We Are Not Saved

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by: Patrick Radden Keefe Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 by: Matt Ridley and Alina Chan Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science by: Karl Sigmund Columbus Day: Expeditionary Force, Book 1 by: Craig Alanson SpecOps: Expeditionary Force, Book 2 by: Craig Alanson Paradise: Expeditionary Force, Book 3 by: Craig Alanson Row Daily, Breathe Deeper, Live Better: A Guide to Moderate Exercise by: Dustin Ordway Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by: Nir Eyal What is a p-value anyway? 34 Stories to Help You Actually Understand Statistics by: Andrew Vickers The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth by: Sam Quinones Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by: S. C. Gwynne Heart: The City Beneath by: Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor

It's time for my newsletter again, and after going step by step through the ideas of Taleb we finally arrive at his crowning idea: antifragility. Perhaps the biggest contribution Taleb makes to our understanding of the world that by grappling with the idea of the opposite of fragility he was able to define fragility, and point out that the modern world is chock full of it.

It's not the end of the pandemic or even the beginning of the end, but we might be at the end of the beginning, and since I just read three books on the subject I thought I'd see what could be said at this point. Come for the discussion of school closure and why it might have seemed so important in the beginning, stay for an overview of the lab leak hypothesis. But most of all just listen to the episode!

I return to a discussion of Douthat's "Deep Places" in particular what it tells about modern epistemology, or as I like to call it, "reality construction". I examine the reality constructed by Douthat, but also the differences between how we constructed reality during the 1918 pandemic vs. how we construct it now. Come for the history, stay for the murderous story of aspirin.

Why Liberalism Failed by: Patrick J. Deenen Leviathan Falls by: James S. A. Corey Termination Shock by: Neal Stephenson The Histories of Herodotus by: Herodotus The Golden Transcendence by: John C. Wright The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by: Charlie MacKesy Doctrine and Covenants

It's that time of year when people make predictions. I also make predictions though I do them somewhat differently. Mostly I'm interested in Identifying potential catastrophes and dismissing potential salvation. For example, nukes will get used again, and a benevolent AI won't save us. The key thing is not to make accurate predictions, but to make useful predictions. And as it turns out there's a big difference between the two.

I decide to take the end of the year off. But I didn't want to leave my loyal listeners without the normally scheduled episode. So here you go the first ever "We Are Not Saved" Classic!! It's my review and discussion of Neil Postman's classic "Amusing Ourselves to Death". One of the best books of the last 50 years!

The ninth book and sixth season of The Expanse were both just released. I haven't watched much of the TV show, but I did just finish reading the final book and as I did so it occurred to me that the way it handled Fermi's paradox might provide a useful way of understanding my own fixation on it. And why I think it presents a huge challenge to anyone who thinks that humanity is on an unending upward slope that will eventually take us to the stars.

The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery by: Ross Douthat Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History by: Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damien Paletta The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by: Michael Lewis Morning Star by: Pierce Brown Star Trek: The City on the Edge of Forever Teleplay by: Harlan Ellison The Economics of Violence by: Gary M. M. Shiffman The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by: J. R. R. Tolkien Chorazin: (The Weird of Hali #1) by: John Michael Greer The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by: Peter Hopkirk

Lately people have been using the idea that something is a black swan as excuse for being powerless. as an excuse. But this is not only a massive abdication of responsibility, it's also an equally massive misunderstanding of the moment. Because preparedness has no meaning if it's not directed towards preparing for black swans. There is nothing else worth preparing for. The future is the product of the black swans we have yet to encounter.