In particular for things such as YC and Thiel Fellowship, there's an important factor people often forget: there are hundreds of attempts to build the next YC - and there were hundred of attempts to build YC before that.
The first cohort is made of people who spotted the one incubator which would go on to eat, if not the world, at least a significant portion of Oceanview. All the following ones just chose an already successful partner.
2. On examples of interviewers that ask the right questions in order to reveal deep truth or contradictions in their subjects.
British documentarist Louis Theroux is incredible at times. While he does not hide his (fairly liberal, but quite buttoned-up) attitudes, and rarely adapts his mixture of genuine curiosity, deadpan stance and open yet far from amoral approach to the interviewees, he still manages to get them to open up, and sometimes (as in between the two films on the Westboro Baptist Church) to reevaluate their choices.
This is never done through evangelical zeal: he simply bares his subjects to themselves in the process of trying to explain their lives to the public. I think you'll find him quite interesting and inspirational.
3. On right vs. left EA and animal welfare.
This has been the first time that our >10 years age gap felt significant.
Most important thing first: the conflict between animal welfare people and longtermists is a psyop; ask me about Bostrom's outing (@lumpenspace for DM, same on gmail).
About subcultural capture:
being in EA, or being LessWrong-adjacent, has only been status-increasing in the straight world for two or three years. Still a year and a half ago it wasn't uncommon to call SSC "far-right" in averagely deranged liberal-ish circles. Google the book, "neoreaction a basilisk", and the eager media reception that it had: that's been the first contact most normies ever had with LessWrong; there were entire subreddits, handled by the fledgling SJW movement, dedicated on reposting and piling snark on the community, its values and mannerisms.
I was quite shocked, in my last SSC meetup - first in years - to see that (a) 40 people were present (five had been the pre-pandemic average) and that (b) some people simply did not get the /concept/ of prediction markets, and some of those had became quite central.
So, I don't see it much as a leftist takeover; more as the - nigh-inevitable - subcultural slide, described best in this timeless Chapman essay: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths (BTW he LIES when he says he's not good at thinking on his feet; we should kidnap him and bring him to your podcast - I think he'll have much to contribute, in particular on subcultures, relationships, pitfalls of systematic thinking and meaning crisis).
As for the animal welfare part: weirdly enough, that was one of the most ridiculed by liberals in the past - and the source of much pearl-clutching. If you allow me some pretty fundamental criticism, I think that the current soybugs aesthetic associations might have deprived of your usual high-decoupling attitude here: the Peter Singer argument was the most spectrally utilitarian, and it was far from arbitrary. Here it goes:
- Suffering is bad
- Suffering is bad in proportion of the capacity for suffering
- Lives of negative utility should not be lived, if the utility cannot be increased
- To the calculus, we need to add the potential of each individual for improving other individuals' welfare.
Some of the consequences of this - the same set of purely consequentialist principles that say that, if a cow can suffer 1/20th of what a man does, subjecting 20 of those to torture and death == doing it to a person - led to the most controversial soundbites Singer ever produced, related to the utility of severely handicapped humans.
In short, EA was far-center - a tribe whose flag shone of the liveliest grey. The apparent liberal takeover is composed of:
- 50% psyop by some frustrated kid who didn't manage to get Bostrom's accolades (nor to produce anything close to what led to such accolades, not that it mattered much to them);
- 50% EA becoming status-conferring and, as such, a community like any other for machiavellian midwits that have "empath" on their dating profile to drain of value. This is not just EA, btw: also circles even closer to your heart seem to be in danger, with the vibe shift on the horison. I kid you not, I have witnessed an attempt at cancelling some comrade for some vintage /liberal/ tweets. Really, the Chapman essay is required reading on this.
Hey, since you are a consumer of anime, I’ve wanted to ask you this. Is your blog/podcast title based on the anime with the same name (Shinsekai Yori in Japanese). Shinsekai Yori is my absolute favorite anime, or fictional story in general (it’s originally a novel, there’s a fan translated version of the novel online if you can’t read Japanese).
I like it! A couple points (I apologize if they are covered later in the episode, I am about 45 minutes into it so far)
Marvel movies hit the sweet spot for family movies - not mean spirited, enough action, nice platonic relationships for most characters, and the romantic relationships are handled in a wholesome way. Marvel is a very easy choice for a family movie night. I've never seen a marvel movie that I thought was very good, but all of them were acceptable for both parents and kids (based on my experience of one daughter, 12, and a lot of her friends) .
