We Are Not Saved

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/04/30/eschatologist-28-if-ye-are-prepared-ye-shall-not-fear/ I'm not a hardcore prepper, but I'm always surprised by how little preperation most people are willing to make, particularly compared to how much they're willing to panic.

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/04/27/the-modern-landscape-of-harm/ It is not just our ability to cause harm, but our ability to mitigate harm which has grown in an unprecedented fashion. Life has done whatever it could get away with for billions of year, but in the last few hundred humans have come along able to inflict or prevent great harms and the consciousness to decide whether and...

In 2014, just a few days before Christmas I was fired and served with a lawsuit. The next two years were some of the toughest of my life. (Which actually makes me pretty lucky.) This is the story of that lawsuit. How it started and how it ended. I made a lot of mistakes, hopefully this will enable you to not make the same mistakes.

What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies  by: Tim Urban The Machinery of Freedom – Guide to a Radical Capitalism  by: David Friedman The Moth Presents All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown  by: Various A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix  by: Edwin H. Friedman Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass  by: Theodore Dalrymple Wi...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/03/31/eschatologist-27-golems-and-genies/   I recently read a book which claimed to describe the central problem of the modern world,  What's Our Problem by Tim Urban. No one can say he lacked for ambition, but I feel like his analysis overlooks several large problems. In particularly I think he doesn't go nearly deep enough into how technology has change...

There have been some competing explanations for the Nord Stream explosions. Seymour Hersh claims the US did it. The New York Times claims it was Pro-Ukrainian forces and a somewhat obscure blogger claims he has evidence that it was the Russians. How is one to decide? And is it even necessary to decide? Is it perhaps more important to have a robust framework for conspiracy theories in general, than...

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity  by: David Graeber and David Wengrow America and Iran: A History 1720 to the Present  by: John Ghazvinian Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It  by: M. Nolan Gray Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed  by: Ben R. Rich The Hedonistic Imperative  by: David Pearce Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthro...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/02/28/eschatologist-26-a-crisis-of-change-and-choice/   In my last newsletter we talked about spiritual health, and a few options for acquiring that health, such as overcoming suffering or, alternatively, gaining material abundance. In this newsletter we're going to go beyond talking about the merits of different options to discussing the way in which the...

Transcript along with pictures of all the docs mentioned in the episode: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/02/25/a-cautionary-tale/   In the interest of not spoiling things you're just going to have to listen...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/02/16/polycrises-or-everything-everywhere-all-at-once/   In general any individual catastrophe is probably overblown. Global warming is not going to cause human extinction. Despite the severity of the war in Ukraine, nukes will probably not be used. Or at least none of these bad things are going to happen all by themselves. The problem is that we face num...

A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies  by: Matt Simon Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century  by: Helen Thompson The Captive Mind  by: Czeslaw Milosz Antinet Zettelkasten: A Knowledge System That Will Turn You Into a Prolific Reader, Researcher and Writer  by: Scott P. Scheper The Farthest Shore  by: Ursula K. Le Guin All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/02/01/eschatologist-25-spiritual-health-and-suffering/ Modernity has inarguably made dramatic improvements in our material well-being, but what about the non-material? The social, emotional and spiritual? In this episode I tackle that question. And while I think it might be possible that modernity has been neutral on this front, I don't think there's any...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/01/28/the-optimal-dosage-of-war/ Previous to the invasion of Ukraine, a sense of pessimism seemed to be ubiquitous with respect to Europe. Since the invasion things seem far more optimistic. One might even say that there's a new vitality and unity. Naively one might expect war to do the opposite, but we have a funny way of stepping up to challenges and wa...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/01/24/challenging-children/ A follow up to my previous episode The Ineffability of Conservatism this episode attempts to approach things without bringing in religion. Though it does circle back there before the end. In particular we discuss three kinds of challenges: Challenges which are unavoidable. Challenges which can be avoided but we choose not to. ...

The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left  by: Garett Jones The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self  by: Michael Easter Infinite Jest  by: David Foster Wallace What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions  by: Randall Munroe The Sandman: Book One  by: Neil Gaiman...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/12/31/eschatologist-24-chatgpt-and-a-lack-of-genius/ I reflect on my AI prediction from past years in light of the amazing abilities of ChatGPT. I wonder if you're ever going to get brilliant output from a huge corpus of material which strictly on account of it's volume has to be essentially average...

Transcript:  https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/12/24/the-ineffability-of-conservatism/ I tell a story I heard of a boy walking out of Church in a direct slap to his father. And wonder why such a thing would have been inconcievable 40 years ago. What changed? As it turns out it's hard to say, and that's a big part of the problem.

The Psychology of Totalitarianism  by: Mattias Desmet The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World  by: Adrian Wooldridge The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud  by: Phillip Rieff Plato: A Very Short Introduction  by: Julia Annas Jesus' Son  by: Denis Johnson Tombs of Atuan  by: Ursula K. Le Guin Roadside Picnic  by: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Purple Days  b...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/11/30/eschatologist-23-avoiding-risk/   After all the hot takes which have been offered in the wake of the FTX collapse, this is the hot take to rule them all. Okay probably not, and at this point it's probably a cold take. But I do think the whole FTX debacle carries some valuable lessons about risk. So that's what you're getting...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/11/26/book-review-the-ethics-of-beauty/   This is a review I did for the first issue of American Hombre , a new magazine being published by a friend of mine. I did an excerpt of it back in episode 292, but he's graciously agreed to let me release it in its entirety. If this makes you interested in the full magazine, the PDF is currently available for free...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/11/19/finding-the-answer/ A somewhat discursive episode where I reflect on a book I just read about meritocracy and different answers for the best way to organize society. And how what we thought was the answer—liberal democracy—appears to be fracturing, leaving everyone to fight over what part of it is the most important. What part was truly The Answer.

Link to survey: https://forms.gle/tCxmpwM4RTxPCJKUA What We Owe the Future  by: William MacAskill The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe by: Michael D. Gordin Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by: Jonathan Shay Socrates: A Very Short Introduction by: C.C.W. Taylor  Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy by: Mortime...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/31/eschatologist-22-a-survey/ Survey: https://forms.gle/toRzdKPervpygw8MA   It's time for me to stick my head out and see what people think of me. Yes I'd like you to fill out a survey. Tell me what you think. I mean it. Be brutal!

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/29/chip-off-the-old-bloc/ Recently the US enacted a set of punishing trade restrictions on China with respect to high-end chips. Some have called these restrictions the annihilation of China's semiconductor industry. Maybe so, but China's not going to go down without a fight, and the situation is complicated by numerous factors, including the complicat...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/22/the-midterms-biases-and-a-lack-of-moderation/   We're a few weeks from the midterms and it seemed like a good time to review the state of things. Though they're changing rapidly. In between composing this episode and recording it people went from expecting the Democrats to keep the Senate expecting them to lose it by a few seats. Beyond the reshuffl...