We Are Not Saved

Prediction is tough. You never know if things are about to get a lot worse, as was the situation with Polish Jews in 1937. Or if they're going to get a lot better, which was the situation of East Germans in 1988. But there are signs...

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. 

Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Courts by: Ilya Shapiro The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by: Joseph Henrich Rhythm of War (Book Four of The Stormlight Archive) by: Brandon Sanderson The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by: Margaret MacMillan Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t by: Steven Pressfield The Minuteman by: Greg Donahue 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:   It’s easy for everyone, whether they agree with you or disagree with you, to understand what it is you say you are doing. It’s easy for everyone to see whether or not you are, in fact, doing what you said you would do. 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: Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the 116 Days that Changed the World by: Chris Wallace Enemy At the Gates by: William Craig Necroscope by: Brian Lumley Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by: John McPhee Bang For Your Buck by: Stefan Gasic The Darkest Winter by: Nick Johns C. S. Lewis Essay Collection & Other Short Pieces by: C. S. Lewis Book of Mormon Made Harder by: James E. Faulconer 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: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by: James C. Scott 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?

Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years by: Vaclav Smil The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley By: Malcolm X (Author), Alex Haley (Author), Laurence Fishburne (Narrator) Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets By: Sudhir Venkatesh Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters By: Abigail Shrier (Moved to the next episode) The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage By: Anthony Brandt Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations by: John Bartlett The Golden Age By: John C. Wright How to Start Your Homeschool: What I Learned My First 5 Years by: Taylia Clegg Bunker Destroying Their God: How I Fought My Evil Half-Brother to Save My Children By: Wallace Jeffs  (Author), Shauna Packer  (Author), Sherry Taylor  (Author) The Neal A. Maxwell Quote Book by: Neal A. Maxwell

In politics there's always a choice between extremism and moderation. In this episode I discuss all the reasons for making moderation the default, and under what circumstances it might be appropriate abandon it and pursue extremism instead. My general conclusion is that there aren't many, but that it's a very difficult problem where clear lines are hard to draw.

Most people understand that voting is a way of making decisions via consensus, what people have forgotten is that voting is also a proxy for power. A much better proxy than those which have existed historically, and positively fantastic when compared to directly matching power via bloodshed and violence.  If people have decided (as Trump supporters) evidently have, that the proxy of voting is no longer working then they can either decide that they have been outmatched in these different arenas, or they can seek other proxies of power to even things out. Up to and including a direct exercise of power, through resorting to bloodshed and violence. 

Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies by: Geoffrey West From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia by: Pankaj Mishra Just like You by: Nick Hornby Seven Types of Atheism by: John N. Gray Why Not Parliamentarism? by: Tiago Ribeiro dos Santos An Instinct for Dragons by: David E. Jones Aristophanes: The Complete Plays by: Aristophanes Translated by: Paul Roche Battle Ground by: Jim Butcher

I think many people expect too much out of the election. Trump supporters expect that if he manages to get reelected that he will do all the things he's been promising since 2016, while Biden supporters expect that their long nightmare of political dysfunction will finally be over. But political dysfunction has been around for a lot longer than Trump and so much of what seems wrong with the world has nothing to do with him. He does have the talent of making everything seem like it's about him, but if Biden is elected (and I think he will be) it will quickly become apparent that most of our problems had nothing to do with Trump... 

Any rational assessment of the effect of your vote on the presidential election is bound to conclude that there is no effect if you're not in a swing state and that even if you are in a swing state the effect is still infinitesimal. But what other option do you have? Well that's what this episode is designed to reveal. I would argue that there's a great option which is almost entirely overlooked, voting for a third party candidate or writing someone in! I'm writing in General Mattis, and if you want to know why you'll have to listen.

In this episode we discuss China, and the various opinions about what they're up to, and what we should do in response to whatever that is. There are numerous opinions and while I don't try to cover them all, I cover a lot of them, and it's safe to say opinions are all over the place. But beyond all of the opinions of others I provide my own unique theory, which is not the theory I find most likely, but it may be the most frightening theory. What is it? You'll have to listen and find out.

Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress by: Christopher Ryan The End of History and the Last Man by: Francis Fukuyama Sidhartha by: Herman Hesse The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Sławomir Rawicz Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space by: Kevin Peter Hand Kansas City Noir by: Various Innsmouth: (The Weird of Hali #1) by: John Michael Greer The Kill Chain: How Emerging Technologies Threaten America’s Military Dominance by: Christian Brose Trump vs. China: Facing America’s Greatest Threat by: Newt Gingrich A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 by: G. J. Meyer

In the book The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama spends quite a bit of time talking about the idea of legitimacy, in particular how the End of History represents a time when only liberal democracy has any reserves of legitimacy. But two questions occur, first where does a nation go if liberal democracy starts failing? And second does that failure happen, does it end up just like all previous systems, if it no longer provides reserves of legitimacy? Recent events seem to indicate that the answer to those two questions maybe no where, and yes. In other words liberal democracy is suffering a crisis of legitimacy and unfortunately, at this point, there's no where left to go.