We Are Not Saved

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 t...

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 t...

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 exp...

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 co...

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 bur...

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race  by: Nicole Perlroth  Everything is F*cked: 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 Son by: Pierce Brown Red Rising: Sons of Ares – Volume 1 and 2 (Graph...

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...

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...

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. M...

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 al...

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 epi...

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...

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...

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...

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....

"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:...

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 wh...

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 i...