We Are Not Saved

Risk comes in lots of different forms. In Skin in the Game, Taleb's last, underrated book. He breaks risk down into ensemble probabilities and time probabilities. On top of that he demonstrates that risk operates differently at different scales. And that if we want to avoid large scale ruin—ruin at the level of nations or all of humanity—that we should be trying to push risk down the scale. 

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by: Carl R. Trueman Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by: Elizabeth Kolbert Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t by: Julia Galef Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution by: Mike Duncan This Is How You Lose the Time War by: Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism by: Sharyl Attkisson Plato: Complete Works by: Plato Stillness Is the Key by: Ryan Holiday The Sorrows of Young Werther by: Goethe

As human beings we have a unique ability to recognize patterns, even when confronted events that are completely random. In fact sometimes it's easier to see patterns in random noise. We pull narratives out of the randomness and use them to predict the future. Unfortunately the future is unpredictable and even when we have detected a pattern the outcomes end up being very different than what we expected.

The US-backed regime in Afghanistan lasted 9 days from the taking of the first provincial capital to the taking of Kabul. After the withdrawal of the Soviets in 1989. That government lasted over three years. What was the difference? Why after spending two trillion dollars and twice as long in the country did we do so much worse? Francis Fukuyama has asserted that the are no ideologies which can compete with liberal democracy. And everyone seems to believe that, but if that's so why did we have such a hard time implanting it in Afghanistan?

Philip Tetlock has been arguing for awhile that experts are horrible at prediction, but that his superforecasters do much better. If that's the case how did they do with respect to the fall of Afghanistan? As far as I can tell they didn't make any predictions on how long the Afghanistan government would last. Or they did make predictions and they were just as wrong as everyone else and they've buried them.  In light of this I thought it was time to revisit the limitations and distortions inherent in Tetlock's superforecasting project.

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by: Nicole Perlroth  Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope by: Mark Manson Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It by: Chris Voss Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore by: Michele Wucker Golden Sonby: Pierce Brown Red Rising: Sons of Ares – Volume 1 and 2 (Graphic Novels): By: Pierce Brown The Bear by: Andrew Krivak The Phoenix Exultant by: John C. Wright A History of North American Green Politics: An Insider View by: Stuart Parker Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology by: Adam S. Miller

In the ongoing discussion of dealing with an uncertain future I put forth the idea that believing in God and belonging to a religion represents "easy mode". 

When people consider the harms which might be caused by technology, they often point to the "precautionary principle" as a possible way to mitigate those harms. This principle seems straight forward but once you actually try to apply it the difficulties become obvious. In particular how do you ensure that you're not delaying the introduction of beneficial technologies. How do you insure the harms of delaying technology are not greater than the harms which might be caused by that technology. In this episode we examine several examples of how this principle might be applied. It isn't easy, but it does seem like something we need to master as new technologies continue to arrive.

My hot take on the situation in Afghanistan.  Highlights: -Why couldn't we have maintained a presence at Bagram, even if we pulled out everywhere else (think Guantanamo and Cuba). -Biden had more flexibility than he claimed. -It feels like this might lead to a loss of confidence similar to what we experienced after Vietnam -The effect on our allies may be the worst consequence of our withdrawal.

Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race by: Shanna H. Swan End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking) by: Katie Mack Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America by: Charles Murray Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness by: Tim Grover Streaking: The Simple Practice of Conscious, Consistent Actions That Create Life-Changing Results by: Jeffrey J. Downs and Jami L. Downs Red Rising by: Pierce Brown Coming Back Alive: The True Story of the Most Harrowing Search and Rescue Mission Ever Attempted on Alaska’s High Seas by: Spike Walker Freedom by: Sebastian Junger Faust by: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Open and Relational Theology: An Introduction to Life-Changing Ideas by: Thomas Jay Oord

I discussed Fermi's Paradox in my last newsletter. In this I discuss the hint it provides that technology may be inevitably linked to extinction. That the reason the universe is not teeming with aliens is that the technology to get to that point presents insuperable risks which cannot be overcome. As I said this is a hint, but I think it's a hint we need to take seriously.

Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters by: Steven E. Koonin Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science by: Peter Godfrey-Smith The Start 1904-30 by: William L. Shirer The Storm on Our Shores: One Island, Two Soldiers, and the Forgotten Battle of World War II by: Obmascik, Mark Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by: Robert K. Massie Tiamat’s Wrath by: James S. A. Corey What I Saw in America by: G. K. Chesterton Job: A New Translation by: Edward L. Greenstein

The massive attention being paid to UFOs in the form of the Pentagon/Naval videos has rekindled interest in the subject and by extension interest in Fermi's Paradox. I think people's interest in these subjects is entirely too trivial. Treating it as a curiosity rather than one of the most important indications of what the future has in store for humanity — either eventual doom or being terribly alone.

In a continuation of the last episode I examine my favorite explanation for the inflection point in 1971: that this is when energy decoupled from economic growth. Economic output which has no connection to energy usage is a new and strange beast, much easier to manipulate in ways that produce inequality and inflation and all the other ills which have afflicted us since the early 70s.

The website wtfhappenedin1971.com presents a series of charts which show that there was inflection in rates of everything from inequality to obesity in 1971. In every case with things getting worse. Why would that be? In this episode I examine at 8 explanations (possibly more depending on how you count). Full warning, my favorite explanation is not included. That will be the subject of my next episode.

And here is where I have cordoned off spoilers for Project Hail Mary. Listen at your own risk.

My capsule reviews for the month: Persepolis Rising by: James S. E. Corey Project Hail Mary by: Andy Weir The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century by: Stein Ringen The Ethics of Authenticity by: Charles Taylor Legal Systems Very Different From Ours by: David D. Friedman Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by: Alfred Lansing The Graveyard Book (Graphic Novel) by: Neil Gaiman Adapted by: P. Craig Russell Illustrated by: Various Learning from Loss: The Democrats, 2016–2020 by: Seth Masket

This episode is in three parts. First is the eschatological reviews: A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by: Jeff Hawkins One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by: Matthew Yglesias

I've been talking about the knobs of society in my newsletters. Well one of the knobs we appear to have lost all fear of is the spending knob and we've decided we can pretty much turn it as high as we want without consequence. And yet everyone regardless of their economic ideology realizes that we can't turn it up forever. And the key problem is that people imagine that when the time comes when we need to moderate our spending that it will be easy to turn down. I very much doubt that.

I recently encountered the term Wizards and Prophets as a way of describing those who were, respectively, optimistic about technology or pessimistic about it. I think this is a good way of thinking about things, and as the context I encountered these terms ended up being a full-throated defense of wizardry, I thought it might be worthwhile to offer up a defence of Prophets. Those who contend that we are playing a dangerous game, one whose stakes Wizards may not entirely understand. The recent resurgence of the Wuhan lab-leak theory for the pandemic proved very timely.