We Are Not Saved

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 B...

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...

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 sellin...

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 com...

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 Man...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 e...

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...

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 upwa...

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: Ga...

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 o...

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...

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...

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...

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...