We Are Not Saved

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/12/31/eschatologist-24-chatgpt-and-a-lack-of-genius/ I reflect on my AI prediction from past years in light of the amazing abilities of ChatGPT. I wonder if you're ever going to get brilliant output from a huge corpus of material which strictly on account of it's volume has to be essentially average...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/12/24/the-ineffability-of-conservatism/ I tell a story I heard of a boy walking out of Church in a direct slap to his father. And wonder why such a thing would have been inconcievable 40 years ago. What changed? As it turns out it's hard to say, and that's a big part of the problem.

The Psychology of Totalitarianism by: Mattias Desmet The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World by: Adrian Wooldridge The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud by: Phillip Rieff Plato: A Very Short Introduction by: Julia Annas Jesus’ Son by: Denis Johnson Tombs of Atuan by: Ursula K. Le Guin Roadside Picnic by: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Purple Days by: Baurus

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/11/30/eschatologist-23-avoiding-risk/  After all the hot takes which have been offered in the wake of the FTX collapse, this is the hot take to rule them all. Okay probably not, and at this point it's probably a cold take. But I do think the whole FTX debacle carries some valuable lessons about risk. So that's what you're getting...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/11/26/book-review-the-ethics-of-beauty/  This is a review I did for the first issue of American Hombre, a new magazine being published by a friend of mine. I did an excerpt of it back in episode 292, but he’s graciously agreed to let me release it in its entirety. If this makes you interested in the full magazine, the PDF is currently available for free at americanhombre.gumroad.com. But also you should consider subscribing to the print version. This magazine deserves to be held.  You can use the coupon code ‘RW’ to get 10% off a subscription or $1 off the price of the print issue. The next issue is coming out in January and it will include another review by me. (The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, if you’re curious.)  This review includes some pictures which you can find either in the PDF version of the magazine, or on wearenotsaved.com. But I will attempt to describe them in the course of my reading. They’re mostly pictures from the trip I took to Ireland this s

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/11/19/finding-the-answer/ A somewhat discursive episode where I reflect on a book I just read about meritocracy and different answers for the best way to organize society. And how what we thought was the answer—liberal democracy—appears to be fracturing, leaving everyone to fight over what part of it is the most important. What part was truly The Answer.

Link to survey: https://forms.gle/tCxmpwM4RTxPCJKUA What We Owe the Future by: William MacAskill The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe by: Michael D. Gordin Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by: Jonathan Shay Socrates: A Very Short Introduction by: C.C.W. Taylor  Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy by: Mortimer J. Adler A Wizard of Earthsea by: Ursula K. LeGuin Freemasonry and the Origins of Latter-day Saint Temple Ordinances by: Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/31/eschatologist-22-a-survey/ Survey: https://forms.gle/toRzdKPervpygw8MA  It's time for me to stick my head out and see what people think of me. Yes I'd like you to fill out a survey. Tell me what you think. I mean it. Be brutal!

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/29/chip-off-the-old-bloc/ Recently the US enacted a set of punishing trade restrictions on China with respect to high-end chips. Some have called these restrictions the annihilation of China's semiconductor industry. Maybe so, but China's not going to go down without a fight, and the situation is complicated by numerous factors, including the complications of the technology itself. There's a lot going on and I attempt to cover a large portion of it.

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/22/the-midterms-biases-and-a-lack-of-moderation/  We're a few weeks from the midterms and it seemed like a good time to review the state of things. Though they're changing rapidly. In between composing this episode and recording it people went from expecting the Democrats to keep the Senate expecting them to lose it by a few seats. Beyond the reshuffling the election is exciting (or terrifying, depending on your perspective) for other reasons. We get to see if polls are still horribly broken (probably) and if there's any hope for either party to become more moderate. And of course there's the eternal possiblity that we'll finally get a viable third party (almost certainly not but a man can hope). 

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/10/15/dalio-vs-zeihan/ Ray Dalio and Peter Zeihan have both written books about the future of America, China, and the world. On some points they agree and on some points they're profound disagreement. I compare and contrast these too books, hoping by doing so to tease out a credible view of the future. It's a view that's pretty pessimistic. But I think once you've looked at both of them, that's what you end up with.

The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by: Peter Zeihan The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by: David Deutsch Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by: Anne Applebaum Post-Truth by: Lee C. McIntyre Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be by: Steven Pressfield  A Reader’s Companion to Infinite Jest by: Robert Bell and William Dowling The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by: Agatha Christie Dauntless: Lost Fleet, Book 1 by: Jack Campbell Fearless: Lost Fleet, Book 2 by: Jack Campbell Courageous: Lost Fleet, Book 3 by: Jack Campbell Outland by: Dennis E. Taylor

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/30/eschatologist-21-but-what-if-theyre-wrong/ I consider the predictions of three books and how one might approach these predictions when deciding how to prepare for the future.  It seems clear that most people start by trying to determine if a prediction is more likely than not to be accurate, but you should actually do somewhat the opposite, you should consider what the consequences are if the prediction is wrong.

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/28/the-bifurcation-created-by-technology/ This episode started as a tweet: Technology bifurcates problems. 99% of problems go away, but the 1% that are left are awful. Case in point customer service: 99% of the time you don't even need customer service from Amazon, etc. but the 1% of the time you do you're suddenly in a story by Kafka. Which I followed up with: Additional thoughts/example: Self driving cars. Tech can take care of easiest 99%. Tosses most difficult 1% back to driver. Driver has no context, just suddenly in deep end, therefore much worse at hardest 1% than if they had just dealt with the full 100% from start. What causes this phenomenon and how worried should we be?

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/21/the-tails-of-the-cultural-bell-curve/ If we imagine that culture has historically taken the form of a bell curve. Does it still do so? Or have we gutted the middle in service of making sure that the tails don't feel neglected? This seems very likely to be the case, and if it is what are the consequences?

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/09/14/excerpt-book-review-the-ethics-of-beauty/ An excerpt from a book review I recently did for the new magazine American Hombre (available here: https://americanhombre.gumroad.com/)

The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail by: Ray Dalio The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century by: Louise Perry The War on the West by: Douglas Murray The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: Woke, Entitled, and Drunk with Power by: Mark Bauerlein Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by: Luke Burgis The Giver by: Lois Lowry The End of Eternity by: Isaac Asimov Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by: Ross Douthat

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/08/31/eschatologist-20-the-antifragility-of-taboos/ We covered the fragility of systems and technology in the last newsletter. In this newsletter I’d like to move from the material to the ephemeral. In other words, let’s talk about culture. This is a huge topic for a short newsletter, so while much of what I say can be applied to traditional culture in general, I want to focus on traditional taboos. The older and stronger and more widespread the taboo, the better...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2022/08/26/the-involution-of-everything/  Recently I came across a theory for the progression of subcultures, which seemed to have significant explanatory power for what's happening to Western culture in general. Among the many things this theory speaks to is why cultural fights have become so vicious, why young people are disengaging, and whether wokeism has peaked. 

To Save Everything Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by: Evgeny Morozov Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? by: Mark Fisher How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe by: Thomas Cahill The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History by: Alexander Mikaberidze Kidnapped by: Robert Louis Stevenson Weird of Hali: Providence by: John Michael Greer Queer Mormon Theology: An Introduction by: Blaire Ostler ⌫ The Ethics of Beauty by: Timothy G. Patitsas