state of AI, the challenges it already presents and how it relates to the future of AI. As it turns out AI is already doing things which cannot be explained and that's only going to get worse. In this episode I lay out why AI might be dangerous and in the next I'll talk about what to do about it, and how that relates to Mormonism.
Visions of the future end up in one of three categories. Either the future will be awesome, or it will basically be the same (TV, couches and central air will all still exist) or the world will end, and we’ll all be dead. What this episode points out is that far more likely than the world ending suddenly and irrevocably, is the world continuing, but going through some kind of crisis. Which means we're still alive but it's neither awesome, nor the same, and it is all the worse because we didn't prepare.
Social media is one of the biggest battlefields in the current divisive cultural war, but how much does social media itself contribute to the divisiveness? By creating an entirely new framework for interacting which allows people to find like minded individuals easier than ever before social media has created an environment more prone to anger and rage than any environment humanity has had to deal with before.
In this episode I discuss the idea of the Overton Window. The sorts of things you can propose without people thinking you're crazy. In particular I focus on how it moves, but always to the left, and how it's speeding up and how that might relate to any potential for ideological conflict. This episode is a vague continuation of the previous episode.
It has been remarked that one of the strangest features of today is that every side thinks they're losing. Immigrants are convinced they’re all about to be deported. Christians feel under attack by an increasingly secular society. Democrats and liberals are dismayed by the election of Trump and Republicans and Conservatives are alarmed by the increasing strident social justice activism. But we examine which side is really losing and what that tells about how the current political climate.
For episode 50 (something I neglected to mention while actually recording the podcast) we return to look at the point of the podcast, why it's sometimes important to be pessimist and why rationalists dismiss religion to both their peril and detriment.
If you were to look at the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica, as John Derbyshire did in 2006 you would find 152 countries listed. How many of them survived intact to the present day, meaning no change in government, no civil wars or revolutions, no significant loss of territory and no foreign occupation. We examine that question, and the answer might surprise you.
In this podcast I introduce the concept of supernormal stimuli. Originally uncovered when scientists discovered that some birds prefer artificial eggs as large as they are to their own eggs. From there I examine whether pornography might be supernormal stimuli, and whether that's harmful, and especially whether it will get worse.
One of the major things coming down the pike is job automation. Robots and AI are getting better and better at doing jobs that used to be only available for humans. In this podcast I examine that phenomenon and the effect it has on people, specifically their need to feel valuable.
One of my fundamental positions is that we are in a race between societal collapse on one hand and a technological singularity on the other. But there are some who think it will be neither and others who paradoxically expect both. This podcast examines the impossibility of those two options.
What is civilization? And how do we preserve it? In this episode I connect the idea of time preference to civilization and point out how we are becoming more and more short term in our desires and actions. All civilizations collapse eventually the question is how close are we to collapse and is there anything which can be done to delay it.
I examine whether we should still be worried about overpopulation. I also look at the phenomenon of falling birth rates and what it says about the societies that experience falling fertility. Also what the movie Tommy Boy has to say about the whole thing.
A review and discussion of the book Tribe by Sebastian Junger. In particular an examination of how stress and struggle can improve mental health, and how by removing both struggle and community modern society creates a situation where psychological problems, particularly in the military, become more acute.
In my continuing obsession with the Mormon Transhumanist Association I report back from their annual conference. Specifically I look at their vision of the future vs. mine, the limits of growth and whether the MTA is schismatic. Fun for the whole family!
Having recently gone to the MTA Conference I ended up with more commentary than could fit in the normal episode. So this is a bonus episode. Additionally as part of the patreon rewards I committed to do a bonus podcast every month, so this is the first of those as well.
Pascal's wager is one of those things that you find either ridiculous or intriguing. There appears to be no middle ground. But most people yearn for some form of immortality and the wager is one of the few things which have a chance of providing it, and perhaps it shouldn't be dismissed so easily. Also Pascal's wager is frequently applied as a thought experiment with no practical application. Viewing the wager from the standpoint of a believer is far more productive.
As something of a follow-up to the "But What If We're Wrong?" episode, I look at the connection between the integration of sexes and sexual violence. In particular I focus on the effectiveness of education and how education might be done differently, particularly if approached from a religious perspective. The I ask if integration does cause more sexual violence are we sure that's a good trade off?
In this weeks episode I tackle the subject of global warming. First I start by breaking down the various questions we have to ask, and then I turn to what must be done to keep warming in check, and finally I look at what's really at stake with Global Warming.
I start with a review of Chuck Klosterman's book "But What If We're Wrong?", which was disappointing. Primarily because he didn't really grapple with anything consequential. I go on to talk about ways we could be wrong which would be a big deal. And use the example of women in the military.
