End September Reading List
Books
Exhalation and Other Stories – Ted Chiang
The War that Ended Peace: the Road to 1914 – Margaret MacMillan
Science and the Tools of Metaphysics – Ted Sider
Ockham’s Razor: A User’s Manual – Elliott Sober
Links
Comment: I agreed with this much more than I do the usual Bret Stephens column.
Daniel Muñoz on Kirk and the War on Terror
Comment: probably the best thing written on the Kirk murder and its aftermath that I’ve read.
More Experts Call for an International AI treaty
Comment: too little, but worth doing.
NYT Profile of Jay Bhattacharya
Comment: this is a weird piece. It kind of wants to be a puff piece, but Bhattacharya’s behavior is not puffable, so it comes out a little condescending: look at this pure rational soul adrift in the murky waters of Washington, in danger of becoming the dictionary definition of a useful idiot.
Will McAskill Did Not Like Yudkowski’s New Book
Comment: cards on the table: I have never been impressed by Yudkoswki. To be fair, I did not read Harry Potter (or Harry Potter and the Sequences of Rationality). But even when friends of mine have shared bits of ideas from him and his circle (some of which are interesting, e.g. the Basilisk thought experiment and Functional Decision Theory) there has seemed to me a mismatch between reputation and reality.
Now Tylenol Gets the Vaccine-Autism Treatment
Comment: feels like a medical witch hunt. I encountered this theory a few months ago on substack in an article that was superficially persuasive but had too many “quackery telltales” on inspection for me to take it seriously.
China’s Domestic Demand Problem
Comment: China has pushed central control more effectively than anyone else has, but the next challenge is daunting.
Comment: frequent flyers beware.
Comment: guys, almost all of the purported goodness of genAI is still in (increasingly tenuous) expectation.
Comment: project this, Goodman.
Dan Greco’s Game-Theoretic Defense of Great Books
Comment: I think Great Books should be in (but should not be all of) the undergraduate curriculum, satisfying neither ultratraditionalists who won’t read anything written after 1600 and ultramoderns who won’t read anything written before 1960.
After the Shooting: A Rush to Score Political Points Before the Facts are In
Comment: NYT Headlines are very hit and miss, but this one is both brutal and accurate. Update 9/28: Applies again.
Jimmy Kimmel Returns to the Air
Comment: Remove Brendan Carr.
Comment: fresh-cooked is a lot of work. It will always be a class marker. If you don’t have money and you want it, you just need to ‘git gud’ (at cooking).
The Rise of Cognitive Disability
Comment: they kind of undersell the “discussion” portion.
Comment: it’s gotten really bad in Haiti, and the press is nowhere to be seen.
I just can’t get into Chiang. He’s story about hell is a strange blend of standard theology and a realist style of writing.