We Are Not Saved

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 approvin...

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 Fantast...

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...

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 t...

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 rathe...

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: Thucydide...

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 s...

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...

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...

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 als...

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 th...

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 y...

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. Le...

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...

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...

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 episo...

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 l...

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 Dr...

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...

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,...

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 likel...

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 K...