We Are Not Saved

I decide to offer an opinion on the current Black Lives Matter protests. I understand that there are a lot of opinions being offered on the subject, and it's entirely reasonable to assume that mine is not necessary nor welcome, but I hope despite that to add something to the conversation. In particular I think trying to combine combatting police brutality with eliminating all racism might make the first and arguably more important task, harder to accomplish.

Elon Musk really wants to establish a colony on Mars. One reason he keeps coming back to this the idea is that he claims it is the only way to prevent our eventual extinction. But is this really the best way to avoid the problems he fears? If we're really interested in increasing localism (which as strange as it might sound is what a Mars Colony is) are there better ways of achieving it if we focus on a better identification of what we're trying to prevent? And does this insight apply at scales much lower than preventing x-risk?

I relate a couple of stories (which are worth the price of admission all by themselves) about how once you've made an initial mistake it's so much more likely that you'll make additional mistakes. Recently we've made a lot of mistakes, and in this episode I suggest that there might be some precautions we can take letting the panic from the initial mistakes cause us to make further mistakes. Because the subsequent mistakes always end up being worse...

The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity By: Toby Ord Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction By: Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner Dune By: Frank Herbert Marriage and Civilization: How Monogamy Made Us Human By: William Tucker Euripides II: Andromache, Hecuba, The Suppliant Women, Electra By: Euripides 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less By: Garett Jones Saints Volume 2: No Unhallowed Hand By: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

After getting lots of feedback and some criticism of my previous episode on superforecasting I decide to make one final attempt to detail the issues I see with it. This episode ended up being pretty long, so while I normally wouldn't ever say this, if you had enough of superforecasting after the last episode, or if you're already in complete agreement with me (also possible I suppose) then you can probably skip this one.

I reluctantly go back to the well of COVID-19 commentary. In particular I wonder what leadership would look like. I conclude that where past instances of leadership emphasized sacrifice, that I'm not sure that this crisis is amenable to calls for that sort of sacrifice, rather our best bet is to be smart, implementing measures that work and easing off those where the evidence is weak. And that if we can't do that we might end up falling Sweden in a de facto and unorganized fashion.

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models By: Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control By: Stuart J. Russell Joseph Smith’s First Vision: Confirming Evidences and Contemporary Accounts By: Milton Vaughn Backman The Cultural Evolution Inside of Mormonism By: Greg Trimble  Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President By: Candice Millard A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream By: Yuval Levin The Worth of War By: Benjamin Ginsberg The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West By: David McCullough Sex and Culture By: J. D. Unwin Euripides I: Alcestis, Medea, The Children of Heracles, Hippolytus By: Euripides

A review of J.D. Unwin's 1934 book Sex and Culture which puts forth the theory that once a culture loosens up restrictions on pre-marital sex that this culture only has about 100 years before it sinks into irrelevance. If we take this prediction seriously and set the sexual revolution as the beginning of this countdown, then we're about halfway through it. What should we do with this possibility?

Recently it's become expected that if you want to be taken seriously as a forecaster that you should not only record your predictions in advance, but assign a confidence level. And that by following this methodology certain people, so called superforecasters, have been found who are significantly better at prediction than average. The problem with this approach is that while these individuals are great at predicting should things continue mostly as they have, they're actually worse at predicting extreme events, which are inevitably the most impactful. 

I make some predictions for what the sort of changes COVID-19 will spawn in the world. In particular I think that gatherings of large groups of people will be affected for a very long time, but also I make some predictions for it's affect on preparation, US-China relations and ecoterrorists... 

Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead By: Jim Mattis The Lessons of History By: Will and Ariel Durant The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes By: Donald D. Hoffman Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World By: Laura Spinney Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives By: David Eagleman Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy By: Francis Fukuyama Sophocles II: Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, The Trackers By: Sophocles

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.