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We Are Not Saved

We Are Not Saved is a podcast covering Eschatology. While this concept has traditionally been a religious one, and concerned with the end of creation, in this podcast that study has been broadened to include secular ways the world could end (so called x-risks) and also deepened to cover the potential end of nations, cultures and civilizations. The title is taken from the book of Jeremiah, Chapter 8, verse 20: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.
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Now displaying: Page 1
Feb 12, 2025

In which I decide that I am not going to read "Wind and Truth". And also that 63 hours on audio is just ridiculous.

Jan 24, 2025

A method for making better decisions should you ever find yourself in Kathmandu, or paying for SEO, or hoping to see the Supreme Court.

Jan 10, 2025

You have probably heard about Rotherham, and the child sex abuse rings that existed there (and may still be operating). As with so many things these days, this story entered the public discussion when Musk tweeted about it. For many people I’ve talked to, this was the first they’d heard of it. I actually spoke about about it in 2018. At the time I felt I was late to the game, but apparently I was six years ahead of most people. Given the story's re-emergence I thought it might be worth dusting off that old piece. I think it holds up pretty well, particularly the part about the woeful lack of reporting on the topic.

I have lightly edited it, smoothing things out in a few places, adding commas, that sort of thing. Temporal references have not been updated, so when I say “a week ago” I’m referring to 2018.

Even if you’ve already read a lot about these horrific crimes, there are a few takes in here that I haven’t seen elsewhere

 

Jan 6, 2025

Exactly five years ago, China identified a “novel coronavirus” and the world was introduced to the term “wet market”. In the time since then arguments continue to rage about the source of the virus, the measures that were taken, and the vaccines that were created.

In the midst of all these arguments, everyone seems to agree on one thing: extended school closures were a bad idea. It’s very easy to continue on from that to assume the harms of such closures were obvious from the very beginning—that they happened only because we were blinded by fear. Some people don’t go quite so far, but nevertheless argue that such closures were implemented hastily and without much consideration. But consider this quote from the Michael Lewis book Premonition on the role of disease modeling:

The graph illustrated the effects on a disease of various crude strategies: isolating the ill; quarantining entire households when they had a sick person in them; socially distancing adults; giving people antiviral drugs; and so on. Each of the crude strategies had some slight effect, but none by itself made much of a dent, and certainly none had the ability to halt the pandemic by driving the disease’s reproductive rate below 1. One intervention was not like the others, however: when you closed schools and put social distance between kids, the flu-like disease fell off a cliff. (The model defined “social distance” not as zero contact but as a 60 percent reduction in kids’ social interaction.) “I said, ‘Holy shit!’ ” said Carter. “Nothing big happens until you close the schools. It’s not like anything else. It’s like a phase change. It’s nonlinear. It’s like when water temperature goes from thirty-three to thirty-two. When it goes from thirty-four to thirty-three, it’s no big deal; one degree colder and it turns to ice.

Dec 12, 2024

Three things converged for me recently and at the point of their convergence was the issue of placing women in frontline combat roles.

The first leg of the convergence was the election of Donald Trump. We’re still debating the reasons why he won, but certainly a reassertion of gender differences are near the top of everyone’s list. For example, allowing natal men into women’s sports.

The second was Trump’s nomination of Pete Hesgeth for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth’s nomination is controversial for a lot of reasons, but one of the controversies is his opinion that women should not be allowed into front line combat roles. 

Finally, I just got done watching the miniseries Band of Brothers, while at the same time re-reading the Stephen E. Ambrose book it’s based on. I would highly recommend the exercise (see my review of the book here.) In addition to being enjoyable it reminded me of how physical, grimy, and desperate combat can be. And of course the theme of both the book and the series is that Easy Company was so effective because they had developed strong bonds of brotherhood through the numerous challenges they overcame. These challenges include D-Day, Market Garden, liberating concentration camps, and finally being the first into Hitler’s stronghold at Eagle’s Nest. But if you were to pick the hardest thing they did, it was probably defending Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.

Watching and reading about Bastogne was a sobering experience. It is also the point where the three things I just mentioned crystallized into this line of inquiry. Given that it might be helpful to give you a brief overview of the Siege of Bastogne...

 

Nov 22, 2024

He talks about the Village, and the River, but what we really need is a Redoubt.

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything 

By: Nate Silver

Published: 2024

576 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

There are two different ways of approaching the world: the River, which thinks in terms of numbers, expected values, and quantification and the Village, which is the paternalistic expert class which manifests as the vast bureaucracy. 

What's the author's angle?

I got the impression that Silver just wanted to write about things that interested him. Because of this, his thesis was kind of tacked on. That said, he is a fairly passionate advocate for things that interest him. 

Who should read this book?

Silver is worried that people will skip the first half of the book which is about gambling, but in reality that was the best part, or at least the part I found to be novel. The second part is about Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), AI, and all the stuff you’ve already heard too much about if you spend much time online. With this in mind, I think there are three reasons to read this book:

  1. If you want a deep exploration of high-level poker playing. 

  2. You have never heard of AI Risk or SBF.

  3. If you think my discussion of Silver’s model of the Village vs. the River is incomplete.

Specific thoughts: An mashup of the election and this book

...

Nov 6, 2024

One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, Volumes 1 & 2 

By: Whitney Alyse Webb

Briefly, what are these books about?