And In the late 70s and 80s comics both Captain America and Batman were very much planners - embedding lots of stoicism along the way.
Brian, nice work on this episode. Wondering if you can point me to the FDR biography that you mentioned to Mr. Patel. I don't think you mentioned the author's name.
I enjoyed the discussion of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” (written by the recently deceased Bert Bacharach) and more pop culture. I don’t know where i read it but apparently music is now made for pop tunes without the cord switch into a bridge because it’s emotionally unsettling. Kind of like how all interior decorating is gray now.
The WEF held a global victimhood summit in DC where all victims of every stripe can voice their grievances and be heard.
First a neo-pronouned, zer/zim, trans-atlantacist, corporate CEO sporting a full mustache, blush and a dress gets on stage with a bible, and says, "religion is the opiate of the masses, I am no longer bound by the ignorant whims of the ancients. I hereby cast off my chains!" And burns the bible in front of the crowd.
Then an Azov, blood and soil, Ukranian NAZI battalion commander with an iron cross around his neck gets up on stage with a bottle of vodka and says to the crowd, "my people are yearning for freedom from the avaricious bear to the East, with this gesture I cast off my chains!" And pours the entire bottle out.
Then a old farmer from Utah gets up on stage and says, "I've been living in this country my whole life, I'm a christian, I pay my taxes, I raised three healthy children, I raised food for the nation, I never did no one any harm. I have been abused in every which way, I have been made to suffer every humiliation, I have been made a symbol of the oppression and evil of the world throughout history by people who have never met me or even my supposed victims. Every symbol I ever held dear has been desecrated and now replaced by the worship of insanity. And with this act I cast off my chains." And takes a vaccine card out of his pocket and burns it.
And the CEO turns to the NAZI and says, "what is this fucking cis white male complaining about?"
Really good episode; a couple of observations:
1. On the founder effect.
In particular for things such as YC and Thiel Fellowship, there's an important factor people often forget: there are hundreds of attempts to build the next YC - and there were hundred of attempts to build YC before that.
The first cohort is made of people who spotted the one incubator which would go on to eat, if not the world, at least a significant portion of Oceanview. All the following ones just chose an already successful partner.
2. On examples of interviewers that ask the right questions in order to reveal deep truth or contradictions in their subjects.
British documentarist Louis Theroux is incredible at times. While he does not hide his (fairly liberal, but quite buttoned-up) attitudes, and rarely adapts his mixture of genuine curiosity, deadpan stance and open yet far from amoral approach to the interviewees, he still manages to get them to open up, and sometimes (as in between the two films on the Westboro Baptist Church) to reevaluate their choices.
This is never done through evangelical zeal: he simply bares his subjects to themselves in the process of trying to explain their lives to the public. I think you'll find him quite interesting and inspirational.
3. On right vs. left EA and animal welfare.
This has been the first time that our >10 years age gap felt significant.
Most important thing first: the conflict between animal welfare people and longtermists is a psyop; ask me about Bostrom's outing (@lumpenspace for DM, same on gmail).
About subcultural capture:
being in EA, or being LessWrong-adjacent, has only been status-increasing in the straight world for two or three years. Still a year and a half ago it wasn't uncommon to call SSC "far-right" in averagely deranged liberal-ish circles. Google the book, "neoreaction a basilisk", and the eager media reception that it had: that's been the first contact most normies ever had with LessWrong; there were entire subreddits, handled by the fledgling SJW movement, dedicated on reposting and piling snark on the community, its values and mannerisms.
I was quite shocked, in my last SSC meetup - first in years - to see that (a) 40 people were present (five had been the pre-pandemic average) and that (b) some people simply did not get the /concept/ of prediction markets, and some of those had became quite central.
So, I don't see it much as a leftist takeover; more as the - nigh-inevitable - subcultural slide, described best in this timeless Chapman essay: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths (BTW he LIES when he says he's not good at thinking on his feet; we should kidnap him and bring him to your podcast - I think he'll have much to contribute, in particular on subcultures, relationships, pitfalls of systematic thinking and meaning crisis).