It's possible I'm too pessimistic. And after reading something from Gordon B. Hinckley I decide to examine whether that's the case. I think it probably is, but I think on the big things I'm still on target. In particular how keeping the commandments give people the stability to be happy and optimistic.
Continuing my discussion of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. I point out through the metaphor of the chocolate covered asparagus that we actually have a lot in common, and that in most cases I hope they're right and I'm wrong, but that in the end because of the far worse consequences which come from the MTA being wrong, that it's best to assume they are and prepare accordingly.
Many people think that technology will save us. Some of these people are religious. Of particular note is the Mormon Transhumanist Association. Many people, including including my friend the Catholic Priest, feel that these people have entirely missed the point of the Tower of Babel story. In this podcast we examine whether that's the case.
The immigration debate has become exceptionally polarized. Obviously the election of Trump hasn't helped, but it was polarized long before that. As part of this polarization rational considerations of feasibility, and long-term goals, and even what standard to apply have all been lost in the yelling. This episode hopes to get back to a rational discussion of how many people can we really let in, and what sort of standard should we use?
Continuing the discussion of Fermi's Paradox I turn to an examination of Liu Cixin's Three Body Trilogy and his Dark Forest explanation of Fermi's Paradox, which assumes that any aliens will shoot you on sight if they become aware of your existence. In other words most aliens are malevolent. I argue that most likely the exact opposite is the case. That it is in fact hard to imagine how you could end up with an extraterrestrial civilization that isn't extremely benevolent.
Returning to a discussion of Fermi's Paradox. I use (and abuse) the movie Interstellar to examine some explanations for the paradox. In particular how culture can act to give people an incorrect view of how probable or improbable certain things are.
I discuss the possibility of violence erupting in the wake of the recent election with four reasons why I think it might be more likely than in the past. In particular I found the strength of the reaction right from day one to be particularly alarming. Also I examine the common misperception that violence will be limited and easy, when in reality it's like Godzilla trudging back and forth through your town.
The world and particularly the elites on the left have fallen pray to a new ideology. The idea that progress is locked in, that it will go on forever, and that in many cases that it is supernaturally driven. The human consciousness is evolving and that through that evolution we're waking up and realizing that certain things which seemed acceptable are not intolerable. This is a shallow and largely selfish way of thinking.
There are three groups. First the Actively Religious who believe we will be saved by God. The Radical Humanists who believe we will be saved by technology. And the Disengaged Middle who aren't actively in either camp. For us to be saved by technology we have to get off the planet. This podcast explores how difficult that is.
I offer a bunch of predictions. Not for 2017, but forever. I also talk about the difficulty of prediction in general and the issues that can arrive from being mostly right, but about inconsequential stuff, and only slightly wrong, but about the big stuff.
A review of Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature. While enjoying the book, I feel that he did a lot of subtle things to lead you to believe that the trend of decreasing violence has been going on longer and is more durable than it actually is. In particular I think some of the things he mentions have not been going on long enough for us to truly asses their duration or impact.
In this podcast I discuss the writings of Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Beginning with his ideas on how people are Fooled by Randomness, moving on to his concept of Black Swans (extreme, unexpected events) and finally finishing with the idea of Antifragility, which I think is one of the concepts most lacking in the modern world.
This week we look at the subject of infrastructure. We seem to spend a lot of money on it to little effect. Why is that? And is it indicative of a civilization in decline. The idea of catabolic collapse is brought up, which is the idea that your society can start to fall apart when the maintenance costs exceed a certain level. I know it sounds boring, but trust me, it's not.
Bad things happen, and it's impossible to know when they will. Occasionally we find ourselves in a bad situation, but it's difficult to know if it's going to get nightmarish like Poland in 1937 or if it's about to peter out like in East Germany in 1988. But that doesn't mean there aren't ways to prepare for it, and perhaps that's a waste of time an money, but if it is 1937 and you are a Polish Jew than no preparation is too great.
Since the election many people have warned against normalizing Trump. This is a dangerous repudiation of the system of law unlike anything in modern memory, and more closely representing the election of Lincoln in 1860. Making this election potentially a lot different than any other election in the last hundred years. The question then becomes what to do about it, which I go on to address.
In this podcast I present three theories of religion. Religion is either divinely inspired, stupid, or a distillation of accumulated wisdom. I then examine what religious persecution looks like under each theory, and conclude that one of the big dangers is the recent dominance of the Religion of Progress.
In the wake of the election many people were declaring that everything would be okay, while other people were declaring it the beginning of the end. In this episode I admit that I don't know if everything will be okay. But I offer a couple of overlooked reasons for Trump's victory and I examine six areas of concern and give my opinion as to how consequential Trump will actually be.
