We Are Not Saved

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, a...

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 e...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2017/02/04/fermis-paradox-and-the-movie-interstellar/ 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. 

https://wearenotsaved.com/2017/01/28/godzilla-trudges-back-and-forth/ 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 eas...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2017/01/21/the-religion-of-progress/ 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...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2017/01/14/how-to-save-humanity/ 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.

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2017/01/07/predictions-spoiler-no-ai-or-immortality/ 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.

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/12/24/reframing-pinkers-the-better-angels-of-our-nature/ 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 men...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/12/17/the-ideas-of-nassim-nicholas-taleb/ 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 moder...

Transcript:  https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/12/10/infrastructure-trump-and-the-hoover-dam/   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 ex...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/12/03/the-change-hurricane-are-we-polish-jews-in-1937-or-east-germans-in-1988/   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...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/11/26/is-this-election-different/   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. T...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/11/19/freedom-of-religion-in-2016/   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.

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/11/12/i-dont-know-if-everything-will-be-okay-my-thoughts-on-the-election/   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...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/11/05/the-value-of-free-speech/   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...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/10/29/scott-adams-and-what-counts-as-censorship/ 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...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/10/22/and-there-was-silence-in-heaven/   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. 

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/10/15/taking-democracy-for-granted/   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...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/10/08/artificial-intelligence-and-lds-cosmology/   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 ...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/10/01/the-politics-of-the-zombie-apocalypse/   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 ti...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/09/24/not-intellectuals-yet-not-idiots/   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 o...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/09/17/hillary-clinton-and-the-criteria-of-embarrassment/   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, particu...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/09/10/the-harvest-is-past/   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?

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2016/09/03/the-secular-answer-to-fermis-paradox/   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...