As for the animal welfare part: weirdly enough, that was one of the most ridiculed by liberals in the past - and the source of much pearl-clutching. If you allow me some pretty fundamental criticism, I think that the current soybugs aesthetic associations might have deprived of your usual high-decoupling attitude here: the Peter Singer argument was the most spectrally utilitarian, and it was far from arbitrary. Here it goes:
- Suffering is bad
- Suffering is bad in proportion of the capacity for suffering
- Lives of negative utility should not be lived, if the utility cannot be increased
- To the calculus, we need to add the potential of each individual for improving other individuals' welfare.
Some of the consequences of this - the same set of purely consequentialist principles that say that, if a cow can suffer 1/20th of what a man does, subjecting 20 of those to torture and death == doing it to a person - led to the most controversial soundbites Singer ever produced, related to the utility of severely handicapped humans.
In short, EA was far-center - a tribe whose flag shone of the liveliest grey. The apparent liberal takeover is composed of:
- 50% psyop by some frustrated kid who didn't manage to get Bostrom's accolades (nor to produce anything close to what led to such accolades, not that it mattered much to them);
- 50% EA becoming status-conferring and, as such, a community like any other for machiavellian midwits that have "empath" on their dating profile to drain of value. This is not just EA, btw: also circles even closer to your heart seem to be in danger, with the vibe shift on the horison. I kid you not, I have witnessed an attempt at cancelling some comrade for some vintage /liberal/ tweets. Really, the Chapman essay is required reading on this.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QUqXKZNrwffxqfZ6I-UYNn1J0usStRIg/view?usp=drivesdk
Hey, since you are a consumer of anime, I’ve wanted to ask you this. Is your blog/podcast title based on the anime with the same name (Shinsekai Yori in Japanese). Shinsekai Yori is my absolute favorite anime, or fictional story in general (it’s originally a novel, there’s a fan translated version of the novel online if you can’t read Japanese).
I like it! A couple points (I apologize if they are covered later in the episode, I am about 45 minutes into it so far)
Marvel movies hit the sweet spot for family movies - not mean spirited, enough action, nice platonic relationships for most characters, and the romantic relationships are handled in a wholesome way. Marvel is a very easy choice for a family movie night. I've never seen a marvel movie that I thought was very good, but all of them were acceptable for both parents and kids (based on my experience of one daughter, 12, and a lot of her friends) .
And In the late 70s and 80s comics both Captain America and Batman were very much planners - embedding lots of stoicism along the way.
My two favorite podcasters doing a crossover! Thank you so much for the episode.
Brian, nice work on this episode. Wondering if you can point me to the FDR biography that you mentioned to Mr. Patel. I don't think you mentioned the author's name.
I enjoyed the discussion of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” (written by the recently deceased Bert Bacharach) and more pop culture. I don’t know where i read it but apparently music is now made for pop tunes without the cord switch into a bridge because it’s emotionally unsettling. Kind of like how all interior decorating is gray now.
Next try “Do You Know The Way to San Jose”.
The WEF held a global victimhood summit in DC where all victims of every stripe can voice their grievances and be heard.
First a neo-pronouned, zer/zim, trans-atlantacist, corporate CEO sporting a full mustache, blush and a dress gets on stage with a bible, and says, "religion is the opiate of the masses, I am no longer bound by the ignorant whims of the ancients. I hereby cast off my chains!" And burns the bible in front of the crowd.
Then an Azov, blood and soil, Ukranian NAZI battalion commander with an iron cross around his neck gets up on stage with a bottle of vodka and says to the crowd, "my people are yearning for freedom from the avaricious bear to the East, with this gesture I cast off my chains!" And pours the entire bottle out.
Then a old farmer from Utah gets up on stage and says, "I've been living in this country my whole life, I'm a christian, I pay my taxes, I raised three healthy children, I raised food for the nation, I never did no one any harm. I have been abused in every which way, I have been made to suffer every humiliation, I have been made a symbol of the oppression and evil of the world throughout history by people who have never met me or even my supposed victims. Every symbol I ever held dear has been desecrated and now replaced by the worship of insanity. And with this act I cast off my chains." And takes a vaccine card out of his pocket and burns it.
And the CEO turns to the NAZI and says, "what is this fucking cis white male complaining about?"