It is tempting to restrict the speech of those you disagree with, but in doing so you may very well reduce your protections against the authoritarianism you fear most. Any weakening of free speech is a bad idea whatever your motives.
Also this podcast was taken from a blogpost written a few days before the election, thus it's a little bit dated, but important nonetheless.
I make three arguments for why banning and censorship, particularly shadowbanning by Twitter and Facebook should be treated similarly to government censorship. First there is their effective monopoly, second is the way that technology allows particularly devious forms of censorship, and finally there is the precedent of public accommodation as established by the Civil Rights Act.
I engage in rampant speculation about what the half hour of silence mentioned in the Book of Revelation means. From there I engage into a discussion of the benefits of preparing for the worst.
Do we take democracy for granted. I argue that the two presidential candidates are strong evidence that we do. Looking back to the Civil War it is apparent that democracy was viewed very precariously and that most of the deaths on the Union side can be attributed to trying to preserve democracy, rather than trying to end slavery.
As artificial intelligence research has progressed one of the key issues which has been identified is the problem of insuring that the AI's are moral. This problem is almost identical to the challenge of mortality as envisioned by the LDS Plan of Salvation. In modeling AI researchers have discovered that many of the problems traditionally associated with religion are inherent to the problem of creating morality in an intelligence.
I explore a theory for explaining the difference between people on the left and people on the right. The first being optimized to thrive in a world without dangers and the second being optimized to survive in a world with lots of dangers. While both are interesting adaptive strategies, I argue that we have tipped too much into a thrive dominated world with consequences that are hard to predict.
Taleb coined the term "Intellectuals Yet Idiots". While I completely agree with his designation and the problems associated with people in that category, I think we also need to look at the mirror image. The people who aren't intellectual and yet are also not idiots. People who use traditional norms to keep them out of trouble. The example I use of this category are the people in developing countries who refused to adopt the more liberal rules on the use of opiates, contrary to people in developed countries who made opiates more widely available and ended up causing a huge number of deaths.
I discuss getting to the bottom of what's really happening and how difficult that can be. That often the best source of information is in what people don't want you to see. I've been going back and turning old blog posts into podcasts and this one is a little bit dated, but still relevant, particularly with all the discussion of fake news.
The US has grown at an average of 2.9%/ year since 1650. That can't continue. At some point in order to continue to grow at that rate we'll have to cover the Earth in solar panels. The growth has to stop. What happens when it does?
An examination of the explanations offered for Fermi's Paradox offered by Stephen Web in his book If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life. In particular a look of the implications of his favored explanation that we are alone. In translating the original blog post to a podcast it became apparent that some things travel better than others. This is one of those times. You've been warned. Or maybe you haven't I don't think anyone actually reads these descriptions.
In 1950 Enrico Fermi asked "Where are they?" Referring to extraterrestrials. In this episode I examine how from a religious and more specifically a Mormon perspective the best answer is that they are here, we call them God and they communicate with us through prayer.
There are two reasons to vote. To decide the election and to express a preference. Given that your chances of actually being the deciding vote, particularly in a presidential election are non-existent, you're mostly voting to express your preference, and if one of the third party candidates more closely matches your preference than the two major party candidates you should vote for them.
The Cold War is over and people have largely assumed that the threat of World War III and global thermonuclear war have passed. But I argue that they have not and that there are many reasons to be concerned.
There is a difference between history and politics. We can get so caught up in wanting our team to win that we can completely forget that in the end history is more important. And history is dominated by large negative events, like the Sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258. Preventing these large negative events is what we should really be focused on.
Support for organized religion is as low as it's every been, but in this episode I argue that organized religion does have a place in the world, and that place exists even if you don't believe in the existence of God. Religion is a way of reducing fragility, and increasing antifragility. The example pre-martial sex is used to illustrate the point.
A discussion of the role of morals and religion when approaching science. How the replication crisis illustrates some of the failings of science. The example of science and the opiate epidemic.
Several articles have been written pointing out that there has been an increase in suicides by LGBT youth, and have blamed that increase on the Mormon church. In this episode I examine how complicated it is to determine the causes of suicide and offer some alternative explanations for the phenomenon.
The lack of some universally recognized logical system of morality means you can rely on God for morality or you can rely on culture for morality, but in both cases you’re relying on religion. You’re just arguing about the source of it. Atheists want to toss religion out the window with God. But it turns out God is hard to get rid of, as we see what happens when atheists actually set about to write.
In this episode I discuss religious objections to a technological singularity, particularly those objections arising from an LDS perspective. And use the metaphor of receiving a driver's license vs. building a car.
"We Are Not Saved" discusses religion, politics, the end of the world, science fiction, artificial intelligence, and most of all the limits of progress and technology.