The alleged connections between organized crime and national intelligence agencies which led to the numerous illicit operations including Watergate, Iran-Contra, the JFK Assassination, and of course the entire Jeffrey Epstein mess. 

A key component of these operations was the tactic of collecting blackmail and using it to convince people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t.

What's the author's angle?

Charitably, Webb is an autodidact with an enormous command of facts and connections.

Uncharitably, she’s someone with a weak evidentiary filter making conspiratorial mountains out of tenuously connected molehills.

Who should read these books?

No one should just read them. You should either ignore them or study them intently as part of an “Intro to Conspiracy Theories” curriculum. Of the two I would recommend the former. Read on to see why.

I- How does one approach a book like this? 

...

Oct 24, 2024

With the enormous increase in the power of AI (specifically LLMs) people are using them for all sorts of things, hoping to find areas where they’re better, or at least cheaper than humans. FiveThirtyNine (get it?) is one such attempt, and they claim that AI can do forecasting better than humans. 

Scott Alexander, of Astral Codex Ten, reviewed the service and concluded that they still have a long way to go. I have no doubt that this is the case, but one can imagine that this will not always be the case. What then? My assertion would be that at the point when AI forecasting does “work” (should that ever happen) it will make the problems of superforecasting even worse.2 

I- The problems of superforecasting

What are the problems of superforecasting?

...

Oct 10, 2024
  1. Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos by: Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam

  2. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by: James C. Scott

This post represents a new feature (experiment?) I plan to occasionally write posts which take advantage of one or more books I read recently, but which aren’t actually reviews of those books. See, for example, my last post: Superminds, States, and the Domestication of Humans

Despite the fact that the books feature heavily in these posts, I assume my adoring fans still want actual reviews. But it doesn’t make sense to wait until the next book review collection for those reviews to appear, nor does it make sense to cram the reviews into the original essay which was about something else. And so I thought that instead I would have the reviews quickly follow the essay as sort of supplementary material. So that’s what this is. Let me know what you think. 

Oct 5, 2024

How durable is the state? How resistant is it to being overthrown? How closely does it reflect our desires? Is it possible it has its own desires?

But maybe more importantly how does all this affect the possibility of a very close election in November?

Sep 28, 2024

A narcissistic dialogue around ideas that are either annoyingly fractured or wholly unrealistic. 

DON'T DIE: Dialogues 

By: Bryan Johnson

Published: 2023

247 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

How best to extend the lifespan of humans and the lifetime of humanity presented in the form of a fictional dialogue between various aspects of the author's personality. 

What's the author's angle?

Bryan Johnson is a biohacker who measures dozens and dozens of biomarkers. As a result of this he claims to be aging at 64/100th the normal rate. He’s also a former and, as near as I can tell, disaffected member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

Who should read this book?

If you’re really into lifespan expansion, then maybe? Or similarly very concerned with X-risks? But I will warn you that the book is written in one of the more annoying styles I’ve ever encountered. Not only does it directly impede the transmission of information, it actively works against its inclusion..

Specific thoughts: A strange approach to X-risks...

Sep 12, 2024

Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/divine-disappointment-and-mortal

Is God Disappointed in Me?: Removing Shame from a Gospel of Grace 

By: Kurt Francom

Published: 2024

190 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

Our parents expect that we will do certain things—perhaps it’s cleaning our rooms, perhaps it’s becoming a doctor—when we don't, they're disappointed. We have a tendency to view God in the same fashion; He also has expectations, and when we fail to meet them we imagine that He is similarly disappointed. Francom claims this is a false belief. Because of God’s omniscience and infinite love, He cannot be disappointed. When we think He might be it leads to shame, which prevents us from accessing His love. 

What’s the author’s angle?

Francom is the director of Leading Saints, an organization whose primary focus is providing advice and resources for the lay leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’s also heavily involved with Warrior Heart a Christian men’s organization that runs retreats with a focus on addiction recovery. This book is part of those focuses and a personal expression of Francom’s approach to leadership and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What’s My Angle?

I’ve known Francom for going on ten years. As such I’ve been privy to his argument that God cannot be disappointed from his initial epiphany all the way down to his full, book-length treatment of the subject. As I’ve watched the idea develop, I’ve raised numerous objections. To Francom’s great credit most of these objections are at least acknowledged in the book. I suspect that I wasn’t the only one to raise these objections, but I fancy that he first heard of them from me. 

My name is listed in the book’s acknowledgments but it’s pretty generic. I had hoped for something more like “And thanks to Ross Richey, if not for his relentless criticism, unending negativity, poor character, and dark soul, the book would have been less accurate, but probably more inspiring.”

Jul 17, 2024

My submission to the Astral Codex Ten Book Review Contest. It was not a finalist. Comments are appreciated. (Especially ones pointing out how much better it is than the actual finalists.) 

Links to transcript sections:

I- Prologue

II- The Core Observation

III- The Realm of the Potentially Traumatic

IV- “Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Children!?”

V- A Continuum of Parenting, With Sundry Bad Examples, and an Appearance by The Last Psychiatrist

VI- Resilience

Jul 10, 2024

If Trump can brazen is way through all of his various scandals why can't Biden brazen his way through this?

May 29, 2024

Just look at the episode picture. The episode picture explains all...

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