We Are Not Saved

It's a two parter this week which starts with a review of The Decadent Society by Ross Douthat. His contention is that the world, but particularly the US has stagnated. That we have lost the ability to cooperate and do great things, or even to create new works of art. From the perspective of eschatology this is not what most people think of, but it is still an end of the world scenario, and in some respects a very depressing one, where we are forever close to the promised land but never quite able to enter...

Like everyone else I talk about the coronavirus, though hopefully in a way somewhat different from everyone else. In particular I focus on how efficiency ultimately equals fragility. Something this crisis has brought into sharp relief, where for the lack of a few hundred million dollars in precautionary spending we're going to end up spending billions if not trillions of dollars trying to fix the mess.

Once upon a time, in an effort to see if people read these show notes I offered an Amazon gift card for people who saw the message and contacted me. I'm going to do that again $20 to the first person to mention this message, and another $20 to the first person who mentions it in the month of May. Hopefully things will be better by then, but it's possible they'll be a lot worse.

Many years ago I read Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and thoroughly enjoyed it, enough so that when I made a goal to go back and start re-reading more books it was the first book I chose. In particular out of all the science fiction books I have ever read it may provide the very best defense of the connection between morality and civilization. It does this on top of having delightful characters and an excellent plot (except the ending, I apologize in advance for the ending...)

As I review my older episodes, I notice that some of them are less about being interesting in and of themselves, and more part of building the foundation for this crazy house I'm trying to erect. Some episodes are less paintings on a wall than the wall itself. This is such an episode.

We're going to talk about how Bostrom's Simulation Hypothesis necessary implies a theology. And that once you have a theology it's a natural next step to consider how that might connect to religion, and eschatology.

• Discussion of Real World Risk Institute #RWRI
• The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties By: Christopher Caldwell
• The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism By: Doris Kearns Goodwin
• The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey By: Candice Millard
• The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer By: Neal Stephenson
• God Can't: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils (Religious) By: Thomas Jay Oord

Now that The Good Place is over I discuss what it had to say about eschatology.

***Warning this episode contains massive The Good Place spoilers. Proceed with caution***

In particular when they eventually arrived at the Good Place there were numerous problems. In part they were included for comedic effect, but in part they reflected real potential issues with a world were all your desires are met. Lest you think this is a pointless discussion, we may be able to create such a world with brain uploading. And even without that, we've developed numerous desire granting technologies.

In 1941 George Orwell said:

Hitler is a criminal lunatic, and [yet] Hitler has an army of millions of men, aeroplanes in thousands, tanks in tens of thousands. For his sake a great nation has been willing to overwork itself for six years and then to fight for two years more, whereas for the common-sense, essentially hedonistic world-view which Mr. Wells puts forward, hardly a human creature is willing to shed a pint of blood

Is this true? Have the number of people with a "common-sense, essentially hedonistic world-view" grown? Is that a problem?

• The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life By: David Brooks
• The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason By: Chapo Trap House
• Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose By: Deirdre Barrett
• My Life and Work By: Henry Ford
• My Inventions By: Nikola Tesla
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin By: Benjamin Franklin
• Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America By: Scott Adams
• The Library Book By: Susan Orleans
• Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus By: Sophocles

Scott Alexander of SlateStarCodex recently declared that "nobody ever really believed [that Fermi's Paradox] was a problem. I not only believed it was a problem I still believe it's a problem, and I think everyone else should as well. If you're one of those who don't think it is, then this episode is designed to change your mind.

In 1519 Cortés began his invasion of the Aztec empire. By 1520 Montezuma would be dead, and by 1521 the empire would have fallen. Within the next half dozen decades 95% of the Aztecs would be dead of disease. But Montezuma and the Aztecs had almost no warning of the cataclysm that was about to befall them. Is there some cataclysm waiting in our future which we will similarly be completely ignorant of until it is upon us? Probably. If that's the case what measures could we possibly take?