We Are Not Saved

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 ha...

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 Ca...

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 me...

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 wil...

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 Loserthin...

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...

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 B...

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 (Reli...

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...

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 D...

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 w...

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 un...

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...

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...

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...

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 iss...

It's my monthly review of the books I read. In this episode I cover: Savage Worlds: Adventure Edition By: Shane Lacy Hensle y Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea   By: Steven Callahan Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence   By: 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...

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 entir...

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 Micha...

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, b...