Author's note: in honor of the upcoming LessOnline event, I'm sharing this one here on LessWrong rather than solely on my substack. If you like it, you should subscribe to my substack, which you can do for free (paid subscribers see stuff a week early). I welcome discussion down below but am not currently committing to participating myself.

Dang it, I knew I should have gone with my first instinct, and photocopied the whole book first. But then again, given that it vanished as soon as I got to the end of it, maybe my second instinct was right, and trying to do that would’ve been seen as cheating by whatever magical librarians left it for me in the first place.

It was just sitting there, on my desk, when I woke up six weeks ago. At first I thought it was an incredibly in-depth prank, or maybe [...]

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Outline:

(02:46) I. Civilization as self-restraint

(07:12) II. Orbits

(12:18) III. Purchasing breathing room

(21:43) IV. Lopsided possibility trees (or, the ecology metaphor)

(30:26) V. The evolutionary metaphor

(41:49) VI. Pressures toward savagery

(53:48) Interlude: The Veil of Ignorance

(01:02:37) VII.

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First published:

Source:

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.