We Are Not Saved

The problem of political unity weighs heavily on people's minds. But as with most problems technocrats imagine that if they just implement the right policy that unity will follow. In reality people only unify around myths, and historically myths have been assembled into religions. Both things that technocrats are generally opposed to. But can they survive without them. A survey of the literature says... no.

Technocracies have been much in the zeitgeist recently, at least in the corners of the internet I frequent. And there appears to be significant disagreement as to how effective they are. While I understand the idea behind them and the way in which they're supposed to work, I'm not sure they actually work in the way people expect. Or perhaps more importantly I don't think they're the best tool for dealing with the current crisis. I offer some alternative epistemological frameworks and suggest that technocracies might be missing something important.

1. Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America's Highest Courts by: Ilya Shapiro
2. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by: Joseph Henrich
3. Rhythm of War (Book Four of The Stormlight Archive) by: Brandon Sanderson
4. The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by: Margaret MacMillan
5. Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t by: Steven Pressfield
6. The Minuteman by: Greg Donahue
7. There is a God: How to Respond to Atheism in the Last Days by: Hyrum Lewis

As you can see this is a much shorter episode. I'm trying out the newsletter format. The idea is that I'm going to send out a short bit at the end of every month, something that offers an easier entry point to my writing. Something people might be more inclined to share. But I obviously couldn't leave out my loyal podcast listeners, so just as with everything else I write, it gets recorded and also goes out there. That said, number of subscribers is something of a success metric these days so if you wouldn't mind singing up for the newsletter I would appreciate it!

Two episodes ago I covered the disasters which can occur when we try to exercise too much control over natural systems. In the last episode I talked about how systems can be too controlling, and how it's better that a system be legible than that it attempt perfection. In this episode, much like peanut butter and chocolate, I combine these two great ideas into one fantastic idea, and explore how the way we combat wildfires in many ways resembles the way we fight political fires, and that both methods fail in similar ways.

In a recent newsletter, Matthew Yglesias suggested three steps for creating effective policies:

1. It's easy for everyone, whether they agree with you or disagree with you, to understand what it is you say you are doing.
2. It's easy for everyone to see whether or not you are, in fact, doing what you said you would do.
3. It's easy for you and your team to meet the goal of doing the thing that you said you would do.

These are great, but I think they could be applied far more broadly, which is exactly what I do in this episode.

This is the second half of my book reviews for books I finished in December. It contains reviews for:

1. Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the 116 Days that Changed the World by: Chris Wallace
2. Enemy At the Gates by: William Craig
3. Necroscope by: Brian Lumley
4. Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by: John McPhee
5. Bang For Your Buck by: Stefan Gasic
6. The Darkest Winter by: Nick Johns
7. C. S. Lewis Essay Collection & Other Short Pieces by: C. S. Lewis
8. Book of Mormon Made Harder by: James E. Faulconer
9. The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion by: Sterling M. McMurrin

This one was long enough, and book reviews sit poorly with podcasts in any event, that I decided to split it in two. This one has my monthly short personal update along with reviews for:

1. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by: James C. Scott
2. Status Anxiety by: Alain de Botton

Back at the beginning of 2017 I made some long term predictions, at the beginning of 2020 I made some short term predictions and the time has come to see how I'm doing on the long-term ones and how I did on the short term ones. Along with that is a reminder of my philosophy of predictions, lots of additional predictions for 2021, and then finally I announce some minor changes I'll be making going forward. Start listening to see what I got wrong, keep listening to see what I'm going to be wrong about this time next year, and then end the whole thing on a cliffhanger!

The number of teenage girls identifying as transgender has skyrocketed, by as much as 4,400% in the last decade by some accounts. What explains this staggeringly rapid and precipitous increase? Abigail Shrier thinks that these girls are falling pray to a peer contagion. A combination of the typical confusion and discomfort associated with puberty combined with a culture that celebrates transgender individuals. That in essence going through puberty is tough and being trans allows these girls to put that out of their mind while also gaining the approval of the peers and in many cases mimicking their peers who have already transitioned. In this podcast we examine the arguments and the evidence. Might she have a point?