We Are Not Saved

Link to survey: https://forms.gle/tCxmpwM4RTxPCJKUA

1. 1. What We Owe the Future by: William MacAskill
   2. The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe by: Michael D. Gordin
   3. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by: Jonathan Shay
   4. Socrates: A Very Short Introduction by: C.C.W. Taylor
   5. Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy by: Mortimer J. Adler
   6. A Wizard of Earthsea by: Ursula K. LeGuin
   7. Freemasonry and the Origins of Latter-day Saint Temple Ordinances by: Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

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 complications of the technology itself. There's a lot going on and I attempt to cover a large portion of it.

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 reshuffling the election is exciting (or terrifying, depending on your perspective) for other reasons. We get to see if polls are still horribly broken (probably) and if there's any hope for either party to become more moderate. And of course there's the eternal possiblity that we'll finally get a viable third party (almost certainly not but a man can hope).

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/15/dalio-vs-zeihan/

Ray Dalio and Peter Zeihan have both written books about the future of America, China, and the world. On some points they agree and on some points they're profound disagreement. I compare and contrast these too books, hoping by doing so to tease out a credible view of the future. It's a view that's pretty pessimistic. But I think once you've looked at both of them, that's what you end up with.

1. The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by: Peter Zeihan
2. The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by: David Deutsch
3. Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by: Anne Applebaum
4. Post-Truth by: Lee C. McIntyre
5. Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be by: Steven Pressfield
6. A Reader's Companion to Infinite Jest by: Robert Bell and William Dowling
7. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by: Agatha Christie
8. Dauntless: Lost Fleet, Book 1 by: Jack Campbell
9. Fearless: Lost Fleet, Book 2 by: Jack Campbell
10. Courageous: Lost Fleet, Book 3 by: Jack Campbell
11. Outland by: Dennis E. Taylor

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/30/eschatologist-21-but-what-if-theyre-wrong/

I consider the predictions of three books and how one might approach these predictions when deciding how to prepare for the future.

It seems clear that most people start by trying to determine if a prediction is more likely than not to be accurate, but you should actually do somewhat the opposite, you should consider what the consequences are if the prediction is wrong.

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/28/the-bifurcation-created-by-technology/

This episode started as a tweet:

Technology bifurcates problems. 99% of problems go away, but the 1% that are left are awful. Case in point customer service: 99% of the time you don't even need customer service from Amazon, etc. but the 1% of the time you do you're suddenly in a story by Kafka.

Which I followed up with:

Additional thoughts/example: Self driving cars. Tech can take care of easiest 99%. Tosses most difficult 1% back to driver. Driver has no context, just suddenly in deep end, therefore much worse at hardest 1% than if they had just dealt with the full 100% from start.

What causes this phenomenon and how worried should we be?

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/21/the-tails-of-the-cultural-bell-curve/

If we imagine that culture has historically taken the form of a bell curve. Does it still do so? Or have we gutted the middle in service of making sure that the tails don't feel neglected? This seems very likely to be the case, and if it is what are the consequences?

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/14/excerpt-book-review-the-ethics-of-beauty/

An excerpt from a book review I recently did for the new magazine American Hombre (available here: https://americanhombre.gumroad.com/)