We Are Not Saved

Exactly five years ago, China identified a “novel coronavirus” and the world was introduced to the term “wet market”. In the time since then arguments continue to rage about the source of the virus, the measures that were taken, and the vaccines that were created. In the midst of all these arguments, everyone seems to agree on one thing: extended school closures were a bad idea. It’s very easy to continue on from that to assume the harms of such closures were obvious from the very beginning—that they happened only because we were blinded by fear. Some people don’t go quite so far, but nevertheless argue that such closures were implemented hastily and without much consideration. But consider this quote from the Michael Lewis book Premonition on the role of disease modeling: The graph illustrated the effects on a disease of various crude strategies: isolating the ill; quarantining entire households when they had a sick person in them; socially distancing adults; giving people antiviral drugs; and so on. Each o

A Gentleman in Moscow by: Amor Towles The Humans by: Matt Haig Super-Cannes: A Novel by: J. G. Ballard Monster Hunter: International by: Larry Correia Monster Hunter: Vendetta by: Larry Correia

Three things converged for me recently and at the point of their convergence was the issue of placing women in frontline combat roles. The first leg of the convergence was the election of Donald Trump. We’re still debating the reasons why he won, but certainly a reassertion of gender differences are near the top of everyone’s list. For example, allowing natal men into women’s sports. The second was Trump’s nomination of Pete Hesgeth for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth’s nomination is controversial for a lot of reasons, but one of the controversies is his opinion that women should not be allowed into front line combat roles.  Finally, I just got done watching the miniseries Band of Brothers, while at the same time re-reading the Stephen E. Ambrose book it’s based on. I would highly recommend the exercise (see my review of the book here.) In addition to being enjoyable it reminded me of how physical, grimy, and desperate combat can be. And of course the theme of both the book and the series is that Easy Company

Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict by: Ara Norenzayan A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains by: Max Bennett The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump by: Max Blumenthal What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by: Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan The Laws of Trading: A Trader's Guide to Better Decision-Making for Everyone by: Agustin Lebron Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by: Oliver Burkeman Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest by: Stephen E. Ambrose The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement by: Sharon McMahon

AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference by: Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory by: Peter Hessler On Grand Strategy by: John Lewis Gaddis Leisure: The Basis of Culture by: Josef Pieper Anatomy of the State by: Murray Rothbard The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration by: David Roberts The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War by: Michael Shaara

He talks about the Village, and the River, but what we really need is a Redoubt. On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything  By: Nate Silver Published: 2024 576 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? There are two different ways of approaching the world: the River, which thinks in terms of numbers, expected values, and quantification and the Village, which is the paternalistic expert class which manifests as the vast bureaucracy.  What's the author's angle? I got the impression that Silver just wanted to write about things that interested him. Because of this, his thesis was kind of tacked on. That said, he is a fairly passionate advocate for things that interest him.  Who should read this book? Silver is worried that people will skip the first half of the book which is about gambling, but in reality that was the best part, or at least the part I found to be novel. The second part is about Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), AI, and all the stuff you’ve already heard too much about if you spend much time online. With t

One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, Volumes 1 & 2  By: Whitney Alyse Webb Briefly, what are these books about? The alleged connections between organized crime and national intelligence agencies which led to the numerous illicit operations including Watergate, Iran-Contra, the JFK Assassination, and of course the entire Jeffrey Epstein mess.  A key component of these operations was the tactic of collecting blackmail and using it to convince people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t. What's the author's angle? Charitably, Webb is an autodidact with an enormous command of facts and connections. Uncharitably, she’s someone with a weak evidentiary filter making conspiratorial mountains out of tenuously connected molehills. Who should read these books? No one should just read them. You should either ignore them or study them intently as part of an “Intro to Conspiracy Theories” curriculum. Of the two I would recommend the former. Read

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by: Neil Gaiman There Is No Antimemetics Division by: qntm The Man Who Had All the Luck by: Arthur Miller How Green Was My Valley by: Richard Llewellyn Theft of Fire: Orbital Space #1 by: Devon Eriksen Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 1) by: Robin Hobb Royal Assassin (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 2) by: Robin Hobb

With the enormous increase in the power of AI (specifically LLMs) people are using them for all sorts of things, hoping to find areas where they’re better, or at least cheaper than humans. FiveThirtyNine (get it?) is one such attempt, and they claim that AI can do forecasting better than humans.  Scott Alexander, of Astral Codex Ten, reviewed the service and concluded that they still have a long way to go. I have no doubt that this is the case, but one can imagine that this will not always be the case. What then? My assertion would be that at the point when AI forecasting does “work” (should that ever happen) it will make the problems of superforecasting even worse.2  I- The problems of superforecasting What are the problems of superforecasting? ...

