We Are Not Saved

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.

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?

My annual episode where I look back on predictions I've made in the past (particularly my 100 year predictions) and make some predictions for the upcoming year. As you might imagine there would be no point of making 2020 predictions if I didn't cover the upcoming presidential election. I think there's a lot going on there, and while Bloomberg hasn't made a big impact he might still do that. Also Biden looks increasingly shaky as a front runner. Whatever happens it's going to be chaotic, but I take a stab at saying what exactly that chaos will look like.

Only the Dead: The Persistence of War in the Modern Age By: Bear F. Braumoeller Tower Lord (Raven’s Shadow #2) By: Anthony Ryan Oath of Swords (War God #1) By: David Weber The War God’s Own (War God #2) By: David Weber Aeschylus II: The Oresteia- Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides, Proteus (Fragments) By: Aeschylus The New Testament: A New Translation for Latter-day Saints (Religious) Translated By: Thomas A. Wayment The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, Maxwell Institute Study Edition (Religious) Annotated by: Grant Hardy Republican Party Animal: The “Bad Boy of Holocaust History” Blows the Lid Off Hollywood’s Secret Right-Wing Underground By: David Cole Utterly Dwarfed (The Order of the Stick #6) By: Rich Burlew Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus By: Wizards RPG Team A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul By: Leo Tolstoy The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations for Clarity, Effectiveness, and Serenity By: Ryan Holiday The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churc

A recent debate on the dangers of pornography, and whether government should restrict things more or whether people just need to "parent better" plus an article about "total sexual freedom" causing the collapse of a nation within three generations are all tied together into a discussion of how to deal with more subtle eschatological concerns.

The title pretty much says it all, but in case you don't know what an Eschatologist is, an eschatologist is someone who studies eschatology. And eschatology is "a part of theology concerned with the final events of history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity. This concept is commonly referred to as the 'end of the world' or 'end times'. In my discussion of eschatology I intend to broaden the definition both horizontally (to include secular concerns) and vertically (to include not merely the end of the world, but the end of the nation).

My book reviews for November: The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why By: Amanda Ripley The Mapping of Love and Death (Maisie Dobbs, #7) By: Jacqueline Winspear The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution By: Francis Fukuyama The Odyssey By: Homer Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl By: Harriet Ann Jacobs You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life By: Jen Sincero Ayoade on Top By: Richard Ayoade Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business By: Neil Postman Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology By: Neil Postman Midnight Riot (Peter Grant, #1) By: Ben Aaronovitch Aeschylus I: The Persians, The Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliant Maidens, Prometheus Bound By: Aeschylus

In 1985 Neil Postman published the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death". The central claim of the book was that TV had replaced the superior epistemology of the printed word with an inferior version focused entirely on entertainment. Now TV itself has been replaced as the dominant medium by the internet and social media. What epistemology has it brought with it, and is it better than TV or far, far worse?

After getting significant pushback I revisit my evaluation of Bryan Caplan's argument for open borders. I continue to maintain that if the average GDP of the US drops by half that some low-skilled workers will be caught in that. Even if many people end up benefiting. I bring in Garett Jones' argument against Caplan along with Caplan's response.

In the book War! What is it Good For? by Ian Morris, he speculates that the world has been built on the back of productive war. But what happens when empire building is out of fashion and nukes make war impossible even if it wasn't. Is it possible that after using war to achieve unity over the course of thousands of years, that it will stop working just at the moment it seemed possible we might unify the whole world?

The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation By: Carl Benedikt Frey Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age By: Arthur Herman All Creatures Great and Small By: James Herriot To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian By: Stephen E. Ambrose War! What Is It Good For?: Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots By: Ian Morris The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses By: Dan Carlin Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics By: Mary Eberstadt Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration By: Bryan Caplan