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by: Michael A. Singer Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It by: Ethan Kross The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World by: John Mark Comer Dumb Money: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees by: Ben Mezrich Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results by: Shane Parrish

Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos by: Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by: James C. Scott This post represents a new feature (experiment?) I plan to occasionally write posts which take advantage of one or more books I read recently, but which aren’t actually reviews of those books. See, for example, my last post: Superminds, States, and the Domestication of Humans.  Despite the fact that the books feature heavily in these posts, I assume my adoring fans still want actual reviews. But it doesn’t make sense to wait until the next book review collection for those reviews to appear, nor does it make sense to cram the reviews into the original essay which was about something else. And so I thought that instead I would have the reviews quickly follow the essay as sort of supplementary material. So that’s what this is. Let me know what you think. 

How durable is the state? How resistant is it to being overthrown? How closely does it reflect our desires? Is it possible it has its own desires? But maybe more importantly how does all this affect the possibility of a very close election in November?

A narcissistic dialogue around ideas that are either annoyingly fractured or wholly unrealistic.  DON'T DIE: Dialogues  By: Bryan Johnson Published: 2023 247 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? How best to extend the lifespan of humans and the lifetime of humanity presented in the form of a fictional dialogue between various aspects of the author's personality.  What's the author's angle? Bryan Johnson is a biohacker who measures dozens and dozens of biomarkers. As a result of this he claims to be aging at 64/100th the normal rate. He’s also a former and, as near as I can tell, disaffected member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Who should read this book? If you’re really into lifespan expansion, then maybe? Or similarly very concerned with X-risks? But I will warn you that the book is written in one of the more annoying styles I’ve ever encountered. Not only does it directly impede the transmission of information, it actively works against its inclusion.. Specific thoughts: A strange

  Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by: George Chauncey The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised by: James Pethokoukis Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History by: Nellie Bowles Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir by: Werner Herzog The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale by: Art Spiegelman The Master and Margarita by: Mikhail Bulgakov The Buried Giant: A Novel by: Kazuo Ishiguro Naked Defiance: A Comedy of Menace by: Patrik Sampler The Riddle of the Third Mile (Inspector Morse Series Book 6) by: Colin Dexter Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Player's Handbook (D&D Core Rulebook) lead designer: Jeremy Crawford

Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/divine-disappointment-and-mortal Is God Disappointed in Me?: Removing Shame from a Gospel of Grace  By: Kurt Francom Published: 2024 190 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? Our parents expect that we will do certain things—perhaps it’s cleaning our rooms, perhaps it’s becoming a doctor—when we don't, they're disappointed. We have a tendency to view God in the same fashion; He also has expectations, and when we fail to meet them we imagine that He is similarly disappointed. Francom claims this is a false belief. Because of God’s omniscience and infinite love, He cannot be disappointed. When we think He might be it leads to shame, which prevents us from accessing His love.  What’s the author’s angle? Francom is the director of Leading Saints, an organization whose primary focus is providing advice and resources for the lay leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’s also heavily involved with Warrior Heart a Christian men’s organization th

A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by: Kelly and Zach Weinersmith Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe by: Judith Herrin The Birth of the West: Rome, Germany, France, and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth Century by: Paul Collins Missing: The Need for Closure After the Great War by: Richard van Emden In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife by: Sebastian Junger Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness by: Steve Magness Eruption by: James Patterson and Michael Crichton  The Last Devil to Die: A Thursday Murder Club Mystery (#4) by: Richard Osman He Who Fights with Monsters 8: A LitRPG Adventure by: Shirtaloon He Who Fights with Monsters 9: A LitRPG Adventure by: Shirtaloon He Who Fights with Monsters 10: A LitRPG Adventure by: Shirtaloon

My submission to the Astral Codex Ten Book Review Contest. It was not a finalist. Comments are appreciated. (Especially ones pointing out how much better it is than the actual finalists.)  Links to transcript sections: I- Prologue II- The Core Observation III- The Realm of the Potentially Traumatic IV- “Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Children!?” V- A Continuum of Parenting, With Sundry Bad Examples, and an Appearance by The Last Psychiatrist VI- Resilience

If Trump can brazen is way through all of his various scandals why can't Biden brazen his way through this?

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by: Matthew B. Crawford Nuclear War: A Scenario by: Annie Jacobson The Pragmatist's Guide to Relationships: Ruthlessly Optimized Strategies for Dating, Sex, and Marriage by: Malcolm and Simone Collins Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by: Salman Rushdie Arkham: (The Weird of Hali #7) by: John Michael Greer Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian Barbarian: The Complete Weird Tales Omnibus by: Robert E. Howard & compiled by: Finn J D John Stories of Your Life and Others by: Ted Chiang He Who Fights with Monsters 6: A LitRPG Adventure by: Shirtaloon He Who Fights with Monsters 7: A LitRPG Adventure by: Shirtaloon Astrophilosophy, Exotheology, and Cosmic Religion: Extraterrestrial Life in a Process Universe by: Andrew M. Davis (editor), Roland Faber (editor), and Various

Just look at the episode picture. The episode picture explains all...